Category Archives: news

Premiere Imagined Injury Firm

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I was going to write about all the people wailing about the harm that marriage equality is causing the world, such as an email from the National Organization for Marriage which asked for donations eight times. Eight pleas (each with a link to the donate button back on their web page!) in a single email message!

But then Mark Fiore posted this funny video that says it better than I could:

And while I’m linking, PolitiFact takes a look at the other claim being thrown around by the anti-gay folks: Wedding vendors have been forced to participate in same-sex marriages under threat or even jail, Family Research Council president says.

The concept of businesses as public accommodations which cannot discriminate against customers has been around for a lot longer than the gay marriage debate—the 1964 Civil Rights Act, for instance. If you are open to the public and offering goods and services for sale, you can’t discriminate. To a lot of people this sounds odd, until you frame it this way:

Imagine a grocery store owner in a small rural community, it’s the only grocery store for miles. Should that grocery store owner be able to refuse to sell food to someone because of his personal beliefs? “No Lutherans Allowed,” for instance?

You buy a business license, you hang your sign out, you open your doors (accessed by public roads and public sidewalks), and you say, “Come in and buy!” Then you have to open those doors to everyone who will pay, behave civilly, and so on. It doesn’t matter if you’re a grocery store, or a restaurant, or a bakery, or a flower shop. You have offered your merchandise to the general public, you have to allow the general public to buy them.

It’s really that simple.

The coffeehouse closes

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I don’t remember exactly when it was that I first read a post at Pam’s House Blend. One of the other news blogs I read posted a link to a story, I clicked it, and was immediately charmed by the logo of a coffee cup next to the blog title, with the tag line, “Always steamin'”

The blog, and its creator, Pam Spaulding, has been a good source for news related to the equality—particularly for women, racial minorities, and the LGBT community. Writing from North Carolina, Pam brought us news and commentary leavened with a bit of humor and the friendly attitude implied by the coffeehouse theme. Both Pam and the blog have won awards for online journalism.

I really felt as if I were sitting down with a cup of coffee and chatting about the news while reading her blog.

Today is the last day for Pam’s House Blend. In her announcement (which I linked above) about closing down the blog, she mentions her health issues, and alludes to the difficulties in being an unpaid citizen journalist while trying to keep one’s day job.

I know some of her regular contributors will be launching a new blog to continue reporting on the types of issues Pam’s House Blend was known for. And anyone who has read her commentaries knows that Pam is going to keep speaking her mind and standing up against prejudice.

But I’m going to miss my regular visits to the virtual coffee house.

Farewell, Pam, and thanks.

I’m not the only skeptic

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My earlier post about the apology issued by Exodus International President, Alan Chambers, just hours before they officially announced they were shutting down wasn’t the only one that expressed skepticism. But there were a lot more places out their taking only a very superficial read of the apology on the first couple of days.

I don’t claim any special knowledge. All I did was read every word of the long apology as posted by Mr Chambers, and then read a live blog from the conference of the closure announcement, and then read the entire official statement published by the organization. A simple, literal reading of each entire statement reveals that, contrary to how some people reported it, they are not renouncing their condemnation of homosexuality they are not abandoning their insistence that gay people must either be celibate or enter into an opposite sex sham relationship to be “right with god,” and they are not apologizing for the harm they caused.

But don’t take my word for it:

John Shore: An open letter to Exodus International’s super-remorseful Alan Chambers. His first money quote:

And congratulations on all the press coverage your apology is receiving!… Why, it’s almost like you’ve been strategically planning your heartfelt apology for months!

But he gets bonus points for:

…you’re no different from the guy saying, “I apologize for being the leader of a group of white-hooded KKK guys who burned a cross on your lawn. That was wrong. You n—–s still need to go, of course. But we’re gonna stop with the hoods and the cross burnings. People just don’t get behind that the way they used to. So we’re gonna regroup, lose the name ‘KKK,’ and come up with a more acceptable way of promoting what we believe. Isn’t that great?!”

