As the number of people officially announcing their candidacy for the Republican nominee for president keeps going up and up, I’ve noticed a lot of people making the same lame meta-joke: “Looks like instead of a clown car, we need a clown van.” This joke, besides being lame because each political observer has been repeating the van comment several times, is bad because it completely misunderstands the whole point of calling the field of potential candidates a clown car to begin with… Continue reading Of clowns, cars, and twits
Tag Archives: news
Weekend Update: 7/11/2015
Among those links were stories about state and local officials defying the Supreme Court ruling declaring bans against marriage equality unconstitutional. Some of those officials are rethinking: Sioux County Clerk reverses course, will issue same-sex marriage licenses. As lots of people have been reported, these individual officers and their counties are getting sued, and they are going to lose those lawsuits to the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars each since the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a very clear rulling. Any good (not crazy) lawyer will tell them that. And some of them apparently are getting advised by good lawyers after the news stories are reported: Van Buren clerk says she won’t issue marriage licenses: UPDATE: Changes tune. Some are getting better legal advice from their governors: Governor to Casey County clerk: Issue marriage licenses or resign, but digging in their heels anyway: Kentucky Anti-gay County Clerk Remains Defiant After Governor Tells Him to Do His Job or Resign – VIDEO
Alvin McEwan (who runs the excellent Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters blog) sums up the real issue very well in Anti-LGBT Christian organizations are exploiting county clerks and peddling lies about marriage equality:
Individuals like Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer and organizations such as the National Organization for Marriage, the Family Research Council, or the American Family Association want a resistance against marriage equality… As if they are puppeteers, anti-gay organizations and personalities are pulling the strings, buoying the arrogance and recklessness of clerks and various other government officials and thereby manipulating them to refuse to carry out their duties… Anti-gay groups are attempting to manipulate us all into an unnecessary holy war in which they hope to reap the benefits of pointing and saying “see, we told you so.”
Related, there are a couple of stories making the rounds (particularly on the Facebook pages of your most conservative relatives and former classmates) that are trying to fan the same flames: Gay Man Sues Bible Publisher For $70M For Causing Him Distress, Turns Out He’s Not Crazy. While he isn’t crazy in that there are some big problems with Biblical translations, he filed the suit seven years ago and it was thrown out. The other one is partially true and current, but there is a very important detail being left out: Oregon bakers forced to pay $135,000 after sharing lesbian couple’s home address. So the fine isn’t for refusing to sell the cake, it’s for publishing private information of customers (who they refused) leading to so many death threats to the couple, the social services almost removed foster children from the home for fear that those loving Christians leaving the death threats might actually follow through.
It’s not all crazy people over-reacting to a little civil rights, thank goodness. The Wonkette reported on Vice President Biden’s speech at the Freedom to Marry Victory Gala, Afternoon Nicest Time: The Time Young Handsome Joe Biden Fell In Love With Gay Marriage. If you don’t want to go watch the video clips at Wonkette, The Seattle Lesbian Blog provides a transcript: Transcript: VP Biden at Freedom to Marry Celebration of Victory.
Completely unrelated to all of that: one particular link in yesterday’s post caused one friend to stop reading and send me a message to tell me it stopped him from looking at the rest. It was a story about a particularly awful child abuse incident which I put under the heading “This Week in Heart-wrenching” because like any child abuse case it was heart-wrenching. This is not the first time someone has told me they wish I wouldn’t include bad news in the links.
I don’t want to get into a weird pedantic argument about what constitutes bad news, other than to say that each person who has made that request has also, at other times, commented on other links to things that someone would classify as bad news in ways indicating that they were glad I linked to it.
But I do want to talk a little bit about why I include links like that. One of the other links under the same heading was about efforts to identify the body of a dead child. I believe that as a human being (let alone a citizen), I have an obligation to that murdered child. She deserves to be buried with her name. She deserves to have law enforcement find out how she was murdered and at least attempt to bring her killers to justice. Both of those things require that she be identified. If I can increase the chances, no matter how little, by sharing the link to the artist’s reconstruction of her face, I think I should do it. That one, for me, is a no-brainer.
