What It Looks Like When Playing To The Moonbats Doesn’t Win You Anything
Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper, who campaigned on a promise to hold a free vote on restoring the traditional definition of marriage, read the tea leaves and instead ended up holding a vote on whether or not to hold a vote. You can’t govern from the far right in a country whose political process and news media haven’t been utterly corrupted by right wing billionaires and big business.
Demonizing minorities for the sake of driving the bigot vote to the polls can only get you so far in the civilized world, and Harper apparently wants to keep on being prime minister…
Tory attempt to restore traditional definition fails in House; social conservatives cry foul as Harper declares debate over
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared the contentious issue of same-sex marriage to be permanently closed.
After a Conservative motion calling on the government to restore the traditional definition of marriage was defeated yesterday by a resounding 175 to 123, Mr. Harper said he will not bring the matter back before Parliament.
"I don’t see reopening this question in the future," he told reporters who asked whether same-sex marriage would return to the table if the Conservatives won a majority government.
Nor does he intend to introduce a "defence of religions" act to allow public officials, such as justices of the peace, to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.
"If there ever were a time in the future where fundamental freedoms were threatened, of course the government would respond to protect them," said the Prime Minister, who voted for the motion. "The government has no plans at this time."
The declared end of the same-sex marriage debate brought comfort to those who have been fighting for such unions. But social conservatives who have supported Mr. Harper’s government said they felt betrayed by his decision to quit their fight; some said it will come back to haunt the party in the next election campaign.
"I am afraid that the Conservative Party feels that they can take social conservatives for granted in this country," said Joseph Ben Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values.
Social Conservatives…? That’s a polite way of saying ‘bigot’ isn’t it? And as I understand recent Canadian political history, calling Harper a Tory is a bit misleading. Harper’s party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was formed from a really odd (to this outsider) merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance, which, particularly in Alberta, couldn’t seem to fag bash enough. The Alliance was Canada’s bigot right, in morals and tone not all that dissimilar from the southern state republicans down here in the U.S,. They can’t be happy with this.
But the rest of the western industrial world isn’t still arguing about evolution. Whatever levers big money has to pull in Canada, it looks like playing the fundamentalists for votes isn’t a winning proposition. So for now anyway, gay people in Canada don’t have to play the roll of the bogeyman herald of the apocalypse who drives the batshit crazies to the polls and keeps the conservatives in power. They can have lives. Real lives.
So I finally watched Brokeback Mountain last night. Yes, it was as painful to watch as I thought it would be. Yes, I was bawling my eyes out at the end.
I hear they’re releasing a collector’s edition sometime next month. I reckon I’ll probably go buy it. For when I want to make myself miserable I guess. Or explain to myself why I’m still trying so hard to find my soul mate.
Groff seems to think I’m censoring him. In a word: no. There are two things I won’t allow in the comments, and mostly that’s advertising spam. I also won’t allow my space here to be used to insult my friends and my readers. Feel free to hurl insults at me if you like, but be aware that I’ve probably heard it before and unless you’re a friend of mine (or a fan of my artwork) I am unlikely to care what you think of me. Oherwise I’m not going to censor my comments. If you have a hair up your butt about homosexuals and homosexuality and you just want to give me some flack about it, fine. As long as you know I’ll probably fire back. I spent nearly eight years arguing with ‘phobes on the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup alt.politics.homosexuality, and trust me, I know the drill.
The Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Baltimore. On Dec. 8 and 9 a handful of protesters from the Topeka, Kan., church will be outside the Baltimore School for the Arts on Cathedral Street in Mount Vernon to picket the school’s production of the play The Laramie Project.
The church is infamous for its anti-gay rhetoric (it operates a web site called www.godhatesfags.com) and it protests at the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq. According to the church’s attorney, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Westboro Baptist protests the funerals because they want people to make the connection that the war "is where God is dealing with this nation for their rebellion against him." Such rebellion, she says, includes putting on productions of The Laramie Project, which is based on the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming man who was killed in 1998 for being gay. Phelps-Roper says of the play: "It’s got only one goal, and that’s to promote a perverse manner of life."