When I read that one to my husband, he said, “Yeah! We’re not going to wear those white hoods any more. Now we’re dressing up in blue hood. Blue’s a warm, welcoming, friendly color, right? What? You say they still look like the same old white hoods? No! They’re blue! It’s just a very, very pale blue…”

And how about Emily K- LGBTQ’s to The Organization Once Known as Exodus International: It’s Still Your Move:

An apology from an organization with a history of purging content from their website without an official redaction will always ring hollow. Closing it down and launching a new one like the last one didn’t exist won’t cut it. Let me be clear: There’s nothing shameful about admitting the terrible things you wrote and said were wrong, and taking full responsibility for them. In fact, this is an honorable and difficult thing to do. The problem is, the people who once led Exodus haven’t done this yet.

Then there’s Jane Brazell: Exodus International: harm repackaged is still harm, where it is noted:

We lost friends, family, and community; we were told that we would not inherit the Kingdom of God – that we were no longer a child of God. That’s what I wanted to hear from him. I wanted to hear that he sees LGBTQ people as holy, that our relationships are holy, that we are in fact beloved children of God and that nothing will separate us from that love. I wanted to hear that he recognizes the courage it took for us to come out and live wholly before God and the world. I didn’t hear that…

And then here’s one where the person ignores all the parts of the apology where they said, “if some people felt pain” rather than “we harmed people,” but she still isn’t giving them a pass: Rev. Dr. Cindi Love: Apologies Are Too Late When the Damage Is Already Done. Money quote:

“Unfortunately, they misled the people they claimed to want to “help.” Last year, Exodus President Alan Chambers reported that 99.9 percent of people who engaged in reparative therapy did not change their orientation.”

And, as several of us predicted, they’ve already announced the formation of a new ministry to create “mutually transforming communities” which they plan to call ReducedFear.Org. Transforming? Right, totally different than “curing” or “repairing” or “changing”—oh, wait, it isn’t.

But it is exactly the opposite of “accepting” or “affirming.”

Hardly a first step

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So, Exodus International, the oldest of the so-called ex-gay/reparative therapy ministries announced last night that they are closing down. A few hours before the announcement, which they made at a conference full of their members, the current president of the organization, Alan Chambers, issued an apology to the gay/lesbian/bi/trans community.

Other religious conservatives are angry, calling them sell-outs and worse.

A lot of other people at the other end of the political spectrum seem to be very surprised that most of us gay people aren’t jumping up and down with joy, accepting the apology, and saying that all is forgiven because someone has said they’re sorry. They are disappointed that we don’t seem to understand that saying you’re sorry is only the first step in the type of redemption and forgiveness model that the people who work for Exodus International have been raised in.

I agree that an apology is only the first step—and it is an important step—in the process of making amends. Except, in order to be that first step, the apology has to be for the actual wrong that you have committed. This apology is not that in the slightest.

The bulk of the apology is about incidental things. He apologizes that some (many) of the counsellors used the so-called therapy as a way to gratify their own sexual desires. He apologizes because some people “found a message rather than mission”—which may qualify as the most convoluted way to say, “if people were offended” ever. He apologizes for neglecting to mention in his own personal story that the so-called cure has never actually made his own attraction to members of the same sex go away. He apologizes for “failing to acknowledge the pain some people experienced.”

It goes on and on. But he never apologizes for the actual wrong: he never apologizes for lying, living the lie, or pressuring other people to live the same lie. In fact, he explicitly says that he is not apologizing for his “deeply held biblical beliefs.” And that’s the heart of the problem. They may be deeply held beliefs, but they aren’t biblical. Don’t go quoting that tired verse from Leviticus at me unless you’re prepared for a long lecture about declensions in Hebrew, and unless you’ve been willing to stone someone to death for the abomination of wearing clothes made of more than one kind of fabric, okay?

In their long announcement at the conference of their decision to close down, one of the board members said, “We’re not negating the ways God used Exodus to positively affect thousands of people…”

Except that nothing positive has ever been accomplished by this group. Nothing. Guilting, coercing, and bullying people into denying their feelings, luring them in with the false hope (and they’ve known it was a false hope for well more than a decade or two) of a “cure,” then handing them instead a lifetime without love, affection, or intimacy are not positive things. Bullying people until they commit suicide is not a positive thing. Encouraging parents to kick their gay children who don’t change after going through the torture they call therapy out on the street is not a positive thing.