Also, literally no-brainer in that the reason both of those links ended up in Friday Links was because I saw the headline in my news aggregator, I clicked on it out of emotional reaction. Then I read the stories. They were both heart-wrenching, and I tapped the share link to send to my list for Friday Links as a totally visceral, emotional, non-rational surge of “Oh My Goodness! This is too horrible to be ignored!”
That’s how those sorts of stories get into the list.
For a long, long time sex advice columnist, gay rights activist, and Seattle gadfly Dan Savage has had a continuing feature on the blog of the local alternative weekly’s paper called “Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father.” He started it because, when he and his husband adopted a baby 17-or-so years ago, they began being harassed by even more threats, hit-pieces in conservative news sources, and so forth by various anti-gay people. The charge that the reason queer couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt, shouldn’t be allowed to have civil unions, and shouldn’t be allowed to marry is always couched in an argument that children can only properly and lovingly be raised by a pair of opposite-sex parents because reasons. The argument usually summed up as “every child deserves a mother and a father. So any time a story of a straight couple abusing (sometimes to the point of murdering) a child crossed his news feed, Dan would share it under the “Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father” heading. His point being that the mere fact that the adults raising a child don’t have matching genitals never guarantees that the children will be loved and cared for.
This feature always drew its detractors, too. “You don’t have to share these horrible stories to make your point,” or “Don’t make it sound like you’re happy to have your point proven correct” et cetera. For a while in reaction to those comments, Dan started including links to charities such as The National Children’s Alliance or The Child Help Foundation, giving those of us who read the stories of the horrible abuse an option to do something to help. Which maybe I should do the next time one of these stories winds up ripping my heart out and making we want to share the story.
I didn’t include the story because I was trying to make a political statement. I included it because it was heart wrenching, because I think it is too horrible to be ignored. I can’t save either of those kids. Sharing the news won’t bring either one back. But pretending I don’t know about their deaths doesn’t do anything to prevent other cases like theirs, either.
I don’t have any clever conclusion to this digression. All I can say is that there is a National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-Child/1-800-422-4453) that anyone can call if you suspect a child is in danger and you’re not sure who to notify. There is a lot of social pressure to hope for the best, to assume that the parent or significant other of the parent is just having a bad day. There is a fear of getting an innocent person in trouble. And there is an aversion to even thinking about the bad things that might be happening out of sight. All of those things contribute to cases like the sad one I linked to Friday.
So I share it as a reminder that there are awful people in this world who don’t always look awful. To make us mindful. To, maybe, encourage someone who has seen something like this, to call someone before the next child dies.
National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-Child/1-800-422-4453)
Weekend Updates: From Sea to Shining Sea Edition (7/4/2015)
MemeGraphs.Com posted a review pointing out that the video has received over 1 million views, far surpassing any previous video by the group by more that 800,000 views. Unfortunately, it’s also gotten 30,000 thumbs down and and even for YouTube a truly amazing number of negative comments. Here’s the best part of the MemeGraphs review:
The auteurs at Catholic Vote have created an instant classic Christian cinematic masterpiece to rival Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas. Not since National Organization for Marriage’s “Gathering Storm” of 2008 have we seen delusional hyperbole, paranoia and self-pity lifted to such delirious heights. Like an episode of The Bachelor or a Lindsey Lohan court appearance, Not Alone is both terrifying and impossible to look away from. This important piece of filmmaking will surely inspire countless imitators, but Not Alone is so earnest in its own clueless, privileged insensitivity that parody may be superfluous (see Poe’s Law). Still, I look forward to seeing what influence this motion picture exerts on Stephen Colbert and the creative staff at The Daily Show, Funny or Die and Saturday Night Live.
As always, the bigots are completely unaware for their own deeply tragic irony. One of the lines from their video lamenting the fact that they are no longer allowed to discriminate against gay people is, “No one should be looked down upon, no one should be suppressed or their views be suppressed.” Unless, of course, you’re a gay or lesbian or bisexual person, then you should be looked down upon, you should be told to keep your feelings to yourself, to hide your relationships, and most definitely not get any legal rights to visit your dying partner in the hospital or not be kicked out of your home by bigoted relatives when a partner becomes incapacitated. Then, of course, you should be suppressed, looked down upon, and told to stop complaining.
