Every time I see some homophobe say bigoted things, they always justify it the same way — they cite their beloved gay friends.

Who are these people? I can’t imagine there are many lesbian and gay people who are uncloseted enough to have come out to Joe the Plumber, yet self-hating enough to say friends with someone who says this:

Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.

(Boy, the Republican party sure knows how to pick spokespeople, don’t it!)

My theory is that it’s just, like, three or four gay people, who spend all their time jet-setting between dinners with Joe (at a restaurant, so they don’t have to meet his kids), hanging with Rick, helicopter hunting with Sarah, stopping by BFF Donny’s house for some showtunes, and then finally taking in a science fiction con with Orson Scott. (Maybe Orson could introduce them to Maggie Gallagher, who is seemingly the nation’s only prominent anti-gay activist not claiming close gay friends.)

That’s the only rational explanation. Because I’m certain that it can’t be the case that all these nice Christian people are lying.

Author’s Preface: GallingGalla’s comment on the third post in this series has made me think I should add this preface: I see each post in this series as one section of a single piece of writing, not as a discrete essay unto itself. As a result, while each section may contain its own argument, it is not really possible to know whether an issue that a reader feels is important, such as GallingGalla’s concerns about how accusations of self-hatred are also accusations of treason, will or will not be left out of the argument made by the entire piece if you’ve only read a part of the series. As I said in my response to GallingGalla, I certainly do not mean this caveat to be, in any way, an inoculation against critique, but given the modular nature of posting to blogs and of how blogs are read, it is a caveat I’d like you to keep in mind if you find yourselves wondering, and commenting on, why I have not addressed something you feel needs to be addressed. Thanks.

To me, the point was obvious. Basing the Jewish claim to the land of Israel on the Jews’ own reading of the Hebrew Bible was asking the overwhelmingly non-Jewish world to accept as objective and incontrovertible the truth that Judaism claimed as its own, never mind the implication that the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians was somehow the will of the monotheistic god. To assert that line of reasoning as an argument for Israel’s right to exist, I suggested, was self-defeating at the very least–even if, as a believing Jew, it was a cornerstone of your faith.

“I never took you for an SHJ,” said one the colleagues with whom I was talking.

“An SHJ?”

“A self-hating Jew.”

The other agreed. “My husband,” she said, “would say you were an antisemitic Jew.”

I stared at my colleagues across a sudden gap of estrangement I did not know how to bridge. I had never been called self-hating before, but I understood it meant that, in their eyes, I’d revealed myself as a Jew who accepted an antisemitic definition of Jewishness. It was a logic I had heard often when I was in yeshiva, though my teachers always used it to explain the antisemitism of non-Jews who were critical of Israel: To suggest that there might be a perspective from which Israel’s existence as a Jewish state was not self-evidently valid, my rebbes would say, in many different ways, over and over again, was to suggest that the Jews had no right to claim such a state in the first place, which was also to imply that the Jews as a people ought not even to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Warren claims he never said it:

I have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophilia. Now of course as members of Saddleback Church you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You’ve never once heard me in 30 years heard me talk that way about that.

Rachel Maddow has the video proving him wrong.

Rick Warren: But the issue to me is, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to the redefinition of a 5,000-year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

Steven Waldman: Do you think, though, that they are equivalent to having gays getting married?

Rick Warren: Oh I do.

(Transcript via Pam’s House Blend; video via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Maybe Warren misspoke; if so, the thing to do is apologize and move on. Instead, Warren simply lies about what he said.

The video is also well worth watching for Katha Pollitt’s segment at the end, in which she outlines some of Warren’s genuinely outlandish misogyny. For instance, you probably already knew that Rick Warren thinks wives should be subject to their husbands; but did you know that Warren says the only acceptable reasons for divorce are abandonment and infidelity? Abused spouses, presumably, should just suck it up.

Transcript of Maddow’s chat with Pollitt is below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it, things are not going very well for right-wing radio these days. Rush Limbaugh has been reduced to a national laughingstock, while Sean Hannity is best known for simply repeating talking points handed to him by the RNC. Where is the innovation? The fight? The good ol’-fashioned hatred that will sustain the righties into a new era?

Well, my fellow Minnesotans can puff our chests up with pride, because we’ve got a budding right-wing radio superstar right here in our own backyard, broadcasting daily at KTLK-FM.