I admit that I am not impartial. While I have never been through any of these therapies, I have had friends and relatives who did give them a try. Most of them survived. One wound up killing himself outright. Another essentially drank himself to death over the course of a few years. One cousin who went through ex-gay therapy has lived his entire life since alone, never dating anyone. He’s dependent on antidepressants and some other drug he once called his “temptation dampener.” I have no idea what the second drug actually is, because among the bewildering array of rules and restrictions he has continued to live under for years is a prohibition against talking unsupervised with anyone who is openly gay or who was supportive of him when he was “in the lifestyle.”

Other relatives have refused to accept me for who I am, and/or refused to welcome my husband (either Ray when he was still alive, or now more than a decade and a half after Ray’s death, Michael), precisely because that one cousin has “been able to change.”

The god they claim to believe in promised not just life, but life abundant. Living alone, constantly afraid of talking to the wrong person, afraid that a little emotional intimacy might lead to forbidden acts, only getting through the day with the help of drugs to kill the libido, and other drugs to kill the very natural depression that comes from living alone, afraid of any intimacy, and a drug-neutralized libido is not abundant life.

The truth is that Exodus and their ilk have lost the fight on a society-wide level. All of these anti-gay organizations have seen their donor pools shrink dramatically in the last few years. Support is dropping off even among many traditional conservative religious circles. Support is practically non-existent among teen and early-twenties aged evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Surveys indicate that a major factor in many young adults leaving the churches in which they were raised is all the anti-gay rhetoric. The writing is on the wall. These guys aren’t shutting down because they’ve had a change of heart. They are shutting down in hopes of re-grouping and finding a new way to attract donors and supporters.

And to top it all off, their deflecting, delusional, and self-serving announcement about why they are closing ended by quoting a bible verse that used to be my favorite, John 16:33. They quoted a different translation than my preferred one. I’m going to stick with mine: “In the world you will face tribulation, but be of good cheer! For I have overcome the world.”

That may be what has angered me most about their non-apology. They have not faced tribulation, they are the tribulation others have faced. They have institutionalized bigotry, and turned it into a process which does not spread love and joy and forgiveness, but rather grinds people down with shame, fear, and lies. They are the very thing that their lord came to overcome, not the other way around.

If they ever realize that, if they ever apologize for being so very, very wrong, I might be willing to consider it their first step in a process by which they may eventually earn forgiveness.

But so far, they aren’t even looking in the right direction.

Privatization vs Free Market

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Some years ago a friend was complaining about the cost of a particular computer accessory. Another friend said, “You just need to encourage people to buy them. As soon as demand goes up, prices will come down.”

I couldn’t quite believe what I heard, so I asked the second friend to repeat it. Then asked a couple of follow-up questions, to clarify. Yep, her understanding of the Law of Supply and Demand was: “When demand goes up, suppliers figure out how to lower prices.”

So I had to explain that the Laws of Supply and Demand describes how economic equilibrium changes in a competitive market. If demand goes up, while nothing else changes, then price will also go up, not down. One way to get to the lower prices is for demand to get high enough that more suppliers see a chance to make a profit and jump into the market, leading to supply going up, which tends to push prices down, which in turn may make some suppliers try to find ways to more cheaply produce their supply (in order to preserve their profits), et cetera. The end result may be that prices go down, but it takes a few back and forths of the seesaw before that happens.

Her response: “Well, my major was Literature, so of course I never took any Economics classes in college.”

I told her that I’d learned about supply and demand in middle school social studies. And then been taught it again in high school civics.

“Really? What does economics have to do with society or government?”

Watching how my state’s liquor privatization adventure has played out brought that flabbergasting question back to mind.

For a long time, liquor sales and distribution in Washington state were regulated by a state-appointed board. The board had been set up in response to the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which repealed Federal Prohibition and sent the regulation of the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol back to the states. Among the goals the board was tasked with were to provide uniform pricing and uniform availability throughout the state, as there was a feeling that rural residents had been gouged by suppliers in the past.