Soundly Awake made a nice and funny video assuring Catholic Vote that they’re not alone:
People claiming to speak for Catholics aren’t the only ones flipping out. Presidential hopeful (and Baptist minister) Mike Huckabee has doubled-down on his calls to “protect religious liberty” in an opinion piece for Fox News (which I will not directly link to it (here’s the Do Not Link link, if you don’t want to go to Fox News, If You Only News has a nice summary) where he vows to issue executive orders to protect hospitals, public schools, private business’ et cetera religious liberty to discriminate against gay people. Hospitals. Can’t you just feel the christian compassion?
Meanwhile Scott Walker, another clown with presidential aspirations, thinks that the reason we celebrate Independence Day is because we don’t want government. Except that’s completely wrong. Independence Day, and the Declaration of Independence, are about our right to form our own government. Which is a very different thing. His official campaign email also manages to mix up the 4th of July with Veteran’s Day and to make it all about america’s founding being about god. (Forgetting that important clause of the Treaty of Tripoli, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion” which was initiated by George Washington near the end of his last term in office, signed by Secretary of State John Marshall, submitted to the Senate by newly elected President John Adams, ratified by said Senate in a unanimous vote in the 7th of June, 1897, and affirmed in a signing statement by John Adams).
But enough of these people who don’t know what Independence Day is all about. Please enjoy this, one of my favorite songs from the musical, 1776:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
While we’re at it, enjoy another great song from this, the perfect movie for this holiday:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Hired hate
They hired people to protest for them.
It didn’t surprise me when the douche-iest presidential candidate, Donald Trump reportedly paid actors $50 to cheer for him at his 2016 announcement. (I especially liked one post I saw about this, someone photographed one of Trump’s employees collecting the “home made” signs and t-shirts from the actors afterward). But come on, if these are your sincerely held religious beliefs that us queers are evil or going to hell or luring other people into sin or whatever, you should have the stones to show up and protest. You don’t hire immigrant day laborers to be your poxies!
On the other hand, Vice reports from Los Angeles that, Protesting Against Gay Pride Was Super Boring. It does give me new appreciation for Jessica Willams’ report for the Daily Show last month about this being the end of a hate era: The Hate Class of 2015.
The Jewish groups outsourcing their hate got me searching for any more stories about protestors at the parade, and there were a few protests within some of the parades intended to remind us that there are still plenty of other civil rights battles left for the queer community. And there was a story of one protester at one of the smaller town parades yesterday who got his sign stolen by one of the parade marchers.
All the rightwing Christian sites had headlines yesterday about ‘thousands protesting gay pride parades’… except it was in Korea. They couldn’t come up with anything like that happening here.
Surveys show that at least 57% of Americans are in favor of gays marrying. And they also show that 63% think that gays should be legally allowed to marry (the discrepancy presumably meaning that about 6% of the population believing personally that gays oughtn’t marry, but that it shouldn’t be illegal for consenting adults to do it if they want to). Experience over the last decade has been that about a year after marriage equality becomes legal in a particular state, support for marriage equality jumps up by at least another 10%, with opposition shrinking. Lots of states have had marriage equality for a while, so the nationwide number probably isn’t going to jump that much, but it will jump.
When you add in the decades-long trend of support for any specific gay rights question increasing by about 2 percent a year, that 37% of the population sincerely and deeply opposed to it will just keep shrinking. I don’t know how tiny it will get, eventually. Will it be as infinitesimal as the percentage of people who think that women should have the right to vote taken away (estimated at less than two one-hundredths of a single percent)?
Maybe in a few generations. I think in the foreseeable future it’s going to drop down to about 22% and then hover there for a long time.
One may ask why is seems like all of the Republican presidential hopefuls went ballistically, foaming-at-the-mouth anti-gay starting on Friday when nearly two-thirds of Americans support marriage equality. The reason is that Republican primary voters are not at all representative of the country as a whole. Likely Republican primary voters oppose marriage equality at almost inverse rates of the population at large: 60% oppose, less than 30% support, and the rest are undecided.
