Friday April 2, 2004

Nice Tent. Maybe Someday They'll Let You In...

Often, but since president defender of sodomy laws announced his support for the anti-gay marriage amendment more then ever, I've heard people, gay and straight, wonder how the hell anyone can identify as gay and republican. Gay and conservative...maybe. But the republican party is to homosexuals as the Ku Klux Klan is to non-whites and jews. How does any self respecting gay declare membership in a political party that hates their guts.

Well, thanks to Boi From Troy I think I now know the answer: They have a problem seeing things that are right in front of their faces.

It was reading about Wonkette's Gayest Seeming Bushie Contest that I saw the link to Boi. He describes himself as "...a 6'1", 167 lb., 28 year-old, gay male, republican, sports fan living in West Hollywood, California and sharing my thoughts on politics, sports and gayness with the world." Okay. Swell. This world certainly needs a 6'1", 167 lb., 28 year-old, gay male, republican, sports fan living in West Hollywood, California, whose thoughts on gayness include the observation that most "so-called" gay activists are more interested in abortion, labor unions and raising your taxes than they care about "with whom I can engage in buggery." Lest we all fear that Andrew Sullivan might suddenly grow a conscience, re-read all the political hackery he's done for a president who would as soon see him locked up for sodomy as look at him, and crawl shame faced away from public view. We need a spare...just in case.

But what really caught my attention was this:

In this post below, I linked to a New York Times photo of John Kerry on the slopes in Ketchum. Now Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds, Bill Hobbs and others are blogging about the mysterious daisy Kerry was wearing that day...suggesting at first that it was either a ski ticket or photoshopped. Their conclusion...it was neither a lift ticket nor photoshopped.

But then I went back to look at the New York Times photo where Kerry was wearing the same ski outfit that day...here are the two photos side-by-side (NYT on the left, AP on right):

Notice anything missing from the New York Times photo? My local Times is no stranger to doctoring images...could it be contagious among major newspapers to selectively edit their pictures to project the images they want?

No...he's serious. He thinks (or thought) that they're the same image, only one's been slightly doctored to remove the daisy on Kerry's jacket. Now...he actually went to the trouble to grab and post both pictures, so you know the half-wit had to at least glance at them once before he posted. And he really thought he saw two versions of the same image.

He later updates his entry to note that a "careful reader" has alerted him to the fact that the jacket is different in both pictures. Gosh that was careful. Then he makes the discovery all by himself that Kerry's "undershirt" is different too. Way careful.

Hey Sherlock...the snow board's different too. And the background. And the curl of snow under the board. And the angle of his head. Oh hell...never mind...

So if you've ever wondered how a gay republican can act like they just don't see how much their party hates them...well...they may really have trouble seeing what's right in front of their noses after all.

[Edited a tad...]

Thursday April 1, 2004

Well...As Long As He's Not A Homosexual...

Don't Ask Don't Tell, continues to squander the future of this nation's best and brightest...

BOULDER - Touched by the story of a University of Colorado student who was kicked out of the Air Force ROTC for admitting she is a lesbian, a professor and an alumna are trying to help.

Mara Boyd had her military scholarship revoked after coming out to her commander in September 2002 in violation of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Told she would have to pay back the $30,990 for failing to complete her service, Boyd left school and started working as a gardener.

"It's pretty daunting to take on that kind of debt," said Boyd, now 22.

Journalism professor Jan Whitt and Susan Schmidt, a member of the Alumni Association, hope to make it less so. They've set up a fund to raise money toward Boyd's debt, with the ultimate goal of seeing her return to the university.

"I want Mara back in school," Whitt said. "She is bright, articulate, courageous and honest. She will succeed at whatever she does, and I want her to graduate and represent the university well."

After hearing about the story, CU leaders, including Chancellor Richard Byyny, requested that the Air Force excuse her debt. They argued in a letter that she had been an exemplary cadet who didn't realize she was a lesbian until after her sophomore year.

Their request was denied...

Ousted gay ROTC student at CU gets help with debt

They said the presence of homosexuals in the ranks was too disturbing to other soldiers. So the courage, energy and ability of literally tens of thousands of American citizens like Mara Boyd would be sacrificed, so that others could feel more comfortable in their barracks.

Others like Max Rodriguez...

DENVER -- A former Air Force Academy cadet accused of rape will be commissioned as an officer after he successfully appealed a separate disciplinary case, the man's accuser said.

Military officials informed 2nd Lt. Lisa Ballas that Max Rodriguez will become a commissioned officer, Ballas told The Associated Press on Wednesday night.

Rodriguez was never charged with sexual assault but was expelled for other reasons that were not disclosed. He appealed to Air Force Secretary James Roche, who ruled in his favor, said Air Force spokesman Col. Jay DeFrank.

"During the course of an extensive review, it was determined that there was insufficient evidence of wrongdoing and that Rodriguez should be reinstated and commissioned," DeFrank said.

"I feel this is a personal attack against me," said Ballas, who has agreed to have her name used. "The thing I have wanted the most from all of this is for Max Rodriguez not to wear a uniform. Now that he will I can't stay quiet."

...

Rodriguez has denied assaulting Ballas. His lawyers said she had been drinking heavily with Rodriguez and others the night of the alleged assault and had been involved in a game of strip poker before the alleged attack on Oct. 13, 2001.

"My parents were told by prosecutors that there was no way he would be charged with rape, but they would do their best to get him removed because they knew of other improper behavior," said Ballas, now a second lieutenant in flight training in Pensacola, Fla.

The alleged improper behavior was never specified. DeFrank said he had no information on what had been alleged against Rodriguez.

Ballas' case was one of several that led to sweeping changes at the academy, including the ouster of the top four commanders.

Remarks by Brig. Gen. Taco S. Gilbert, then commandant of the academy, were interpreted as partially blaming her for the events.

Cadet Accused of Rape to Become Officer

There is a nexus in the contempt of the homophobe and the misogynist, and you never see it more clearly then in the U.S. military's treatment of women and homosexuals. They both bring their troubles on themselves for not knowing their place. They are both guilty until proven innocent.

Somebody Tell Me Again About How Republicans And Conservatives Are In Favor Of Smaller, Less Intrusive Government...

Via Matthew Yglesias...

NEWPORT NEWS [Virginia] - A Newport News woman charged with a felony for receiving oral sex in a car is challenging a state law that prohibits certain types of sex between consenting adults.

A police officer says he found the 21-year-old woman in a parked car receiving oral sex from a man about 3 a.m. Jan. 29. Both were charged with a felony under the statute for crimes against nature.

...

Virginia's statute on crimes against nature says people can't have oral or anal sex, whether homosexual or heterosexual. But the law doesn't specify whether the sex is illegal in public or in private.

State's law on sex act challenged

I hear so many people these days talk in tones of amazed wonderment about how republicans and conservatives have been so quick to abandon their core principles, such as states rights, with things like the anti-gay marriage amendment or over things like Bush's steel tariffs and big spending ways. But it was always easy for them to posture when they weren't actually in a position to dictate policy. Now they are, and lo and behold the truth comes out. They never had core principles. What they had was rhetoric. Different things.

If liberals are people who believe in less personal freedom, big spending and big government with no accountability, then republicans are liberals.

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Gutter Crawlers

Well...I thought I was going to take a hiatus...and I still might. But I had to post about this: It looks like the Bush gang are going to play the queer card on Richard Clarke. I have no idea at this point whether the man is actually gay or not, but thems apparently the rumors the Bush gang is now spreading, in their ongoing smear campaign against him.

Atrios alludes to it, Wonkette discusses it openly, wondering aloud in the process about a president that keeps telling men what beautiful faces they have. Paul Krugman alludes to it in his column today, which begins incisively:

Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."

So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power...

I reckon there aren't too many people left on this good earth who are still deluding themselves about the inner squalor of the man occupying the white house and his gang. Anyone with half a brain saw it during the primary, and even a dead pig on a stick could have seen it after Florida. The people still proclaiming his virtues in office now are his fellow residents in the American gutter. They know what he is, and they're fine with it, because they know what they are.

On Atrios' comment boards, they're talking about mutually assured destruction, as in what happened to Pete Williams during the Don't Ask, Don't Tell fight. Personally, I'm all for it, but it's worth bearing in mind that mutually assured destruction is still destruction and that's fine with the thugs in power now. The ashes of our democracy is where they hope to do their victory dance.

This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics - even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power - to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.

Paul Krugman

Getting these goons out of the seats of power is going to be painful. Fine. Bring it on.

Saturday, March 20, 2004

Remind Me...It Was Going To Be A Cakewalk...Right...?

