Maggie Gallagher, whining about gays and stuff:

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that the gay rights movement, the gay marriage movement, really does believe you’re like a racist if you think marriage is the union of husband and wife,” explained Maggie Gallagher, co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage. “They want to rip Genesis out of our Bibles.”

Maybe I should leave it to one of my Christian friends to say this, but it’s adorably quaint listening to a representative of the Religious Right say this, since the entire “family values” Christian Right pretty much ripped the Gospels out of the Bible as the first order of business for their movement. Isn’t that sort of the basis for the religion they claim to follow?

Am I right, John and Kathy?

[h/t Jeremy]

Yesterday, the bill to repeal DOMA passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 10-8. This is making the Religious Right whine a lot. Brian at Right Wing Watch compiled a bunch of their reactions, and you should hop over there and read all of them, but my favorite is the fact-free whining from hate group leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee passed S.598, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) bill that would completely eradicate the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the protections it affords taxpayers and the majority of state’s voters who have decided to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

The misnomer medal of the month might have to be awarded early! S.598, the misleadingly titled “Respect for Marriage Act” not only disrespects American’s across the country who want to protect traditional marriage–and have done as much in the 31 states which have passed statewide referendums in favor of marriage–it will also require your tax dollars go to pay for the federal benefits and subsidies of gay couples, irrespective of where they live, who have gotten “married” in 6 states that allow it.

Marriage is not some prize that liberals can award to a small, vocal and already well off special interest group. Marriage between one man and one woman was created prior to the formation of any governments and is given benefits by governments because it uniquely contributes to a productive society. Trying to change the definition to fit some misguided concept can only cause harm to society.

Oh, boo-hoo, it “disrespects” Americans who want to “protect traditional marriage” from a “special interest group.” Also, his concept of the history of marriage is pathetically stupid. Here, let Al Franken explain that for you, as he did yesterday during the hearings. As Kirsten at Wonkette points out, it was kind of sad that he had to spell this out so slowly and nicely for the idiots, but it’s still necessary, unfortunately:

As for Tony’s blathering about state referenda and ‘Murkans who want to defend tradishnul murrge, here is a picture I found yesterday, of Rachel Maddow explaining these sorts of things to people who are dumb:

Today on BuzzFeed: 20 couples that put Kim Kardashian’s 72-day marriage to shame. Guess what? They’re all gay and unable to get legally married. Here are a couple of my favorites, and then click over for the rest:

“Ed Watson is 78 years old and has Alzheimer’s. He’s worried that by the time the court finally rules on Prop 8, he won’t be able to recognize Derence, his partner of over 40 years. They cannot get married, but Kim Kardashian can… for 72 days.”

“David and Michael Serkin-Poole have been together 25 years and together raised three developmentally disabled children. They cannot get married, but Kim Kardashian can… for 72 days.”

“Kathy Glass and Carmah Lawler have been together for over 30 years and are from Colorado. “Kathy has a way of being able to laugh at almost anything even though at our age there aren’t that many things to laugh about,” says Carmah. They cannot get married, but Kim Kardashian can… for 72 days.”

Yeah, please click over and read the rest. The people above are Public Enemy No. 1 for the Religious Right, and Kim Kardashian, by engaging in a traditional marriage (of 72 days) is their ally.

Moral high ground, anyone?

Mitchell Gold, friend of Truth Wins Out and founder of Faith In America, went on MSNBC this afternoon and discussed anti-gay bullying, and the root cause of it, which is spiritual terrorism inflicted by the Religious Right, on the kids of this country. Refusing to mince words, he called the religious messages of hatred against LGBT people exactly what they are: “child molestation of a child’s mind.”  Here’s the pull-quote:

I would say this, that clergy people who stand at their pulpit and they speak about gay people as sinners and an abomination, that is bullying a young kid. That is really — and I know this may sound exaggerated — but that is nothing less than child molestation of a child’s mind. [...] It is devastating to a 14-year-old-kid to hear their rabbi or their imam or their priest or clergy person say that they are a sinner or an abomination…and I’m here to tell them, they are full and whole and wonderful and they will learn as life goes on that there are many, many people who feel that way.

