Oh look…

Protector of traditional marriage Doug Manchester leaving wife of 43 years

In July 2008, hotelier and developer Doug Manchester donated $125,000 to help gather signatures for a proposition that would ban same-sex marriage in California. The early money was crucial to getting the initiative—which ultimately passed—on the ballot. At the time, he told The New York Times that he made the donation because of “my Catholic faith and longtime affiliation with the Catholic Church,” which preferred that marriage remain between a man and a woman. Indeed, the Catholic Church has vehemently opposed gay marriage. Then again, it’s also not too keen on divorce.

On Oct. 9, 2008, Manchester ended 43 years, eight months and nine days of marriage to Elizabeth Manchester by moving out of their La Jolla abode. The couple spent the next several months trying to reach a quiet settlement on how best to distribute millions of dollars in cash and other assets. In July, those talks totally broke down, and Doug started playing financial hardball with Elizabeth, allegedly draining the couple’s shared accounts and stealing her mail…

Let me guess…it was all those same-sex marriages the California supreme court allowed to stand that caused their divorce.  Manchester was a critical player in the battle over Proposition 8.  Specifically, he provided a big chunk of the cash that helped it get on the ballot…

Developer Doug Manchester and other prominent San Diego County businessmen have given significant financial support to an initiative that would ban same-sex marriage targeted for the November statewide ballot.

Manchester’s $125,000 donation has prompted a gay-rights activist to urge a boycott of the Manchester Grand Hyatt and the Manchester-owned San Diego Marriott Hotel and Marina.

In addition to Manchester, Mission Valley developer Terry Caster has donated $162,500; Robert Hoehn, owner of Hoehn Motors in Carlsbad, has given $25,000; and La Jolla businessman Roger Benson has given $50,000, state records show.

Manchester said he was motivated by his strong Catholic faith.

“I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman,” he said.

Donations from San Diego residents make up a significant part of the $1 million raised for the initiative.

That has allowed the campaign to hire professional signature gatherers to help collect the 700,000 signatures needed to qualify the constitutional amendment for the ballot, said Andrew Pugno, an attorney for Protectmarriage.com, which is sponsoring the amendment. 

So now this prize bigot, after forcibly divorcing thousands of same sex couples in California, is having himself a messy divorce.  Sweet.  I hope your wife drags you over a bed of hot nails Doug.  I hope she makes your life a living hell.  And if you ever find yourself wondering why your private life has become so much fun and games for so many total strangers who don’t know you from Adam, go ask the jackass you see every morning in the bathroom mirror who it was that turned marriage into a scorched earth battleground and see if he doesn’t laugh in your face like I’m laughing in your face.

Last week the APA released its report on ex-gay therapy, to a somewhat muted response from the charlatans of the ex-gay political machine.  Oh yes…we’re so very happy that the APA acknowledges that a patient’s religious needs must be taken into account, they said, politely skimming over the overwhelming evidence that trying to force gay people into straight jackets harms them deeply.  You had to expect they wouldn’t leave it at that.

Now comes the "final" release of the Jones and Yarhouse "study" of ex-gay "therapy"…touted in that well known scientific peer reviewed publication, the Baptist Press…

Study: Ex-gay ministry has 53 percent success rate

Sure it does.  You read through the brief article for a while and, of course, you see little nuggets like this one pop out at you:

Jones expressed frustration that the APA task force didn’t take their 2007 study seriously.

"They selectively apply rigorous scientific standards," he said…

Yes.  Of course.  It’s all a consperacy of the scientists to further the militant homosexual agenda.  Oh…have I meantioned that Exodus paid Jones and Yarhouse for their labors?  Naturally that didn’t affect their scientific rigorousity I’m sure.

Or…not…

While Jones and Yarhouse’s study appears to be very well designed, it quickly falls apart on execution. The sample size was disappointingly small, too small for an effective retrospective study. They told a reporter from Christianity Today that they had hoped to recruit some three hundred participants, but they found “many Exodus ministries mysteriously uncooperative.” They only wound up with 98 at the beginning of the study (72 men and 26 women), a population they describe as “respectably large.” Yet it is half the size of Spitzer’s 2003 study.