Between conference sessions, I wander around the Foggy Bottom area, and back and forth to my hotel, which I paid for out of my own pocket, rather then hassle with Washington traffic, which is a nightmare. The hotel has a nice little kitchenette, which allows me to eat reasonably well without further damaging my budget for the month. Around noon I begin the walk back to my hotel for lunch, stopping to examine a decrepit building right next to the conference hall, that I assume is one of the student dorms. It is, and I see by the bronze plaque by the door that this one is named Lafayette Hall. I read the inscription, which briefly describes the history of Marquis de Lafayette, who fought beside George Washington, taking a bullet in the process, for the freedom of a nation that was not his own, and who later attended the first commencement ceremonies of the university that bore his friend's name, shaking the hand of each of those first graduates. While I am reading, a snarky voice in the back of my mind is saying Freedom Fries...Freedom Toast... An old friend of mine I'd had breakfast with that morning, told me a joke he'd heard about a man who, while visiting France recently, asked a random Frenchman, "Sir, can you speak German?" When the Frenchman replied that he couldn't, the American said, "You're welcome." I told my friend the Frenchman could just as easily have asked the American, "Sir, do you have a king?"

My hotel is somewhat oldish. My room is on the sixth floor and the elevators are small and slow. I press the button and when one finally appears, I see that there are already two businessmen inside. It's a tight fit for three. As we go up I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. There are some who you would never know from the look of them, to be of the right wing thuggish persuasion, and there are others who hit you with it in waves, in the cut of the clothes, the bullying posture that is as second nature as breathing, and the coldness of the face, particularly when smiling at nothing in particular. I tune them both out, pulling out from a space within me I'd almost forgotten about, a "Yes I'm a longhair, yes I know you hate my guts, and no mister establishment person sir, I really don't give a flying fuck" attitude, close my eyes, and listen to the elevator floor counter click off the floors to mine. I toy briefly about writing a book, "Everything I know about living under Bush II, I learned from Nixon". The old elevator rises slowly. I hear one of my companions say, "I hope they don't cancel our flight out Thursday." The other chuckles and says, "The war will be over by then."

Flashback...Washington D.C...March 18, 2003

The Heterosexual Prerogative

The New York Times has an article up today about real estate law as it applies to same sex couples. Anyone who has heard the argument that same sex couples don't need marriage, because they can make private contracts to secure their rights if they want (and who hasn't heard that argument), might want to read this.

Another form of title to real estate, Ms. Bluth said, is known as a tenancy by the entirety. "This form of ownership is only available to persons who are legally married when they acquire the property," she said, adding that while tenancy by the entirety historically applied only to real property - like houses and condominiums - on Jan. 1, 1996, the law in New York was changed to allow co-op apartments to be owned as a tenancy by the entirety.

With this form of ownership, Ms. Bluth said, the spouses do not hold partial ownership interests in the property. "Instead, each spouse owns 100 percent of the property and the right to possess the entire premises, subject to the parallel right of the other spouse," she said. And when one spouse dies, the surviving spouse automatically becomes the sole owner of the property, not because of any right of survivorship, but because he or she has always had a 100 percent ownership interest.

"In essence, upon the death of the first tenant by the entirety, his or her interest in the property merely disappears," Ms. Bluth said, adding that the law makes certain assumptions about how title to property will be held in the absence of a specific election by the parties to hold title in another way.

"The law assumes that a married couple acquiring real property or a co-op apartment take title as tenants by the entirety," she said. "And when unmarried people acquire real property or a co-op apartment, the law assumes that they take title as tenants in common."

I'm sure this varies state by state...but not by much in any fundamental way. Marriage confers rights automatically, that couples who cannot legally marry cannot attain in any other way, even if they tried. A same sex couple cannot make a contract with each other for "tenancy by the entirety", because that form of ownership is reserved for legally married couples only.

One thing that bears keeping in mind is that people who are familiar with how the law works, and that would include lawyers, real estate agents, any number of people who deal with matters of law on a day to day basis, would know perfectly well the degree to which unmarried couples cannot avail themselves of the rights married couples can. When the lobbyists for various anti-gay political organizations yap for the TV that gay couples don't need marriage, because they can always write a contract, they almost certainly know from first hand experience that what they're saying isn't true.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

Satire Is Officially Dead

It wasn't the Successories graphic of Christ on the cross, there below the menu of the website of official licensed products for Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ. No. It wasn't the empty cross coffee mugs. No. It wasn't the Passion Nail (as in nailed to a cross) necklaces, available in 1 7/8 and 2 5/8 sizes for men and women. No. T'was the Passion Nail keyrings that marked the official end of satire.

There. You've lived to see it. Remember this moment well. Future generations will ask you what it was like.

As Civil As A National Dialogue On How Much To Persecute A Minority Gets

They're busy fighting evil in gulfport. evil incarnate being homosexuals, naturally...

GULFPORT - The City Council passed a resolution Tuesday supporting President Bush's proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriages.

Councilman Billy Hewes introduced the resolution, saying it would help to protect the country's moral character from the forces of evil.

"To me, folks, things like (same-sex marriage) is the devil at work," Hewes said. "I think it is one of the most irresponsible things that people in government could allow to happen."

The resolution states the acceptance of same-sex marriage would "have a devastating effect on moral traditions and on the laws and legal system of the country."

Mayor Ken Combs endorsed the resolution.

"About 54 years ago when I got married to my wife, it was perfectly legal for us to get married and illegal for people of same sex to marry one another and that's the way I stand today," Combs said. "I don't move a bit from that stance."

Councilman Chuck Teston said same-sex marriage defies the intentions of Jesus Christ.

"I wouldn't be sitting here today if we condoned men marrying men and women marrying women," Teston said. "I don't think that's what the Lord Jesus Christ meant for us."

The Biloxi Sun-Herald - Gulfport supports ban on gay union

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such. These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.

-James Carroll, "Constantine's Sword"

And While We're At It...Let's Make Sure They Can't Buy A House Either...

RACINE - Marilyn Riedel, 61, a disabled Army veteran, has trouble moving, drinking and eating. It's difficult for her to talk because her worsening Parkinson's disease makes her tongue quiver.

But she's so lucky. She's lucky because a woman named Connie Guardino, 58, loves her with her whole heart. Whatever the future may offer, this couple will face it together, and they'd like to do it in a cute little two-bedroom home on Illinois Street.

If they were married, they could have it. But because they are a same-sex couple, they've been rejected for a loan by the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

Politicians and citizens may debate what rights are appropriate for same-sex couples, but it's up to Riedel and Guardino to live with the results.

...

In the 1960s, this Army captain had 130 soldiers under her as she struggled to hide her sexual orientation. Her unit at Fort Ritchie in Maryland helped to operate a communications center for the president near the Camp David presidential retreat. Meanwhile, she feared she'd be transferred to some undesirable spot in Europe if her sexual orientation was discovered.

Later, as a pastor at Mount Pleasant Lutheran Church, 1700 S. Green Bay Road, she struggled to reconcile her faith with her sexual orientation. Soon after leaving the church in the mid-1980s, she noticed her left hand quivering. At first she thought it was some sort of inherited trait.

She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

100 percent disabled Now, retired Capt. Marilyn Riedel has served her country, and she is labeled 100 percent disabled by the government, but she may not apply for a veterans loan with her same-sex partner.

The Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs offers sweetheart deals on loans to veterans. But without much of an income, Riedel can't qualify for a loan. With Guardino as a co-applicant, she'd be able to qualify, but a co-applicant must be a spouse under Wisconsin law.

"A spouse is an individual who enters a valid marriage contract. Unless the law is changed, there is no way that we can change that," Wisconsin DVA spokesman Andrew Schuster said in an interview. "We go directly by the statutes. We don't have any authority to vary that."

Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs Division Administrator William Kloster sent Riedel an e-mail on March 12 that explains her same-sex partner cannot be a co-applicant. He adds: "I know this may not help you but we are bound by the law and the rules that apply to the bonds we buy to make loans."

The Journal Times (Wisconsin) - No loan for disabled vet, same-sex partner

Of course, if the federal anti same-sex marriage amendment passes, this will become the law of the land in every state, regardless of how much its people may be offended at the knuckle dragging bigotries of other states. Meanwhile, states that are passing anti same sex marriage amendments, are nowadays taking care to spell out the fact that any civil recognition of same sex couples will be against the law, no matter how small. In states that have already passed them, republicans are busy closing what they see as the domestic partners loop hole. If the republicans have their way, discrimination against homosexual Americans will become as deeply engrained in American law, as racial apartheid was once in South Africa. Homosexuals will have to live under a set of laws crafted specifically to exclude us from as many aspects of civil life as the republicans can think of. We will become non-citizens, in our own country.