There were many other factors in play. The complex and sometimes very dysfunctional relationship society has with the use of intoxicants, the moral absolutism some people project on intoxicants, as well as a tendency to look for simple solutions to complex problems (which had led to Prohibition in the first place) insured that.

There had been many previous attempts to privatize the distribution of alcohol. Most of the legislative attempts bogged down over economic issues, rather than moral arguments. Timid legislators have increasingly turned to cigarette and alcohol tax increases to close gaps in state revenue, as it is harder to rally the public against a tax increase on substances that many feel were sinful, and which very few feel are necessities. There is also the fact that some (and sometimes most) of the costs of individual misuse of alcohol falls on the public, not just the person(s) directly involved.

Since a privatization initiative nearly passed a couple of years ago, the legislature did finally pass a law setting up a bidding process to open alcohol distribution to private companies and begin the process of disentangling the state from the process. It would have been interesting to see how that worked out.

Unfortunately, some of the larger retail corporations, who had been donors to the previous initiative, felt the state’s process was a bit too intent on encouraging competition, so they dumped money into another initiative, which included language giving existing large grocery stores a virtual monopoly on the sale of alcohol.

This time, the voters passed it.

There are a couple of provisions meant to allow some competition. People could bid on the right to take over old state liquor store franchises. And restaurants and bars could turn to other distributors, including out-of-state distributors.

Except that the large grocery store chains have used a combination of existing lease agreements or the threat of moving their stories to prevent landlords for letting the new, smaller liquor stores open. And, surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Prices have gone up while selection has gone down.

Imagine! We went from a non-profit system owned by the public and charged with selling and distributing a popular (and sometimes problematic) product to a system run by for-profit companies, and the prices went up. Who could have possibly foreseen that?

Things like the law of supply and demand only work in a free market (or one in which all sellers act on a level playing field). Privatization is not the same thing as a free market.

Now, those same grocery companies who essentially wrote the initiative and bought the election, are lobbying the legislature to repeal those few protections in the initiative intended to keep the distribution channel to restaurants and bars open. They want to be able to act as distributors, without paying for distribution licenses or taxes.

There are good reasons for some regulation and taxation to be involved. As I already mentioned, the costs of the misuse of alcohol fall disproportionately on the community rather than just the people who misuse it. Any product which is mass produced for ingesting by the people who buy it carry risks that are on a completely different scale than buying produce at a local farmer’s market. We need to have systems that can impose penalties when manufacturers or sellers negligently or recklessly cause harm to their customers.

Privatization can be made to work, but replacing a monopoly that was directly answerable to the public with several near-monopolies whose primary goal is to extract as much money from the public with as little effort as possible is not the answer.

How do you figure?

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A week or so ago a prominent anti-gay person stated in an interview that 30% of all characters on TV shows now are gay. That’s horrible, he said, in part because clearly no more than 4% of the population is gay, and the huge numbers on TV were there to desensitize normal people to the existence of gay people. He also talked about how happy and loving gay people as shown on this TV shows are a myth, and went on to assert the gay people are too busy bullying kids to be living productive lives.

Setting aside the fact that even when a Republican administration looked into the issue of kids being bullied it found that the vast majority of the bullying was from straight-identifying adults and kids, and that it was directed at kids who were perceived as being gay or were otherwise non-gender-conforming, his claim is so ludicrous, I’m surprised that even the conservative publication who conducted the interview managed to recreate it without dying of embarrassment.

Also, we’ll just ignore the 4% assertion, as that topic is worthy of a post all of its own.

There are reasons I majored in Math in college, and one of those is that I can’t just leave wrong-sounding numbers alone. I feel compelled to try to figure out just how wrong they are.

I could simply accept GLAAD’s (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) report last year that found about 4.4% of regular characters on scripted network shows this last season were Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender. If GLAAD is correct, than the anti-gay guy’s number is nearly 7 times as high as it ought to be.

But I wanted to dig into the numbers a bit more.