One of the most poignant moments in the play is the scene where the Phelps clan is busy waving their obscenity laced signs at the townspeople in front of the courthouse where Matthew Shepard’s murderers were being tried, and Romaine Patterson and about a dozen of her friends, dressed as angels with huge wings, step between Phelps and the townspeople, and turn their backs on the Phelps’, their wings blocking Phelps signs from view. So I’m sure The Laramie Project holds a special place on Fred’s little shit list.
The "Whites Only" fountain once dispensed the same water as the "Coloreds" one did; but the implications of having to walk the alternate line to obtain the H20 spoke volumes.
Via Blue Jersey, here’s an example of how the consequences of separate but equal play out in the lives of gay people…
Consider Paula Long and Rosalind Heggs of Camden who have been together over 15 years. They were registered as domestic partners and also had a civil union from Vermont. Under New Jersey law, they have hospital visitation rights and the right to make decisions on behalf of each other when the other is sick. That’s what’s on paper, but when Rosalind had a heart attack and needed a blood transfusion, the hospital refused to allow Paula to give consent. Paula even had a highlighted copy of the relevant law with her, but that didn’t matter to the hospital. They demanded to see their marriage certificate. (see video of their story)
This story happens over and over again from one end of this country to the other, in red states and blue alike, and it’s indicative of a mindset. Here’s that mindset in a nutshell:
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… Bigots such as Orson Scott Card cannot, will never, acknowledge there is a bond between same sex couples, but only, and grudgingly, that they may feel themselves to have one. Card later wrote another column, in which he reduced the struggle of gay and lesbian Americans for simple justice, to a childish demand for "fairness"…
The single most effective argument being used to gain support for the redefinition of marriage to mean anything, therefore nothing, is this:
"It’s not fair that homosexuals can’t get married just like heterosexuals."
This argument is only effective because nobody is bothering to define "fairness" or to figure out whether the result will be in any way more fair than the hitherto universal definition of marriage.
When our kids were little, we made it a very clear rule in our family that fairness didn’t mean that everybody got exactly what anybody else got.
"Suppose we buy a dress for your sister," I said to my son. "Would you want us to get a dress for you too?"
Never mind for a moment, the brain dead sexism in that example (picture Card telling his daughter, "suppose we buy blue jeans for your brother. Would you want us to get blue jeans for you too?" "Well…yeah dad…why not?" But maybe females aren’t allowed to wear pants in Card’s family…) Just look at it for a moment. Card is saying there, that to ask hospital staff to let you be with your other half as they lay sick, and maybe even dying, is like a child throwing a tantrum because daddy didn’t bring him a present too. Read that entire column, and if you aren’t a bigot like he is, one sickening thing just leaps out at you like a ghoul at a fun house, and laughs in your face: nowhere in that column is there even the slightest hint that Card can see there may be a deep and profound bond of love between a same sex couple. It just doesn’t even cross his mind.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Homosexual sex. Because they’re disfunctional….
But it is grossly unfair to demand, in the name of "fairness," that the normal pattern of marriage and family be deprived of its privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about dysfunctions that even they insist are nobody’s fault.
This is the mindset that same sex couples have to face every time they try to assert their rights as a couple. The hospital staff that kept Paula Long out of the room where her other half was suffering from a heart attack, treated their union like it was some kind of pathetic imitation of their own, because that’s exactly what they thought of it. Equal marriage rights won’t change their minds about that. But what it can do is warn them upfront, that if they let their cheap conceits and bar stool prejudices devastate the lives of innocent people, there will be consequences. Separate but equal on the other hand, merely validates their prejudices and conceits. As long as they believe they can put the knife in our hearts and get away with it, they’ll keep doing it. Because it is unfair to demand that normal families loose their privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about their dysfunctions .
When Bill Flanigan admitted his partner Robert Daniel to the hospital because of AIDS-related complications his loss was tremendous.
Kept from Daniel during his last hours alive, Flanigan was denied the chance to say goodbye to his partner of more than five years. He filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore City Circuit Court on February 27.