For years I've heard gay republicans and gay conservatives argue that there are more important matters for them to consider when voting, then their sexuality. Economic matters. Matters of national, and personal defense. But if you allow the pink triangle to be sewn into the constitution, none of these will matter. You'll have no economic rights. Your country will have no interest in defending you, and you'll have no right to defend yourself. When that day comes, all that will matter is survival, and the odds won't be in your favor.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

And While We're At It...Let's Take Away Their Ability To Hold Down A Job Too...

Via 365Gay.Com... Bush Office Of Special Counsel appointee Scott Bloch, says that while gay and lesbian federal employees cannot be fired for attending a gay pride event, they can on the other hand, be fired simply for being homosexual...

"People confuse conduct and sexual orientation as the same thing, and I don't think they are," Bloch said in an interview with Federal Times, a publication for government employees.

Bloch said gays, lesbians and bisexuals cannot be covered as a protected class because they are not protected under the nation's civil rights laws.

"When you're interpreting a statute, you have to be very careful to interpret strictly according to how it's written and not get into loose interpretations," Bloch said. "Someone may have jumped to the conclusion that conduct equals sexual orientation, but they are essentially very different. One is a class . . . and one is behavior."

This is almost a complete reverse of the tack I hear most homophobes take when it comes to workplace discrimination. The usual rhetoric you hear is more along the lines that nobody is ever fired just for being gay, they're fired for some sort of homosexual conduct. If you don't act on your unnatural urges, how is anyone going to know that you're a homosexual...? Bloch, since he is apparently unable to justify letting federal gay employees be fired for conduct, such as going to a pride day event, without a doubt at the behest of his master in the white house, deftly turns it on its head. Okay...we can't fire you for acting gay, but we can still fire you for being gay. And speaking of complete reversals, this renounces federal policy on discrimination due to sexual orientation going back to 1973.

You have to figure they've nothing to lose now, when it comes to prejudice toward gay and lesbian Americans. They've waved the bloody flag over same sex marriage, the few naive (okay...blind as bats) gay supporters they managed to hold onto up until then are livid, nobody can seriously claim anymore that Bush isn't actively hostile toward homosexual Americans, so...what the hell...let's go all out for the gay bashing vote. Might as well.

Another Reason To Go Open Source...

USA Today: Tech titans give more to GOP

Once upon a time they were at the cutting edge of a new technology, that brought power to everyday people in a way the world hadn't seen since Gutenberg. Now they're falling over each other to sell that promise out for a seat at the feast of thugs and tyrants.

Moronsexuals

Okay...now they're yapping that not only don't we love, homosexuals don't have sex either. In L.A. Times letters to the editor page the other day was this fragrant little gem:

Kmiec's column explained the legal issues of gay marriage quite well. Sex is a union of male with female. As such, gays do not have sex. They can only engage in sex play. If the polarity is missing, the act is not sex; and a union between like genetic material is impossible.

I might want, with all my heart, to play center for the Lakers. But I'm too old, too short, female and a terrible athlete. It would be ridiculous for me to suggest I am entitled to play with the Lakers because I have the same rights as any human.

Gays are entitled to form unions that meet their needs and give them full protection under the law. But they need to do so without trying to redefine sex and marriage.

Rosemary Patterson, Los Angeles

Well...okay...if Rosemary to-old-to-play-football is old enough, there won't be any "union between like genetic material" in her bed either, which means she doesn't have sex, nor do a lot of heterosexual couples.

I know...I know...people who dispense this crap are morons. So what's being proven here isn't that a lot of people only think they're having sex, but that some people only think they can think.

Monday, March 15, 2004

Theocracy Rising

God loves you and I love you and you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about the future can hear.
George W. Bush - in a speech before the "Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Conference" in Los Angles On March 3, 2004
As Quoted in Slate.Com

...is not strained.

Great Leonard Pitts Jr. column the other day on the black response to the gay civil rights movement. He begins by saying, "Call it an object lesson in the quality of equality."

Saturday, March 14, 2004

Change Of Schedule

Every weekend now since I started working back in September to finish my degree, I've felt the pressure of two colliding deadlines. My classes almost always have had Sunday at midnight as the deadline for submitting work for grading. But for two years now, that's also been my self imposed deadline for getting a new cartoon up. This weekend, I finally had to accept the fact that I can't keep doing both, without ending the weekend too stressed for work the following Monday. That work pays my bills, and it's the one pure joy of my life currently, so I need to adjust things around here.

Starting this week, new cartoons will appear on Wednesday, instead of Monday. I think that'll work out better, because evenings during the first few days of the week are generally my least stressful, and that'll allow me to finish up a cartoon gracefully, without rushing anything onto my scanner.

I know, because a few of you have told me, how much having your Monday "fix" of one of my cartoons is to you. And I always wanted it to be a start the week kinda thing for my readers. But the programming assignments I'm getting now are intense, and I just can't do both over the weekend anymore. So think of them now, as more a middle of the week breather. Something to remind you in the middle of yet another week of republican right wing homophobic babbling why you're still fighting the good fight.

Stay tuned...I may have something else for you sometime in April. (I hope...)

The Home Front

Every time I hear a black conservative bellyaching that gays have never had to face prejudice and discrimination and hate the way blacks have, I am reminded of a line I heard somewhere, that yes, our struggle is a different one: for one thing black kids don't have to tell their parents they're black. The fight for justice and equal rights, brands our consciousness in a different way. If it seems sometimes as if our struggle is more personal and emotional and heart embittering, there's a reason. The knife strikes us first from those we are the most vulnerable to, and at a time when we are already busy struggling our way though adolescence. Family. Mothers and Fathers. Childhood friends and peers. Dealing with the hatred of strangers is trivial by comparison. Strangers can wound your body, they can take your life, they can make you afraid, but only family can eat your heart and spit it back out.

I had it good. My own parents simply refused to talk about the matter, and right to the end of their lives maintained a don't ask, don't tell policy regarding it. They never nagged me to get a girlfriend, never forced me into church or therapy, always, in every other way possible, showed me that they loved me. But the subject of my sexuality was utterly off limits. Even when I brought boyfriends into our apartment, they would doggedly refuse to see the obvious. Smiles all around, but I never got the discussion of the dating and mating game others did while growing up. Yet, I consider myself blessed. One boyfriend told me, in hushed words as we lay together one night, how after he came out to his own parents, how after they both reassured him of their undying love, the next morning his father printed up several hundred brochures listing every biblical damnation of homosexuality he could find, and added a few of his own for good measure, and then placed one in the front door of every house in their neighborhood.

You hear people complaining about the apolitical mindset of many gays. I think the reason isn't self centeredness, so much as that the family battle looms so large by comparison, and wounds so deeply, that there is almost no room left for political activism. Many deal with the family matter by moving far away, cocooning, dropping out as some in my generation used to advise. The fear is that opening the lid on politics, getting into the political battle, will reopen deep, and always tender wounds.

But for Gays and Lesbians, there is almost nothing about the act of making a life for ourselves, that isn't political, that doesn't require a degree of bravery, a willingness to endure once more, the old wound:

David Knight, son of the state senator who was the author of the California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, defied his father's law and wed his partner of 10 years Tuesday in a quiet ceremony attended by just two friends in San Francisco City Hall.

Atop the grand staircase of City Hall's rotunda, Knight and Joe Lazzaro of Baltimore exchanged rings and were pronounced spouses for life one month after Sen. William "Pete" Knight, R-Palmdale, proclaimed San Francisco's same- sex marriages "nothing more than a sideshow."

The younger Knight and Lazzaro joined the growing ranks of couples -- more than 3,700 -- who have wed in San Francisco since Mayor Gavin Newsom on Feb. 12 ordered the city to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Knight and Lazzaro said the ceremony Tuesday reaffirmed the commitment they had made two years ago in a civil union ceremony in Vermont. "Vermont was the big deal," Knight said. "That was our real commitment. This is to be part of what's happening across the country."

Civil unions, such as those adopted by the state of Vermont in 2000, are legal partnerships recognized by the state and conferring most of the legal benefits of marriage including the right to share title on a house, file joint state tax returns, sue for wrongful death and make decisions on behalf of their partner in the event of a medical emergency.

The difference between the Vermont civil union and the San Francisco marriage, Knight said, is that "although Vermont recognizes the 400 or so rights granted by that state, if we lived in Vermont, we'd have those, but we'd still lack the thousand or so rights a married couple, a heterosexual couple, receives from the federal government."

Knight's father did not attend either ceremony in Vermont or San Francisco. He did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.

...

...When Bird, the volunteer who performed Tuesday's ceremony, learned afterward who he had just wed, he gasped.

"You are giving me goosebumps," he said. "I just married Pete Knight's son."

