Since Evan and I have been blogging about it for some time now, TWO readers are likely familiar with the attacks on marriage equality in New Hampshire.

In case anyone needs a refresher, New Hampshire’s entire legislature flipped from Democratic to Republican control in the Tea Party-fueled red tsunami of the 2010 midterms. One unfortunate result of that was that the state’s marriage equality law, which made New Hampshire the fifth state to grant same-sex couples the freedom to marry when it took effect in January 2010, came under assault from anti-gay extremist elements of that state’s GOP. Despite polls decisively showing widespread opposition to repeal among citizens of the Granite State and editorials from several of the state’s major newspapers calling on lawmakers to end their mean-spirited efforts, Republican politicians have pushed ahead in their attempt to strip away existing rights from their LGBT constituents and spit in the face of the nearly 1,800 same-sex couples who have married there since the law was enacted. (So much for the whole “will of the people” thing, huh?)

According to the Nashua Telegraph, the state House of Representatives is expected to take a vote on the repeal measure very soon after the January 10 presidential primary. Just two years after New Hampshire lawmakers granted lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people the simple dignity of being able to marry the person they love, that precious freedom is in serious jeopardy.

Enter Craig Stowell. Craig is a Republican and a former Marine. He also happens to have a brother, Calvin, who is gay (and a Twitter phenom, but I digress). Bucking his party, Craig became the co-chair of Standing up for New Hampshire Families, the group working to preserve, protect, and uphold the state’s marriage equality law. He also launched a Change.org petition calling on the legislature to do the right thing and leave the law alone. Change.org always asks petition creators why their particular action is important, and Craig’s explanation brought tears to my eyes:

My brother and best friend, Calvin, was tormented all the way through high school because people knew he was gay. There were nights that I worried I may wake up and he wouldn’t be there any longer; crushed by the misery he was forced to endure. When New Hampshire extended marriage to gay and lesbian couples, two years ago, he finally felt accepted. He finally felt like he belonged. Since that day 1,800 loving and committed gay and lesbian couples have married.

Today, the right to marriage is under attack in New Hampshire. If HB 437 passes, same-sex couples will no longer be allowed to marry. This mean-spirited attack is nothing more than state sponsored bullying. The bill actually goes on to allow discrimination in employment and housing based on sexuality.

When I enlisted in the Marines, I took an oath to defend freedom and liberty. In 2004, I went to Iraq to do just that. As the co-chairman for Standing Up for New Hampshire Families, I am now defending my brother’s freedom here at home, and I hope you will help me by telling legislators to vote NO on HB 437.

Two recent polls have shown that Granite Staters overwhelming support marriage equality. One poll coming from the University of New Hampshire shows support at 62 percent. It should be obvious that the majority of New Hampshire believes this is a settled issue.

When my wife Berta and I were married, Calvin was right there by my side as my best man. I want the opportunity to be his best man when he finds the person he wants to marry. With your help, I know we can ensure that freedom will still be there when he does.

Once you can see your computer screen again through the tears and have swallowed the lump in your throat, please join me in heading over to Change.org and signing Craig Stowell’s petition. All of us at Truth Wins Out (along with so many others) have said for a long time that equality is not and should not be a partisan issue. The courageous and heartwarming actions of people like Craig Stowell give me hope that the day will come when that’s truly the case.

When Barney Frank announced his retirement, many wingnuts sensed that their opportunities to point out that Barney Frank is a gay homosexual who likes men were about to fade away, so they decided to say it one last time.

The Tennessee Teabaggery Association [I'm sure they're called something close to that] is taking heat right now for one of those very comments:

The Tennessee Tea Party is trying to repair the fallout, following a derogatory post about Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank. Frank, who is openly gay, announced he will retire and not seek another term in congress.

The news of Franks retirement brought a derogatory tweet on the Tennessee Tea Party’s twitter feed. The remark was also posted on the party’s Facebook page as well. The tweet called Frank a pervert, and used a number of derogatory terms about Frank’s homosexuality.

