So I see the ex-gay movement held it’s annual medicine show down in Orlando earlier this month…

Andrew Sullivan this morning:

Last night, it struck me that every single statement on gay rights by the GOP candidates, however brutal, could have been leavened by some small concession that gays are serving their country honorably, that gays are a part of many families and indeed the American family, that they should not be demonized by the majority, etc. But none of the candidates could say a single positive thing. Or rather they believed they could not survive a GOP primary by saying anything even vaguely positive about gay Americans. In some ways, that’s more telling.

If in the process of conducting your political campaign you give a silent consent to hate then you are just as much a part of the mob as if you had born one of their torches yourself and screamed for blood.   Anyone who cannot muster the moral backbone to denounce hate is unfit to be director of public parking, let alone president of the United States.   It is that simple.

Ah…the predictable backlash against the backlash against the backlash has begun…

Lawyers question firm’s decision to ditch gay marriage case

Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding won plaudits Monday from gay activists for backing out of an agreement to argue to uphold the federal ban on gay marriage. But a day later the reviews were a bit more bruising in  the legal community.

Top lawyers and law professors, with some notable exceptions, called it an embarrassing blunder by the prestigious firm or  a betrayal of a client and legal principles. Others think King & Spalding, whose clients include General Electric and Coca-Cola, may have backed out because the firm fears the fallout from leading an anti-gay legal fight.

You say that like it’s a bad thing…

King & Spalding’s announcement it would not represent congressional House Republicans in their quest to defend court challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)  and the subsequent decision of Paul Clement, the lawyer  in the case, to quit the firm and take it  elsewhere was the talk Tuesday among Yale University Law School faculty, said Lawrence Fox, a Yale professor and expert in legal ethics. DOMA defines marriage “for federal tax, Social Security and other purposes” as only a union between a man and a woman.

“We really go down a bad road if we say law firms can’t take on (controversial)  matters or people will assume you have those views,” said Fox. “I’m going to walk into my class today and I’m going to use this. I’m tearing up my lesson plan …  to talk about this case.”

The nice thing about working in an ivory tower is what you do doesn’t have to have any relationship to the world outside.   Tenure.   It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who have to live there, in the world of the commoners, it’s only they who remember the panic that set in back in 1993 when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could not constitutionally be denied the right to marry.   It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who remember how the party of Lincoln and Fred Phelps pushed through congress the Defense Of Marriage Act to protect American heterosexuals from the damaging effects of having to live in a world where the sordid, brief and barren sexual assignations of homosexuals had the same legal standing as their noble unions of male and female.   It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who remember how the man who stood in front of them and said “I have a vision for America and you’re part of it” signed that bill into law in the dead of night, somewhat less then three years after he folded on his promise to let gay servicemen serve openly and with dignity.   It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who watched as the new republican majority in congress, elected on campaign pledges of jobs, set about immediately to work reassuring their base that the meager gains gay Americans had made while the democrats were in control would not stand, and that they would be steadfast in opposing president Obama’s plan to impose The Gay Agenda on America.

It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who read the steady stream of news reports of same-sex couples beaten down and destroyed by this nation’s abject capitulation to bigotry, month after month, year after year.

Gay couple’s immigration plight: Ailing New Yorker may be torn from spouse over visa

A gay Long Island couple who have played by the immigration rules for more than a decade are stuck in a Catch-22 that could tear them apart just when they need each other most.

New Yorker Edwin Blesch, 70 and his South African husband, Tim Smulian, 65, have been spending six months on Long Island and six months abroad to comply with Smulian’s tourist visa.

But Blesch, who has HIV, suffered several mini-strokes and other complications and is now unable to travel safely.

Smulian is his primary caregiver – but has no way to stay here permanently.

Immigration Officials To Gay Binational Couples: Just Kidding, No Deportation Holds

It’s unclear what will happen to the couples already profiled by major news sources, like Monica Alcota and Cristina Ojeda. The one thing that is clear is that this is a sad day for binational same-sex couples, and for everyone who values America’s tradition of being a place where people can come from anywhere in the world to make a home. Like so many other things, that seems to be a privilege reserved for straight people.

It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who remember their names…names like Laurel Hester.   Not law professors in ivory towers.

Here is a law firm that proudly touted its support for gay Americans in their struggle for equality.   Suddenly it is, in a very high profile way, part of the republican party’s DOMA circus.   Suddenly every attorney, every clerk, every secretary, every intern working for this law firm is under a gag order…not simply to refrain from speaking about the case, but never to breath so much as a word against DOMA.   Imagine that instead of Teh Gay this case was about defending a congressional ban on Jewish ownership of businesses.   How many eyebrows would be raised when a law firm that touted its opposition to antisemitism, suddenly took on the congressional defense of that law, and gagged its partners and staff from ever speaking a word against the segregation of Jews?   Who would complain when the law firm withdrew and the jackass antisemitic partner who dragged them into that despicable case left to pursue it on his own, that the Jews had gone too far?

But conscience, and a sense of basic human decency wanders in a lot of people, even now, when it comes to the persecution of gay Americans.   Suddenly persecuting minorities becomes some abstract thing, less important, less real, then the right of republicans to conduct a great circus show of defending marriage against the forces of Obama and Satan, and demonize a segment of America for votes.   The constant rain of gay blood on the streets isn’t even on their moral radar…

HRC is right to fight vigorously to overturn DOMA, which deprives gays and lesbians of many of the rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts. But it sullies itself and its cause by resorting to bullying tactics.

