My only question is this:  How many of these changes is the Religious Right actually happy with?

I mean, we know Phyllis Schlafly probably doesn’t support the 1993 change, because she doesn’t believe marital rape exists.  The 1769 change probably is a bit of a thorn in many anti-gay bigots’ sides.  1967?  Hell, Mississippi’s still having trouble with that.

Perhaps the greater lesson to be learned here is that it’s important to see the same-sex marriage fight not as simply anti-gay, but as just one more thing that chips away at the frail patriarchy wingnuts need to preserve in order to sustain some semblance of self worth.

[h/t Unicorn Booty]

We all know the Bible verse from our Sunday School days, you know, the one about how only girls are supposed to wear pink nail polish.  It’s right there, red-letter-edition, I believe.  [That means Jesus said it, in case you didn't know.]  So it’s appropriate that a wingnut going by the name of “Erin R. Brown” has published a fever screed bemoaning the “transgendered child propaganda” in a J. Crew ad:

J.CREW, a popular preppy woman’s clothing brand

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Erin, J. Crew is a women’s clothing brand?! They must be more subversive than I thought with their transgender propaganda, because I am a BOY BLOGGER and I am totally wearing a J. Crew shirt right now. Gay/transgender agenda bein’ crammed down everybody’s throats, ain’t it!

is targeting a new demographic – mothers of gender-confused young boys.

Well, they got cash. Okay, so here is the ad in question. It features Jenna Lyons, the president of J. Crew, with her son, who apparently likes the color pink, and also likes a little nail polish now and then.

This is a phase that MANY boys go through, and they grow up to be straight, gay, bisexual, transgender and whatever else. It literally has no bearing on anything if a little boy likes pink or nail polish. But we’re dealing with the Religious Right here, so please, let us all get our pink panties in a wad. Back to the complaining Erin person:

In the feature, Jenna is pictured with her adorable curly-haired son Beckett, and the two are seen giggling with Jenna holding Beckett’s feet, containing hot pink painted toe-nails. ‘Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,’ read Jenna’s quote. ‘Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.’

Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow, Jenna’s indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the boy in the future. J.CREW, known for its tasteful and modest clothing, apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the façade of liberal, transgendered identity politics. One has to wonder what young boys in pink nail polish has to do with selling women’s clothing.

Okay, first of all, let’s be clear, that J. Crew makes clothes for men too. Also, let’s be clear about the fact that millions of moms have had little boys who liked to do girly things sometimes. Let us continue to be clear about the fact that, AS ERIN STATED, Beckett might change his favorite color tomorrow! That is the point about this being a phase that lots of kids go through! It is perfectly normal, and the reason this ad probably resonates is that it is such a common experience for moms of boys. To conclude that this ad has anything to do with “transgendered identity politics” is approximately as insane as continuing to believe that there is a question about the birthplace of Barack Obama. Oh, Erin. You’re probably one of those too, aren’t you?

Anyway, that’s all that Erin has to say. Unfortunately the story isn’t over, because now Fox News is jumping on the idiot bandwagon in declaring this a liberal, transgendered propaganda something or other.  Enter hack psychologist Dr. Keith Ablow:

Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your “innocent” pleasure.

Yeah, because we all know the great damage done to kids who aren’t made to feel ashamed of themselves. Oh wait, this is a wingnut psychologist…they don’t care about protecting kids! They simply are concerned with protecting patriarchy and tradition.

This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such “psychological sterilization” [my word choice] is not known.

This is a dramatic example of nothing. And it is very obvious that “psychological sterilization” was your word choice, as a more qualified mental health professional would never utter moron words like that.

In our technology-driven world—fueled by Facebook, split-second Prozac prescriptions and lots of other assaults on genuine emotion and genuine relationships and actual consequences for behavior—almost nothing is now honored as real and true.

Increasingly, this includes the truth that it is unwise to dress little girls like miniature adults (in halter tops and shorts emblazoned with PINK across the bottoms) and that it is unwise to encourage little boys to playact like little girls.

One can make the argument that little girls shouldn’t be objectified in such ways, but to conflate that with the idea of little boys simply enjoying “girly” things is beyond stupid. What kind of degree mill let Keith Ablow through?