Chris Sanders of the Tennessee Equality Project pointed out, in the nicest terms possible, that it’s pretty freaking sad that this Teabagger couldn’t think of anything to say about Frank’s policies, but simply figured it would suffice to call Barney a fag one last time. Here are Chris’s actual words:

“They chose to use terms that degrade the gay community. Can we keep the debate on policy, can we not get personal about people. Do you really have that much hate?,” said Sanders.

Seriously. Here’s what Tennessee’s High Priestess of Teabaggery, Tami Kilmarx, said about it:

“I am totally and completely responsible for anything produced by one of our staff or moderators. I am appalled by the language in the commentary. While privately and inwardly I may agree with the commentary, it is completely irresponsible for any one of us to write these kinds of commentaries. The individual who has written this commentary has been duly dealt with,” said Kilmarx in a Facebook post.

See?! She is simultaneously appalled by the bigotry, and also totally agrees with the bigotry! And here I’ve been saying for several years that what makes wingnuts so pathetic is their utter inability to hold two thoughts in their heads at once.

This is an anti-gay parallel, though, to the fact that many members of the Tennessee Association of Teabagging Practitioners and Chipmunk Taxidermists would never be unfriendly to the “lovely black family” who moved in next door and “keeps their yard so nice!,” but damn, you don’t want to hear what they say about black people around the dinner table.

You might have heard about this moment from last night’s clown circle-jerk Republican debate, where, when a question was posed to Ron Paul about whether we should let a person who chooses not to have health insurance die, the audience of Teabaggers decided to answer for Paul by screaming things like “Yeah!” and “Let ‘em die!”  They are, in short, monsters.

Gabe at Videogum points out that this is an echo of last week’s debate, where the audience got just a lil’ bit too excited about how many prisoners Rick Perry had killed as governor, even though one prisoner executed during that time was almost certainly innocent. Yeah! said the teabaggers, excited about killin’ people ‘n’ stuff. Yeah! said the teabaggers, about lettin’ people just cold die because they don’t have health insurance! Boooooooo, abortion, though!

Anyway. Of course, leave it to a comedy writer like Gabe [motto these days of comedy writers: Mostly Better Than Actual Journalists] to explain how ludicrous what Paul said, and what Teabaggers seem to think [I'm usin' the word "think" loosely, y'all], about the uninsured, really is:

This brings us back to Ron Paul’s argument that not buying health care is exactly the type of risk vs. reward scenario expressing PURE FREEDOM that his libertarianism supports. Neat! The problem with this, of course, is that it borrows the George W. Bush catch-phrase banner slogan down-with-Osama-Bin-Laden branded “FREEDOM” and uses it in the place of “ANARCHY.” I don’t mean that in a facetious or sensationalized way, I mean that libertarian philosophy quite literally represents an anarchistic distrust of the state and a desire to see it abolished. Freedom sounds nice when you think it just means that you can buy Kettle Chips in every imaginable flavor at your local bodega and stay up as late as you want. It’s not as nice when it means there’s no such thing as the fire department and if you want to have surgery you have to take competing bids from your local Organ Contractors. The reality is that we live in a world of rules that sometimes get confusing but that are, for the most part, the best attempt we’ve achieved so far at making this place as close to livable for everyone as we can. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t use some work, and I bet there are a lot of poor, disenfranchised people who might argue that it’s not so livable (although I don’t think those people are libertarians), it just means throwing the baby out with the bath water and then also throwing out the bath tub itself and hoping that it dies because the bath tub opted not to buy “Get Thrown Out Insurance” doesn’t seem like a useful step in the march towards progress.

But, OK. If that’s how Ron Paul feels, I can totally respect that. It’s a hard line to take, but I respect hard lines (that is what she said).

Indeed. Read the whole damn thing.