Not only was Flanigan refused the right to be with Daniel, he was also not permitted to share Daniel’s treatment wishes with his physicians, according to a statement issued by Lambda Legal. All because the staff from the Maryland Medical System Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore said Flanigan was not family.
…
It was only after Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town that the Shock Trauma Center released information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and allowed the entire family — including Flanigan — to see Daniel. But it was too late — Daniel was no longer conscious and his eyes were taped shut, and his wishes not to have life prolonging measures performed had been denied. There were tubes in his throat.
That was particularly hard for Flanigan to take.
At one point Daniel briefly regained consciousness, according to a nurse, and he tried to pull out the breathing tube. In response hospital staff tied down Daniel’s arms.
For Those Of You Who Share My Thing For Film Music…
I’ve been an avid collector of film music since I was a kid. I love any music that is evocative and beautiful, particularly when it makes use of a full symphonic orchestra. But it’s not a very well respected genre. Way back when, I seldom saw recordings from films whose music I liked (Just try finding a copy of David Whitaker’s gorgeous music to Run Wild, Run Free), and when I did it was often not the original soundtrack, but some aftermarket re-recording that seldom did the original music justice (which was, alas, what I got when I finally was able to get my hands on an LP of Run Wild, Run Free). Most people here in America who’ve seen Legend probably think of the music Toto recorded for the American release, unless they’ve had a chance to see a copy of the European version with it’s lush Jerry Goldsmith music. And nowadays, the entertainment companies would rather release something with a lot of band tunes on it, whether any of those tunes were actually played during the runtime of the movie or not. Witness the two competing CDs of music "from" the film Pleasantville, only one of which actually has the beautiful Randy Newman music on it, the other having about a dozen or so hit tunes, only one of which was played during the movie, and that while the closing credits were running.
I stumbled across this place last week, and thought I’d found a secret treasure trove. They have CDs from dozens of films whose music I’d never seen released anywhere before, including Lalo Schifrin’s music for The Liquidator, which you should listen to if only for Shirley Bassey belting out the title song like she is going to make everyone forget about Goldfinger.
I got two CDs from them in the mail last night, two Michael Legrand scores I’d been dying to find on CD: Summer of 42, and Ice Station Zebra. What’s wonderful about Ice Station Zebra is that it was pulled from the original masters, unlike the previous CD release which sounds like it was taped off an old LP copy, the cues are in order now, and it contains cues that were missing from the original release. When I listen to film music, I seldom even think of the film I first heard it played to. I enjoy it simply as pure music. It’s so hard to find new music anymore, that is evocative and beautiful for its own sake. But it often helps to have the music presented on the recording, as it was played to the film, as the story it was following in the film was the structure the composer was writing to. When the cues are out of order the music just looses its impact somehow. It’s like listening to a symphony with the movements all jumbled up randomly.
I have a list. Could the powers that be please release in CD or some other digital form, the original soundtrack music to, Run Wild, Run Free, Maya, The Dark Crystal, Robert Russell Bennett’s amazing full length score to The Twisted Cross, Morton Gould’s music for the TV series World War 1, Vyacheslav Ovchinnokov’s War And Peace, and the music for The Apartment, Nicolas and Alexandra, Born Free, and The Bible? Please. Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated…
Last month, a conference of US Catholic bishops approved and released a letter entitled "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care". Calling homosexuality "objectively disordered" the document complains that western culture recognizes "no acts as intrinsically evil". It asserts that "any tendency toward sexual pleasure that is not subordinated to the greater goods of love and marriage is disordered, in that it inclines a person towards a use of sexuality that does not accord with the divine plan for creation". Then later, without any apparent irony, the document states that "many in our culture have difficulty understanding Catholic moral teaching because they do not understand that morality has an objective basis."
The document ultimately demands that homosexuals abstain from any and all forms of sexual intimacy congruent with their nature, and says that "chaste living is an affirmation of all that is human, and is the will of God. It is we who suffer when we violate the dictates of our own human nature."