Even the few Republican candidates who intend to try to sell themselves as moderates to the general electorate know that they have to get those hardcore haters to vote for them in the primaries in order to become the nominee. And let’s be frank, on most of the issues voters care about, all 16 or 17 or however many we’re officially up to now of the Republican candidates have extremely similar positions. Most of them have name recognition problems at this point in the campaign. The only way they can break out of the pack at this point is to latch onto something that some of those hardcore voters care deeply enough about to remember when the primaries actually roll around.
So despite the fact that a lot of the more mainstream Republican pundits and so forth were hoping that a Supreme Court win for the gays would finally take this issue away as a wedge issue that drives moderate voters to the Democrats, I don’t think they’re going to get their wish.
That’s the problem when you hitch your wagon to hate and anger.
Love is love… Love wins!
And what is the nature of our triumph today? Well, it’s summed up really well in the closing paragraph of the decision:
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
—Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in the historic Supreme Court decision legalizing marriage equality nation wide.
Our triumph is a love that may endure past death. Our triumph is equal dignity in the eyes of the law. Our triumph is not to be condemned to loneliness. Our triumph is a hope to find another person who we love and loves us in return, and together to become something greater than we were apart.
“Love your way through the darkness.”
—Cornel West
Our society is a collection of customs and laws. Those laws exist for the times when customs are not enough to prevent injustice. Some people still claim that love doesn’t need legal protection. The love itself may not, but the people who share it sometimes do.
Sometimes things happen. Our health fails. There is an accident. And suddenly one member of a relationship is no longer able to make decisions for themselves. The law steps in at that time, and if our relationships aren’t recognized by the law, that means that instead of a person we have loved and shared our life with for decades making decisions about our health et cetera, that person is kicked out of our hospital room by bigoted relatives. The person we have loved and shared our life with may find themselves legally barred from entering the home we shared for those years. They may find themselves, like one old friend years ago had to, trying to prove in court that his clothes, personal belongings, and his own family photo albums were his, and not the property of his partner who had died in a car accident.
So while I believe in the power of love, and believe that the best way to get through darkness is love, I also believe in the power of the law. And I and my husband deserve to enjoy the law’s protection exactly the same as anyone else.
“The opposite of injustice is love.”
—Ken Wytsma
Not everyone is happy about this, and they can say some pretty irrational things while expressing their disagreement. Others try to act as if this disagreement doesn’t matter. Well, Eleven years ago… my friend Barb, beloved wife of my other friend, Kathy, wrote this essay that says much of what I want to say on that topic. It’s a really great post.
Friday Links (rainbow connections edition!)
It’s Friday! It’s not just Queer Pride Month, this is Queer Pride Weekend (at least in many places, including my home, Seattle)! Tomorrow, June 27th, is the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, which most credit as the beginning of the modern gay right’s movement, which is why most folks in the U.S. celebrate June of Pride Month and why so many Pride Parades happen on the last weekend of the month. It’s time for every les-bi-gay, transgender, genderqueer, femme, butch, stud, stem, glittering fairy, cycle mama, leather daddy, drag king, queer nerd, gym bunny, baby dyke, cuddle pup, drag queen, bear, wolf, otter, twink, single, swinger, couple, trouple, PolyFamily, anyone I left out, and everyone who loves any of the above to step out and get down in the Pride Bash Extravaganza!
(Remember, you don’t have to be queer to celebrate it. Know someone who’s queer and want them to have a happy life? Then you can join the party!)
Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared. Sorted into categories with headings so you can skip more easily:
Link of the Week
UPDATE: BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules Same-Sex Marriage To Be Law Of The Land Nationwide In Historic Ruling.
Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules, 5-4.
This week in Justice:
Jury finds that anti-LGBTQ “ex-gay therapy” is a total fraud.
With All Eyes on Marriage, Gays Just Won Another Enormous Legal Victory.
Supreme Court Allows Nationwide Health Care Subsidies.