Minnesotans know KTLK as the radio station that made the head-scratching decision to abandon reasonable talk and go to an all-right-wing-nonsense-all-the-time format right before the collapse of the Republican party. With the aforementioned Limbaugh and Hannity, along with Jason “North Carolina is Infinitely Superior to Minnesota, What With its Low Taxes and Family Values, Which is Why I’m Getting the Hell Out of There and Coming Back to the Cities” Lewis, KTLK is the sort of radio dinosaur that would have been really popular in 1994, but now languishes down with KOOL-108 (the oldies station) in the ratings.

But Chris Baker aims to change all that. The new morning drive host and Texas import is making a name for himself nationally, and doing it the old-fashioned way: by saying crazy crap.

You may remember Baker from his previous assertion that basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson had faked testing positive for HIV, because as everyone remembers, in the early 1990s nothing was cooler than pretending to have AIDS. Now, most radio hosts would kill to have just one crazy statement like that, driving the ratings and whipping up conservative resentment of multimillionaire basketball players who have spent their retirement building up the poorer areas of Los Angeles through investment. But not Chris! No, he’s just getting started.

According to the George Soros-controlled Media Matters, in his brief time in Minneapolis Baker has:

• Said that the murder of transwoman Latiesha Green was the media’s fault, saying, “I believe the media and the rest of the enablers out there, they have this guy’s [sic] blood on their hands because they create this false sense of reality and they enable people who need serious psychological counseling.” Because nothing says Liberal Media Conspiracy like the argument that people should be able to live their lives without being shot.
• Said, “I don’t think homeless people should vote. Frankly. In fact, I have to be very honest. I’m not that excited about women voting, to be honest.” Honestly!
• Suggested his gal Sarah Palin “shoulda had a little cleavage going” during her debate with Joe Biden. (Thank goodness she didn’t, it could have killed Rich Lowry.) Baker continued to show the kind of not-sexism that the GOP showered upon their veep, saying “[S]how your stuff, you know what I’m saying? Use all your assets….By the way, I noticed a panty line on her. … When they turned to walk to the podium, I saw a panty line.”
• Said of Code Pink protesters, “I’ll tell you, though, in the speech — the best part of the speech was when those Code Pink nuts — another bunch that ought to have all their tubes tied. All right? I can’t stand these Code Pink broads.”
• Called Thomas Beatie, the transman who has become pregnant twice, a “mutilated lesbian.”
• And while he didn’t say it himself, he promoted a video of a pastor who called Barack Obama’s mother “trash” for having a child with a black man.

Heckuva guy, huh? He also, just for the record, argued for the use of ax handles and machine guns against RNC protesters who, as far as I can tell, broke a window at Macy’s and…well, that’s it. Misogynistic, transphobic, racist — I assume homophobic, since it really is part and parcel of that worldview.

Of course, Baker is hardly alone in using sexism and hate to sell his agenda — it’s pretty much expected on the right. But for a guy to do so much in such a short time…well, it’s inspiring to all the hatchet men and haters on the right. Baker has set a high bar for his fellow wingnuts to clear. And I shudder to think what he’ll do next. Because while I suspect Baker doesn’t believe half the stuff that comes out of his mouth, we all know that a lot of his listeners do — and Baker has given the thumbs-up to violence against women and transpeople, given the green light to attacking liberal protesters. He’s opened the door to a lot of hate and evil. But that’s what the best right-wing talkers do, now, isn’t it?

As many of you heard, Connecticut’s supreme court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage today. Awesome.

However, next month Californians will be voting on prop 8, which seeks to eliminate same-sex marriage here. For the last couple of months, polls have been looking good, but earlier this week support for the proposition jumped by ten points. 47% of Californians are now in favor of eliminating same-sex marriage rights, with 42% opposing. If this proposition passes, it’ll reverse the supreme court’s decision and once again make same-sex marriage illegal. Now, the numbers are inexact, and pollsters are saying it’s still too close to call. But we need to pay attention to this.

A couple of quick notes: contrary to the lies supporters are spreading, the existence of same-sex marriage does not mean that officiants are now forced to perform these marriages. One thing you hear fairly often is that theoretically, people can now sue their places of worship if said place of worship won’t marry them. Sure, they could file a lawsuit - they could absolutely take the paperwork down to the courthouse and hand it to the clerk. But it’d be laughed out of court. Rabbis aren’t forced to marry Jews and non-Jews, even though that’s legal.