So says The Washington Post.   Bullying tactics?

Details Of Brutal Hate Crime Attack On Damian Furtch Emerge

A gay man was attacked outside a West Village McDonalds for doing nothing more than wearing pink shoelaces and bright clothing, according to the victim.

Damian Furtch, 26, was pummeled early Sunday by two suspects shouting anti-gay epithets, police said.

The beating was the third bias attack in the neighborhood since October.

Bullying Tactics?

Gay Bash Benefits Gay Bashing Victim

On February 22, around 11:00 p.m., Shortell was walking home to his apartment on Kent Avenue and North Fourth Street, a walk that never felt unsafe to him before, when he was brutally attacked by a group of four teenagers. The details were fuzzy after that and as a result of the incident, Shortell suffered a fractured chin and nose; eye sockets and cheekbones, requiring ten hours of immediate surgery, several days in the hospital, and a month of recovery since.

Bullying tactics?   Bullying tactics?   Here’s the problem: the scapegoats aren’t taking it anymore.   They’re fighting back.   Where is the outrage in the corporate news media…the comfortable McMansion in the rich white suburbs corporate news media?   Once again, it’s directed at gay Americans.   For standing up for their human dignity.   For defending themselves against hate.   For fighting back.   Republicans inciting hatred for votes is just Business As Usual.   Gays asking businesses to walk the walk not just talk the talk on civil rights is front page news!   How dare they.   Don’t they know their place anymore?   What is this world coming to, when even homosexuals demand to be treated with respect?   Who told the them they had a right not to be bullied?   It certainly wasn’t us.

The pushback from the right started almost immediately, and with all the acid vitriol by which they inflamed the violent passions that almost certainly led to the shooting in Arizona last Saturday in the first place.   You could watch the bogus Jared Lee Loughner Facebook pages…the ones where he admits his loathsome liberal tendancies…being created and deleted as fast as the Facebook administrators could catch them going up.   You can really tell they learned their lesson from the killing of Matthew Shepard.   If now was then, they’d have been calling Shepard a meth using sex addict and McKinney and Henderson a couple of drugged out psychopaths and the killing a Tragic robbery gone bad long before the body had a chance to get cold, let alone buried.   And as always, a key ingredient in the smokescreen building are the uncertainties, inevitable so close to the event itself, if not for far, far beyond it.   What actually did motivate the killer?   Was he a leftist or a hard core Tea Partier?   Did he read Marx or Hitler?   Did he surf The New Republic or Daily KOS?   And if we can’t answer those basic questions then dare you lay blame for this horrible, horrible tragedy at the feet of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party you treasonous America hating liberals.

And so on…and so forth…

What does it mean to “lay the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at the feet of Palin and the Right”?   That they gave the killer the gun and some money and sent him on his way?   That they deliberately incited this specific killer to this specific act?     That they fueled a dangerous climate of violence against their political opponents, deliberately, to intimidate their political opposition without particularly caring if any one of them actually got killed, because long ago they stopped seeing the opposition as their neighbors, their fellow Americans, but rather as an enemy to be defeated by any means necessary, and if one of them Did get killed it would teach the rest a lesson?

“Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: ‘Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!'”
-Sarah Palin via Twitter

Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who’s in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical…

Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.

Angle: Well it’s to defend ourselves. And you know, I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.

Responsibility.   If our fingerprints are not actually on the murder weapon itself then we are not responsible.   It is immoral for you to use this National Tragedy for partisan political advantage.   And if our violent eliminationist rhetoric did happen to motivate that poor psycho to pack a gun and kill an elected officeholder we’ve placed our crosshairs on, well then logically liberals are the ones who are responsible.   Because if it wasn’t for all that ACLU liberal freedom of speech stuff he would never have heard us talking about 2nd amendment remedies for adverse election outcomes.   Responsibility.

What do I have to change my name to so I can get on one of those No-Fly lists?   Seriously.

Napolitano defends new screening at airports

Amid criticism over intensified airport screening measures, Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the Department of Homeland Security’s use of full-body scanners and pat-downs as essential to “match the changing threat environment that we inhabit.”

“This is all being done as a process to make sure that the traveling public is safe,” she said, adding that officials would “have an open ear” if adjustments to the new rules needed to be made.

Got an open ear do you?

Good thing I actually like long distance road trips.   But hopefully in my lifetime the great ocean liners can start making a comeback.     Please.   I would still like to see the world someday.

Rand Paul, white heterosexual tea party candidate won his contest last night, and among cheering white heterosexual supporters announced to the world…

I have a message – a message from the people of Kentucky, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back!

Our government.   Our government.   Our government.   This from the man who said it was wrong for government to force businesses to obey civil rights laws because it was a violation of individual liberty, but who also thinks government should be in the business of controlling women’s bodies, dictating what is and what is not marriage and what is and what is not a family.   So when speaks of “the people” and utters the phrase “our government” it’s pretty easy to tell that “the people” are not necessarily his neighbors in this life but merely his own kind.   White.   Heterosexual.   Oh…and rich.   Very very rich.