Preach it. The Religious Right doesn’t particularly like to hear that they are at the root of the higher rates of bullying, depression and even suicide that gay teens experience, but we at Truth Wins Out aren’t in business to make the bigots feel better. Here’s the video:

This screed from supposed “ex-gay” and anti-gay crusader D.L. Foster, about the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, has to be seen to be believed. It’s been amazing to watch, over the past year, as the suicides of gay teens have reached a certain level of prominence in the media, as members of the Religious Right like Linda Harvey have gleefully pissed on the graves of those we have lost. But I think Foster has outdone Harvey in the hate department, which is quite a feat. Is the hate of the Religious Right, which feeds the casual bigotry of those who bully gay kids into severe depression and, tragically, sometimes suicide, to blame here? No, Foster, hateful twit that he is, blames Dan Savage and Lady Gaga:

Homosexual activists Dan Savage and Lady Gaga should be brought up on charges of murder for issuing wholesale false promises and lies to young people confused about their sexuality.

“Lies” like “you can have a happy life” and “don’t let the bullies get you down.” This runs completely counter to D.L.’s message of “I’m filled with self-loathing to such a degree that I have become an abuser, and you can too!”

Just this past week, Savage’s so-called “it gets better campaign” proved just how ineffective it is when a fourteen year old boy in Buffalo, New York committed suicide after embracing its dead message. ABC News reported that Buffalo police are considering charges.

Yes, against the bullies. Because, unless you are mindblowingly stupid, you understand that the tragedy of Jamey’s death came despite the fact that there are now messages getting out there to tell gay kids that they’re going to be okay. The bullying was still just sadly too much.

Responding to Jamey’s “It Gets Better” video, D.L. says this:

If homosexual activists are looking for a culprit and someone to lay the blame on, they need look no further than what a dollar store mirror will show them. Plying confused children with false hope is just like giving a drunk kid car keys and telling him to drive home safely.

This is why anytime a rube from the Religious Right claims to want “dialogue” with LGBT people, they should be summarily laughed at and scorned. These people do not exist in the reality-based community. They actually believe their ridiculous, disproven dogma, which says that gay kids hate themselves “because of their sin,” which is, again, batshit stupid, as there are many, many, many gay teens who have never dealt with self-hatred or depression, and it’s because they have supportive families and communities. You take away the religion-based bigotry, and you have healthy kids, whether gay or straight. Right from the closet case’s mouth:

The tragic irony of the “it gets better” lie is that it ignores the only true hope for those who are personally embattled with sexuality and gender confusion issues. It (whatever “it” is) never defines what “hope” is, thus its nothing but a carrot stick trick to hurting children. Savage conveniently tosses out the bait only to dissappear then re-emerge with “outrage” when another sexually confused teen succumbs to their inner demons. The real outrage is that America has been suckered into accepting a lie that continues to kill its youth. Of course, it gets Savage and his IGB cohorts lots of media face time and awards and such. For them, the exposure certainly does get better.

Actually, Dan gets letters all the time from kids who are doing much better now because of the “It Gets Better” project. D.L. cannot prove that these kids are “personally embattled” or dealing with “inner demons.” No, that’s likely what D.L. deals with, and it’s because he’s a victim of the same machine that he’s now been empowered into abusing others with. And it is precisely that abuse that leads to dead kids.

In a way, I feel sorry for the Religious Right, because it must be quite a concept to grasp, to find out that everything they’ve ever believed is not only a joke, but also leaves a trail of blood and dead kids’ bodies. It must shake them up. But after I’m done feeling sorry for them for about eight seconds, we’re back to normal, where these people need to realize that if they don’t want to be viewed as monsters, they need to stop being f*cking monsters.

But let’s be clear here. The solution to such turmoil in youth isn’t the usual humanistic “just believe in yourself”, “just love yourself”, “you were born this way” screeds. At best, such is fatalistic window dressing. Telling someone that they cannot change what they hate about themselves is no promise, its a death sentence. Imagine if Christ came and told us that we could not be free from sin?

Yet again: take away the Religious Right dogma, and these kids have a hell of a lot better chance of surviving past 12th grade. Pile on the religious hate and the bodycount will continue to grow. It’s quite simple, because, again, for the slow wingnuts, these kids wouldn’t hate themselves if hateful fundamentalist whack-jobs like D.L. Foster didn’t teach them that they should. The fact that D.L. is a make-believe “ex-gay,” which means he actually knows what it’s like to be different because of your sexuality, and that he still chooses to twist the knife in regards to these kids, is simply a reflection of his own lack of character.