Also. This whole thing about forcing teachers to tell their students that homosexuality is okay? Please. The reasoning goes like this: since teachers sometimes talk about marriage in the classroom, teachers would theoretically be required to teach that same-sex marriage is just as good as hetero marriage. I actually wish that were the case, but no - the police aren’t going to break down the doors of classrooms in which teachers aren’t extolling same-sex marriage. It just isn’t going to happen.

My husband put it very nicely: supporters of prop 8 are framing all of their arguments as theoretical - as if Californians haven’t already been living with gay marriage (in our state, cities, neighborhoods, or homes) since June. They don’t want us to think about the fact that it’s a reality: first off, because that would call attention to the fact that they’re trying to take away actual rights, and secondly, because people might start to notice that civilization hasn’t crumbled to pieces yet.

And don’t get me started on that party-A-party-B-is-ruining-straight-marriage bullshit.

If you live in California, please volunteer to phone bank with the No On 8 campaign. And if you live in Connecticut, pay attention to this - the bigots are showing their cards.

Stay tuned for my diatribe against prop 4! Also opposition to prop 2, which people are claiming will force us to eat Mexican chickens. No, I’m not making this up.

(Cross-posted on Modern Mitzvot)

Once you take either of these positions, you lose all rights to be treated as if you might possibly have anything interesting to say. You lose all rights not to be cursed at. You also lose all rights for others to assume that you are a human being and not, say, a shit-covered paramecium.

1) Homosexuality is linked to pedophilia.

2) Black people are less intelligent than whites.

Feel free to comment on this, but guess which two positions you shouldn’t take unless you want to be banned? Pleas for civility will also be ignored.

From Feministe:

Projection, anyone?

A boy scout leader who opposed allowing gay men and atheists serve as troop leaders — and who even sued the city of Berkeley over it — has been arrested on felony sexual abuse charges. For sexually abusing boys in his troop.

But at least he kept the gays and the atheists out.

This is the best thing I’ve read in probably a month, and it’s am absolute must-read for anyone who’s ever wondered about the political and theological confluence of events that became the religious right.

It’s 3 years old, but I just read it this afternoon, so it’s new to me. Also, it’s long, but I found myself entertained and interested all the way through.

It is, of course, of special interest to those among us who would like to live by Biblical principles, since there’s a fair amount of talking about just exactly what those principles are.

It’s broken up into 5 parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The author, bradhicks, is awesome in several other ways as well. It’s worth poking around his LJ, especially for some of his political writing.

PS. This was originally posted at my LiveJournal page, but I decided to repost it here for the general quality of conversation.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested and pled guilty to disorderly conduct after he was caught propositioning an undercover police officer for sex in an airport bathroom.  Pam has the run down on his votes on key gay/lesbian policy issues:

* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

This would be funny is this guy didn’t wield so much power, but at least he didn’t say a black man scared him into offering a blowjob like the last Republican who was caught doing this.

Is anyone keeping count of how many Republican politicians have been caught in gay sex scandals this year?

I’m going to organize this as bullet points for each episode. 

Gods Jewish Warriors

• I thought this was the best one of the series. 
• It was balanced in showing both the extremist settlers, and the more mainstream Jews who were opposed to the extremists.
• They gave ultra-orthodox Jews a free pass on the sexism issue, which was unfair.  They noted the treatment of women by Muslim and Christian fundamentalists, but mentioned nothing that I recollect.
• I was also impressed with how they discussed the international dimensions of the settler movement, and the fundamentalist Christians and right wing Jews who provided money and support to the settler movement.
• They also discussed the changes throughout history and covering the various peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors.  One of the most disturbing parts of the special was the discussion of the killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  If you don’t know the story, you can click on the link.

God’s Muslim Warriors

• I felt like this one was a little more predictable because we are quite accustomed to critiques of Muslim fundamentalists–people promoting violence, Jihad, etc.  I do wish they would have highlighted more of the moderate leaders, and more people opposed to Islamic fundamentalism.  They did interview a few people who left extremist groups, which was interesting, but I wish they would have talked with people who were fighting these extremists all along.
• I thought the scenes of the Iranian women protesting were the most moving.  Heart has several postings on the women’s movement in Iran; you can find them here.  Many of the Muslim countries in the Middle East have draconian anti-women policies, and these policies are often justified in the name of religion.  By far one of the most consistent trends with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish extremists is their disdain for the rights of women.
• They did very good at focusing on the international dimensions of the movement; in particular the growing movement in Europe.  What I also found interesting was how both the Christian and Muslim fundamentalists were obsessed with the “cultural decay” in the West, focusing mostly on the decline in traditional definitions of family, materialism, and hedonistic popular culture. 