Now would be a good time to point out what this wingnut bitching session is really about, because Ablow goes on to ask, approximately, well, if you don’t see anything wrong with the ad, what if it was a boy in a sundress?!  Note that they wouldn’t be quite as freaked out about a tomboy-ish girl.  Why?  Because, for a girl to aspire to be “like a boy,” although galling for these weak-minded men as it applies to a woman eschewing motherhood and choosing a high-paying career instead, seems quite natural for them, because they believe men are superior.  They are freaking out over this because they believe that for a little boy to do something stereotypically “girly” is not just against tradition, but indeed shameful.  It’s also the same reason wingnut freak-outs over homosexuality tend to skew hardest against gay men, because gay men are perceived [by wingnuts] to be betraying our masculinity, our superiority, our place on the pedestal.  This goes all the way back to the verse in Leviticus about lying with a man “as with a woman.“  That verse isn’t about homosexuality, at least not the way modern minds understand it.  It’s about misogyny.  It’s about the inherent shame, the inherent lower status [they believe], in womanhood. 

Watch the trash science spew as Ablow continues:

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

Oh my dear god! First of all, actual transgender people don’t get gender identities that match their biological sex at birth. Science actually understands this a bit, and all the major medical and mental health associations present a fairly unified front on how this should be handled. Moreover, no one is “crowding” operating rooms for the “amputation of body parts.” Anyone, who is not currently a mentally deficient wingnut, can understand that transgender is not a disease that is somehow going to spread through the general population if little boys are allowed to wear nail polish! The suggestion that this would in any way be related to “playacting” as members of another race is so stupidly insipid that I won’t even address it. Indeed, I’m not sure why I’m still responding at this point, because you really can’t fix stupid.

Ablow then details other symptoms of the fall-out from Nail-Polish-Gate:

The fallout is already being seen. Increasingly, girls show none of the reticence they once did to engage in early sexual relationships with boys. That may be a good thing from the standpoint of gender equality, but it could be a bad thing since there is no longer the same typically “feminine” brake on such behavior. Girls beat up other girls on YouTube. Young men primp and preen until their abdomens are washboards and their hair is perfect. And while that may seem like no big deal, it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else, and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives.

Okay, first of all, the seething hatred and jealousy Ablow exhibits toward men who have nice bodies and good hair is bizarre, but I understand it, considering his hair situation. But the rest of this can be summed up in one statement: “This is agin’ terdishun, it is!” Ablow here is lamenting the fall of a world where bitches know their place and men are elevated to superior status, simply on account of their penises. It’s supremely pathetic.

I wonder what Jenna would think if her son wanted to celebrate his masculinity with a little playacting as a cowboy, with a gun? Would that bring the same smile of joy and pure love that we see on her face in the J. Crew advertisement? Or would that be where she might draw the line?

Uh, she’d probably be fine with it, because normal, good parents [i.e. not wingnuts] love and support their kids no matter what, instead of putting the terdishun of the penis-having patriarchy above all else, and worrying about the fall-out later.

I’m always amazed at the utter lack of self-awareness wingnut men exhibit when they pen pieces like this, when they clutch their pearls in this way.  Do they ever realize how weak, how fearful they look and sound?  Do they realize that, in their desire to paint women into one, inferior corner, in their obsession with penis-substitutes, that they end up appearing, in their stereotypical images, like little girls?  We on the sane side of things know that these binary constructs aren’t true, for we all have the capacity for strength and weakness, for “masculinity” and “femininity,” and every other emotion and characteristic on the spectrum, regardless of the respective arrangements of each of our genitals.  But that is the world wingnuts live in, and so it’s always stunning to me, and not just a little bit hilarious, that in their whiny need to protect their male superiority, they just end up looking sad and scared.

The true threat to men like Dr. Keith Ablow isn’t that little boys who like to wear nail polish will suddenly become gay or transgender or anything else.  It’s rather that there are little boys who wear nail polish today who will grow up to be greater, stronger men than anything those wingnuts could ever aspire to, men who don’t need the grading curve of the patriarchy to succeed in life. 

