February 4, 2010
Just today, I kid you not, I realized the purpose of the duct tape in all those NOH8 Campaign photos. It should be intuitively obvious, I suppose: we can be full members of society if we keep our mouths shut and pretend we’re something we’re not. But for some reason–perhaps it’s because straight people pose for those ads, too–I never made the connection till today.
(Sssshhh! Don’t tell anyone, but apparently I’m a little slow on the uptake.)
Earlier this week, I was chatting with some people, and the topic of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell came up. I’ve been fortunate to find a great group of progressive-minded people here in this corner of the Bible Belt, so it was no surprise that the tone of the conversation was one of humor and bemusement. Now that even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that DADT is just plain wrong, it’s fairly safe to treat the topic as a big, puzzling joke.
But then someone new joined us. With a troubled expression, he explained that he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. If a gay person wants to serve in the military, this fellow said, that’s fine, right? As long as he keeps his mouth shut?
A bunch of us tried to explain how that’s right but also so very wrong. But I don’t think we really succeeded: his final pronouncement on the matter was that he didn’t know if repealing DADT was such a good idea.
(Sssshhhh! Don’t tell, but I was really pissed.)
(more…)
December 15, 2009
Just read this, in which DeMint is quoted as saying this, regarding same-sex marriage:
I think we need to make a constitutional case of it. The federal government and our courts have no business redefining marriage and even at the state level, the courts have no business telling us what marriage means. So we need to fight this, because this is not about equal rights. This is about the government legitimizing and promoting behavior that culturally we have always considered wrong.
A constitutional case in what sense, if the courts have no business deciding? Wha–? How’s that? Say again?
I keep thinking Jim DeMint might be the worst, most insufferable person on earth–and then I remember Joe Lieberman.
Last night I ran across this piece. The gist is that Lieberman is really not all that smart. A lot of people are spending a lot of time trying to figure out why he says what he says and does what he does…
But there’s little evidence that he’s a sharp or clear thinker, and certainly no evidence that he knows or cares about the details of health care reform. At one point during the 2000 recount, the Gore campaign explained to Lieberman why lowering standards for military ballots would be totally unfair and illegal, and Lieberman proceeded to go on television and subvert the campaign’s position. Gore loyalists interpreted this as a sellout, but perhaps the more plausible explanation was that Lieberman — who, after all, badly wanted to be vice-President — just didn’t understand the details of the Gore position well enough to defend it. The guy was taken apart by Dick Cheney in the 2000 veep debate.
Finally! An explanation that makes sense!
I think the same can be said of DeMint. His motives are by no means inscrutable–he wants power within the GOP. Be that as it may, he’s a reciter of talking points, and he’s probably believes what he’s saying, as weird and as inconsistent with reality as it is. He’s just not “a sharp or clear thinker.”
The other day, I told Todd he should run against DeMint. There’s no way Todd would win, but the debates would be a lot of fun.
December 14, 2009
I read this today, and then I used DeMint’s online contact form to send this:
I gather that you’re currently in the process of trying to become king of the Tea Partiers, and as such you’ve said some things recently that are calculated to attract the attention of fringe right-wing zealots. The senate has gone too far to the left. We should privatize social security. A gay president would be some kind of immoral blight on the nation.
In addition, I’ve seen some items in your Twitter feed that are not only inflammatory but plainly false.
As an aspiring “kingmaker” who spends the greater part of his time jetsetting “across the country recruiting new republicans,” you may not have noticed that things in South Carolina are pretty bad right now. As your constituent, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop stirring the pot and focus on real-world solutions for real-world people.
Of course, even as I write this, I’m only too aware that I’m wasting my time. Your idea of a “real-world solution” is giving Social Security away to Wall Street. In your world, the ideological principle of “a free market” is always and entirely more important than the health and safety of actual human beings.
And as I think we’ve learned over the course of the past year, members of your party care as little for helping people as they do for the truth–i.e., not at all.
(I love how y’all go on and on about liberty and freedom all the time, but then you openly and outspokenly yearn to enact your own narrow view of morality into law. Sometimes I think that the Republican definition of freedom begins and ends with the right to own firearms. But I digress.)
I have a suspicion that if you ever started reading this at all, you won’t have gotten this far. But in any case, I’ll finish by saying that I would really, really like it if I could see your name in the news just once without cringing because you’ve said something ignorant or hateful. You’re an embarrassment to your office and to the state of South Carolina.
Although Lindsey Graham occasionally replies to my messages, I’ve never had any kind of acknowledgment from Senator DeMint on anything I’ve ever sent him. I’m sure he’s far too busy trying to amp up his rightist cred to have any truck with the lefty likes of me.