God’s Christian Warriors

• This was by far the worst of the three.  First, they didn’t show any of the Christian fundamentalists who advocate murder and violence.  There was a brief mention of bombing abortion clinics, but I wish they would have had an in-depth interview with someone like American terrorist Eric Rudolph or any of these people who have engaged in violence at abortion clinics. What about the Christian Identity movement?  What about Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and his family?  They did talk with Christian fundamentalists, but they didn’t talk to the ones who engage in or promote violence like they did in the first two parts of the series.
• I was happy to see them discuss gender, and the treatment of women, especially when Christiane Amanpour told the one minister that the Taliban said the same thing as him. That was classic.  But they didnt get into the depth that they could have– discussing churches who barred women from being ministers.
• There were not enough interviews with people opposing Christian fundamentalism.  They had two ministers who stepped away from some parts of the movement.  I liked the Minnesota minister, who couldn’t figure out why these groups were so obsessed with homosexuality as a sin, but not materialism, greed, or gluttony.
• There was no coverage of the international nature of Christian fundamentalism.  You would think it is only in the US, but there are places like.  Several of the countries in the pink on this map prohibit abortion even in the cases of rape and incest, and Christian fundamentalists are responsible for promoting this in many countrries.  This list also includes some of the various Christian based terrorist groups around the world.

What do you think?

From the Boston Herald:

A Boston man who failed the Massachusetts bar exam has filed a federal lawsuit claiming his refusal to answer a test question - related to gay marriage - caused him to flunk the test.

Stephen Dunne, 30, is suing the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, claiming the “inappropriate” test question violated his religious convictions and his First Amendment rights. Answering the question, Dunne claims, would imply he endorsed gay marriage and parenting.

The suit also challenges the constitutionality of the 2003 SJC ruling that made Massachusetts the nation’s first state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Dunne, who describes himself as a Christian and a Democrat, is seeking $9.75 million in damages and wants a jury to prohibit the Board of Bar Examiners from considering the question in his passage of the exam and to order it removed from all future exams.

The lunacy of Dunne’s position is obvious; because a lawyer disagrees with the law doesn’t exempt her from knowing the law. Dunne’s moral claim — that answering a factual question about a law implies agreement with the law — is similarly groundless.

This illustrates the sense of entitlement held by many fundamentalist Christians today. Consider the fundamentalist pharmacists and emergency room doctors who refuse to fulfill the duties of their job, but push for laws exempting them from the consequences of that decision; or the Christians who have objected to biology exams that ask questions about evolution.

No one can force Dunne to answer an exam question he prefers to leave blank. But being Christian shouldn’t exempt Dunne from having to pass the bar exam if he wants to practice law. Unfortunately, Dunne’s attitude — which can be summed up as “let’s make a special law exempting Christians from the ordinary consequences of not meeting requirements” — seems increasingly common among right-wing Christians.

UPDATE: Zuzu at Majikthise continues the mockery. As does Daddy, Papa and Me.

Genarlow Wilson, the teenage boy who was sentenced to ten years in prison for consensual¹ oral sex with another teenager (at the time, he was 17 and the girl was 15, which is “aggravated child molestation” according to Georgia law), had his sentence thrown out by a judge who called his sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice.” But the Attorney General of Georgia has appealed, meaning that for now Wilson remains in prison.

Wilson’s long minimum sentence stems from the fact that Georgia’s laws, at the time of Wilson’s conviction, called for a harsh 10-year minimum sentence for “aggravated child molestation” (which includes oral sex). If Wilson had had coital sex with the 15-year-old, rather than getting a blow job, he would have been sentenced to one year instead of ten years. I suspect the harsher penalties for non-coital sex were based on the association of non-coital sex with homosexuality; so although Wilson is being punished for straight sex, he may be a victim of homophobia.

It’s also hard not to suspect that the system would have found a way to be more merciful — or the Attorney General would have given this appeal a pass — if Wilson weren’t Black.

One last disturbing note about this case: Wilson was also acquitted of raping a different girl at the same party. Of course it’s impossible to be 100% certain, but from what ABC reported, it sounds to me like Wilson probably is a rapist, despite the acquittal.