D.L. quotes something from that loon Jew for Jesus Michael Brown and then winds up here:

Savage, Gaga, Swilley, Obama and all the rest that have promised “it gets better” have no power to change anything because they are finite humans with the same limitations and frailties as the kids who believe their false promises.

Contrast the false —and powerless— promises of Savage, Gaga (who’s now whining to SOTUS about the issue) to the promises of new life given to all men who are in covenant with Jesus Christ.

Joshua 23:14 – God says not one of his promises will ever fail you
Jeremiah 29:11 – God says his plan for us is filled with hope
Titus 1:2 – You can rest in his promises, because he cannot lie
Numbers 23:19 – God is not a man that he should lie. If he said it, he will perform it.

Nothing will get better when the only hope for change is rejected. The only hope for this world is Jesus Christ. Not a church, not a program, not a campaign, not the lies of gay activists. Jesus Christ.

D.L.’s true message: his perverted vision of “god” created you wrong, but if you swear fealty to his perverted vision of “god,” you, too, can find a way to repress your true self and write hateful screeds about dead kids on the internet.

No thank you.

Thers has a little piece up that I meant to link to the other day, commenting on some Clown Hall piece on the decline of the sanctity of bedrock institutions like marriage [or something equally convoluted], written by a wingnut called Ken Connor. Here is a snippet of the annoying piece, just to give you a taste of what it is that Thers is making fun of:

[blah blah blah fart] precipitous decline of marriage. What was once venerated as a holy, sacramental institution is now considered an optional, if slightly outmoded social convention, a stultifying but necessary financial convenience. This week’s Washington Post illustrates that proposition. In a recent article, the Post discusses the increasing number of couples opting to have a friend rather then a religious officiant preside over their wedding ceremonies.

Seeking to distance themselves from any prescriptive religious connotations that may cling to marriage, self-proclaimed “hippy types” are redefining the institution along highly personalized, pseudo-spiritual, distinctly non-sacramental lines. From the article:

“Members of the American University crew shared a love of jam bands, including Phish and Moe, as well as a passion for environmentalism and nature. Their wedding ceremonies often reflected those interests.

Some of them talked about vigorously scrubbing the word “God” from their rituals; instead readings came from environmental poet Wendell Berry or novels, such as “Einstein’s Dreams,” which explores human beings’ relationship to time passing.”

It’s that whole “venerated as a holy, sacramental institution” and this part that comes after it, about glue or something, that is annoying Thers:

Traditional marriage (specifically, Christian marriage) has through the centuries served as a critical civilizing force in society. It has been, quite literally, the glue that holds communities and peoples together. As traditionally understood, the bonds of marriage are forged not by man, but by God. They are not merely legal, physical, or emotional, they are spiritual and sacred.

Yeah, so Thers is straight and married and here is what he has to say about that:

That’s precisely why gays want to get married. Steve says to Bill, “before all our loved ones, please let’s together forever participate in what was once venerated as a holy, sacramental institution that is now considered an optional, if slightly outmoded social convention, a stultifying but necessary financial convenience, you sweet bitch you.”

Anyway, I’m straight, and not religious, and I’m pretty sure I got married because of the love thing, and also because I was pretty sure I would like being married and having kids.

[...]

There’s no mystery as to why God-botherers want us all to hold to 14th century social norms: it’s good to be the priest.

But as for me — stop bugging me. I’m a straight married guy. Whatever. Stop trying to call what I have some sort of Spiritual and Sacred hot-shit win for Mankind. It’s not. It’s just what I am.

I’ve often thought that the weird way that Religious Right characters talk about marriage — this up in the clouds, sanctified bedrock blah blah blah crap — was more than a little bit unhinged from the reality of married life for the average American. It’s good to know that their weird rhetoric on the topic creeps out opposite-married people too.

You’ll want to head over to Thers’s blog and read the rest of his post, because there’s a whole riff in there about glue holding people together that you won’t want to miss. I’d quote it here, but y’know. It includes the phrase “sticky nipples.”

I haven’t said much about this, but you all might have heard that a judge has ruled that the tapes of the Prop 8 trial may be unsealed and made available to the public.  The judge, James Ware, stayed his ruling so that the anti-gay sideshow known as Protect Marriage may have a chance to appeal the ruling.