Thus, the Louisiana Courier Press reported during the campaign…

Along with college and university students, Paul is courting the libertarian-leaning Republicans who got excited about his father. But to win a Kentucky primary, he’ll need social conservatives, and University of Kentucky political scientist Stephen Voss said he must be careful as he tries to appeal to both.

“This is a difficult tightrope to walk,” said Voss, who nonetheless believes Paul may be the front-runner right now. “When he’s talking economics and money, he is philosophically a libertarian. When he talks about social issues, he’s sending guarantees to the right wing that he’s not libertarian.”

Paul says he opposes abortion without exception, not even in cases of rape, incest or the health of the expectant mother. He also opposes marriages between gay and lesbian couples. At the same time, he voices staunch opposition to government intruding in the private lives of citizens.

A Difficult Tightrope To Walk… No, not a tightrope, a deception.     There are two kinds of “libertarian”.   There’s the useful tools who really believe that crap.   I was one of those back in the late 70s and moved around in Libertarian circles, working on campaigns, getting bored shoppers to sign our petitions, and that was where I saw that I was basically just a useful tool for the other sort of Libertarian.   The faux ones.   The rich right wingers and hard core John Birchers who saw libertarian rhetoric as a good way to bamboozle voters, especially young voters.   I first saw it when a vigorous argument broke out in the ranks after the U.S. supreme court decision in Hardwick v. Bowers upheld the state’s sodomy laws.   I was aghast and fully expected my comrades in the movement to be also.   But…no.   It was all about “state’s rights” many of them said.   But, but…says I…surely the states don’t have the right to toss grown adults in jail for simply for having sex either, no matter how strongly others may disapprove.   Individual liberty and all that.   No, no, I was told over and over.   “State’s rights”.   “State’s rights”.   “State’s rights”.

It was a slogan I had come to know well from the fight over race segregation in America, and I knew perfectly well even at a young age just what it was code for, along with that other famous code phrase of the time.   We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

I got your libertarian America right here…

…and here…

…and here…

…and here…

…and here.

And I got your “libertarian” senator right here…

Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Carl Paladino…

Un…

Now, in addition, I have a nephew…I have people working for me who are gay.

Deux…

Never had a problem with any of them…

Trois…

…never had a problem in any sense with their lifestyle…

Quatre…

…and we’ve talked about it often.

Cinq…

I talk to them about the discrimination that they suffer and I’m sensitive to it.

Six…

The discrimination that they suffer is very, very difficult and I’m totally sensitive to it.

Sept…

I want to clearly define myself. I have of no reservations about gay people at all…

Huit…

…none.

Neuf…

I feel that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

Dix…

That’s not how God created us and that’s not the example that we should be showing our children.

Onze…

I don’t want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.

Douze…

I oppose the homosexual agenda, whether they call it marriage, civil unions or domestic partnership. Marriage is between a man and a woman – period.

Le Curtian…Applaus a vous…

Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist…

Un…

I’m a live and let live kind of guy…

Deux…

I think if partners want to have the opportunity to live together, I don’t have a problem with that…

Trois…

And I think that’s where most of America is.

Quatre…

So I think that you know, you have to speak from the heart about these issues.

Cinq…

They are very personal.

Six…

They have a significant impact on an awful lot of people…

Sept…

…and the less the government is telling people what to do, the better off we’re all going to be.

Huit…

….partners living together, I don’t have a problem with.

Neuf…

Question: Now that you’re trying to occupy the political center, are you still in favor of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage?
Governor Crist: I feel the same way, yes, because I feel that marriage is a sacred institution, if you will.

Dix…

But I do believe in tolerance.

Le Curtian…Applaus a vous…

Ken Mehlman, former republican party chair, is out and proud.   Well…out anyway…

Ex-GOP national chairman Ken Mehlman says he’s gay

Mehlman, manager of the 2004 Bush/Cheney re-election campaign, came out to Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. “It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman said in the interview. “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey and for me over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues and current colleagues and they’ve been wonderful and supportive.”

The article goes on to say Mehlman wants to work for same-sex marriage.   That would be helpful.   Mehlman worked for years to get anti-gay bigots elected. He ran the reelection campaign of Bush The Junior, waving the gay scarecrow at voters despite the fact that he himself was one…

But he was, and probably still is, a party loyalist, and as Garrison Keillor said after Norm Coleman won in the almost-as-ugly 2002 election (which also saw Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran loose to slimeball Saxby Chambliss), they are Republicans first and Americans second. If the party tells you it wants to put a knife in your back, you offer to do it yourself as a show of loyalty.

But let it be said they are not completely incapable of regret. In 2005 Mehlman apologized for decades of GOP race baiting…

“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” Mehlman said at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”

This was happening back when some pundits were thinking republicans could peel some of the black vote away from the democratic party on social (read: anti-gay) issues, which makes Mehlman’s offering this apology more then a little grotesque. But if all you’re noticing about this is its tang of political opportunism, you’re missing that he’s offering this apology for deliberately polarizing the nation to win elections, just a year after they’d waged the most homophobic campaign in American history. Here’s a cartoon I did at the time…

That was the summer I stood in a protest line outside an ex-gay ministry in Memphis Tennessee, where a gay teen had been committed against his will by his own parents. There I heard the stories of other gay kids and young adults either forced into ex-gay therapy or on their own because they were terrified of being homosexual, in a climate of anti-gay fear, loathing and hate ginned up over the years by among others, Ken Mehlman. He had an election to win you see, and never mind the damage done to this country in the process. Neighbor had to hate neighbor. Parents had to loath their own flesh and blood, children had to see that loathing in the faces of their own fathers and mothers, and remember having seen it for the rest of their lives, so George Bush could be president. To the party loyalist the ends justify the means. You must be willing to destroy some families, to win an election on Family Values.