In a portion of a tape obtained by “Primetime,” Wilson, then 17 and an honor student and star athlete who was homecoming king, is seen having intercourse with a 17-year-old girl, who was seen earlier on the bathroom floor. During the sex act, she appears to be sleepy or intoxicated but never asks Wilson to stop. Later on in the tape, she is seen being pulled off the bed.

Other portions of the tape show a second girl, who was 15 and later said she did not drink that night. She was recorded having oral sex with several boys in succession, including Wilson.

The following morning, Wilson got a phone call that would change his life. He learned from a friend that the 17-year-old had gone to the police to report that she’d been raped.

“I was, like, ‘What? When was this happening? Did this happen at the same party I was at?’” Wilson said. “It was shocking to me.”

Authorities believed the 17-year-old alleged rape victim and said she was too intoxicated to consent to any sexual acts, which is what Georgia law requires, otherwise these acts can be considered rape.

Wilson maintained his innocence. “I know that it was consensual,” he told “Primetime.” “I wouldn’t went on with the acts if it wasn’t consensual. I’m not that kind of person. No means no.”

Five of the boys accepted plea deals, but Wilson — the only one without a police record — held out. [...] Jurors voted to acquit Wilson of raping the 17-year-old.

“I mean it wasn’t even an hour,” said jury forewoman Marie Manigault. “We immediately saw the tape for what it was. We went back and saw it again and saw what actually happened and everybody immediately said not guilty.”

Notice that Wilson’s defense — that he understands that “no means no” — is exactly the kind of thinking that leads a lot of date rapists to think their rapes of semi-conscious victims are justified. “She didn’t say no,” in their minds, is enough to make the event “not rape”; that she actively say yes is not required, in this view.

Unfortunately, that belief is held not just by a lot of date-rapists, but by a lot of people everywhere, which is (perhaps) why the jury found acquitting Wilson of rape so easy. My view is that when someone is nearly asleep during sex with a half-dozen boys and men, and when she’s so out of it that she has to be pulled off the bed (presumably because she wasn’t able to get up by herself), and then she says that she didn’t consent — that’s rape.

EDITED TO ADD: Just to be clear, folks, I am in no way claiming that punishing Wilson for consensual sex is okay because in a separate incident he probably raped someone. Obviously, I don’t want the law to work that way. Sorry if my post was unclear on this point.

1. According to Wikipedia, the girl herself has repeatedly said that the oral sex was consensual. (back)

UPDATE: Comments on this thread are closed.

–

So, there was me, grumbling that my post about Durkheim’s “tyranny of the majority,” the Overton window, and the general concept of politics as rationalization, had become a thread about whether or not rights for gays hurt people anyone, and then I realized, that’s a silly thing to do.

Meet the new post, which is the post for debating whether or not gay rights hurt people anyone. I submit that they do not. Robert and Sailorman submit that they do. Which people Who? queried I. How, and why?

Replies Robert:

Well, vis a vis discrimination laws:

Their identity: People who own rental property in a number of cities (Berkeley and San Francisco among them) which have passed ordinances adding sexual orientation to the list of banned categories of discrimination in housing.

The harm done: Their ability to dispose of their property as they wished - specifically, to have a degree of control over the people living in their house - was constrained. In addition, their ability to behave in non-discriminatory but carefree ways is impinged. Instead of not caring at all about the sexual orientation of an applicant, a landlord now has to care about it even if he or she has no intention or desire to discriminate.

Some of those people, a lot of them even, didn’t want to discriminate in that fashion anyway; others (usually for religious reasons, though not always) did. Even the former group is negatively impacted by the law - the creation of a category of discrimination opens them to false claims (whether malicious or simple misunderstandings) of such discrimination even when they did not intend to discriminate.

Pre-ordinance, Landlord X might reject Tenant Y for some bona fide reason, or if he just didn’t like the cut of her jib. Post-ordinance, if X rejects Y and Y happens to be gay, Y can make a claim (however implausible) that X discriminated on the basis of orientation. X must now take exceptional care in rejecting gay applicants for bona fide reasons - particularly if through happenstance X ends up renting to a straight tenant instead.

So, what Robert is doing here is asking for “can’t refuse to rent house to gay people” a.k.a. “landlord can’t dispose property as zie wishes” to be defined as “hurt.”

I’m opposed to this definition, because of a metaphor that I’m going to steal from The Angry Black Woman, whose archives I spent a shocking amount of yesterday reading — on account of her being so brilliant, and all.