Which is true enough, as any gay person who has tried to deny their nature will tell you. In 1975, one of Love In Action’s first clients, Jack McIntyre, committed suicide rather then, by his own reckoning, make one more promise to God he knew he could not keep. The effect of the Guidelines for Pastoral Care will without a doubt be to drive other gay men and women into self annihilating behaviors, if not outright suicide. "Chastity", say the Bishops, "means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being." But it is precisely that inner unity they intend to doggedly destroy within gay and lesbian people, in the name of god, in the name of Jesus, and in the name of love. How easy it is, to take that body and soul wholeness away from someone else, when you don’t have to live with the pain and the emptiness. It is we who suffer, when we violate the dictates of our own human nature, not the ones who teach us to fear and loath our human nature, the nature that our creator bestowed upon us.
Green mush isn’t high on my list of appealing things to eat. But if you’re going to sell green mush to people, you should at least give them the sort of green mush they think they’re buying…
Peanut butter is made from peanuts, tomato paste is made from tomatoes, and guacamole is made from avocados, right?
Wrong. The guacamole sold by Kraft Foods Inc., one of the bestselling avocado dips in the nation, includes modified food starch, hefty amounts of coconut and soybean oils, and a dose of food coloring. The dip contains precious little avocado, but many customers mistake it for wholly guacamole.
On Wednesday, a Los Angeles woman sued the Northfield, Ill.-based food company, alleging that it committed fraud by calling its dip "guacamole." Her lawyer says suits against other purveyors of "fake guacamole" could be filed soon.
I’ve been carefully parsing the lables on food ever since the early 70s when I took my first bite of something I thought was a slice of cheese, but upon more careful inspection turned out to be merely something called "cheese food". By the time they came out with Country Time Lemonade Drink I wasn’t being fooled anymore. Lemonade Drink, is it? I know what lemonade is, and I know what a drink is, but a "lemonade drink" is probably lemonade like "cheese food" is cheese.
But the Kraft product, near as I can tell, was simply labeled "Guacamole Dip". So I guess the argument here is how much guacamole does a guacamole dip have to have in it before you need to start calling it something else. Like…guacamole food flavored dip by-product, or something…
Learning to carefully parse the syntax on product packaging when I was still a kid may be one reason I eventually became a software engineer. It’s sure as hell why I subscribe to Consumer Reports…
Even some of my very favorite bloggers can piss me off from time to time. Such is life…
Nickelback
I don’t know always know what the kids are listening to these days, but I just switched on VH1 and was immediately possessed by the spirit of Butthead:
What the hell is this crap?
If you really need to know what I’m talking about, here it is.
You know Duncan…I feel the same way about two-thirds of the music you speak adoringly of on your blog. I’d rather listen to cats fighting then most of it. I’d rather listen to a jackhammer symphony then most of it. I’d rather listen to a fifty car pile-up on the JFX then most of it. But I don’t usually feel compelled to say anything about it. If it makes you happy, or any of your readers happy…fine. There’s little enough of that in this poor world.
I don’t know if Nickelback ever made anything else worth listening to, and I don’t care. I like that song. It speaks to me. If it doesn’t speak to you, then turn the fucking dial.
Larry Corrigan, a well-known activist in local Republican politics as a backer of U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert and King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, was arrested Wednesday in an Internet sting for allegedly trying to arrange sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Reichert is pro-life and opposes the use of federal money for sex education. Reichert is against gay marriage and has promised to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. And a sexually ignorant thirteen year old girl, is a good thirteen year old girl…
But the president’s performance this week — his refusal to impose any deadlines on Mr. Maliki to start reconciliation talks and break with the militias, and his refusal to give the Pentagon a deadline to stand up an effective Iraqi Army — tells us once again that Mr. Bush does not listen.
That does not bode well for James Baker and the Iraq Study Group, which, according to reports, is likely to call for some pullback of American combat troops along with more aggressive regional diplomacy. Yesterday, Mr. Bush seemed eager to preempt that advice, brushing off suggestions that he talk directly to Iran and insisting that there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq.
Mr. Bush’s lack of curiosity was well known even before he became president, but as time has gone on and bad news has mounted, that disinterested quality has turned into a stubborn refusal to hear bad news. The country simply cannot afford it any longer. Three years of having Mr. Bush trust only his gut has plunged Iraq into bloody chaos and done untold damage to America. There needs to be an urgent change in policy.