Why am I writing about this on Truth Wins Out? Oh, just because one of these goons [Rick Perry] is going to get the GOP nomination, and if liberals and gays don’t get out there and vote and stop complaining about how they haven’t been gifted with glitter ponies by the Obama administration, one of these goons [Rick Perry] could actually be elected, and that would open up a whole new can of hell for this country, including LGBT people.

Also: What The Rude One said.

Totally funny story from Think Progress:

The debt ceiling deal has left the Tea Party more disliked than ever, as a recent New York Times poll shows. In April, 2010, 21 percent of Americans approved of the Tea Party while 18 percent disapproved of it. Now, 20 percent approve while a stunning 40 percent disapprove of it. Ironically, the conservative movement is now more unpopular than two often-marginalized groups it sometimes rails against — Muslims and atheists — and is the least popular of the 23 groups the poll asked about.

Ha ha ha, let’s go to the original source piece and twist the knife a little bit:

But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

HAHAHAHA, YAY, so anyway.

Dear Christian Right: America hates you. Hates you, hates you, hates you. Does not consider you representative of “American values” or “traditional values” or anything else. Hates you. Doesn’t want to live next to you, because property values are already sucky as it is.

Gays raise property values in neighborhoods, but you don’t. Anyway.

What a funny story to start our Thursday!  Say it again!  Real, actual Americans like Muslims and Atheists more than Teabaggers or Linda Harvey or Maggie Gallagher or Peter LaBarbera or Matt Barber or any of their other ideological trans fat substitutes.  Muslims and atheists!  I love polls!

The pollsters have also taken time to find out what really drives Teabaggers:

They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today.

Just old bigot racists in Hoverounds, as we always suspected. Whatever.

There have been a few articles in the past day or so, dissecting the fact that the Teabagging movement, which seemed so upright and powerful in the last several years, is basically flaccid these days.  Why?  Well, you see, The Price Is Right is on…

*actual rate of herpes popularity not sampled, but just making a point.

We all know that the Teabagging movement, in general, is not all that bright.  We also know that they’re less of a “movement” and more of a repurposed rebranding of the same old wingnut rage-gasm that has been the base of the modern Republican party for several decades now.  Sometimes they say horribly offensive things, but more and more, I’m dumbstruck by how utterly disconnected from reality they are.  Consider this quote from Tea Party Nation CEO Judson Phillips, one of the most racist ones they have:

I will tell you ladies and gentlemen, I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me.

Uh. Like I said: too stupid, can’t get mad.

What the hell are they even talking about?

Related: If you missed Bill Maher’s brilliant suggestion for a liberal counterweight to the Tea Party, please catch up by clicking this clicky.

[h/t Andrew Sullivan]

Annise Parker was elected mayor of Houston in 2009, and it made news across the country because she was the first LGBT person to hold such a position in such a large city.  Houstonians seem to like her for the most part.  The Dallas Voice brings us news, though, that Parker is again being targeted for her sexual orientation by “homophobic electrician” Dave Wilson, who was a gnat in her face during the 2009 elections as well.

It was only a matter of time really: Dave Wilson is sending anti-gay letters (above) to Houstonians attacking Annise Parker, who’s seeking re-election in November.

Wilson, you may remember, is the homophobic electrician who sent 35,000 fliers like the one below to Houston homes during the 2009 elections with a picture of Parker’s swearing in for her previous position as City Comptroller, her partner Kathy Hubbard at her side. The 2009 fliers asked the question, “Is this the image Houston wants to portray?” To which Houston voters resoundingly replied, “Yes!” Parker became the first openly gay person elected mayor of a top 10 U.S. city.

Wilson’s latest attack is on a much smaller scale than his full color assault from 2009: It’s a personal letter sent to Parker’s donors and Houston Democratic precinct chairs.

They just don’t stop. Just as with DADT dead-enders who will cry about openly gay servicemembers until their dying breath, long after they lose and we win, they’ll keep complaining, keep annoying, and looking more and more unhinged to the general population in the process.