Jones and Yarhouse wanted to limit their study’s participants to those who were in their first year of ex-gay ministry. But when they found that they were having trouble getting enough people to participate (they only found 57 subject who met this criteria), they expanded their study to include 41 subjects who had been involved in ex-gay ministries for between one to three years. The participants who had been in ex-gay ministries for less than a year are referred to as “Phase 1″ subpopulation, and the 41 who were added to increase the sample size were labeled the “Phase 2″ subpopulation.

This poses two critically important problems. First, we just saw Jones and Yarhouse explain that the whole reason they did a prospective study was to reduce the faulty memories of “change experiences that happened in their pasts” — errors which can occur when asking people to go back as far as three years to assess their beginning points on the Kinsey and Shively-DeCecco scales. This was the very problem that Jones and Yarhouse hoped to avoid in designing a prospective longitudinal study, but in the end nearly half of their results ended up being based on retrospective responses.

-Jim Burroway, Box Turtle Bulletin,  September 17th, 2007 – A Preliminary Review of Jones and Yarhouse’s "Ex-Gay? A Longitudinal Study"

[Emphasis mine] So basically their data was corrupted by the same half-assed sloppiness of the Spitzer study.  Oh but wait…it gets better.  Again from Burroway…

Whenever a longitudinal study is being conducted over a period of several years, there are always dropouts along the way. This is common and to be expected. That makes it all the more important to begin the study with a large population. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t terribly large to begin with; it started out at less than half the size of Spitzer’s 2003 study. Jones and Yarhouse report that:

Over time, our sample eroded from 98 subjects at our initial Time 1 assessment to 85 at Time 2 and 73 at Time 3, which is a Time 1 to Time 3 retention rate of 74.5%. This retention rate compares favorable to that of the best “gold standard” longitudinal studies. For example, the widely respected and amply funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health study reported a retention rate from Time 1 to Time 3 of 73% for their enormous sample.

The Add Health Study Jones and Yarhouse cite began with 20,745 in 1996, ending with 15,170 during Wave 3 in 2001-2002. But this retention rate of 73% was spread over some 5-6 years, not the three to four years of Jones and Yarhouse’s study.

What’s more, the Add Health study undertook a rigorous investigation of their dropouts (PDF: 228KB/17 pages) and concluded that the dropouts affected their results by less than 1 percent. Jones and Yarhouse didn’t assess the impact of their dropouts, but they did say this:

We know from direct conversation that a few subjects decided to accept gay identity and did not believe that we would honestly report data on their experience. On the other hand, we know from direct conversations that we lost other subjects who believed themselves healed of all homosexual inclinations and who withdrew from the study because continued participation reminded them of the very negative experiences they had had as homosexuals. Generally speaking, as is typical, we lost subjects for unknown reasons.

Remember, Jones and Yarhouse described those “experiencing difficulty with change would be likely to get frustrated or discouraged early on and drop out of the change process.” And so assessing the dropouts becomes critically important, because unlike the Add Health study, the very reason for dropping out of this study may have direct bearing on both questions the study was designed to address: Do people change, and are they harmed by the process? With as much as a quarter of the initial population dropping out potentially for reasons directly related to the study’s questions, this missing analysis represents a likely critical failure, one which could potentially invalidate the study’s conclusions.

[Emphasis mine] Harm…what harm?  We didn’t speak to anyone who was harmed…

But look a tad more closely at what Jones and Yarhouse "know"…

On the other hand, we know from direct conversations that we lost other subjects who believed themselves healed of all homosexual inclinations and who withdrew from the study because continued participation reminded them of the very negative experiences they had had as homosexuals.

Healed.  Healed.  They believed themselves healed.  Not cured.  Not changed.  But…healed.  This is the language of religion, not science.  And now you know where Jones and Yarhouse were coming from, and why they were good with allowing data into their study that could only weaken it from a scientific point of view. 