I have little to say about this, except that it’s a matter of public record and we already know what fools the anti-gay side made of themselves during the trial.  And that was the absolute best they had. I can’t imagine why, considering the fact that it happened a year ago, these Religious Right thugs are still so obsessed with keeping what happened under wraps, unless they really, finally have grasped how awful they look in the eyes of sane people, and are ashamed of themselves.  Wait, do anti-gay bigots experience shame, besides the kind that comes from whatever personal demons cause them to devote their entire lives to attacking minority groups?

I dunno. Anyway, victory for transparency, and probably, eventually, for equality!

So sad to report, out of Buffalo:

Jamey Rodemeyer’s parents believe years of bullying drove their son to suicide. The Williamsville North freshman took his life Sunday, he was only 14 years old.

Jamey Rodemeyer posted a message online hoping that others would be inspired by his struggle with bullying. A part of the message reads, “That’s all you have to do. Just love yourself and you’re set. And I promise you, it’ll get better.”

Soon after coming home from a family camping trip, Jamey was found dead Sunday. His parents say he was always under pressure because of struggles with his sexuality.

Jamey’s mother Tracy Rodemeyer said, “So he hung around with the girls a lot, so then the teasing started happening like ‘Oh you’re such a girl or you’re gay or whatever and that bothered him for many years.”

Now, they want to carry in his message in hopes of preventing another tragedy like this one.

Jamey’s father Tim Rodemeyer said, “To the kids who are bullying they have to realize that words are very powerful and what you think is just fun and games isn’t to some people, and you are destroying a lot of lives.”

Here’s Jamey’s “It Gets Better” video.

Sadly, it seems that the hate that was spewed at him for so many years finally did get the best of him. I want to point out something in the video: did everyone notice that one of the things people were hurling at him was that he was going to go to hell? The Religious Right soullessly and callously claims that there is a difference between their bullying and the bullying kids inflict upon each other, but we know differently, and Jamey knew differently. The very message that gay kids are going to hell comes from fundamentalist religious people who love their ignorant, hateful ideology more than they love human beings like Jamey Rodemeyer. It’s then passed on to their children, who pass it on to other kids, such as this one.

Here’s the local news report on Jamey’s death:

Towleroad has much more.

This is the Religious Right’s greatest fear, for some reason or another. It’s a first dance at a gay wedding, and it’s great!

Okay, I’ll have interesting stories to report for you in a few minutes…

An interesting study is out which shows that, among committed couples, both straight and gay, monogamy is going up:

Data on gay and heterosexual couples from 1975 and from 2000 — the most recent year such data with identical survey questions was available to researchers — show the percentage of partnered gay men who reported sexual activity beyond the relationship dropped from 83% to 59%, while lesbians reported a decrease from 28% to 8%. Married heterosexual men and women showed a similar trend away from extra-relational sexual behavior.

“Our findings reveal a marked movement toward monogamy over time,” study authors wrote in the September issue of the journal Family Process.

And that data is now eleven years old. I find a few things of interest here:

1. While nonmonogamy seems to still be obviously higher among gay men, it’s interesting to see that trend line move down as homosexuality becomes more accepted and integrated in society. It would seem, possibly, that the move away from homosexuality being an “underground” thing — and with that, more societal support for our relationships, which happens to allow young gay people to dream the same dreams for life as everyone else — might contribute to these numbers.

2. It gives lie to the idea, promulgated by the Religious Right, that gay relationships are inherently nonmonogamous or inherently unstable.  [We gays already knew this, but whatever.]

3.  Moreover, it gives lie to the Religious Right idea that somehow we are in or are headed toward some sort of morally hedonistic place as a society, whether we’re talking about homos or heteros.

I’m not getting into the whole subject of whether monogamy is right for every couple.  What works for your relationship might not work for mine and vice versa.  That’s a different subject, and one about which we could fight all day.  And I’d like to see more data about this, but I would suspect that it would show similar results.  The world for gay people in 1975 was very different from what it was in 2000 and what it is today, and anecdotally I find that many of my friends’ and acquaintances’ expectations for their relationships are a far cry from what the ooga-boogas of the Religious Right would tell you about gay relationships.