Son of gay marriage foe weds in San Francisco
The San Francisco Chronicle

There is our struggle in a nutshell. Wish them luck. Wish them all the best. Wish for the day to come soon, very soon, when Gay and Lesbian children won't have to walk through life, with a knife in their heart.

Tuesday, March 9, 2004

Never Again?

James Carrol, in a remarkable column in today's Boston Globe, gets to the heart of the matter:

POLITICIANS who spark a culture war for the sake of their own power are playing with fire, and journalists who exploit a culture war for the sake of its unleashed furies are throwing gasoline on the flames. At the beginning of the presidential election contest, that is history's warning to America.

...

...When quasi-hysterical fearmongering replaces reasonable debate, dark forces can be set in motion that outrun anyone's intentions, and that is especially true when the question involves a segment of society that has long been subject to irrational bigotry. To define the wish of homosexuals for equal access to marriage rites and rights as a mortal threat to the social order, as Bush does, is to put gay people themselves in an unprecedented position of jeopardy. Bush and a conservative punditry, out of crude self-interest, are working hard to reverse the evolution of attitudes that has blurred the boundary between blue America and red. Bush wants that boundary bright. In an election year, it may work. But it is dangerous.

The phrase "culture war" comes from "Kulturkampf." That word was coined in the 1870s when Germany's George W. Bush, Otto von Bismarck, launched a "values" campaign as a way of shoring up his political power. Distracting from issues of war and economic stress, the "Kulturkampf" ran from 1871 to about 1887. Bismarck's strategy was to unite his base by inciting hatred of those who were not part of it.

His first target was the sizable Catholic minority in the new, mostly Protestant German state, but soon enough, especially after an economic depression in 1873, Jews were defined as the main threat to social order. This was a surprising turn because Jewish emancipation had been a feature of German culture as recently as the 1860s. By 1879, the anti-Jewish campaign was in full swing: It was in that year that the word "anti-Semitism" was coined, defining not a prejudice but a public virtue. The Kulturkampf was explicitly understood as a struggle against decadence, of which the liberal emancipated Jew became a symbol. What that culture war's self-anointed defenders of a moral order could not anticipate was what would happen when the new "virtue" of anti-Semitism was reinforced by the then burgeoning pseudo-science of the eugenics movement. Bismarck's defense of expressly German values was a precondition of Hitler's anti-Jewish genocide.

One need not predict equivalence between the eventual outcome of Bismarck's culture war and the threat of what Bush's could lead to. For our purposes, the thing to emphasize is that a leader's exploitation of subterranean fears and prejudices for the sake of political advantage is a dangerous ploy, even if done in the name of virtue. No, make that especially if done in the name of virtue.

Meanwhile, back at the Rhino Times, Orson Scott Card is answering some of the angry mail his column on same sex marriage provoked:

To Mr. Lee, I can only say that you are the reason some of us are terrified about what is about to happen to the First Amendment. When a carefully reasoned essay is published in opposition to the current political innovation of gay "marriage," which is being forced on an unwilling public by judicial fiat, instead of answering a single idea in the essay, you immediately label it "hate literature."

Those of you who have read The Hypocrites Of Homosexuality, may recall that Card advocates the use of sodomy laws, not so much as an excuse to witch hunt homosexuals, but as an effective means of punishing those who defy social mores, and flaunt their homosexuality openly. And calling his attacks on homosexuals hate literature is a terrifying threat to his first amendment rights. Oh...I get it now...the hypocrites he was referring to, were homophobes like him.

No use to suggest that he talk to the few remaining survivors of the German Kulturkampf, who were forced to wear the pink triangle, about what it means to be terrified. He thinks terrorizing homosexuals is a social necessity.

Saturday, March 6, 2004

Bigot Pornography

After a while I stopped being shocked to discover that someone I had known well, or whose talent I admired, was either moving into or already a part of the not-so-clandestine network of gay relationships. I learned that being homosexual does not destroy a person's talent or deny those aspects of their character that I had already come to love and admire. I did learn that for most of them their highest allegiance was to their membership in the community that gave them access to sex.
-Orson Scott Card

The tragedy of people who loved Ender's Game, is in discovering that the author of their beloved novel is a lot less decent and humane then the book he produced, that he is in fact a moral runt with the conscience of a lynch mob leader. I can relate in a small way, having once loved some of the music of Ricard Wagner, only to discover that it's inextricably entwined with his passionate antisemitism. You allow the artist's work to enter a very private, and intimate part of your heart, and then you learn that all that time it was a smarmy sleezebag that you were letting press your buttons. Not as bad as discovering that the prince charming you've been sleeping with was burning crosses and robbing convenience stores nights he wasn't with you...but close.

For fans of Orson Scott Card, the shock usually comes while reading The Hypocrites of Homosexuality for the first time, although for Donna Minkowitz, it came while interviewing him. Back in the early 90s, his tune was that The Hypocrites of Homosexuality was only his statement of belief as a Mormon, and wasn't intended as an attack on gays who weren't part of his faith. That was then, and this is now, and now, provoked by the recent outpouring of support for same sex marriage, Orson Scott Card has written another rant about homosexuality, and it's something we can all welcome as the end of pretense with him. It's worth reading, not just as a textbook example of the unflinching dishonesty of homophobes, but to see for yourself what an addiction to hate can do to someone, who might once have become a decent man.

Card is there, for all to see, one of a rapidly shrinking wing of American hatemongering; the otherwise respected public figure, who is perfectly willing to let the world see how utterly incapable they are of seeing the humanity of homosexual people. Once upon a time it would have been unremarkable. But now that we gays and lesbians are living our lives openly, insisting to anyone who will listen that homosexuals are sub human deviates, malformed monstrosities incapable of experiencing the richness of life at best, and hell bent on destroying that richness for others, is no longer a sure fire line of persuasion. In fact it is political death and they know it. The problem the homophobic right faces today, is how to affect anti-gay public policies without appearing to be motivated by nothing more noble then an irreducible hatred of homosexuals. So just the other day on Capital Hill, you heard a minister arguing that even though same sex couples can be both decent and loving, marriage isn't about love. That's how desperate they are. Card on the other hand, makes the purer case: homosexuals don't love, they just have sex. Homosexuals are incapable of experiencing the joy and wonder of romantic love. Homosexuals are separated from the cycle of life. Homosexuals are damaged, deformed consciousness, twisted, alien to the fundamental nature of human existence. You could just picture him patiently, earnestly, saying all this to a group of young science-fiction fans, most of whom these days have friends who are gay, if not openly gay themselves, utterly clueless as to what he's telling them, not about homosexuals, but about himself.

Now, you could call that brave in its own way, but it's more like the stupidity that happens when you let a festering hate rot your brain for a few decades. Hate like that wages war on every other part of your consciousness, because it will not endure questioning, will not accept anything other then being the central focus of your life. It must rule over all. Your intellect. Your conscience. Your sense of honor and justice, and any capacity you might have had for sympathy and human decency. All of it has to step aside. And right away in Card's latest rant, you can see that his base moral instincts are completely gone:

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States, now or ever, has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage.

To just write this off as sophistry misses it. Yes, it's sophistry. It's also dishonest in a particularly totalitarian doublespeak way, which makes it striking coming from a man who claims to be defending democracy over the rule of activist judges. In the former Soviet Union, the laws made it difficult to impossible for Christians to worship freely. But those laws, the Soviets insisted, were not discriminatory, since everyone, atheists included, had to obey them. And of course, in some parts of the United States, particularly the south, race segregation was justified as being applied equally to all races. This is the kind of argument you make, when you don't want to defend the morality of an act, so much as confuse and naturalize the moral judgments of others. It is the technique of a Stalinist, not a defender of morality. An honest person would acknowledge and justify the discrimination, but Card's first act in making his case, is to reach for mendacity, and then wave it in his reader's faces. Right away he is telling us, that he has no use for the moral argument, and it's a safe bet that he tells us this because he knows the moral argument is not his friend.

When you see yourself lying to your audience like this, it ought to ring your alarm bells, it ought to wake you up. A truly moral man would see this for what it is; a warning to oneself. But when hate is the monkey on your back, the warnings just get ignored. You throw everything away, your conscience, your honor, your good name, your sense of right and wrong, all of it becomes so much excess baggage, because in the end all that matters, is the hate.

And it's fitting, that immediately after declaring his intention to deceive his readers, he shows them, in all its sickening glory, why he must:

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be... Not, "however much in love a homosexual couple may be", but "however emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be." Homosexual love is not real love at all, but a fake, a fraud, a pale and pathetic imitation. Later, he makes it even more clear:

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.