It didn’t matter.  They needed bodies to get a big enough sample size that they could plausibly go on with it and give the kook pews something they could wave around and claim that scientists were conspiring against them on behalf of the godless homosexual menace.  They would have known going into it, that the APA would regard their study as flawed because they engineered the flaws into it themselves.  Anyone who was serious about it would have gone back to their funding and told them they couldn’t do it without more first year subjects (a lot more), and more participation from the drop-outs.  But they kept on with it anyway.  Because knowing whether or not ex-gay therapy works wasn’t the point.  Knowing whether or not it harms the very people it purports to help wasn’t the point.  Having something to wave back at the APA was the point.  That promise that they would report the results whether or not they embarrassed Exodus was as empty as the promise that "change is possible".   Neither one had a money back guarantee.

[Update…]  Yarhouse is identified Here, as an evangelical psychologist and graduate of Regent University.  Regent is Pat Robertson’s baby.  This man is as likely to be objective about ex-gay therapy as he is to be a flying pig.   Jones is of Wheaton College, which is described by The Princeton Review’s Best 351 Colleges thusly: "If the integration of faith and learning is what you want out of a college, Wheaton is arguably the best school in the nation with a Christ-based worldview."   Well this team really looks like a couple of objective researchers to me…

[Update again…]  Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin goes another round with this "study"…finds it not too much different from the previous round…

In short, the Jones and Yarhouse study was funded and fully supported by Exodus and conducted by two researchers who were avid supporters of ex-gay ministries. They wanted to study 300 participants, but after more than a year, they could only find 57 willing to participate. They then changed the rules for acceptance in order to increase the total to 98. After following this sample for 4 years, 25 dropped out. Of the remainder, only 11 reported “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.” Another 17 decided that a lifetime of celibacy was good enough.

Good enough for the Baptist Press!

Captain Obvious has a message for all you ATM thieves out there.  If you’re planning on planting one of your fake ATM bank card skimming machines inside a hotel lobby, don’t do it at one that’s hosting a hacker’s conference…

As the conference was kicking off a few days ago, attendees noticed that at ATM placed in the Riviera Hotel, which plays host to the annual event, didn’t quite look right, according to a senior conference organizer who identified himself only as Priest. "They looked at the screen where there would normally be a camera," he said. "It was a little bit too dark, so someone shined a flashlight in there and there was a PC."

Two headlines crossed my screen the other day…one concerning yet another grotesque MAFRIAA file sharing judgment.  The other, this little tidbit from SlashDot…

The Music Industry’s Crisis Writ Large 

The NY Times has an opinion piece that makes starkly clear the financial decline of the music industry. It’s accompanied by an infographic that cleverly renders the drop-off. The latest culprit accelerating the undoing of the music business is free, legal online music streaming.

"Since music sales peaked in 1999, the value of those sales, after adjusting for inflation, has dropped by more than half. At that rate, the industry could be decimated before Madonna’s 60th birthday. … 13- to 17-year-olds acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007. CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent. … [T]he percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music ‘regularly’ and nearly a third listen to it every day."

The moron who wrote that Time’s piece, seems to agree with the Music Industrial Complex that the internet is killing the business.  Starting off with how the speed at which the industry is falling apart is "utterly breathtaking", he proceeds, as in the quote above, to blame this new fangled thing called streaming music.

First, piracy punched a big hole in it. Now music streaming — music available on demand over the Internet, free and legal — is poised to seal the deal.

Okay…when I was a kid, streaming music was called RADIO.  And we listened to it constantly.  For…free.  Yes it had advertising…but back then it wasn’t the constant barrage of screaming in your face ads that broadcast radio is now. And then, as now, RADIO doesn’t pay per song royalties (at least not here in the U.S.).  They pay a flat licensing fee to the big music royalty groups, that’s based on a sampling survey of their programming.  Internet streaming radio on the other hand, has to pay Per Song Served.  So…yes Mr. New York Times…kids are listening to steaming music for free.  That doesn’t mean the Music Industrial Complex isn’t getting any money from it.  In fact, they’re getting more Per Song then then get from broadcast radio.