Here’s the letter [click to embiggen, of course]:

The Dallas Voice points out, sighing, that the claims in the letter are, of course, inaccurate, starting with the usual fundamentalist scare tactics about “men dressed as women using the women’s bathroom,” etc.  But they also point out that this weirdo, Dave Wilson, actually funnels money into the mayoral races, so unfortunately, like most gnats, he’s impossible to ignore.

One of these days, gay and lesbian politicians will be able to do their jobs without their detractors’ complaints focusing on nothing but their sexuality.  Maybe.  We thought we were past that with race, but then Obama was elected and the Tea Party sprang into existence, using every code word they could to express their fear of a black president.  So I’d say “one of these days” is probably a long way away.

Igor Volsky went to a Tea Party rally in New Hampshire and asked the people there if they had seen any changes in the state since marriage equality passed.  It doesn’t seem to have affected them.

Here is your caveat, though:  This is New Hampshire.  Gay wingnuts are already crowing, seemingly because they think they have a point to make, that “See, I told you the Tea Party weren’t bigots!”  Again, this is New Hampshire. 

It’s got to burn the Religious Right, though, seeing videos like this.  At least in some places, even the craziest of the wingnuts aren’t riled up by the gays anymore.

Next time, go ask Alabama Teabaggers what they think about marriage equality, and you’ll get a very different set of responses.

[h/t Jeremy]

For a long time, Evan Hurst and I have made three points:

1) The Tea Party does not really exist. It is the slick public relations campaign of three billionaires (David and Charles Koch and Rupert Murdoch), who don’t want to pay taxes. They have essentially taken the same tired hard-core, right wing Republican activists and re-branded them as a “new movement” by putting them in goofy triangular hats. Much of the media may have been fooled, but we weren’t at Truth Wins Out.

2) The so-called Tea Party (we prefer Tea Baggers) will pretend to be interested in economic matters, but this is mostly (but not completely) a ruse to push social issues once in office. In other words, this is a stealth campaign for the aging social conservative hacks, who failed to succeed pushing their agenda through traditional GOP channels.

3) This alleged “movement” is laced with racist elements. We know this because there was little concern among this crowd about deficits when George W. Bush was president. Now that the black dude is in office, this motley crew has gone apoplectic about deficits — as well as an obsession about Obama’s birth certificate. Finally, who can forget the disgusting racists signs during the healthcare town hall meetings and Tea Bagger rallies in Washington?

This brings us to today’s outrage. Orange County Republican Central Committee member and Tea Bagger, Marilyn Davenport, was asked by the NAACP to resign after she sent out an e-mail picturing President Barack Obama’s face on the body of a baby chimpanzee. Here is her apology:

“I humbly apologize and ask for your forgiveness of my unwise behavior,” the statement said. “I say unwise because at the time I received and forwarded the email, I didn’t stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive.”

In the statement, Davenport also quoted the Bible and said she was “an imperfect Christian” who tried to “live a Christ-like honoring life.”

“I would never do anything to intentionally harm or berate others regardless of ethnicity,” she said. “I will not repeat this error.”

She had no idea this would be insensitive and was oblivious to the historical implications? You’ve got to be kidding me. What Davenport is really upset about is that she got caught.

If you believe that the Tea Party isn’t tinged with racism, then I want to drink some of the magic tea that they’ve been serving you.

Clearly, racial resentment and homophobia is at the very heart of the Tea Party. The only deficit this crowd should be concerned about is the deficit in morals and common decency that is all to often displayed by people like Marilyn Davenport.

Good video story HERE.

Last night, Michele Bachmann [Wingnut-MN] gave the Tea Party response to the Republican response to the State of the Union address. But before that, Michele Bachmann told a group in Iowa that our Founding Fathers worked to eradicate slavery and that all immigrants were treated equally, which is not only not true, but is an astonishingly ignorant statement for an elected official to make. Watch as Chris Matthews and Joan Walsh tear apart Bachmann and one of the Teabagger mouthpieces, Sal Russo, who was tasked with defending the indefensible on the program.