How does he know this? How can he, or anyone else say with certainty, that anyone else's love for their mate is not real, is not deep and profound? During Karen Thompson's decade long legal fight to be reunited with her beloved Sharon Kowalski, kept isolated by her parents in a nursing home after a motorcycle accident that left her severely incapacitated, Kowalski's father once asked plaintively, "What does this woman want with my daughter? She's in diapers." For Card, for any homophobe, to acknowledge that homosexuals couples love each another, is necessarily to acknowledge the humanity in homosexuals, and this is the critical line that the homophobe is incapable of crossing. They complain that people call them bigots as a tool to shut down discussion, but if the word has any meaning at all, then it is describing them exactly, and here in passages like that is where you see it. Hello...my name is Orson Scott Card....I cannot see the people for the homosexuals...and here is a little essay to prove it to you... People see this, and shrink away, and the homophobes complain about political correctness, when what's happening is they're colliding head-on with other people's conscience, and having little to none of their own, they don't understand it.

I've no intention here to do a detailed analysis of Card's latest. I've got school work to do this weekend. Most of the rest of the article, which is larger then his Hypocrites of Homosexuality article of some years back, just waves the usual homosexual bogeyman. Homosexuals don't want equal rights, they want to destroy heterosexual families. Homosexuals aren't born, they're made, usually by being abused as children. If we allow same sex marriage, America will be destroyed. No...I'm not exaggerating what Card is saying. What's striking isn't the content, so much as its pornographic indifference to shame. But I can't end this post, without noting this:

If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists - which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does - then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage.

Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game is knocking on the door to Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVey land. Don't be surprised if he walks in. The America of the golden door is as foreign, and as vile a place to his kind, as it was to the islamic radicals who murdered several thousand Americans on September 11, 2001.

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

I Was Pushed Into It. Okay...I Pushed Myself, But I Was Still Pushed.

A common refrain we're hearing now, is that Bush was pushed into supporting a constitutional amendment, banning same sex marriage. He didn't choose this fight, we're being told, by the same crowd in fact, that said Bush didn't want to go to war with Saddam. Yeah...he was pushed into that war too. But now it is activist judges and militant homosexuals who are pushing Bush to take this step. He didn't choose this fight, they keep saying.

Let's review a few little snippets of recent gay history...

When Sharon Kowalski was injured in an automobile accident in November 1983, her partner, Karen Thompson had to fight a nightmarish legal battle with Kowalski's parents lasting ten years. During that time, Kowalski's parents placed her in a nursing home where they could insure that Thompson would be kept away. The nursing home was unequipped to give Kowalski the physical therapy she needed, and which might have made a difference in the extent of her recovery had it been given to her early on. When Kowalski was given a typewriter to communicate, she instantly began typing out calls for Karen. The typewriter was taken from her.

When Juan Navarrete came home in 1989 and found his partner LeRoy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house, it marked the beginning of a bitter fight with Tranton's brother who prevented Navarrete from seeing his beloved in the hospital. Despite Tranton's persistent calling for his lover Juan, he was kept away. When Tranton later died, Navarrete was unable even to visit the grave.

In 1993, a Virginia judge ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit mother because she was a lesbian, and awarded custody of her 20-month-old son, to her mother, who had sought custody of the boy when she learned her daughter was a lesbian, and in love with another woman.

In 2000, a court in Tacoma Washington ruled that Frank Vasques could be denied his lover of 28 years' estate because the two where in a homosexual relationship. They had shared a house, business and financial assets for 28 years.

After NBC news cameraman Rob Pierce died in a helicopter crash, his family visited his partner Frank Gagliano, in the Miami condominium the two had shared. After mourning together, they told Gagliano he should take a walk on the beach. Then Pierce's family changed the locks on the condo, and when Gagliano returned, told him he was no longer welcome there. Gagliano had to go to court just to get his belongings.

And in Massachusetts, after Ken Kirkey's partner Mark died of cancer, Mark's family removed his ashes from the home the two shared. Kirkey discovered he had no legal right to Mark's ashes, though they were among the first to take advantage of Vermont's new Civil Unions law.

In 2001 Sharon Smith was told she had no legal standing to file a wrongful death suit against Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, after two of their dogs mauled her partner Diane Whipple to death in the hallway of her apartment.

In 2002 Officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred William Robert Flanigan Jr. from his dying partner's bedside, saying he was not "family", and that 'partners' did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner's bedside. Only when Daniel's mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel's room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel's final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints

People who say that George Bush wasn't spoiling for this fight, but had it forced upon him, are not merely blaming the victims of prejudice for fighting back, they are erasing a long and heartbreaking history of discrimination, as if it never happened. It is gay and lesbian Americans who were never spoiling for this fight, who have had it forced upon us time and time again.

In the past, we simply fought for our rights as couples piecemeal. Please give us hospital visitation rights. Please give us the right to share property. Please don't take everything away from one, when the other dies. Please. And every time we have asked for these meager portions of the vast estate that heterosexual couples regard as their natural right, we have been accused of trying to impose homosexual marriage on the rest of the country. Hospital visitation? No, that would amount to homosexual marriage. Inheritance rights, shared property rights? No, that would amount to homosexual marriage. The right to mourn at our partners' graveside? No, that would amount to homosexual marriage. No matter how small the shred of human dignity we have asked for, always the answer has been the same: you can't have it, because that would amount to legitimizing homosexual marriage.

Fine. So now we are fighting for the right to marry. And I'm laughing in the face of every drooling moron who's saying that we forced this fight on the rest of America. For years, for decades, you've told us that the only way to secure any right for our households, was to fight for the whole, for the right to marry. Now we are. This is the fight you told us we had to wage. You wouldn't accept anything else. Fine. Then accept this as tribute: You were right all along. We were too timid. We were beggars, when we should have been fighters. We were chumps, we were rubes, timidly entreating swindlers and thieves to please not steal quite so much of the wonder and joy from our lives. You were right to force us to this place, to demand that we either fight for the legitimacy and righteousness of our love, or shut the hell up. Now fight for your hate or shut the hell up. Don't tell us the second class citizenship you've been saying for decades was too much, is now suddenly good enough...for you. Don't lecture us about civility and respect for one another out of one side of your mouth, while calling us and our households a threat to civilization out of the other. Don't tell us we started this fight. You demanded this fight. Fine. Now you have it. Here we are.

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

Next I Suppose You'll Be Saying Witches Should Be Left Alone Too...

Of course, the powers that be at Baylor couldn't just leave it at that...

Baylor Chief Decries Gay Marriage Defense
The Associated Press

WACO, Texas -- The president of Baylor University, the world's largest Baptist school, said Tuesday he is "justifiably outraged" over an editorial in the student newspaper that defended same-sex marriages.

The editorial last week in the Baylor Lariat supported San Francisco's lawsuit against the state of California seeking to continue performing gay marriages.

"Taking into account equal protection under the law, gay couples should be granted the same equal rights to legal marriage as heterosexual couples," the editorial said. It also likened discrimination against gays to racial or religious intolerance.

President Robert B. Sloan Jr. denounced the editorial in a strongly worded statement that appeared in the newspaper Tuesday.

"We have already heard from a number of students, alumni and parents who are, as am I, justifiably outraged over this editorial," Sloan wrote.

"Espousing in a Baylor publication a view that is so out of touch with traditional Christian teachings is not only unwelcome, it comes dangerously close to violating university policy, as published in the student handbook, prohibiting the advocacy of any understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching," Sloan wrote.

The paper also published a statement Tuesday by the student publications board, a group of faculty and administrators overseeing the newspaper, calling Friday's editorial a violation of student publications policy. The policy says student publications should not "attack the basic tenets of Christian theology or of Christian morality."

To: Robert_Sloan@baylor.edu
From: Bruce Garrett <bruce@brucegarrett.com>
Subject: Justifiable outrage

When I read the Baylor Lariat editorial in support of same-sex marriage I was thrilled to see that the tradition of Roger Williams had not completely died out in the faith. Were there more Baptists like the students who wrote and published that editorial, I might still be one today.

But thanks to theocrats like you, Baptist Popes as I once heard your kind described, the faith looks more like that of the Taliban now, then the faith of Roger Williams, who doggedly defended the rights of Catholics, Jews and even Pagans in the new world, which is why I keep my distance from it. I will admit to a measure of justifiable outrage though, whenever I see theocratic louts like you making a mockery of it, making the word "Baptist" something one would utter in the same breath as "Theocrat" or "Stalinist" or "Mullah". Once upon a time, Baptists stood for freedom of conscience. Once upon a time, Baptists stood with Jefferson, and fought against religious litmus tests for public office holders. Once upon a time, a Baptist named Roger Williams said that God "...requireth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity, sooner or later, is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls." He wouldn't last a minute in your school, would he? But then, neither would Jesus.