In Fair Housing Act Case, Supreme Court Backs ‘Disparate Impact’ Claims.
SCOTUS Decision in FHA Case Reinforces Critical Tool To Address Housing Discrimination.
Police Cannot Arrest You For Watching and Criticizing Them from a Distance In Washington State.
This Week in Queer(ish) History
Cops Raid Gay Bar. What Happened Next Changed History.
Every American should know about the largest mass murder of gay people in US history. Media reaction to the 1973 mass killing at Upstairs Lounge reflected society’s views on homosexuality.
The Case of the Sultry Mountie: Doing Family History Queerly.
The Long, Winding Path of Same-Sex Marriage.
John Waters Says He Never Actually Came Out As Gay Because Nobody Asked.
How One Army Vet Designed The Iconic Symbol Of The Gay Rights Movement. Though I’ve read about (and written about) Gilbert Baker, design of the Pride Flag before, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a picture of the man himself.
Political/culture war news:
California Judge Throws Out Ballot Initiative Calling For Execution Of Gay People.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only anti-equality initiative filed in California this year: LGBT Coalition Forms To Fight Horrific Anti-Transgender Ballot Initiative In California.
No Matter What the Supreme Court Decides, the Fight for LGBT Equality Isn’t Over.
Satanic Temple Will File Federal Lawsuit Against Missouri Abortion Laws.
Conservatives Demanding ‘Fascist, Anti-Christian’ Gay Pride Flag Be Taken Down. Right… and exactly when, in history, did Gay people enslave non-gays, buying a selling them, ripping them from their families, and then declaring a war the resulted in the deaths of 300,000 americans to try to keep their right to enslave?
Though the Wonkette’s headline is even better: Oppressed Wingnuts: Please Stop Lynching Us With Gay Rainbow Flag!
Atlanta Gay Man Bashed With Bat While Helping Change a Flat Tire.
Transgender Teen Killed In Mississippi.
Jon Stewart doesn’t give a damn anymore: Why the “Daily Show” host has never been more watchable.
Why Christians Aren’t Being Oppressed By Gay Marriage.
Science!
Kennewick Man Was Native American; DNA Analysis Confirms What Tribes Said All Along.
DARPA: We Are Engineering the Organisms That Will Terraform Mars.
70-Year-Old Tree Cut Down in NYC Will be Cloned and Planted Again.
Spooky Physics Phenomenon May Link Universe’s Wormholes.
Ancient Human With 10 Percent Neanderthal Genes Found.
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation!
An open letter to the WSFS about unintended consequences.
This Week in Love vs Racism
Because I Would Otherwise Scream.
This Week in Racism
The Confederate Flag Doesn’t Commemorate the South’s ‘Lost Cause’—It’s the Symbol of a Cause Won.
Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party.
How long will we let conservatives write off Republican racism as a coincidence?
Why I Can’t Forgive Dylann Roof.
How White Christians Used The Bible — And Confederate Flag — To Oppress Black People.
Republicans have firm rules for fighting terrorism—unless it’s committed by domestic racists.
Michael Moore Nails Every Racist, War-Mongering, Pseudo-Christian, RW Gun Extremist – In One Tweet.
The Key Thing Conservatives Don’t Get About Obama’s Use Of ‘N*****’.
Just Putting These Here So They Can Be Part of the Permanent Record.
Fox News Race Experts So Mad Obama Allowed To Use N-Word And They Aren’t.
This Week in Sexism
John Oliver shows how trolls have turned the internet into a nightmare for women.
News for queers and our allies:
The New Law That Would Outlaw LGBT Discrimination Everywhere.
My Whole Life I’ve Been Asked If I’m a Girl or a Boy.
What same-sex marriage reform could mean for the LGBT youths of America.
Op-ed: I’m Gay, Not Trans, and That’s OK.
These Black Trans Couples’ Stories Tug At Our Heartstrings.
An Island With Only 48 Residents And No Gay Couples Just Legalized Same-Sex Marriage.
Reclaiming the spirit of Pride.
Allah Made Me Muslim; Allah Made Me Queer.
On choosing pronouns and embracing ‘queer’.