When I was a kid back in the late 60s and early 70s, we listened to tons of music for free…on the RADIO.  And what was more, if you had a good tape recorder and a good radio, you could tape the music you were listening to and play it back later, as often as you liked.  But back then there was an incentive not to.  You could actually buy the songs you really liked for a price most of us kids could afford.  This New York Times jackass seems to want everyone to forget that…

This is part of a much broader shift in media consumption by young people. They’re moving from an acquisition model to an access model.

Even if they choose to buy the music, the industry has handicapped its ability to capitalize on that purchase by allowing all songs to be bought individually, apart from their albums. This once seemed like a blessing. Now it looks more like a curse.

In previous forms, you had to take the bad with the good. You may have only wanted two or three songs, but you had to buy the whole 8-track, cassette or CD to get them. So in a sense, these bad songs help finance the good ones. The resulting revenue provided a cushion for the artists and record companies to take chances and make mistakes. Single song downloads helped to kill that.

Previous Forms.  Previous Forms.  Previous Forms. 

Ahem…

This is a shot I took of myself (before the haircut…) with my 45rpm collection for a post last year.  These are Singles.  Well…doubles if you counted the B side that nobody ever listened to.  That was what you bought back then when you were a kid in the 1960s into the early 70s.  Yes…even during the days of the 8 track tapes.   Music stores back then usually had a whole wall devoted to the 45 rpm singles, and they were all the top forty tunes, plus a lot of also-rans that sold enough to keep them on the shelves.  Singles didn’t kill the music business back then.  They brought tons of money into it.  That was how teenagers bought music back then.  Because that was what we could afford.  Teenagers you see, have no money.

Those 8 track tape machines, an early attempt at letting car owners play their own tunes while they drove, were for…car owners.  And they were an expensive add-on.  And so were the tapes, which often jammed after getting warped while baking inside a car.  Kids…that same age group that Mr. New York Times is bellyaching aren’t buying enough albums anymore…didn’t buy 8 track tapes, and only bought an album if it was a particularly favorite group and you had the money.  So the Beatles for example, sold tons of albums.  But super star bands like the Beatles were the exception.  Until the mid 70s, most top-40 hits were singles and they were all available as 45rpm singles.

But the Music Industrial Complex wanted more.  So they decided kill the single, to force listeners to buy albums.  And in the late 70s it worked pretty much.  We boomer children were getting older, had jobs, had money, and albums then weren’t extravagantly expensive compared to singles.  You could buy a Led Zepplin album for about 5 to 8 bucks depending on where you shopped.  Singles by then were selling for around a buck twenty-five, so if an album was mostly good to listen to, it made more sense to buy the album instead.  But soon, many of the top-forty hits couldn’t be found on singles.  That was a decision the music companies made, and…surprise, surprise…kids started taping songs and passing them around instead of buying. Music sharing didn’t start with the Internet and this generation of teenagers didn’t invent it.

You really began to see that the greed of the music companies would eventually kill them with the advent of the Compact Disk.  Initially their expense was related to the newness of the technology, and its superiority over the vinyl record.  But the price never came down and it’s still outrageously high.  I remember one day shopping at Tower Records, and seeing a set of new releases of James Bond movie scores (I am a film music buff…).  I picked up a few, thinking that my old vinyl LPs were getting a little worn and it would be nice to have fresh, all digital copies.  I picked up a copy of Dr. No….From Russia With Love…GoldFinger…Thunderball…Live And Let Die…  I had five CDs in hand and was about to walk to the cashier when I realized I was holding, and $22 a pop which was the price then, over one-hundred dollars of CDs in my hands…and there were only five of them.  So I put them back. 

Eventually I bought them second-hand for a lot less.  I was a grown adult then, with a job that let me afford to buy CDs at the grossly inflated price the Music Industrial Complex was charging for them, and I still balked.  $110…plus tax…for just five albums?  I just couldn’t justify it.  What the hell did the music companies think teenagers were going to do when faced with that decision?  Let me see…  Er…make copies?