Homosexuals are to you, as witches were to your brethren in Salem, and government to you, is nothing more then a forum for trying witches. If the students did in fact violate your policy, that student publications should not attack the basic tenets of Christian theology or morality, as your publications board recently stated, then the next time I hear someone complain about Christians being ridiculed as nothing more then a bunch of ignorant witch burners, I'll simply point them to Baylor University, and tell them that your official position is that any student who thinks Christians aren't a bunch of ignorant witch burners, is attacking the basic tenets of Christian theology and morality.

All the hungry souls. All the hungry souls of this world. And all you could do for them was take the fish, and the loaves, and the wine, and turn them back into nothing.

Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

Saturday, February 28, 2004

Baptist != Bigot

Via Atrios, the student newspaper at Baylor university has come out in support, not of domestic partnerships, not of civil unions, but of same sex marriage:

The editorial board supports San Francisco's lawsuit against the state. Taking into account equal protection under the law, gay couples should be granted the same equal rights to legal marriage as heterosexual couples. Without such recognition, gay couples, even those who have co-habitated long enough to qualify as common law spouses under many state laws, often aren't granted the same protection when it comes to shared finances, health insurance and other employee benefits, and property or power of attorney rights.

Like many heterosexual couples, many gay couples share deep bonds of love, some so strong they've persevered years of discrimination for their choice to co-habitate with and date one another. Just as it isn't fair to discriminate against someone for their skin color, heritage or religious beliefs, it isn't fair to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation. Shouldn't gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?

There was a time, way back when, that Baptists were adamantly opposed to any church/state entanglements. The faith is, at its roots, highly anti-authoritarian, and profoundly individualistic. The first Baptists, if they would be shocked at anything, would be shocked that such a statement of principal would even be necessary. The knuckle-draggers who have co-opted the faith today of course, are going to be apoplectic that these kids have said what they said in a Baptist university newspaper.

Thank you folks, from the bottom of my heart, for this little echo of a past time, when Baptists regularly stood up to theocrats, in the name of conscience.

God requireth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity, sooner or later, is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.

Roger Williams - founder of the
first Baptist Church on American soil

Thursday, February 25, 2004

The Proof Texters

One useful thing about the current blow up over same sex marriage is that many heterosexuals are now getting a chance to see how slimy the other side is when it comes to presenting its case. Joshua Marshall does a pretty good take down of professional hate monger Gary Bauer's latest attempt to pervert science to the service of hate...in this case, a paper published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on gay and bisexual life expectancy in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Focusing on the average lifespans of urban gay and bisexual men during the height of the AIDS crisis is like focusing on the average number of sex partners urban gay members of sex clubs and bathhouses in the late 1970s have (another tactic of Bauer and his kind), which the authors of the Vancouver study point out:

Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre were experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by men in Canada in the year 1871. In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.

Marshall goes on to ridicule Bauer's logic:

Given the fact (controversial, but generally considered to be true) that lesbians have a lower incidence of sexually trasmitted diseases than either gay men or heterosexuals, by this logic, Bauer should be pushing to ban straight marriages too and only allow lesbian marriages. Perhaps he already is. He certainly wouldn't be the first straight-laced middle-aged man to have a thing for lesbians.

However that may be, this little reductio ad absurdum leads to the big absurdum at the center of Bauer's silly argument: namely, that if you're really serious about reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men -- rather than just bashing them -- presumeably you'd want to encourage monogamy, and thus marriage, rather than fight against it.

In fact, when you try to wrestle Bauer's foolishness and sexual authoritarianism down to some measure of reality, you realize that what he should really be calling for is something like mandatory gay marriage, ambivalence about straight marriage and more or less letting the lesbians just run wild.

That's perfectly true. But the what's telling here isn't Bauer's irrationality, but his grim single-minded determination that the lives of homosexuals must be miserable, and brief. Never mind what the reality actually is. Bauer isn't concerned with what the reality actually is. Bauer knows what the reality must be, knows what it has to be.

To say that Bauer and his kind manufacture evidence that the lives of homosexuals are miserable and brief, not to generate sympathy and concern, but to generate disgust, is to state the obvious. But look at it. Bauer isn't making an argument about the dangers of homosexuality to homosexuals, but of the threat homosexuals are to heterosexuals. Joshua Marshall above, gives the perfect response of a rational man to Bauer's absurd argument, that since promiscuity makes the lives of homosexuals so short, they should be prevented from forming monogamous pair bonds and settling down. Yes it's ridiculous, but only in the sense that any rational person wants to relieve human suffering, wants to make life better for themselves and their neighbors. But the furthest thing from Bauer's mind is to make the lives of homosexuals better. Consider his one and only solution to homosexuals is conversion therapy. Bauer's solution is for homosexuals to not exist.

But of course, conversion therapy doesn't cure homosexuality, any more then denying marriage to same sex couples discourages homosexual promiscuity. Conversion therapy is a sham, and what is more, Bauer and his kind know it. Look at how much time and energy they spend on supporting conversion therapy ministries, compared to how much they spend on anti-gay political campaigning. They couldn't be less interested in saving homosexuals from lives that are miserable and short, and they couldn't be more interested then they already are, in making our lives miserable and short.

So safe sex education is wrong, not because it is imperfect, but precisely because it would save lives...lives that, by his reckoning, ought not to be lived in the first place. So hate crime laws are wrong, not because they amount to thought crimes, but precisely because they might prevent attacks on homosexuals...people who, in his judgement, deserve it simply for existing. So making schools safe for lesbian and gay kids is wrong, not because it interferes with the right of Christians to denounce homosexuality, but precisely because some gay kids might not decide to kill themselves, and thereby spare everyone else the need to suffer another homosexual in their midst.

What you need to bear in mind when Bauer or one of his kind wave around some distorted fact that claims that our lives are miserable and short, their solution to same is that homosexuals should not exist. They proof text science the same way they proof text the bible: not for truth, but for ammunition.

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

"Do You Know What This Is?" "A Sack." "Well If It's A Sack, Then Get In It!"

My copy of the complete Jim Henson's The Storyteller came today from Amazon. It's a bittersweet treat. The Storyteller was Jim Henson at his absolute best and it's a pure pleasure to watch. But after the stories are done, and the DVD put back in its case, and the usual crap takes its place on the TV screen, you really realize what the world lost when Jim Henson died.

Clarity

"The president believes it is important to have clarity," - White House Press Secratary Scott McClellan

Clarity. All the gay republicans, all the gay conservatives, all the gay average Joes, who have been saying for years that their sexuality isn't the center of their universe, who insist that those homosexual militants, those sexual extremists, those flaming queers have been giving gays a bad name, who voted republican because there are more important things in life then your sexuality, should now be able to see with perfect clarity just what their votes have bought them.

Clarity. It doesn't matter how normal your lives otherwise are. It doesn't matter how stable and monogamous your unions are. It doesn't matter how much you agree with the republicans on economic issues, or national security issues. The man you voted for just put a knife into your heart. The people in his big tent are calling you a faggot to your face. Clarity.

Clarity. All your hopes of winning hearts and minds by setting an example of how normal homosexuals are. All your proud suit and tie notions of how sexuality has nothing to do with whether someone is liberal or conservative. But normal people of any political persuasion don't passively accept a kick in the face. Normal people fight back when they, their families and their loved ones are threatened. Normal people know the difference between turning the other cheek, and groveling. All you've shown them is that they can piss all over you, and you'll still shake their hands afterwards. All you've been teaching them, is that you don't think you deserve to be treated like a normal person either. Clarity.

Forget the friendly face of the man who just told you that in his America you can be separate, but not equal. Find a mirror and look deeply into your own. Is that a faggot you see in there? No? Ask yourself if you could, even now, shake George Bush's hand. All these years you've been shaking their hands...what did they see when you did that. Clarity.

Monday, February 23, 2004

We Don't Want Any Activist Judges...And That Means Especially Any Judge Who Might Throw Us In Jail...

A little something to remember, the next time you hear republicans yap, yap, yapping about out of control judges who don't follow the law, and anarchy in San Francisco...

Washington's conservative activists have found a traitor in their midst, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch. The occasion is Memogate, the internal Senate investigation into whether Republican aides unethically (and perhaps illegally) tapped into Democratic computer files containing private judicial-nomination strategy memos and leaked them to the press. The more the story balloons in the media, embarrassing Republicans and distracting them from trying to confirm more judges, the more right-wing activists savage Hatch, the man they hold responsible for it. To them, the Utah Republican has done something "acutely damaging to the struggle to get conservative judges onto the federal bench," as one National Review writer put it this week, in a column widely e-mailed among disgusted activists. Another activist ominously warned in the Washington Post of a "thermonuclear" punishment for Hatch. Also in the Post, Gary Bauer fumed over a "demoralized Republican base around the country" and sounded about ready to stage a public hanging on Capitol Hill.