Everyone is sharing this special engagement notice from today’s Irish Times.
How ‘Twin Peaks’ helped one queer teen find himself.
I was a family man in my 50s when I finally came out of the closet.
What The Hell Do Butch And Femme Even Mean Anymore?
‘Cisgender’ Added to Oxford English Dictionary.
The obligatory Sad Puppies/Hugo Awards update:
BREAKFAST OF BULLSHIT: FUTUREPHOBIA, THE HUGOS AND THE INVENTION OF SF’S PAST.
Farewells:
Patrick Macnee, Star of ‘The Avengers,’ Dies at 93.
Things I wrote:
“I can’t be a bigot, because…”.
What’s there to be proud about?
Savage Heroics and Barbaric Eroticism – more of why I love sf/f.
Videos!
Magic Mike XXL – Matt Bomer sings ‘Heaven’:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Leonard Nimoy reads Isaac Asimov’s ‘The Last Question’:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Asimov said of all the stories he wrote, this was his favorite. And he said the story had “the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they ‘think’ I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don’t remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably ‘The Last Question.’”
He said people wrote and asked him so often, and the story they were trying to remember was always this one. So one time when he got a phone call that was clearly an international call on a bad connection (which we had to put up with back in those days), he could barely understand the person, but he thought he caught the phrase, “don’t remember the title.” So Isaac said, “I yelled into the phone, ‘the name of the story you can’t remember is The Last Question!'” Then he repeated it, in case the person couldn’t understand. The line was just static for a moment, he heard, “thank you” and the person hung up. “So now he probably thinks I’m psychic.”
The Golden Girls on Marriage Equality:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
What’s the Definition of “Traditional Marriage”?:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Show Me Your Pride – By Miss Coco Peru – OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Benny – Little Game (Official Video):
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Conchita Wurst – You Are Unstoppable:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Tove Lo – Timebomb:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Oppressed oppressors, part 3
Mat Staver is the head of the anti-gay Liberty Counsel, featured speaker at several Values Voter Summits over the years, a man who has gone to court many times defending laws that discriminate against gay people, and someone who as recently as June has testified to congress about why gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people shouldn’t be included in anti-discrimination law, and has many times on his radio show praised laws in places like Russia and Uganda that criminalize gay people and even talking about gay people. For example, last year he was on another radio show, ranting about those Christians who have said that gay rights and marriage equality are losing battles. “To assume that you can go against the created order is hubris, it’s arrogance, it’s dangerous and it is not something in which we can simply say, ‘the battle’s over, we need to figure out how to coexist.’ There is no coexistence.”
“There is no coexistence.” If he insists that his side can’t co-exist with us, that’s another way of saying either we have to cease to exist or he does, right? And I’m pretty sure he isn’t suggesting that all true believers (his side) should commit mass suicide.
When Staver says “there is no coexistence” that means he’s ultimately willing to kill. The reason Staver’s organization encourages things like Uganda’s kill-the-gays laws, and talks up the rhetoric of how dangerous we are to society is because he believes we should not be allowed to exist. Which means killing us. Or at least, scaring us with a credible enough threat of death that we all go back into the closet.
Just like the people who regularly go to Seattle’s old gayborhood (Police investigating weekend hate crimes on Capitol Hill) every weekend (‘Not one more’ — March strikes back at anti-queer violence on Capitol Hill), the aim isn’t to kill each and every queer person, it’s to scare the rest of us back into the closet. When rightwing Texas preacher Rick Scarborough announces that he’s willing to be burned to death to oppose gay marriage, he doesn’t mean that he’s going to set himself on fire; he wants to whip up fear and anger so that people who agree with him will do horrible things to some of us to frighten us into silence.
It’s the same tactics used by the hate leaders who radicalized Dylann Roof into shooting nine innocent people in a church in Charleston: making members of the majority believe that a historically oppressed minority somehow has all the power. Roof told the lone adult survivor of his shooting, “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and overrunning our country.” In a country where white police officers gun down unarmed black children in the street without facing murder charges, he believes that black people are the ones threatening the existence of white people.