I’m glad Mehlman is finally at some sort of inner peace with the person he is. For one thing, people who are disgusted with their sexual nature, gay or straight, tend to take that disgust out on others. But no one, not even Republican’s first and Americans second, should feel forced to live their lives in the closet. But it isn’t unreasonable to expect those republicans to work a little harder now to make this an America where nobody else has to either. There’s a lot of damage out there, with their names on it.

Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Iowa GOP candidate Jeremy Walters…

Un…

homosexual ‘GAY’ is not of God!!!!

Deux…

The Holy Bible says if your ‘GAY’ homosexual they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

Trois…

This tells me a lot so should we kill them NO. They Need to ask God to forgive them of their sins and mean it turn away from it.

Quatre…

They also need to know that when it says that their blood shall be upon them that tells me it is AIDS.

Cinq…

That how I feel.

Six…

It’s offensive to them because they know it’s the truth.

Sept…

Truth does hurt.

Huit…

I am not against people having a gay lifestyle, and the statements made on Facebook have been taken the wrong way.

Le Curtian…Applaus a vous…

The preacher stopped at least, and there arose out the darkness a woman with her hair pulled back into a little tight knot. She began so quickly we couldn’t hear what she said, but soon her voice rose resonantly and we could follow her. She was denouncing the reading of books. Some wandering book agent, it appeared, had come to her cabin and tried to sell her a specimen of his wares. She refused to touch it. Why, indeed, read a book? If what was in it was true, then everything in it was already in the Bible. If it was false, then reading it would imperil the soul.

–H.L. Mencken, The Hills of Zion

Some days I marvel at how lucky I was, to enter grade school when I did, just when the Soviet Union was scaring the hell out of the United States.   Looking back, it’s astonishing to me now, how utterly taken for granted it was, that all American kids needed, and by god were going to get if the feds had anything to do with it, a good education in the sciences.   The Soviets had launched Sputnik, which meant their missiles could hit any city in the U.S.   They were going to own a good chunk of planet Earth and outer space too if we didn’t get up to speed.   Suddenly having science in the classroom Mattered.     Things are a tad different now.

As soon as I saw it in my morning Google news page, I knew it would be spreading through the kook pews like wildfire by days end…

The Roots of White Anxiety

In March of 2000, Pat Buchanan came to speak at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Harvard being Harvard, the audience hissed and sneered and made wisecracks. Buchanan being Buchanan, he gave as good as he got. While the assembled Ivy Leaguers accused him of homophobia and racism and anti-Semitism, he accused Harvard — and by extension, the entire American elite — of discriminating against white Christians.

A decade later, the note of white grievance that Buchanan struck that night is part of the conservative melody. You can hear it when Glenn Beck accuses Barack Obama of racism, or when Rush Limbaugh casts liberal policies as an exercise in “reparations.” It was sounded last year during the backlash against Sonia Sotomayor’s suggestion that a “wise Latina” jurist might have advantages over a white male judge, and again last week when conservatives attacked the Justice Department for supposedly going easy on members of the New Black Panther Party accused of voter intimidation.

To liberals, these grievances seem at once noxious and ridiculous. (Is there any group with less to complain about, they often wonder, than white Christian Americans?) But to understand the country’s present polarization, it’s worth recognizing what Pat Buchanan got right…

That the Nazis couldn’t have killed all those Jews?   That if Britain had not waged war on Germany there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust? Oh…wait…

Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class.

[Emphasis mine…]   Never mind that we’re actually not talking about White Anxiety here but Rural White Anxiety.   Never mind that not all American Christians are white, let alone rural.   Never mind that this…analysis…comes from Minding the Campus, which is a Manhattan Institute front group (Especially never mind that one of their published authors is Bell Curve author Charles Murray, who explains that black people have lower IQs not because poverty and racism limit their educational opportunities, but because they’re just…well…genetically inferior.   Please do never mind that!)

Here’s the problem:

…and this…

And this…

And…this…

…and…this…

And.   This.

If all you’re seeing there is a religious verses science struggle you are missing it.   This isn’t about religion verses science, this is about two utterly different and incomparable views of what constitutes knowledge.   In the Christianist, fundamentalist view, knowledge is something that is received.   In science, knowledge is something that is discovered.

The difference is profound.   One group of kids gets taught how to think, how to ask questions, how to evaluate, how to make independent judgments…and the other gets taught to be afraid of questioning authority and to always defend the tribe against outsiders.   And the worst kind of outsider is the one who stops blindly accepting everything they’ve been told by their tribe.   Edjucatin’ will do that to a kid.   What you aren’t getting, is the entire grade school life of rural white kids these days is now being carefully, meticulously geared toward preventing a higher education from ever taking root.