The Music Industrial Complex profits from album sales in the 70s, and CD sales in the 90s were driven by the shear size of the baby boomer population.  We liked our rock bands.  We had jobs in the late 70s, and vinyl LPs were affordable, so the disappearance of the 45rpm single didn’t bother us too much.  In the 90s we were buying our old favorite albums all over again in CDs and we had careers by then and we could afford it.  But teenagers have no money.

If your business model is based on the impulse buying habits of teenagers, you need to make your product affordable to them.  And convenient enough that the impulse to buy won’t flip over to the impulse to…well…borrow a friend’s copy and copy it.  You can lecture them all you want about stealing, but when you can’t afford to buy music you copy it and that’s what a teenager is going to do.  Ask me how I know.  I still have those hours of music tapes I made off the radio.  The nice thing about taping music off the radio I discovered back in the early 70s, was you could skip over the commercials.

Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Linda in San Diego…

Un…

I am against the gay pride parade. 

Deux…

It is never report about the luid acts that happen down and around that area.

Trois…

I had friends go down there for dinner not realizing about the parade.

Quatre…

The cops have been told to ignore these acts of luidness.

Cinq…

Please stop this gross parade.

Six…

Oh by the way I do have gay friends.

Le Curtian…Applaus a Voux…

From our We’re Not Racists We Just Believe In Racial Purity Department…

Fox News’ Kilmeade: We "marry other species," Finns "pure"

Kilmeade and two colleagues were discussing a study that, based on research done in Finland and Sweden, showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Kilmeade questioned the results, though, saying, "We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other …"

At this point, his co-host tried to — in that jokey morning show way — tell Kilmeade he needed to shut up, and quick, for his own sake. But he didn’t get the message, adding, "See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes …. Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society."

You can see the video of it on Salon.  I suppose they’ll be touting the benefits of incest on FOX News next.  It doesn’t get much purer then that…

Guess which brave and righteous crusader for Traditional Marriage is having a wee problem with his moral compass now.  Go ahead.  Guess…

I’ll give you a hint…

April 29, 2009: Marion Barry Reneges on Marriage Equality, Calls Himself "Moral Leader" at Anti-Gay Protest

In June 2008, Washington D.C. Council member and former mayor Marion Barry declared his support for same-sex marriage in the District. Three weeks ago Barry co-sponsored the District law that recognizes legal same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The former mayor now breaks his promise and appears at an anti-gay rally organized by the publicity-hungry gay-bashing Bishop Harry Jackson of the Hope Christian Church in nearby Beltsville. Barry and Jackson call marriage equality "immoral."  

Oh…you’d like Another hint would you?  Well…okay…

May 5, 2009: Barry Warns of "Civil War" Over Gay Marriage

D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), the only council member to vote against the bill today to legalize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, predicted today there could be a "civil war" in the District if the Council decides to take up a broader gay marriage bill later this year.

"All hell is going to break lose," Barry said while speaking to reporters. "We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this."

Barry made his remarks a few hours after a group of same-sex marriage opponents, led by black ministers, caused uproar in the Wilson Building after the Council voted 12 to 1 to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. They caused such a ruckus that security guards and police had to clear the hallway. The protesters shouted that council members who voted for the bill will face retribution at the polls.

This was a hard one I know…

July 6, 2009:  The Charge Against Barry: Stalking His Ex-Girlfriend

U.S. Park Service Police arrested Barry (D-Ward 8) about 8:45 p.m. in Anacostia Park after a woman flagged down an officer to report that a man in a nearby vehicle was "bothering her," police said.

After interviewing Barry and Watts-Brighthaupt, Barry, 73, was charged with one count of "misdemeanor stalking," said Sgt. David Schlosser, a Park Police spokesman. Barry, on probation for failing to pay his federal taxes, was released hours later and ordered to appear in court Thursday.

It’s a girlfriend who broke up with him and says he won’t leave her alone.  Except they had lunch together that same day and she’s saying now she didn’t ask for him to be arrested.  This is the same girlfriend he bought a eight-hundred dollar coat for at auction while he was struggling to repay the back taxes he’s on probation now for not paying.  Moral Leadership.

Tune in again next week when our topic will be: Moral Leaders And Their Soulmates…featuring Marion Barry and Mark Sanford.