That must be absolutely terrifying.

[h/t David Badash]

He’s in character as 007, and in case you’re curious, he looks damn good in a dress.

But it’s not “pro-equality” like you’re thinking — no, this is a public service announcement addressing the kind of inequalities that still exist between men and women.  Oh yes, we’re still cleaning up the mess the Christian patriarchy left us, on both sides of the pond.

Truly a fantastic spot.

[h/t PZ Myers]

This post from John Shore is a few weeks old, but I hadn’t seen it, so I figured y’all might not have either.  In it, he goes directly to the heart of why so many fundamentalists are so virulently anti-gay.  It, of course, has nothing to do with the Bible, no matter how much they protest that it does — that’s all a smokescreen that they use to convince themselves and others that something much deeper isn’t going on.  This is also why the word “homophobia” is so excessively appropriate to describe the condition exhibited by anti-gay activists:

The reason is power. It’s all about power. The problem Christians and others have with homosexuality isn’t about sex. Nobody cares that much about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Sure, it says in the Bible that homosexuality is bad. And of course that matters. As a Christian, what the Bible says certainly matters to me. But the Bible also says that slavery is good, and that women shouldn’t speak in church, and that Christians should never eat shellfish, and on and on an on. We’ve long ago made our peace with the idea that sometimes we have to modify our understanding of Biblical texts—especially when (as is true with the Pauline proscriptions of homosexuality), there are sound reasons to question the way the text has been translated.

You see, fundamentalist Christians have no trouble finding easy rationalizations for the Bible verses they don’t personally like or that don’t fit in with their own worldview.  Indeed, if you browse John’s comments section, you can easily find ten examples of fundamentalists doing just that.  John goes on to explain what he means by “power”:

And the answer to that question is simple: they threaten the traditional power base of men.

Here’s the basic run of it inside a man’s brain/heart/subconscious:

I may not be much. But I’m a man. And that entitles me to a lot.

Two women together? That’s kind of cute—sexy, even. But it doesn’t scare me. Because neither of those women can threaten my power. They can’t undermine the truth that, as a man, I’m still (figuratively and literally) on top. Two women together doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a man’s world.

But two men together? Yikes. That’s a problem for me. That’s when all the walls in my world begin to crumble.

Each of those men is my equal, my peer; they’re my kind. If it’s okay for them to be romantic with each other, then, for me, everything gets upended. [Oh, will you just stopalready?!] Because where the heck does that leave me?

I’m a man. I get to be a man. That means I’m … the man! I’m in charge. I’m at the head of the table. I make the money. I have the muscles. I build the castles. I’m number one! But I can’t be number one without people below me to be number one over. You’re not a boss unless you have subordinates. My whole organization—my entire power structure, everything that keeps me being The Man—absolutely, 100% depends upon me—and, by extension, upon my kind—being in charge.

And what we’re in charge of is women.

Hello? Muscles. Castles. Food on the table. Conquering hero.

Swinger of clubs. Thruster of weapons.

Head of household.

That’s how it’s been. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s my goddamn right as a man. And if you try to take that from me, I will do everything in my power to make sure that you fail.

And we’re not joking now. I’ll beat you. I’ll make sure my kids learn to hate you.

I’ll have no pity for you when you commit suicide. I’ll happily supply the gun for that. Or the pick-up truck and the rope, if you’re having a problem with gettin’ her done.

You’re screwing with my life now, you see? And I will see you in hell before I’ll sit back and let that happen.

And that’s how that goes. That’s how that’s always gone.

This is a point that feminists have been making for decades, and it’s refreshing to see it stated so bluntly by a straight, Christian man.  [It also suggests that John Shore is more secure in his manhood than many of his co-religionists.]

It all goes back to the simple question of “Who am I better than?  What do I control?”  Deeply ingrained in our society is the notion that Christian men are The Deciders, and many of these men, having embraced this status through no merit of their own, are deeply fearful that one day the emperor will be shown to be quite naked, indeed, and that their fragile pedestal will crumble to the ground, forcing them to exist on the same level as everyone else.  So they are indeed threatened by the idea of men who disrupt their patriarchal power structure, on whatever side of the spectrum it’s happening; they might be deeply threatened by a man, straight or gay, who is deeply in touch with his feelings/his “feminine” side [see:  sneering about "metrosexuals"], and they might be even more threatened by a gay man who is very obviously stronger and more masculine than they are.