Similarly, in a country where:
- 1500 queer children are bullied into committing suicide every year,
- where thousands of queer children are thrown out onto the streets by so-called Christian parents whose religious leaders have told them they have to show tough love,
- where the authorities don’t investigate those parents for child neglect,
- where the numbers of homicides of LGBT people have climbed to record highs,
- where more than half of hate-motivated murder victims are trans people of color,
- where state legislators are rushing to enact religious-belief based “right to discriminate” laws,
- where in most states it is perfectly legal for employers to fire someone simply because they think the person might be gay (and where landlords can evict gay tenants or refuse to rent to them, et cetera),
- where queer people are 2.4 times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than jews, and 2.6 times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than muslims,
- where the number of hate crimes against all groups except lesbian, gays, trans, and bi people is going down while all categories of anti-queer hate crimes remain the some or are rising,
- where the overwhelming majority of elected officials at the federal, state, and local level are Christian (far out of proportion to their percentage of the population),
- where state and federal tax dollars are funneled into “faith-based” charity organizations that are often allowed to discriminate in how they administer those tax-funded activities,
- where religious schools are often supported by tax dollars diverted from public schools,
- where high school kids are threatened with expulsion for wearing “Gay OK” t-shirts to school after a bunch of Christian bullies beat a gay classmate (but the bullies weren’t punished),
- where a public school teacher responding to an incident of anti-gay bullying read a book about acceptance to his class, then was forced to resign for “promoting homosexuality,”
- where Christian organizations rally and raise money to combat anti-bullying policies unless said policies include exemptions that allow their kids to bully gay kids in the name of their faith,
…Christians are claiming that queers are persecuting them.
Seriously? Not being able to bully, discriminate against, and torment their gay neighbors is oppression?
Who raised the kid?
It’s impossible at this time of year to avoid all the memes and heartfelt testimonials and emotionally manipulative articles about dads. Which is great for people who have wonderful dads and are happy to be reminded about how great a good father can be. It’s not so great for people who are grieving the loss of a father they loved. And it’s not so great for those of us who had terrible fathers.
I was lucky enough to have two incredible, wonderful, and loving grandfathers as well as an incorrigible (but still loving) great-grandfather who were all three very involved in my life throughout my formative years. And one of those wonderful grandfathers, my mom’s father, was her adoptive father. Not being her biological father didn’t diminish one iota the love he gave my mom and her sister (and me and the other grandkids). He did everything a dad was supposed to do and more.
Similarly, my great-grandfather was my grandma’s biological father, but he was also a step-dad to grandma’s oldest two brothers. Great-grandma was a 28-year-old widow with two young boys when she met and fell in love with great-grandpa (who, I should point out was only a 16-year-old farm hand). But even though he wasn’t that much older than those two kids, he did his best to be as good a father to them as he was to the other kids that he and great-grandma had together.
So I get more than a little angry when people (or stories or movies or TV shows) imply (or sometimes come right out and say) that step-parents or adoptive parents aren’t a kid’s “real parents.”
Which is why I want to share this little story (and angry op-ed) posted by Dan Savage earlier in the week: Brian Brown Suggests Terry and I Stole Our Son from His Biological Parents. Brian Brown is the head of the odious anti-gay National Organization for Marriage. Dan Savage is a national syndicated sex advice columnist and gay activist. But Dan and his husband, Terry, adopted their son as part of an open adoption years ago, and have raised that child while allowing (and encouraging him) to keep in contact with the biological mother who was a homeless street kid when she got pregnant. As Dan points out, there are far more orphaned children who need families in this country than there are straight couples looking to adopt. When you exclude unmarried people or lesbian/gay couples or other “non-traditional” families from the adoption process, the choice you are making is to leave those children with no parents at all.
It isn’t a choice of straight parents vs queer parents, or a mommy-and-daddy vs a single parent. It’s a choice of these so-called non-traditional parents or no parents. And note about the fact that not one but two traditional couples turned down the baby before Dan and Terry’s adoption paperwork was completed. So, the only people who deprived that kid of a “traditional” family of genitally-opposite parents were straight people.