•
UPDATE:
DeMint said that the Senate Republicans have moved to the left; I wrote that he said they’ve moved to the right.
His assessment is so backassward that I cannot seem to type it. Even in the sentence directly above, I almost typed “moved to the right…moved to the right.” No doubt my confusion stems from the fact that the Republicans in the Senate keep moving to the freakin’ right.
But never mind. I fixed my mistake in this post.
December 10, 2009
Rick Warren has at last spoken out against Uganda’s proposed anti-gay law.
He had to, you see, in order to “correct lies, errors and false reports when others associate my name with a law that I had nothing to do with, completely oppose and vigorously condemn.”
Question. Why would anyone who “completely opposes and vigorously condemns” refuse to say so for so very long? If, when first asked, he had said he “completely opposes and vigorously condemns” the bill, that would have been the end of it.
I noticed a few days ago that Warren tweeted this:
DJoe,I feel no need to tell reporters &bloggers what I’ve done behind the scenes on this.They never admit their misreporting anyway.Pr.15:12
Since he didn’t use the standard Twitter @-mention mechanism, and the only “DJoe” on Twitter has tweeted only once (on August 25, 2008), I have no way of knowing that this refers to. I suspect it has to do with this Uganda thing. Pure speculation.
Just for funsies, I looked up Proverbs 15:12:
A mocker resents correction; he will not consult the wise.
Shame on us ill-tempered correction-resenting mockers. When will we leave the poor wise Rev. Warren in peace?
Side note: Warren’s next tweet after the one quoted above? Pascal’s Wager:
If you guess life ends at death, please consider that Eternity would be a long time to be wrong. I wouldn’t gamble.
Trouble is …
Well, there are a lot of problems with Pascal’s wager, as detailed here. Suffice it to say, once you’ve chosen one belief system over all the others, you’ve placed a bet.
•
UPDATE:
Again, from Warren’s Twitter timeline:
DThanks Bob! It seem our quiet effort helped kill part of the Uganda b so it was worth being misjudged, but our job isnt done yet.
Makes me think my suspicions about the earlier tweet are correct.
I wonder if it would cynical or unkind to point out that Warren’s attempt to take credit for the softening the bill (without seeming to take credit) is further testament to the strength of his connection with the Ugandan haters.
Well, I don’t really care. Consider it pointed out.
Dear Senator DeMint:
Congrats! You’re the quote of the day on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:
The problem in the Republican Party is that the leadership has gone to the left.
This is not just any garden-variety quote. This could be the money shot for a teabagger porn flick.
As a proud member of the reality-based community, however, I must ask you the following two-part question. What are you smoking, and where can I get some?
(more…)
December 9, 2009
Oh, Senator Graham, you’ve done it again! You’ve made me so proud to be a citizen of South Carolina.
I’ve just been reading your comments on the “black jail” at Bagram:
When our colleagues go over to visit, I would just make a recommendation to committee members if you get a chance go over to the Bagram confinement facility, General McChrystal, y’all have done a great job, that is a, I wish we had jails like that in South Carolina, I mean it really is a very impressive facility, and I want to commend you and your staff and the embassy working together to come up with a new detainee policy I think will help the war effort.
I can see your point, really. Reading this, it just sounds like this is simply the most humane and effective detention facility on earth.
The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June. “They don’t let the I.C.R.C. officials or any other civilians see or communicate with the people they keep there. Because I did not know what time it was, I did not know when to pray.”
Sure, sure, some detainees were allegedly abused while being detained in conditions unfit for any facility run by the ASPCA, and in fact would have preferred death:
“That was the hardest time I have ever had in my life,” Rashid said of his interrogation. “It was better to just kill me. But they would not kill me.”
But ohmigod, it’s not like detainees are people or anything, amiright?
You just keep fightin’ the good fight, Senator!
December 8, 2009
Although good things seem to be happening in New Jersey, and in fact overall things “appear to be v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y getting better” for same-sex marriage.
But in Uganda… Oh, dear, in Uganda, there is a very clear indication that in the broadest possible context, we have a long, long way to go.
In short, the Ugandan parliament is considering an “Anti-Homosexuality Bill.” If enacted, the country’s laws concerning homosexuality will become repressive and draconian unto the point of absurdity. A single act of gay sex carries a penalty of life imprisonment. Testing positive for HIV or engaging in a second act of gay sex is punishable by death–as is gay sex with a minor. If you are aware that such acts have occurred, and do not report them, you may face up to three years in prison. The bill prohibits the “promotion of homosexuality” in such a way that all HIV and AIDS prevention activities will cease. Homosexual Ugandans who engage in gay sex abroad “are supposed to be brought back to Uganda and convicted.”