No matter that Hatch has spent the past three years fighting nonstop to confirm George Bush's judicial nominees. After Hatch declared himself "mortified" by the file-stealing allegations and said he supported a formal investigation, angry GOP activists?who want to downplay down the scandal?accused him of being a weak-kneed appeaser of Democrats. The National Review's Timothy P. Carney even likened him to Neville Chamberlain.

That's madness, of course. Under Bush, Hatch has fought bitterly with Democrats over judicial nominations, to the point of shattering an emerging reputation he'd gained for moderation and spoiling some of his old bipartisan friendships. If anything, the real story of Orrin Hatch's recent career is the way the Bush administration took a senator who had been growing mellower and more independent with age and reduced him to a crude partisan attack dog. Yet even Hatch's partisanship isn't enough for the Savonarolas of the right. The right-wing bile over Hatch's Memogate burst of conscience only shows how frighteningly militant Washington's church of conservatism has become.

If this conservative senator isn't safe from conservative attacks, is anyone?
Slate.com

Dig it. The feral republicans are angry that a fellow republican called for an investigation into the breaking of some fairly non-trivial federal laws against computer hacking...because that investigation is getting in the way of their stacking the federal courts. And they're so angry at him that they're going to go "thermonuclear" on him as punishment. Swell. So what kind of people do people who retaliate against squealers nominate as judges?

George Bush, in less the a single term, has given the republican party completely over to thugs, whose leaders have the moral character of organized crime bosses. They are no different from the inner city drug lords who put the hit out on anyone who rats to the police, except their houses are bigger, their contempt for the law vastly bigger, and their conscience several orders of magnitude smaller. Oh...and they get to pick the judges. When these republicans say that a judge is out of control, what they mean is that they aren't owned by the party.

[Edited]

[UPDATE] Just so we understand that what those Republican aides are accused of is a crime...this just in from CNet:

Ex-ViewSonic employee sentenced to one year

A U.S. federal court sentenced Andrew Garcia, a former employee of monitor maker ViewSonic, to a one-year prison term for using other employees' passwords to break into the company's system, after he had been fired. The 39-year-old network administrator pleaded guilty in October to a single count of accessing a protected computer and causing damage.

That Was Then, This Is Now

Some senators apparently still aren't with the program...

Four senators have expressed concern that the actions of a new Republican appointee, who pulled references to discrimination based on sexual orientation off an agency's Internet site, are at odds with statements he made as part of his confirmation hearing.

...

During his confirmation, Bloch was asked to respond in writing to a series of questions from Akaka.

At one point, Bloch said that "sexual conduct can clearly fall within the definition of conduct that is not adverse to the on-the-job performance of an employee, applicant or performance of others. I will not be selective in enforcement based on the orientation of an individual whose personal sexual conduct is at issue, and assure you that I will enforce the law as passed by Congress and interpreted by the Courts with complete impartiality."

Akaka asked, "Do you agree with the advice provided by OSC that, if 'Supervisor Joe fires Employee Jack because he saw Employee Jack at a local Gay Pride Day event,' such firing constitutes an example of discrimination against the employee that is unlawful?"

Bloch said cases must be judged on specific facts, but added that he agreed such a firing would be prohibited by the law.

Special Counsel Under Scrutiny - The Washington Post (registration required)

Oh...did I forget to mention that the positions I hold right now, won't necessarily be the ones I hold while in office, and weren't necessarily the ones I held the moment before I walked into this committee room...? My bad...

Saturday, February 21, 2004

Upcoming Issues Will Feature Jack Chick As Our Guest Artist

To: Tim Fish
Subject: Cavalcade Of Boys - issue six

My grandmother on my mother's side used to live with us when I was a kid. She was a sour Yankee Baptist lady who burned my comic books and scolded me whenever I used words like "darn" or "gosh darn". The only times I ever saw her happy was when she was listening to her radio preachers tell her how sinful and god forsaken humanity was, and when she was watching her soap operas.

She'd watch "As The World Turns" and "General Hospital" and god knows what else during the afternoon while I was in school, and if it had been anyone else but her I'd have wondered what the hell the fascination was in watching your average everyday ordinary people being relentlessly cruel and miserable to each other. But this was the lady who taught me what a misanthrope is.

Which brings me to Cavalcade of Boys six. "I mean, this is a romance comic, isn't it?" Uh, no. For it to be a romance, its author would have to actually believe in romance, and let's face it, you don't. This is soap opera. Degrading yes...but what the heck...heterosexuals have been spitting on themselves in their soap operas for just about forever, so why should they have all the fun.

That gay morality barometer should have clued me in, but I swear I thought it was tongue in cheek. Heh...no it wasn't. You had me going with issue five, particularly those flashbacks where even Gordon, your standard issue pathetic ugly older gay guy troll (ewww...he's got a tooth missing and everything...) can actually be seen as something somewhat resembling a human. I thought for a moment that you were going to actually start saying something worth hearing about the struggle to love and be loved, and how to hold on to your humanity even when your family hates your guts, and everyone you ever took into your arms has taken advantage of you and laughed while they did it. But no. You don't believe in it. The scenes where your characters are being cheap to each other are full of energy. The scenes where you make a few gestures toward love are halfhearted and that's being generous. At the end of issue six, the guy who did the right thing is in therapy.

I know...I know...life isn't just blue sky and roses. But a comic book isn't life, it's art. It's a statement, trivial though it may be, about life and existence and how much you reckon either one is worth. Not all that much, huh? Oscar Wilde said once that we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. No. We are not all in the gutter. But those who are, who keep their eyes on the stars, will eventually find their way out. The rest never will. What you're saying to your readers is the gutter is real, the stars aren't. Nice work.

Young Bottoms in Love is an absolutely great title. And I realized after putting down issue six of Cavalcade, that everything in Young Bottoms In Love that ever spoke to me, wasn't done by you. Some of the artists in that title believe. Enough to make it really shine. Enough to make you feel after you put it down, that you can take any crap the world wants to throw at homosexuals, because loving and being loved, and all the awe and wonder of loving and being loved, are worth it. Are you sure you want to keep producing it?

-Bruce Garrett

Friday, February 20, 2004

George Bush Isn't A Gay Basher...Just The People He Appoints

Remind me again why some gays identify as republican...

A newly arrived Republican appointee has pulled references to sexual orientation discrimination off an agency Internet site where government employees can learn about their rights in the workplace.

The Web pages at the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency whose mission is to protect whistleblowers and other federal employees from retribution, has removed references to sexual orientation from a discrimination complaint form, training slides, a brochure titled "Your Rights as a Federal Employee" and other documents.

Scott J. Bloch, the agency head, said he ordered the material removed because of uncertainty over whether a provision of civil service law applies to federal workers who claim unfair treatment because they are gay, bisexual or heterosexual.

"It is wrong to discriminate against any federal employee, or any employee, based on discrimination," Bloch said. But, he added, "it is wrong for me, as a federal government official, to extend my jurisdiction beyond what Congress gives me in the actual interpretation of the statutes."

Gay Rights Information Taken Off Site - The Washington Post (registration required)

Sorry...but my hands are tied. And if they aren't, then they ought to be...

Elaine Kaplan, who served as the Clinton administration's special counsel, said references were added to complaint forms and training materials as part of an overhaul of the agency's information and outreach efforts.

"It seemed to us that this was well-established law," she said. "Part of the job of the agency is to educate employees about their rights."

Kaplan said the old Civil Service Commission issued a bulletin to agencies in 1973 stating that agencies could not declare a person unsuitable for employment merely because the person was gay or engaged in homosexual acts. Ten years later, she said, the assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel at the Justice Department concluded federal employees, even those in law enforcement, could not be fired solely for being gay.

Does anyone...I mean besides kooks like Steve Miller...still seriously believe that republicans are no worse then democrats on gay rights issues..or even better? Oh I know...I know...there are more important things in life besides sex. Economic things. Like...having a job and being able to pay your bills for instance...

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

In Defiance Of The Law

I hear a lot of right wingers and their useful idiots in the punditry yap, yap, yapping about how San Francisco is defying the rule of law by issuing same sex marriage licenses. Funny how I don't hear them bellyaching about this:

A Virginia Beach man has been sentenced to six months in jail for trying to pick up an undercover police officer in the restroom of a department store

Joel D. Singson was sentenced under Virginia's sodomy law. Even though the US Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws last year (story) Virginia interprets the ruling to exclude sex in a public place.