So, I searched the web for listings of prime time network television shows this last season, and tried to figure out which ones should count (it seems obvious that sports and news shows shouldn’t be included, but then I noticed in the interview that the bigot seemed to be including contestants in talent shows as characters, so it wasn’t completely clear that only scripted comedies and dramas were what he was talking about). I decided that my calculations based on web searches weren’t very scientific on my own, (at one point I had a number of 4224 regular and recurring characters, and that seemed as ridiculous at the bigots numbers).

The GLAAD study has slightly more rigorous methods. They came up with 97 scripted programs on the five broadcast networks, and they only counted characters whose actors qualify (under union rules) as playing regulars. That led to a total of 701 characters, of which 31 were identified as non-heterosexual. If the bigot’s percentage was correct, that should have been 210 non-heterosexual characters.

Which next made me wonder where the bigot was getting those 179 characters from?

It’s possible, of course, that he simply made up the number in order to shock the ultra-conservative people from whom he is constantly pleading for donations. But since he’s the president of a federally registered non-profit that identifies itself as promoting morality, that can’t possibly be the case, can it?

Then I thought about what his life is like: giving all these interviews, sending out the constant emails and mailers pleading for money, leading protestors outside legislatures and such, staging press conferences in front of civil rights offices, pretending to be addressing a huge crowd of sympathizers as his employees record the speech for YouTube, and carefully hiding the fact that the number of reporters covering the event far outnumbered the crowd (and most of the crowd were his employees!), and thinking up new ways to repeat the same tired, debunked lies on cable news shows. All of that takes an enormous amount of effort. There is no way he has the time to watch TV shows!

Which led me to realize that he probably spends more time reading LGBTQ news sites and blogs than I do. And it is the case that when they cover pop culture, those sites disproportionately focus on queer characters, or actors and actresses who are either gay or allies. So if one’s primary source of information was from those, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that nearly a third of the characters in all these shows were non-heterosexual.

I hope he doesn’t ever wander into somewhere like FanFiction.Net or the like! Because if you believed all the fanfiction out there, less than 3% of any characters in any show or series in exclusively heterosexual. That possibility might give him a fatal shock!

Defending your right…

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Gay rights equal gun rights poster
Personal dislikes.
Some odd posters have been popping up around Seattle.

I first read about them in a local alt-weekly’s news blog. The story has slowly been picking up steam. The QR code on the posters lead to a gun-rights web site, but the owner of the web site denies any knowledge of the posters. Reporters tracked down the photographer who took the picture for a gun rights campaign, and he says no one asked his permission to re-use the work, but as a pro-gun person, he is delighted that the image is being used. Those reports describe the photo poster as a picture of one woman holding another, but the shorter girl looks youthful enough that I think a better description of the photo might be “young woman embracing a teenage girl.”

No one has been able to locate the artist of the cartoony image on the second poster. The image is credited to a “Dale Nixon,” but that’s a pseudonym that many artists have used over the years when they don’t want their name attached to a piece of work they did for hire. It is even more clear that the cartoon was drawn for a father-son campaign, originally.

That’s one of the things that annoys me about the posters, and which makes me think these are not created by someone who is terribly sympathetic to the gay rights cause.

Annoyed isn’t the right word. First I was disturbed, and as I thought about it a little longer, deeply creeped out that someone would think that a good way to pitch a political message at gay couples would be to include images that hint at pedophilia. Really? I’ve spent decades having to explain that gay people are no more likely to be pedophiles than straight people, decades explaining that I was not sexually abused as a child and why it’s offensive the people assume that, and so on, and you think a good way to make me sympathetic to your cause is to imply that all middle-aged gay men are dating teen-agers? Look at that male couple in the poster! Tell me in all seriousness that the guy on the right isn’t a “kid.”

Marriage rights equal gun rights poster
Arm yourself, especially if your partner is 20 years younger than you!
It could be simply a case of cluelessness, of course. Someone wanted some images to go on the poster, and was just trying to find something that might pass as a same-sex couple with a gun or three. It would certainly not be the first time someone armed with some page layout software did something incredibly dumb unintentionally.