The bill is expected to pass.
(more…)
November 10, 2009
There’s a boycott, or rather a “pause,” going on. As John Aravosis explains here, the idea is to remind the Democrats that they’ve made certain promises, and we expect them to be kept:
Candidate Obama promised during the campaign to be the gay community’s “fierce advocate.” He and the Democratic party have not kept their promise.
Aravosis lists many examples, going all the way back to a campaign event featuring an “ex-gay” minister. The inclusion of Rick Warren in the inauguration seemed bad at the time, but I gave Obama the benefit of the doubt; now that I learn that Gene Robinson was also included, but in an oddly backhanded way, it somehow makes the Warren thing seem worse. More recently, in spite of various promises to do … something … about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the administration has actually stymied at least one attempt to defund it. And a repeal may not even be considered in the next year.
In all, there are 39 things on the list–some more alarming than others, of course.
As Alex Koppelman writes:
It will be interesting to see how the White House responds, if at all. And it will also be interesting–and instructive–to see how members of the LGBT community, and voters of all kinds, respond.
Tonight, just after I read about this “pause,” I happened to get an email from the DNC, asking for my help with health care reform. (Specifically, I’m meant to write letters to the editor.) As you may have noticed, health care reform is very important to me. But I replied and wrote:
Health reform is a big deal. I’m very happy about making a major and historic step toward the goal of universal health care.
It’s ironic, however, that you are now able to send me these emails, urging me to take action to further your agenda because I typed in my email address on a contact form in the process of complaining about the DNC/OfA failure to … wait for it … send out emails urging Mainers to take action on Question 1.
Or maybe you are able to send me emails because I also typed in my email address in the process of complaining about your leadership’s handling of the aforementioned failure — you know, the arrogant and condescending remark that maybe someone who was out of the country without access to email might not have known how to vote … but oh, you know those nervous bureaucracies…
I’m not really impressed with you folks lately. Hope you can manage to pass health care reform without dealing away contraception as well as abortion. In any case you won’t be getting much help from me, since my LGBT friends and I get no help from you.
I confess I’ve gotten a little cranky on this subject, to the extent that my message promises a lot more disengagement than I’m really willing to deliver. But I have signed the pledge to withhold monetary support from the DNC, OfA, and the Obama campaign.
November 8, 2009
November 6, 2009
I ran across this yesterday.
Short version: Y’all goofed, and continue to do so.
Here is the glib, defensive, and condescending message quoted in the above link:
1. An email went out asking activists to make calls to New Jersey. It was insensitive not to omit Mainers from that email. I apologize that no one thought to do that. I can’t imagine it could have cost No On One even a dozen votes, but I still wish someone would have thought of this in time to catch it. Mistake noted.
2. A different email went out to Mainers urging them to vote. As the only thing of substance anyone was voting on in Maine was Question One, and as Democratic activists vote our way, this was a small but positive effort to be helpful.
I would have liked to see that email discuss No One One directly, in case there may have been an email-enabled Organizing for America activist someplace in Maine who did NOT know where Maine Democrats stood on this issue. (Out of the country without Internet access until the night before the election?) But I’m told there was concern that advocating specifically for a ballot initiative, whether LGBT or otherwise, would set a precedent for every other ballot initiative. Bureaucracies are nervous about setting precedents.
No, listen. Seriously.
The “mistake” is not that you neglected to omit Mainers from the New Jersey email. The mistake is that the second email didn’t also urged Mainers to call five people IN MAINE and ask them to vote “our way.” The issue is not that some OFA activist might have been “out of the country without Internet access,” but that someone (or, one hopes, several thousand someones) might have had parents or relatives or friends somewhere in the rural areas of Maine that went overwhelmingly for Question 1. If the governor’s race in New Jersey was important enough for them to make phone calls, surely Question 1 was at least as important.
The nervousness of bureaucracies is well-suited to maintaining the status quo. That’s all fine and dandy for the Republican Party, but you’re not the Republican Party … are you?
Also, again, the DNC got involved in the campaign to stop Prop 8 in California.
In other words, you’re making excuses, and they’re not very good ones.
As the author of the blog post linked above writes:
But regardless, why does the DNC (and the White House) have a problem getting involved when a core Democratic constituency is having its civil rights taken away by the far-right base of the Republican party? We were promised that this administration would be our fierce advocate. Now all we get are excuses.
And the DNC and the White House wonder why they have a growing problem with the gay community.
Perhaps what we have here is a failure to communicate. Or maybe you really just don’t care about the LGBT community–except for our money and votes.
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