Fat chance.
This administration has been orchestrating a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions, and history will remember both that the president failed to hear the warning bells and that many others failed to ring them loudly enough.
Chocolate Roulade (Christmas Log): Soft Ganache Frosting with a Chocolate Sponge, Meringue Mushrooms, Magnolia Leaves in White Chocolate, Raspberries.
Mini Tartlettes.
Pecan Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Orange Chiffon and Chocolate Boston Cream Pie.
Chocolate Truffles.
Homemade, Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache.
Long Stem Strawberries with Dark Chocolate Dipping Sauce.
Warm Macintosh Apple Cobbler With Oatmeal Crumble.
Pumpkin Trifle.
Spiced Pumpkin Mousse with Whipped Cream and Shaved Dark Chocolate.
Look…I don’t begrudge the rich and fabulous their high life. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours and that’s fine with me. But given the unmitigated failures of this man and his administration, never mind the relentless corruption, all this is just plain obscene. If Bush had only kept America more or less on the same course that Bill Clinton had left it in, with a budget surplus, a good economic outlook for the future, and a decent regard for human rights both here and abroad, I’d offer to wash his fucking dishes. But he’s been a complete disaster. He didn’t earn any of this.
This isn’t so much about Microsoft and Zune, as about the news media. But…look at this. In the morning I sit down at my computer and call up google news. It’s a really nice headline service. And what do I see? A bunch of headlines screaming at me that Microsoft’s Zune player has already taken second place in the compact digital music player race. Gosh.
And it’s only been out for a few days. So maybe Microsoft’s legendary (and occasionally illegal) marketing power, would succeed once more over it’s legendary technological incoherence.
During the time period in question…the iPod had about 68 percent of the market share, and Zune, at second place, had 9. In other words, Zune is the top dog in the category of "other". Which isn’t hard to fathom, given all the hype that preceded it.
Meanwhile…the other story about Zune that we’re not hearing more about…
Remember that deal Bill made with Universal Music? Yeah. Part of the game for Bill may simply have been to use the RIAA as a tool to cut into Steve’s iPod profits. But that isn’t likely the entire game. Zune doesn’t have to be a money maker for Microsoft in order to succeed. It doesn’t even have to have market share. All it has to do, is kill the ability of Microsoft’s competitors to set the course of this technology as it develops. Zune doesn’t have to be king of the player market, as long as every player in that market, eventually comes to depend on Microsoft technology in order to work…
Microsoft’s handling of the whole "Plays for Sure" initiative can only be described as a fiasco in the wake of the Zune music player launch. The Zune uses its own software to manage songs and has no integration with the "Plays for Sure" ecosystem of DRMed music, so customers who purchased songs from PfS online music stores (including the URGE online store integrated into Windows Media Player 11) are unable to use them with the new Zune.
However, according to Michael Gartenberg at JupiterResearch, songs purchased from the Zune online store will actually play on many Plays for Sure devices. It seems as if the Zune player will only play WMA-DRM songs specifically tagged by the Zune online store, but other PfS players only look to see if the song is in the WMA-DRM format and don’t bother checking to see if it is a "Zune" song or not.
You shake hands with Microsoft and you need to count your fingers afterwords. But look at this. Now Bill has a nascent eco-system of playback devices out there, and a few online music stores, that all depend on his technology. And he’s the only one so far offering the kind of deal the big music companies want. The more of that Bill gets out there, the harder it is for Apple, or anyone else, to stand on their own. Remember two things about Microsoft: They’re not a hardware company, and Bill’s primary skill set isn’t his grasp of technology. It’s that he’s a thousand percent more devious and cutthroat then anyone else in America since Rockefeller made his oil empire.
If they get away with it, then in the future there will be both an RIAA tax and a Microsoft tax on every music player sold in America. Including the iPod if the big music companies decide that Plays For Sure, or some Microsoft technology, is the only way they’ll allow their music to be sold. Even the iPod may someday have a little bit of Zune inside of it. And Zune itself could be long gone. People will laugh at how foolish Microsoft was, to produce that piece of junk.
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