And I’ve gotten into enough discussions with certain kinds of conservative-minded (though they always describe themselves as “libertarian”) gay men who can’t understand why so many out gay people are much more sympathetic to liberal causes. No matter how many examples you give them of how anti-gay most conservative organizations, policies, and politicians are (and how steeped in unconscious bigotry and entitlement most libertarian messages and casual conversations are), they don’t get it. And they’ve been in enough of these debates that they are paranoically defensive about any of their statements. Putting up anonymous posters would not be unexpected from them.

The neighborhood where these have popped up isn’t just well-known as the “gayborhood,” it is so incredibly deep blue politically, and known to be a hot bed of liberal activism, that it’s hard to believe anyone thinks there’s a significantly number of people who haven’t already thought about the issue of the right to bear arms. These posters use very tired, old arguments that everyone who has thought about either the issue of guns or hate crimes has processed and come to an conclusion on long, long ago. Neither the posters or the web site they lead to have anything there that is going to change anyone’s mind.

Anyone at all. The only people who buy the arguments on the linked web site are people who already agree with them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve pointed out many times that I sometimes confound my fellow liberals because I think gun control means hitting what you aim at, even though I’m in favor of universal background checks, holding gun owners responsible for what happens when they don’t secure a gun or “forget” to report a stolen gun. It’s not their opinion on the right to keep and bear arms I’m concerned with in these posters. I’m disturbed and creeped out by the use of father/son and mother/daughter images to represent gay couples. I’m annoyed at the implication that violence is an expected outcome of gaining equality. I’m annoyed and disappointed at the second poster’s implication that brandishing guns is the proper response to verbal harassment (“not going to take sh*t from the homophobes”). I’m irritated that the person drawing these false equivalencies hasn’t thought through to the obvious conclusion: marriage rights are like gun rights, and if marriage requires a license, why doesn’t gun ownership require one?

Some people think the posters are meant to scare people, to imply that hate crimes are rampant in the city. Instead of putting up anti-gay posters, such as the “no homo zone” posters in the news elsewhere last year, put up these things that on the surface seem to be pro-gay, but actually are meant to make gay couples feel less safe—a reverse-psychology form of intimidation. I don’t think that’s the most likely explanation.

As the adage says, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Pure, and clean-minded, and manly

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Riddle me this: when is inclusion really exclusion?

So, a bit over a month after announcing they would take an internal vote on whether to modify their ban on gay members, the Boy Scouts of America decided to remove “the restriction denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual orientation alone” (emphasis mine). Which a lot of people are praising as a great step forward, while others are predicting the destruction of scouting (and the continued collapse of society and eventual destruction of the entire universe).

The anti-gay folks shouldn’t be upset. The way the BSA has worded this policy isn’t a loss for them in the least. It is, in fact, an insidious trap perfectly designed to increase the amount of self-loathing and self-delusion that can be instilled in young gay men.

A lot of people have pointed out that the ban allows gay boys into scouting until they turn 18, keeping the ban on gay scout leaders and lesbian den mothers firmly in place. They have paraphrased that policy as, “you’re welcome… for a while.” And most everyone can see that that is a half-measure, at best.

But it’s sneakier than that. A more accurate paraphrase would be, “you’re welcome now, and you can participate, make friends, learn things, and have great fun… but we’ll kick you out when you’re 18 unless, by some miracle, you cease to be gay by then.”

There is already incredible emotional and social pressure for young non-heterosexual boys to hide, obfuscate, and deny their orientation. The internal mantra of the closeted gay teen used to be “no one must know!” and if you broke that rule, your life would be ruined. This policy creates an atmosphere where you can let the secret out without facing at least one type of immediate rejection, but opens up new doors for indoctrination and oppression.

And it’s not just that “change before you’re 18” club that they have to metaphorically beat the gay boys with. The other one is that little, sneaky word in the new policy, “alone.” You can’t be kicked out for your sexual orientation alone. It’s the central tenet of the religiously-motivated rabidly anti-gay crowd: “I don’t hate gay people, I morally disapprove of their lifestyle.”