If a child has ten pieces of candy, and his sister has no pieces of candy, and there are only ten pieces of candy in the house, and his mother takes five pieces of the child’s candy away [ETA: to give to his sister], then the child losing candy will cry. The child losing candy is not losing rights. The child losing candy is not being oppressed. The child losing candy is *experiencing* hurt, but he is not actually being hurt.

Privelege is something we often only notice when it’s lacking. A space that priveleges both men and women equally will be perceived as discriminating against men because it does not cater to their interests.

And so here.

So, please shift the argument about gay rights and hurt here, and please wander to the other location if you want to talk about politics as rationalization, the evils of extremism, or the tyranny of the majority, or kittens.

Oh, okay, you can talk about kittens in either thread. I’ll start.

UPDATE: Sailorman would like the following quotes to speak for his position:

Take gay rights and abortion rights, for example: they seem pretty obvious to ME, and I don’t much give a shit [if] granting them pisses the hell out of some people.

I don’t doubt, though, there are people whose lives have been personally worsened by the granting of abortion rights or gay rights. I just don’t care about them.

I apologize for the implication that Sailorman is trying to take rights away from gay people. It was unintended. I simply disagree with him; I do doubt that there are people is anyone whose life has been personally worsened by the granting of gay rights.

The House of Representatives voted to extend hate crimes protections those who are the victims of crimes motivated by gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  Here’s a quote from the New York Times:

By 237 to 180, the House voted to include crimes spurred by a victim’s “gender, sexual orientation or gender identity” under the hate-crime designation, which now applies to crimes spurred by the victim’s race, religion, color or national origin.

“The bill is passed,” Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is gay, announced to applause, most of it from Democrats.

Similar legislation is moving through the Senate. But even assuming that a bill emerges from the full Congress, it will face a veto by President Bush on grounds that it is “unnecessary and constitutionally questionable,” the White House said before the House vote.

The House did not pass the bill by a margin wide enough to override a veto, which requires a two-thirds majority. The Senate is not expected to do so either.

Debate over the legislation has been spirited, and while some of it has addressed whether the bill is really necessary, the arguments have also been colored by issues of conscience and notions of personal morality.

Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic majority leader, said the House vote represented “a statement of what America is, a society that understands that we accept differences.” Civil rights groups have long urged that people who are attacked because of their sexuality be given additional protections.

But Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a conservative lobbying group, told listeners to his radio program that the bill’s real purpose was “to muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality,” according to The Associated Press.

I have no idea what these conservative lobbying groups and right wing Christian activists are talking about. For example, I found this site, which makes the following claims.

Today, conservative groups and lawmakers warned that the measure undermines freedom of speech.

They say it could lead to arrests of Christians who speak out against homosexuality.

Conservatives also say the bill would make homosexuals more important than other Americans — because crimes against them would have harsher penalties than crimes against others.

Well folks this is false (I thought lying was in the 10 Commandments.), and it reflects a basic misunderstanding of hate crimes legislation.  Hate crimes legislation does not curtail freedom of speech, so if the conservative Christian activists want to have public protests denigrating women, gays, lesbians, and transgender people, they can do so.  However, if they commit a crime in the process of their “protest” and that crime is motivated by bigotry, they could get a harsher sentence.  But they have to commit a crime.  So they can say God hates women and gays all day long, but if they decide to go and beat up a women/gay man/lesbian/transgender person while yelling I hate bitches, fags, and dykes.  The prosecutor will now have the option to take on a hate crimes charge to the assault. 

It is also ridiculous to assume that this makes “homosexuals have more rights than others.”  Why?  Because the legislation targets all crimes motivated by gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.  Crimes against heterosexuals (and men), however rare they are, would also be covered.  The identity of the perpetrator is also irrelevant.  LGBT folks could commite hate crimes against other LGBT folks and be prosecuted for hate crimes, and the same could be said for men and heterosexuals.

What matters is the motivation of a crime.  People will still be entitled to believe hateful things, but if they commit crimes motivated by bias, then they will have a harsher penalty.

From Reuters, under the headline “Catholic politicians must oppose gay marriage: Pope”:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Church’s opposition to gay marriage is “non-negotiable” and Catholic politicians have a moral duty to oppose it, as well as laws on abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict said in a document issued on Tuesday.

In a 140-page booklet on the workings of a synod that took place at the Vatican in 2005 on the theme of the Eucharist, the 79-year-old German Pope also re-affirmed the Catholic rule of celibacy for priests.

In the “Apostolic Exhortation” Benedict says all believers had to defend what he calls fundamental values but that the duty was “especially incumbent” for those in positions of power.