High Finance edition…

Feds seize Madoff penthouse, wife leaves

NEW YORK – Federal marshals seized disgraced financier Bernard Madoff’s $7 million Manhattan penthouse on Thursday and forced his wife to move out and leave her possessions behind, including a fur coat she had asked to take with her, an official told The Associated Press.

…U.S. Marshal Joseph Guccione said the marshals arrived at the property at noon with a court order permitting them to take custody of the apartment and to make anyone living there move out. Guccione said Madoff’s wife Ruth had been advised in advance of the marshals’ plans and was leaving the residence and surrendering all personal property.

"She will be leaving," he said at midday. "Restitution for the victims is the government’s top priority."

There are the people he took money from.  But I wonder if he ever thought about what he was doing to his wife too…

As Jim Burroway remarked last night on Facebook, I had no idea "Hiking the Appalachian Trail" meant that…

Mark Sanford.  Republican.  Conservative.  Sexual moralist.  Fierce defender of Traditional Marriage.  Protecting innocent children from the homosexual agenda.  Upholding his state’s reputation as a place decent normal families can come visit…

Adulterer…

S.C. Governor demands personnel and procedure changes in tourism fracas

When South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford learned that his state was being advertised as a gay tourism destination, he ordered a Cabinet-level department head “to do the right thing personnel-wise or process-wise to ensure this does not happen again,” Sanford’s spokesman Joel Sawyer told Q-Notes.

Sanford was reacting to U.S. media reports that a subway poster mounted in London, England, during Gay Pride week was announcing, “South Carolina is so gay.”

A state employee who approved the ads was called to a meeting with management and resigned, according to Marion Edmonds, spokesman for the state’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism (PRT).

If the employee broke any rule in the conduct of her job, it was apparently an unwritten one.

…

Governor Sanford mandated that PRT director Chad Prosser will from now on have to personally sign off on all advertising campaigns, Sawyer said.

Drum roll please…

Sanford admits to affair

S.C. Governor Mark Sanford has admitted to being unfaithful to his wife, and stated in his press conference at 2:30 p.m. that this was the reason he was in Argentina for Father’s Day instead of at home with his family.

I don’t want to hear one more word about how horrible it is that teh gays hold their parades every year on Father’s Day.  Oh…and his mistress is also married…

Seemingly fighting tears at times, he said the situation holds a certain irony. He said his mistress is also married and has two children.

Good thing we have people like you keeping children safe from all those same-sex households, so they won’t grow up with a twisted set of values.

Another day…another anti-gay culture warrior pops out of the philanderer closet. So…"I believe in traditional marriage" is a euphemism for "I’m cheating on my spouse" is it? 

Nevada Senator John Ensign.  Republican.  Conservative.  Sexual moralist.  Fierce defender of Traditional Marriage.  Adulterer…

SEN. JOHN ENSIGN’S ADMISSION: ‘Last year I had an affair’

Calling it "absolutely the worst thing that I’ve ever done in my life," U.S. Sen. John Ensign admitted Tuesday that he had an affair with a campaign staffer last year.

"If there was ever anything that I could take back in my life, this would be it," Ensign, 51, said Tuesday afternoon in Las Vegas, reading from a prepared statement in a brief news conference at which he took no questions.

Ensign would support amendment banning gay marriage

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Ensign cautioned that changing the Constitution should not be done lightly.

After evaluating the idea of President Bush’s recommendation of such an amendment Tuesday, Ensign said he believes it is necessary "to protect the institution of marriage in America."

"In order to defend the institution of marriage, uphold the rights of individual states and maintain the will of the people, I believe we are compelled to amend our country’s Constitution," Ensign said.

So many righteous defenders of marriage.  So many marriages needing defending from their defenders.  It wasn’t gay people who broke your marriage vows jackass.  It was you.  Stop blaming other people for your own pathetic failures of moral character.  We are your neighbors, not your scapegoats.  Leave us the fuck out of your problems.  If you had minded your own goddamned business instead of dumping your cheapshit bar stool moralizing on other people you might still have a reputation to defend, let alone a marriage.