But cultural biases seem to be at work as well. Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”

It is not the “gatekeepers of elite education” keeping rural white kids from getting into their schools Douthat you drooling moron, it’s their fear and loathing of anything that doesn’t righteously affirm their fundamentalist, tribal culture.   It’s the knee jerk reflexive hostility to that very education that their world view is drilling, drilling, drilling into them, that’s keeping them out of America’s big universities.

And it’s nothing new.   It has been going on, and getting worse and worse, since Scopes.   I was lucky…so incredibly lucky…that I entered grade school for one brief shining moment when nobody was paying any attention to the howls from the kook pews.   (Thank you Khrushchev!)   A kid today from the rural bible belt part of America who wants, really wants, that higher education has had the cards stacked against them by their grade school experience.   They haven’t been taught how to think critically, because that might lead them to question the story of Noah’s Ark.   They haven’t been taught how to sift through a set of facts to find an answer, because the culture they grow up in not only instills in them a knee jerk hostility to any fact that contradicts eternal tribal truths, it also teaches them to hold onto ideas that are palpably, laughingly false against even the most staringly obvious facts, in defense of those truths.

And it’s getting worse.   Now their schools are on a roll to dumb down their curriculums even more.

Texas Board of Education cuts Thomas Jefferson out of its textbooks.

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

Tell me how a university is supposed to try and teach those kids…anything.   Those school boards are grimly determined to keep their kids from crossing over to the other side in the culture war…the side where the pursuit of knowledge isn’t just a good thing, but a great adventure…and in the process they’re locking them behind their own down home version of the iron curtain.   A university admissions officer is going to look at their school system and know right away that kid will never make it past their first year, possibly not even their first semester, and they simply won’t bother with them.   That’s not the university’s fault.   It’s one thing to make room for an urban minority kid whose disadvantage is money, and another to give that seat to a rural kid whose disadvantage is money and Intelligent Design.

And yes, it is very, very bad for this country to have it divided into well educated urban citizens verses people who have had any genuine desire to Learn pummeled out of them by a culture scared to death of anything resembling independence of thought.   I would argue that the “gatekeepers of elite education” really do need to do some serious educational outreach to the white rural population.   But do you understand the explosion of bitter hate and resentment that reaching out to those communities, trying, really trying hard, and with energy, to bring them science, world literature, logic and semantics, and all the humanities that they’ve been mocking for generations as “effete”…do you understand the nuclear explosion that would follow?   The howls of “elitist cultural aggression” would be defining.   And their republican enablers would take to the talk radio airwaves and cable TV junkyards with proof…proof mind you, that the elites were trying to brain wash their children…possibly to make them gay…ban the bible, impose a socialist new world order and sell their white women to the negros as reparations.

Try…just try…to bring the rural white population into higher education in greater numbers and they’ll just dig themselves even deeper, deeper into the gutter, to prevent their children from ever learning anything that might make them question that bedrock of bigotry, paranoia and resentment their culture sits and sulks on.   I can appreciate that urban minorities have their own host of problems preventing them from getting into the better Universities… poverty… crime… violence… a general breakdown of family and community.   But the problem isn’t that “the gatekeepers of elite education” are prejudiced against low income white people.   The problem is that a kid in a drug gang infested urban slum whose school is falling apart because their city has no money actually has a better chance of leaving grade school being able to think for themselves then a kid from bible belt America does.

He argued that the gift of tongues was real and that education was a snare. Once his children could read the Bible, he said, they had enough. Beyond lay only infidelity and damnation. Sin stalked the cities. Dayton itself was a Sodom. Even Morgantown had begun to forget God…

[Edited and expanded a tad for clarity…]

I’ve been meaning to link to this Fred Clark sermon…

12 vicious values (cont’d.)

I think part of the reason Glenn Beck’s 912 Project opts for the term “values” rather than “virtues” is because virtues take work. They require practice to acquire as habits.

This is not what the 912 Project is for. It is not a group or “movement” of people who have chosen to practice these 12 virtues in order to acquire them as habits. It is not a group that seeks to learn or to embody those virtues at all.

Look at that list again: Honesty, reverence, hope, thrift, humility, charity, sincerity, moderation, hard work, courage, personal responsibility, gratitude.

Does any of that characterize the agenda or the practice or the visible habit of Beck’s tea partying mobs? Were any of these virtues on display in the town-hall disruptions, in the angry marches or the signs carried under Beck’s “912” banner? Was there even a hint that these gatherings were composed of people even slightly interested in such virtues?

This is why Beck’s list of “12 values” can’t withstand comparison to the first similar-seeming list that comes to mind, the Boy Scout Law. The Boy Scouts of America isn’t my favorite organization as I’m not a fan of either homophobia nor vacuous civil religion, but I am a big fan of that Scout Law:

A Scout is: Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Against such there is no law.

The 12 virtues listed there are at first glance quite similar to Beck’s, but the differences are telling. The Scout Law begins “A Scout is“…

Is verses waving them around like a damn flag.   This is the single most telling thing about the culture warriors.   They yap, yap, yap about Values…but they don’t ever act like they have any. And there’s a reason for that.   Values are to them as weapons to wield against the Faceless Other…not things that actually sustain and guide.   Values aren’t a part of your bedrock, they’re rhetorical tools to use as needed and discard like a Kleenex afterward.

You should go read the whole thing.