But it’s not just gay people that set them off in this way.  When Republican politicians scream out “baby killer!”, most rational people can tell that they’re not really talking about babies.  The entire idea of reproductive rights for women essentially says to these men, “You no longer have the final say over what does and does not happen to women’s bodies.”

Another piece chips away from the pedestal.

When teabaggers wail about “wanting their country back,” as they make up truly bizarre fantasies about who the president really is, where he really came from, what he really is, what he really wants to do — it’s disrupting their white, male patriarchal power structure.

And so on.  It’s no coincidence that the virulently anti-gay are also virulently anti-choice, and often “want their country back,” etc.  On a deeper level, they’re yearning for a time when women, gays, minorities, etc., knew their place.  On an even deeper level, these straight men [and the women who, as John Shore points out, are often just as tied up in that structure as their men are] are yearning for a time when they knew their own place, and were secure in it.

Those days are gone.  We’re a better society for it, but that’s, at heart, what scares the everloving shit out of the Bryan Fischers and Tony Perkinses of the world.  There was a time in Bryan’s life, and probably in Tony’s father’s life [and certainly within his worldview], when men like they had the last word and it was unquestioned, no matter how stupid or ignorant it was.  These days a smart, overqualified, more outspoken woman, gay person or minority can look guys like that in the face and tell them to go to hell, and then carry out the ultimate revenge by having a happy, fulfilled life that, by its very existence, negates the worldview they use as a blanket for their deep insecurities.  I imagine it’s hell, because such people have been raised with a privilege they did not earn, and that they do not deserve.  But to have privilege ripped away like that, to have society roll its eyes a little more each and every day at such provincial thinking?  Damn.

I’m glad there are straight Christian men like John Shore who are willing to step up and state the frightening truth to their own compatriots.

Remember that, though, when you’re dealing with people who have nothing of any substance to say to you beyond “It sez in the Holy Bubble!”  or some derivation of that.  It has nothing to do with the Bible, and everything to do with deep insecurities and fear.

Last month, the New York Senate tried and failed to bring equal marriage rights to the citizens of New York. If you don’t remember, things went south when eight cowardly Democrats betrayed their caucus and joined the Republicans in defeating the bill. One of those Democrats was Senator Hiram Monserrate of Queens, who, before his vote, had become notorious for being charged with “slashing his girlfriend Karla Giraldo in the face with a broken glass.” Continued:

Monserrate was found guilty of the lesser charge of third-degree assault for dragging a bleeding Giraldo down the hallway of their building after the alleged attack. That charge is only a misdemeanor so the lawmaker will be able to keep his seat in Albany.

Despite initially claiming Monserrate attacked her, Giraldo had refused to cooperate with the prosecution in the case.

Oh, and there was video!

(via NY Daily News)

Classy!

So why am I bringing this up? Well, it seems that a group calling itself the “Coalition for Morality” has been dispersing these flyers in support of Senator Monserrate:

Classy again! So who are the generically branded “Coalition for Morality”? We don’t quite know. My Googling has come up dry, and the others who have reported this have had similar results. For all we know, Monserrate could have printed them up himself!

But I do know this: This little flyer is revelatory of the worldview which seeks to deny equality to the LGBT community. It may seem abhorrent to people with any semblance of a moral compass that a man caught assaulting a woman on camera could be held up as a paragon of morality, but it really shouldn’t be surprising. There are indeed many conservative religious people out there who hit the fainting couch over two consenting adults of the same gender falling in love, but at the same time really don’t mind the idea of abusing women. I mean, let’s get real here. Respected conservative “thinkers” have penned pieces as recently as last year which seem to support the idea that marital rape doesn’t exist! (Dennis Prager, I’m looking at you.)

So there you have it. According to some people, Hiram Monserrate, abuser of women, can claim moral authority over gay people who choose to live our lives with integrity.

Gross.