Circuit Judge Frederick B. Lowe Tuesday sentenced Singson to three years in prison for one count of solicitation to commit a felony. The judge suspended all but six months of the sentence and set an appeal bond of $5,000. The maximum sentence in Virginia for approaching someone for sex in public place is five years in prison.

The case has gained national attention because of the state's continued use of its sodomy law and allegations it is only applied to gay men.

Virginia Man Sentenced To Six Months In Jail For Soliciting Sodomy

You could argue that there is a distinction to be drawn between sex in public and in private, but that's also beside the point. What Virginia is doing is continuing to prosecuting sodomy law offenses, despite the fact that those laws were ruled unconstitutional, in part because they singled out gay people for unequal treatment under the law. Virginia state republicans insist, defiantly, that they have the right, regardless, to specifically penalize homosexual sex differently, and more harshly, then heterosexual sex, and are not only still enforcing Virginia's sodomy laws, they are handing out jail sentences. I'll bet a lot of them used to chant "massive resistance" too, once upon a time...

So don't talk at me about San Francisco's act of defiance.

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Just Don't Expect Him To Give You A Refund

Via TBogg, the spectacle of Lileks bellyaching about how violent films just don't treat their audiences very nice:

If I go to hell I intend to look up Quentin Tarantino and have a few words about how he used that song in "Reservoir Dogs." Jerk. Who gave him permission to take this song and make us think of someone splashing gasoline on a bloody ear?

Okay...let me get this straight... Lileks actually watched Reservoir Dogs and now he's upset about some of the violent content of it? Well if Tarantino's a jerk then you're a drooling moron Lileks because that's like complaining about how flaming hot the food got after you doused it with a spoonful of what was in that tiny little bottle of Uncle Beelzebub's New Orleans Make The Devil Cry sauce.

I've never watched Reservoir Dogs. I still get misty-eyed at the end of Casablanca, a film I've watched I don't know how many times, so I sorta figured when it was first released, that Reservoir Dogs wasn't my kind of film. I watched The Godfather, and while I admired the film maker's art, I didn't much care for the story. Gangster films can be an interesting look into the world of human low-lifes, but anyone who thinks they're actually looking into the dark side of the human soul in a gangster film, is just a tourist in Disneyland.

You want to look into the Pit, try making sense of this:

Man says he killed son to spite wife
The Associated Press, June 28, 1999

FRANKLIN, Ind. - On Father's Day, Amy Shanabarger found her chubby-cheeked infant son, Tyler, face-down and dead in his crib.Two days later - just hours after the tot's funeral - her husband gave police a confession saying that not only did he kill his son, he planned the crime even before the child was conceived as a way of exacting revenge against his wife.

Shanabarger said he planned to make Amy feel the way he did when his father died. He married her, got her pregnant, allowed time for her to bond with the child, and then took his (boy's) life.

He said it was revenge because Amy, before they were married, had refused to cut short a vacation trip to comfort him when his father died in 1996.

"Shanabarger said he planned to make Amy feel the way he did when his father died. He married her, got her pregnant, allowed time for her to bond with the child, and then took his (boy's) life," according to an affidavit prosecutors filed to support a murder charge.

What kind of person does a thing like that? Or this:

Father Who Killed Sons Finds Way to Deepen Their Mother's Grief
By Rick Bragg
The New York Times
February 4, 2001

MEMPHIS - First, the killer took her two children and now, prosecutors say, he teases her with the hope that she could have one back.

Alex Ware murdered his two toddler sons by leaving them to die in a landscape of swamp, levees and lonely gravel roads, an Arkansas jury decided last month, a crime that sickened veteran police officers and prosecutors.

Mr. Ware killed them, Arkansas prosecutors said, to take revenge on the boys' mother, Chantilly Harrell, 21, after she said she did not want to be with him.

As revenge goes, it seemed complete. It seemed there was little else that the 35-year-old Mr. Ware could do to hurt the mother of his children.

But in his trial in Forrest City, Ark., prosecutors said, he found a way. He teased her with hope, saying that one of the children, the one whose body was never found, was alive in a city far away, being kept by a woman no one has found.

Ms. Harrell, who said she hated him for what he did to her, says she has to believe.

"If I give up on that, what do I have?"

Gangster films hold no special appeal to me. Gangsters just want your money...or maybe your life if they feel like that too. But there are people walking this earth who will put a different kind of knife in your heart, for the pleasure of watching all the joy and wonder that was possible to you drain slowly from your face, and leave you empty. Consider Ohio, which recently (see below) not only passed a redundant ban on same sex marriage, but whose republican lawmakers couldn't just leave it at that, but went further, prohibiting even hospital visitation and bereavement leave for same sex couples. So, now in Ohio, if one half of a gay couple dies, the state's offical position is that the other's grief does not exist. This is what the republicans in Ohio are calling a statement of "strong public policy".

The republicans who did this, they knew exactly what knife they were putting in some nameless gay person's heart, and that was their purpose, never mind the self serving rhetoric about the sanctity of marriage. This was about putting the knife in someone's heart, and right at the moment when that heart is already wounded and grieving, and twisting it, just because they are homosexual. If you think a little time spent watching gangster flicks is telling you anything about the struggle between good and evil, you are drinking from the bottle marked 'lite'. Reservoir Dogs, Sopranos and Godfathers aren't shit.

Slouching Toward The Stone Age...

Associated Press, February 6, 2004
Ohio Gov. Signs Bill Banning Gay Marriage [Excerpts]

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Gov. Bob Taft approved one of the country's most-far reaching gay-marriage bans on Friday, saying its adoption was urgent because the nation's first legally sanctioned same-sex weddings could take place as early as this spring in Massachusetts.

Taft, a Republican, denied assertions that the law promotes intolerance. He said the new law would send a strong positive message to children and families.

And speaking sending messages to children...

Associated Press, February 11, 2004
Ohio Board OKs Evolution Lesson Plans [Excerpts]

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Opponents of the state school board's new lesson plans on evolution expect to lobby heavily for changes before a final board vote.

The state school board voted 13-4 on Tuesday in favor of lesson plans that some scientists say continue to contain inaccurate information about evolution. Proponents say the plans are some of the country's most rigorous in favor of evolution.

Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote board president Jennifer Sheets on Monday to express concerns that parts of the alternative concept of "intelligent design" were being incorporated into the plans.

Intelligent design is the idea that life is so complex that it was designed by a non-specified power.

Taft, a Republican, will not get involved in the board's decision, spokesman Orest Holubec said Tuesday. Governors appoint six of the board's 18 members.

Homophobia and Fundamentalism. Homophobia and Fundamentalism. Cut from one cloth...

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Things that make you feel a whole hell of a lot lonelier...

"Just because you sent me an e-mail, doesn't mean I read it."

I know...you're busy. And it's only me.

I have this other friend, who wonders how the hell I can stand driving through the southwestern deserts all by myself in a little compact car year after year. It would drive him crazy he says. But...you see...out there, being alone isn't as hard to understand. Of course I'm alone...I'm in the fucking desert...

I'm Not A Bigot, You Menace To Little Children Everywhere You...

Letter To The Editor, The Chicago Tribune.

Subject: The Way Marriage Ought To Be (Registration Required)

Mr. Byrne "declines" to accept studies that show that kids raised by same sex couples are in general, no different from kids raised by opposite sex couples. He tells us that his reasoning and experience, which I take to mean his gut level feelings on the matter, tell him otherwise. He goes on to say at the end of his column that "in the interest of civil debate" we should agree that a person defending traditional marriage shouldn't be called a bigot.

Let me say that, "in the interest of civil debate", people shouldn't accuse homosexuals of being a threat to children without any evidence to back that up.

Monday, February 9, 2004

Alive, But Not At All Well...

Sorry for the lack of activity here. I'm back in one piece from California, but I seem to have brought with me a nasty little flu. It's been kicking me in the head for the past several days now.

This is why I get the shot every year. Not that I'm at any particular risk of complications, I just don't like getting socked in for a week at a time or more with fevers and aches and that draining of all your energy from your body like it was wrung out sponge feeling. I hate it. I suppose I should count my blessings that at fifty flu is the worst thing I've ever had to hate (I had the Scarlet Fever when I was a very wee lad, but I don't remember much of it). The actual symptoms aren't really that unendurable (unless nausea is part of the mix anyway), but the damn things just drag on and on. And of course the yearly flu shot only protects you from one of several possible strains, so of course you're still as likely as ever to pick up any of the others.

I'll post more later, when I can look at a crt for longer periods of time without that burning eyeball sensation...

[UPDATE] Getting a ten out of ten on your first homework assignment of the semester can make you feel a lot better...

Tuesday, February 3, 2004

If Al Capone Were Alive Today, He