I have these arguments online from time to time with nutcases who feel this world would be just peachy keen if everyone were made to live according to the dictates of their particular religion.  You get to a point where the argument becomes why do I want to trample all over their religious freedom.  Because for instance, I’d like to marry someday and their religion says homosexuality is an abomination, and if I can marry a same-sex partner then…somehow…that means I’m trampling on their religion and I need to respect their deeply held religious beliefs.  My argument is they need to respect American Cultural Values of liberty and justice for all because that is what is making it possible for them to practice their religion in the first place. 

But a lot of people who have absolutely no respect for the cultural values that make American religious freedom possible, just love appropriating little bits and pieces of it when it suits them, without any regard for the culture that made that which they find worthwhile possible. 

I’m working on a blog post about a column by Rod Dreher in the Dallas News, which has prompted me to scan his blog on BeliefNet, and I came across this…

"Whole Foods Republicans"? Er, wow.

Wherein Dreher quotes Michael J. Petrilli in the Wall Street Journal, thusly…

What’s needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate "Whole Foods Republicans"–independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods, which has become a symbol of progressive affluence but is also a good example of the free enterprise system at work. (Not to mention that its founder is a well-known libertarian who took to these pages to excoriate ObamaCare as inimical to market principles.)

What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There’s no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation.

…rides his bike to work…  Oh yes…let’s hear it for libertarian road rules, where everyone gets to decide for themselves what safe speeds are and what safety equipment needs to be on their cars and whether the bicycle has the right of way or they do because they’re in a bigger more powerful vehicle and placing limits on how automobiles behave in mixed traffic is just a way of Big Brother penalizing bigness and success.  Let the marketplace of traffic decide who the winners and losers are.  That’ll make all those Whole Foods Republican cyclists happy I’m sure. 

Yes…buying food made by companies who think selling people crap just because they can is immoral is so very nice isn’t it?  How wonderful it would be, if corporate America had to behave like that, if the law held them accountable for selling food that damaged people’s health…

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Make Popcorn

Two years ago, Orville Redenbacher soared from the graveyard and announced in weeks of TV ads that his popcorn was now free of diacetyl. That’s the chemical in artificial butter flavoring that has been blamed for sickening hundreds of workers, killing a handful and destroying the lungs of at least three microwave popcorn addicts.

Almost every other popcorn maker followed suit.

But now, government health investigators are reporting that the "new, safer, butter substitutes" used in popcorn and others foods are, in some cases, at least as toxic as what they replaced.

Even the top lawyer for the flavoring industry said his organization has told anyone who would listen that diacetyl substitutes are actually just another form of diacetyl.

So what is the Obama administration going to do about it? Nothing meaningful, at least for a year, it said this week, stunning unions, members of Congress, public health activists and physicians who have pleaded for government action to protect workers and consumers from the butter flavoring…

…When diacetyl trimmer is in the presence of heat and water, it will release diacetyl. And butter starter distillate is not a substitute for diacetyl because it contains high concentrations of diacetyl. However, it is considered a natural material, which is a boon to companies that wish market their food items with the "natural" label, Hallagan said in an interview from Colorado.

Hallagan said that his trade association discouraged using these materials and calling their products "diacetyl-free."

But he added that his group "is not a regulator and has no legal authority to prohibit their use. That’s up to the food manufacturers."

Let’s hear it for the invisible hand of the marketplace.  How the hell did we ever expect to get meaningful healthcare reform done when we can’t even make the food companies sell food that doesn’t kill people?  The alternative food marketplace evolved from an eminently liberal-progressive disgust with how big business treats its customers and is allowed to get away with it again and again by government that allows itself to be influenced by big business money.  If people who shop in that marketplace "view big government with great suspicion" it’s more likely because they can see how corrupted it’s become by corporate interests every day the current health care debate goes on, then that they’re all just waiting for someone to tell them they’re republicans. 

In fact, a lot of them probably aren’t shopping at Whole Foods anymore.  I know I’m not…

To John Mackey at Whole Foods

Since no one at Whole Foods Market Inc., can tell CEO and co-founder John Mackey just how bad he screwed up, I will. Mr. Mackey, your extremist views on employee benefits and unionization have, lucky for you, mostly flown under the progressive radar to date. Which is why pushing that luck with this screed on healthcare suggests you are either out of your flippin mind or have suffered a lapse in business acumen not seen since New Coke. And in the WSJ no less:

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment.

Mr. Mackey, I’m not sure if you understand who it is that shops at your organic grocery chain: a lot of progressives, vegetarians, professional and amateur athletes, and others who care so much about the environment and what they eat that they’re still willing to shell out three bucks for an organic orange, even in the midst of the worst recession in sixty years. I was proud WFMI was based in my hometown of Austin, and defended it against most of the conservatives I knew growing up there, many of whom still hold your entire business in utter contempt. Some of them ridiculed me for shopping at Whole Foods, with all the "tree huggers and granola eaters and hippies" who, incidentally, made you a millionaire.

Mr. Mackey, you just shat all over your best customers. Given the years of pseudonymous postings on Yahoo finance slamming a competitor you were quietly trying to acquire at the time, double talk and unethical behavior arguably seems to be becoming a habit for you. So I will never, ever, shop at your stores again, unless you retract that op-ed, apologize for stabbing us in the back, or resign. In this day and age, it’s just too easy to locate competitors. Until then, well, judging by the Whole Foods community forum, not to mention the discussion in Hopeful Skeptic’s and Aptoklas’ diaries, you’ve finally managed to universally piss off everyone. I predict the next few weeks of your life are going to suck, immensely.