So, you won’t be kicked out for admitting you’re gay, but you might be kicked out for not acting manly enough. Or you might be kicked out for spending too much time with other openly gay teens. Or you might be kicked out for having a boyfriend.

Now, they will defend that last one by pointing out that scout law demands that all scouts be “clean in thought, word, and deed” and therefore straight scouts who engage in premarital sex would be disciplined, too. The sad thing is, a lot of otherwise gay-friendly people will nod their heads to that and say, “well, yes, that makes sense.”

But I didn’t say they would be kicked out for having sex with another guy. I said “kicked out for having a boyfriend.” Straight scouts don’t get kicked out for having a girlfriend. But I know gay scouts will face an extremely heightened scrutiny of any of their relationships. And activities that straight scouts will do with impunity will be punished, at least by some troops, when a gay scout does it.

Just go google “facebook gay kissing controversy” to see an example. Facebook is littered with pictures of straight couples kissing, of half-naked people of either gender in all sorts of compromising positions without anyone batting an eye. But if someone posts a picture of two fully clothed men kissing, some people will flag it as “graphic or sexually suggestive,” and sometimes it gets banned. It doesn’t get unbanned until other people kick up a fuss.

It’s a common double standard. Prime time TV is full of all kinds of sexually suggestive situations between opposite-gendered couples that no one reacts to, but if they show a gay couple having a fairly innocent kiss, anti-gay activists start screaming “graphic gay sex!”

It’s not just the obvious bigots who think that way. I’ve seen dozens of stories from teen-agers who were surprised when they came out to their liberal, gay-rights supporting parents, because the parents freaked out. “You’re too young! You can’t know whether you’re gay, or not!” The reason the parents have the freak-out is because while they think they’re open-minded, they actually have fully bought into the myth that being gay is about sex, only sex, and nothing but sex. Their support for gay-rights is about letting adults decide how to conduct their sex lives. So while they wouldn’t freak out if their 14-year-old daughter had a crush on a boy, or their 15-year-old son had a crush on a girl, because having crushes is a natural and innocent part of growing up and learning about love. But they go ballistic when their teen talks about being gay, because being gay must mean sex. It can’t possibly be an innocent crush.

My old scout manual explained that “Clean in thought, word, and deed” meant that a scout strove to be “pure, clean-minded, and manly.” That sounds great, until you think about all of the impure, dirty-minded, and unmanly stereotypes people have about gays. And how impure, dirty, and unmanly some people construe anything that a known gay guy says or does.

No policy is going to prevent bigoted parents from looking for (and trumping up, if necessary) reasons to kick the gay kid out of their son’s troop. No policy is going to prevent kids under the influence of such parents from misconstruing actions from the known gay troop member as some sort of sexual advance, and try to get the kid kicked out.

But this particular policy is quite clearly designed to encourage those behaviors. So, I’m one former scout who is not ready to celebrate, yet.

Who’s not paying?

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Even NPR can’t get it right.

This morning I heard the NPR reporter say, “But when Apple pays no taxes, Congress can’t ignore it.”

Apple paid 7 billion in U.S. federal taxes last year. Yes, they are holding more than $70 billion in foreign earnings outside the U.S., and aren’t currently paying federal taxes on that. However…

General Electric is currently holding more the $100 billion in foreign earnings outside the U.S. The last year that G.E.’s taxes were reported to the public, 2010, they paid just under 1 billion in U.S. taxes. Which is a lot more than they paid in 2009, because in 2009 they exploited U.S. tax law to get the government to refund more money than they put in. (Apple paid about 5 billion in U.S. taxes that year that G.E. paid less than zero).

Exxon paid about 3 billion last year, and according to the Wall Street Journal is holding more of its foreign earnings off shore than Apple (though less than G.E.).

I haven’t been able to find all the numbers for Google, but Bloomberg reports that Googles holds most of its billions in foreign profits in an Irish subsidiary, just like Apple.

So who’s not paying?

The losing arguments of the homophobes

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While the constitution protects the rights of individuals to hate anyone they choose, there is no constitutional right to discriminate. Those withholding public accommodations based on sexual orientation — or any other protected category — can hardly be described as “innocent.”