He said these included “respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, the family built on marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms.”

“These values are not negotiable,” he said.

There are hundreds of similar articles in the mainstream media today, mostly focusing on the Pope’s “not negotiable” opposition to same-sex marriage. ¹ I’ve also seen some mentioning his opposition to abortion, and one mentioning his opposition to divorce. But defending human life until “natural death” is pretty clearly an anti-death-penalty statement, and this too is (according to the Pope) “not negotiable.” Yet I’ve been searching in vain for a single news story pointing out that the Pope called opposition to the death penalty “not negotiable.”

This confirms to a general rule the mainstream media follows: Events that highlight a split between Catholic teaching and liberal policies are news, and are reported on prominently. In contrast, events that highlight a split between Catholic teaching and conservative policies are not reported on at all.

Then again, maybe the media silence is more truthful than the Pope’s statement. Despite what the Pope said, opposition to the death penalty is negotiable. Has there been a single case of a Bishop refusing communion to a politician — or to local activists — to object to their public support of the death penalty? Will the Church leadership criticize pro-death-penalty Catholic politicians with one-tenth the passion that they’ll devote to fighting same-sex marriage? Of course not. For the Pope — and for most right-wing Catholics — supporting discrimination against queers is much more important than opposing the death penalty.

There’s also a very notable omission from the Pope’s 140-page discussion; he doesn’t call on politicians to oppose torture, nor does he call for the Eurochrist Eucharist to be withheld from politicians who support torture, even though he must know that many prominent politicians have been pressing for laws to accommodate and support torture. In fact, Benedict didn’t mention torture at all. It’s not surprising that the Pope is such a moral coward when it comes to standing up to the right wing, but it is disappointing.²

So maybe the media has it right after all.

1. Why are so many reporters using the phrase “non negotiable,” when the official text of the statement says “not negotiable”? It’s a mystery. Anyhow, here’s the relevant paragraph, quoted from the Vatican’s website:

   Here it is important to consider what the Synod Fathers described as eucharistic consistency, a quality which our lives are objectively called to embody. Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter, without consequences for our relationships with others: it demands a public witness to our faith. Evidently, this is true for all the baptized, yet it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values, such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms (230). These values are not negotiable. Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce and support laws inspired by values grounded in human nature (231). There is an objective connection here with the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:27-29). Bishops are bound to reaffirm constantly these values as part of their responsibility to the flock entrusted to them (232).

   (back)

2. Contrast Benedict’s silence on torture this week to the words of the Second Vatican Council:

   Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator.

   (back)

And of course, the bigots are gloating. Pam’s House Blend provides this quote from leading bigot Rabbi Yehuda Levin (pictured¹):

This is not the homo-land, this is the holy land. Today is a great victory for religious power. The sodomites are back in the figurative closet. They are not free to provoke.

Despite Rabbi Levin’s victory dance, however, it appears that it was the threat of Palestinian reprisals to the recent Israeli shelling of civilians in Gaza which convinced parade organizers to switch to the stadium rally. So in effect, the good Rabbi is gloating because threats of Palestinian terrorism have forced Israelis to avoid the streets.

DovBear has some background on Rabbi Levin (who is an American, by the way). As Pam points out, fundamentalist Muslims and Chirstians also tried to have the march cancelled (although as far as I know the Christians didn’t overtly call for violence).

1. So sue me - I’m feeling immature today. (back)

I’m stealing this post outright from Dispatches from the Culture War. Ed quotes from a Time Magazine article about reactions in Israel to this Friday’s planned Gay Pride parade:

An unknown extremist Jewish group pasted up signs announcing a $500 “reward” for every gay man or woman killed during the parade, which is scheduled for Nov. 10. Several ultra-orthodox rabbis have vowed to mobilize more than 100,000 protesters to shut down Jerusalem on the day of the parade, and police warn that some groups plan to pelt the marchers with apples jagged with razor blades.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the religious divide:

Meanwhile, in a rare display of solidarity with Jewish extremists, an influential Islamic cleric is urging Muslims to stage a simultaneous protest inside the old walled city to draw away Israeli police who would otherwise be shielding the gay parade from harm. “Not only should these homosexuals be banned from holding their parade,” says one Muslim cleric, Sheikh Ibrahim Hassan, who preaches at a mosque near Damascus Gate, “but they should be punished and sent to an isolated place.” Hatred, it seems, can be a bridge to inter-faith harmony.