Via Digby…  Le Dance Pathetique…as choreographed by Joe The Plumber…

Q: In the last month, same-sex marriage has become legal in Iowa and Vermont. What do you think about same-sex marriage at a state level?

Un…

Joe The Pumber: At a state level, it’s up to them. I don’t want it to be a federal thing.

Deux…

I personally still think it’s wrong.

Trois…

People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer.

Quatre…

Queer means strange and unusual.

Cinq…

It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that.

Six…

You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for.

Sept…

Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins.

Huit…

I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual.

Neuf…

And, I mean, they know where I stand…

Dix…

…and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children.

Onze…

But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.

Le Curtian…Applaus a Voux…

Dan Savage over at SLOG reports thusly…

Married conservative Catholic—married arch-conservative Catholic—Mel Gibson hits the red carpet with his new girlfriend.

Gotta love them deeply held religious beliefs.

Via Dispatches From The Culture Wars…

From Pat Robertson, speaking about the DHS report on right wing extremists:

"It shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question. But it’s that kind of thing, somebody who doesn’t think that we should have abortion on demand, is labeled a terrorist! It’s outrageous."

Peter LaBarbera, responding to criticism from Glenn Sacks…

 Are you a homosexual, Glenn?

And then there’s good old Scott Lively wandering around the globe telling people that genocide is caused by homosexuals When I was a kid, it was the Communists who were secretly behind every hidden plot the lunatic right was babbling on about.  Now it’s Teh Gays. 

Mrs. California apparently doesn’t much like them thar gays…

"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised."

You were raised to parade around in front of TV cameras in high heels and a tiny little bikini were you?  Then later, out comes this…

"It is a very touchy subject and [Perez Hilton] is a homosexual and I see where he was coming from and I see the audience would’ve wanted me to be more politically correct," she added. "But I was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything."

and still later…

"I think Mr. Mellish is a traitor to this country because his views are different from the views of the President and others of his kind. Differences of opinion should be tolerated, but not when they’re too different. Then he becomes a subversive mother."

No…wait…  I’m confusing Carrie Prejean with a different Mrs. America.

I’ll endure George Will’s half-assed There Is No Such Thing As Global Warming claptrap…but by god not this…

Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy’s catechism of leveling — thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism — of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances.

Sure George…whatever…

I can’t think of a better reason for the existence of blue jeans then human skin.  Snuggled up there at the hips, that little gap between denim and flesh is just so damn lovely you can’t look away.  Or at least I can’t.  Polyester just doesn’t cut it.  Neither do dockers.  Blue jeans are that perfect marriage of form and function, utility and art, durable and almost unbearably sexy.  Low class is a mindset, not what you wear.  There are a lot of low class assholes in this world, wearing very expensive clothes made from rare and expensive fabrics that can’t hide the asshole that face and body language give away.

I have a couple-dozen or so jeans in my closet, each with their own personality if you will.  Patterns of wear and fading…slight differences in fit…dark blue, black, low risers, boot and straight leg…they each require careful consideration.  Do I wear the light stone washed 527s I bought last July, or that pair of nicely faded 501’s that’s almost a year old now, but fits perfectly in all the right places?  Or maybe the new pair that looks really sharp with the red SM-4 Mission shirt I got last September?  Decisions…decisions. 

I like how guys look in jeans.  I like how I look in them.  And let it be said, they keep me in line.  They are my motivation to stay in shape…or as much shape as a nerdy fifty-something IT worker can stay.  As I get older it gets harder to keep my waistline in control.  But swear to God I’ll eat birdseed for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes to wear my blue jeans and they fit right and I’m not not looking like…well…like this sad example of malehood they found over at Fark.Com…

Denim is what people who don’t care about what they look like wear.  Yellow saggy polyester pants and a shirt that telegraphs to the whole goddamned world that lazy ass self indulgence isn’t just for welfare state liberals…that’s okay.  Mature.  Sensible.  Ugh.  Just…ugh.  I’ll endure lectures on what a well dressed male looks like from a lot of people…but not you bow-tie boy…

[Edited a tad…]