Dreher here, and his pal at the Wall Street Journal, are trying to drum up support on the right for their union busting Randian friend, since he had the regrettable stupidity of telling his customer base that his store’s progressive facade is just that.  Not quite as deceptive as a box of microwave popcorn claiming to be diacetyl-free, but more like that doughnut shop in Pittsburgh with the name Peace, Love and Little Doughnuts with a hippy love peace theme that’s owned by a religious right nutcase who hates gays and liberals and democrats and writes on his blog that…

This crowd will not rest until Homosexuality is mainstream; until the Second Amendment is done away with; until abortion on demand is as common and accepted as going to the dentist; until sexual images and strip clubs line our streets and suburbs; until government education is started in the womb; until disagreement with their political party is “hate speech” and becomes a crime; until they pass the Fairness Doctrine and rid the county of Conservative talk radio; until they transfer our sovriegnty to the UN, etc. etc. etc… 

Right.  Whatever.  There is money to be made by marketing to urban progressives obviously, or the con artists wouldn’t bother with branding scams like Peace, Love and Little Doughnuts.  But at least they’re honest liars.  Mackey’s Whole Foods is to grocery stores, what a lot of high end native American trading posts are in the southwest.  He sells the best items he can find, without the slightest regard for the culture that brought them forth.  He is it for the money, not to cultivate the culture that made what he sells possible, knowing full well that enough of his customers won’t care as long as the goods keep coming. 

But what do you make of a bunch of free market republicans who would rather buy their food in the alternative food markets progressives created so they could have something fit to eat and feed their children, then buy from the big food factories they’ve set free, free at last from the chains of government oversight?  You call them practical.  A Whole Foods Republican is someone who doesn’t want to eat from the table they set for everyone else.  Ezra Klein writing in The Washington Post about Mackey’s Wall Street Journal said…

Food is more like health care than it is like cable television. We worry if people don’t have enough food to eat. We worry quite a lot, in fact. So we have a variety of programs meant to ensure that people have sufficient food. If you don’t have much money, you rely on these programs. As of September 2008, about 11 percent of the population was on food stamps. It’s probably somewhat higher now. Millions more rely on the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program, and reduced-price school lunches.

The insight that people need food has not led us to simply deregulate the agricultural sector (though that might be a good idea for other reasons) or change the tax treatment of food purchases or make it easier for rich people to donate to food banks, which is what Mackey recommends for health care. It’s led us to solve, or try and solve, the problem directly by giving people money to buy food. And that works. These programs, as every Whole Foods shopper knows, haven’t grown to encompass the whole population or set prices in grocery stores. If you have more money, you shop for food on your own. And if you have a lot of money, you shop at Mackey’s stores. That’s pretty much the model we’re looking at in this iteration of health care reform. We’re also laying down some rules so grocery stores — excuse me, health insurers — can’t simply refuse to sell you their product, or take it away after it’s already been purchased.

Mackey, playing to type, has offered a Whole Foods solution for health care: It makes the system even better for the rich and the young and the educated — the sort of people who shop at Whole Foods, in other words — and doesn’t do a lot for those who really need help. But the existence of a vibrant institution like Whole Foods within a broader system that considers it unacceptable — at least in theory — for the poor to go hungry, and so subsidizes their purchase of food, does have lessons for heath-care reform.

Emphasis mine.  If you think Mackey is simply suffering myopia you are not paying attention.  He’s a Randoid.  Me…I buy from Trader Joe’s these days.  It’s smaller then the Whole Foods down the street from me, but that Whole Foods used to be a Fresh Fields until Mackey gobbled our local natural food chain up.  A lot of folks here in Maryland had bad feelings about that when it happened, but Mackey put on a good show for us right up until the Wall Street Journal editorial.  Now we know what we’re dealing with.  Now I have another reason not to shop there.  I don’t want to be rubbing elbows with rich republican homophobes who support Proposition 8 but absolutely love the work their gay landscaper does around their house. 

In 1989, Juan Navarete came home to find his beloved Leroy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house.  He’d fallen off a ladder while doing work.  What happened to Juan next is the stuff of nightmares.  Or…righteous devotion to Godliness depending on your point of view…

Juan and Leroy lived together in Long Beach for eight years. One day, Juan came home from the grocery store and found Leroy, who had fallen off a ladder, lying on the concrete patio. Leroy was rushed to the hospital where he stayed in a coma for several days. Although Leroy regained consciousness, he remained hospitalized for nine months. Juan visited Leroy once or twice each day, feeding him and encouraging him to recuperate.

Leroy’s estranged brother, who lived in Maine, filed a lawsuit seeking to have himself appointed as Leroy’s conservator.

When Juan accidentally found out, he showed up at court in Long Beach. Although Juan, who was not represented by counsel, stood up and protested, the judge refused to consider Juan’s plea because he was a stranger to Leroy in the eyes of the law.