It’s amazing that so many people the world over believe that something as basically harmless as one guy fucking another guy, or one woman fucking another woman, is something to get so hysterical about. Further proof that right-wing religion rots the mind, I guess. When they die and have to face God and Her girlfriend in Heaven, boy will their faces be red.

In this video, “Peppermint Patty” (great name!) describes having her donations turned away by a Ronald McDonald House worker, who explained that she wouldn’t accept toys from a lesbian.

The video is, frankly, harrowing to watch, because Peppermint Patty is so shattered. Some people might find her reaction disproportionate - after all, far worse discrimination happens to queers every day than having their handmade teddy bears turned away by a Ronald McDonald House volunteer. It’s not like she was kept out of her lover’s hospital room, or refused the chance to marry, or beaten up, right?

But humans are funny creatures, not logic machines. Probably this same woman could experience being turned away from a church, or for a marriage license, and be pissed off and hurt but not in tears - because that sort of discrimination is expected. We mentally steel ourselves for the rejection. Our defenses are up.

But to have a Ronald McDonald House volunteer suddenly and arbitrarily turn away your donated toys because you’re a lesbian - that’s different. That’s being told - at a point when you’re totally unprepared and all your mental shields are down - that you really are worthless, that every bad thing society has every told you about yourself is true, that you are a pariah. This sort of blatant, out-of-the-blue othering is the sort of thing that could easily drive me to tears, to ripping my hair out, and to screaming fits in my bedroom - although I wouldn’t be brave enough to put it on a YouTube video, as Peppermint Patty did.

This sort of thing happens all the time, and the wounds are deep and they sting like hell. How much energy do the pariah classes - lesbians in this case, but also people of color, queers and trans of all sorts, the disabled, fat people, femme men, and others - spend just fighting internalized self-doubt and self-loathing? How much does this sort of crap set us back on a daily basis? How much more could we accomplish if we didn’t have all those feelings brought to the surface by worthless assholes like the RMH worker?

I can’t find an email for Ronald McDonald House (which, Peppermint Patty notes, is not actually owned by the McDonalds corporation), but there are phone and fax numbers here.

A new addition to the list of the stupidest arguments against marriage equality. From the New York Times article on the House of Reps debate over same-sex marriage:

Another Georgia Republican, Representative Phil Gingrey, said support for traditional marriage “is perhaps the best message we can give to the Middle East and all the trouble they’re having over there right now.”

I’m trying to imagine what would have to be going through someone’s mind to make “we should ban same-sex marriage to send a message to the Middle East” seem like an even remotely rational argument.

Was he thinking that if there’s anything wrong with the middle east, it’s that the culture there is too accommodating of homosexuals, and so we must set a good example by not accommodating our local queers? Was he thinking that the reason people kidnap Israeli soldiers is because lesbians and gays in Massachusetts are getting married, and so we should therefore attempt to placate them by assuring them we hate gays, too? Was he too high on crack to be thinking anything at all? It’s a mystery.

UPDATE: By the way, this is far from being the most repulsive, bigoted, anti-queer statement to come out of an elected Republican this week.

[Cross-posted on Creative Destruction, where the moderation is lighter.]

By Pat Parker (1944-1989)

You know, some people got a lot of nerve.
Sometimes I don’t believe the things I see and hear.

Have you met the woman who’s shocked by two women kissing
and in the same breath, tells you she is pregnant?
BUT gays, shouldn’t be so blatant.

Or this straight couple sits next to you in a movie and
you can’t hear the dialogue because of the sound effects.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.

And the woman in your office spends an entire lunch hour
talking about her new bikini drawers and how much
her husband likes them.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.

Or the “hip” chick in your class rattling like a mile a minute
while you’re trying to get stoned in the john, about the
camping trip she took with her musician boyfriend.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.

You go in a public bathroom and all over the walls there’s John loves
Mary, Janice digs Richard, Pepe loves Delores, etc., etc.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.

Or your go to an amusement park and there’s a tunnel of love
and pictures of straights painted on the front and grinning
couples are coming in and out.
BUT gays shouldn’t be so blatant.

Fact is, blatant heterosexuals are all over the place.
Supermarkets, movies, on your job, in church, in books, on television every day
day and night, every place-even- in gay bars and they want gay
men and woman to go and hide in the closet.

So to you straight folks I say, “Sure, I’ll go if you go too”
BUT I’m polite so, after you.

–Pat Parker