The brother subsequently had Leroy transferred from the hospital to an undisclosed location. When Juan finally discovered that Leroy was being housed in a nursing home about 50 miles from Long Beach, he attempted to visit Leroy there. The staff stopped Juan in the lobby, advising him that the brother had given them a photo of Juan with strict orders not to allow him to visit Leroy. Unfortunately, no one else ever visited Leroy there.

It took Juan about two weeks to find an attorney who would take the case without charge. The attorney filed a lawsuit seeking visitation rights.

A few hours before the hearing was scheduled to occur, the brother’s attorney called Juan’s attorney, informing him that Leroy had died three days before.               

Since the body had already been flown back to Maine where it was cremated, Juan never had an opportunity to pay his last respects.

Juan had no, absolutely no legal standing to do anything other then grieve, and there are those (I’m coming to you in a minute Jeff…) who would likely say that he was lucky to have that, and not be tossed into a jail cell for admitting he had engaged in homosexual conduct.  In the eyes of the law, he and Leroy were strangers.  Some people to this day think that’s more then we deserve, considering that in the eyes of the law we used to be criminals.

Same sex marriage is allowed in a few states now, and you can call that progress if you wish.  But the chilling truth is that in most of the land of the free and the home of the brave, a same sex couple can be legally ground under foot by the local justice system, to the sound of loud hosanna’s from the righteous.  It’s not enough that our wedding rings mean nothing.  It’s not enough that our love isn’t seen as meaningful to us, let alone to anyone else.  Even our grief must be unreal…a cheap imitation of the real grief heterosexual couples feel when one becomes gravely ill, or dies.  

Because to permit us even our grief is to erode the sacred institution of heterosexual only marriage…

Update: R.I. governor vetoes ‘domestic partners’ burial bill

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — An opponent of same-sex marriage, Governor Carcieri has vetoed bill that would have added "domestic partners” to the list of people authorized by law to make funeral arrangements for each other.

In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: "This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.

"If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the state of Rhode Island decide.”

Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex…

The legislation was prompted by one of the more heart-wrenching personal stories to emerge from the same-sex marriage debate.

At a hearing this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby’s wish for cremation — only to have that request rejected because "we were not legally married or blood relatives."

Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner’s office "our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate" from Connecticut, but "no one was willing to see these documents."

Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex…

He said he was told the medical examiner’s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner’s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they "waited another week" to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.

Homosexuals don’t love…they just have sex…

After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee "took pity on me and my plight … reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron’s body to me," but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron’s body.

"On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron’s body," and so, "on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron’s remains and put this tragedy to rest."

Meanwhile, homophobe Jeff Jacoby writes today that militant homosexuals activists are filled with vitriol…

When will it occur to supporters of same-sex marriage that they do their cause no good by characterizing those who disagree with them as haters, bigots, and ignorant homophobes? It may be emotionally satisfying to despise as moral cripples the majorities who oppose gay marriage. But after going 0 for 31 – after failing to make the case for same-sex marriage even in such liberal and largely gay-friendly states as California, Wisconsin, Oregon, and now Maine – isn’t it time to stop caricaturing their opponents as the equivalent of Jim Crow-era segregationists? Wouldn’t it make more sense to concede that thoughtful voters can have reasonable concerns about gay marriage, concerns that will not be allayed by describing those voters as contemptible troglodytes?

Why of course you’re not a contemptible troglodyte Jeff…you’re perfectly capable of looking at your gay and lesbian neighbors and seeing human beings…aren’t you…

I can sympathize with committed gay and lesbian couples who feel demeaned by the law’s rejection of same-sex marriage or who crave the proof of societal acceptance, the cloak of normalcy, that a marriage license would provide.

Because of course, all Juan Navarete wanted when he saw Leroy lying in a pool of blood on their driveway was societal acceptance…a cloak of normalcy.

If you knew what it was your gay and lesbian neighbors wanted, you wouldn’t be a bigot Jeff.  But you can’t see the people for the homosexuals, so you don’t.  You can’t.  You never will.  Even a troglodyte knows his neighbor is capable of grief.

Here’s another reason why I want to disappear into Disney World for a while…

GOP Lawmaker’s Graphic Sex-Bragging Caught On Tape

Michael Duvall is a conservative Republican state representative from Orange County, California. While waiting for the start of a legislative hearing in July, the 54-year-old married father of two and family values champion began describing, for the benefit of a colleague seated next to him, his ongoing affairs with two different women. In very graphic detail.

For instance:

She wears little eye-patch underwear. So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!

Oh how lovely.  Haven’t I already seen this movie? 

As the OC Weekly reports, 
Duvall has "blasted" efforts to promote gay marriage, and got a 100 percent score from the Capitol Resource Institute, which describes its mission as to "educate, advocate, protect, and defend family-friendly policies in the California state legislature". In March, a spokeswoman for the group called Duvall "a consistent trooper for the conservative causes," adding that "for the last two years, he has voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California."

See…this kind of thing is funny for a while (oh look at what just popped out of another conservative’s closet…!), but then it gets so soul wearying.  I really need to remember that morality and values and honor and decency really do represent more in our lives then convenient hooks to drive the rubes to the polls with…that there is more to the human status then this runt represents. 

People need to look…really look…at what’s motivating all those moral crusaders of the right, waving scarecrows bearing their neighbor’s faces.  They’re just pushing your buttons because they know it works.  And why is that?