I’m not a parent. I’ve never had kids and never adopted. But if I were a parent, and Brian Brown had come into my house and told me that he thought my child should be forcibly taken away from me just because I’m gay, I would have said a whole lot worse than what Terry said.
Weekend Update – 6/20/2015
I know how easy it is to obsess over a horrific story like this. But the nine people who were murdered in a hateful act of racist terrorism in a historic church this week deserve to be remembered. And we can’t solve problems like racism if we don’t confront the problem.
Charleston shooting victim Tywanza Sanders ‘died trying to protect his elderly aunt.’
Why South Carolina’s Confederate flag isn’t at half-staff after church shooting.
NRA Dude Identifies Real Charleston Shooter. Surprise, It Was The Black Pastor!
Black People Aren’t Making Things Up: The Science Behind ‘Racial Battle Fatigue’.
Relatives of victims offer forgiveness at bond hearing for suspected Charleston gunman.
Charleston church shooting massacre: Who are the victims?
Anything But Race: Right-Wing Pundits In Denial Mode Following Charleston Shooting.
Southern Baptist’s Russell Moore: It’s time to take down the Confederate flag.
Friday Links (toxic bigotry week)
Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared. Sorted into categories with headings so you can skip more easily:
Link of the Week
They published this op-ed about 36 hours before the Charleston shootings: The Other Terror Threat: the main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists.
Science!
Gun owners not likely to use firearms for self-defense, study claims.
The Little Boy Who Should’ve Vanished, But Didn’t.
Gravity –“The Clue to the Dark, Quantum World of Our Universe.”
Tiny Octopus Is So Cute Scientists Might Name It ‘Adorabilis.’
The Oldest Depiction of the Universe Was Made in 1600 BCE.
Does a black hole create a hologram copy of anything that touches it?
This really belongs under an Anti-Science headline, but: 5 completely insane things Christian fundamentalists are teaching their kids.
Gay moths? London museum gives insects ‘gender treatment’ to protect artifacts.
Rheumatoid Arthritis and Giant Cell Arteritis Correlated with Solar Cycles.
General relativity explains why Schrodinger’s cat is alive.
Remembering Clyde Tombaugh on Pluto’s doorstep.
Helium-Shrouded Planets May Be Common around Other Stars in Our Galaxy.
Cosmic ray observatory to explore hotspot.
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation!
Terry Pratchett’s Daughter Says Discworld Is Over.
SORRY, GAME OF THRONES: IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME.
Mad Max: Fury Road Makes Your Rape Arguments Invalid.
Thousands Of Gay Geeks Unite At Flame Con, New York’s First LGBT Comic Con.
Political/culture war news:
Opinion: Washington needs to tell the truth about police violence.
Why There’s No Conservative Jon Stewart.
The GOP Needs a War on Christianity.
Donald Trump Campaign Offered Actors $50 to Cheer for Him at Presidential Announcement.
Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal: Clash of identity and authenticity.
“Shit’s Gonna Hit the Fan”: Talking to a Billionaire About Class War.
#NoMoreBushes trends on Twitter as Jeb Bush announces he will run for president.
This Week in Racism
Too often we give lots of press to the hateful killers who commit these crimes, when we should be remembering the victims. There are pictures of each of the nine people killed in the church in Charleston, with some biographical details. I needed more than one kleenex: These Are The Victims Of The Charleston Church Shooting.
Police Search For Man Suspected Of Killing 9 At South Carolina Church.
For Charleston’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church, shooting is another painful chapter in rich history.
Is South Carolina Just Gonna Fly That Confederate Flag Today or What?
An Emotional Stewart Drops the Comedy to Talk Charleston: ‘We Still Won’t Do Jackshit.’
Shot fired into Saint Matthew Church in Memphis.
Tip from Kings Mountain florists led to Charleston shooting suspect’s arrest. Not just a tip: she called police from her car and kept following him, giving police updates along the way!
This Week in Sexism
How Tor Books Threw Its Women Employees Under The Bus.
Forget Redefining Beauty: This Fat Chick Just Wants Some Nice Clothes.
News for queers and our allies:
This Trans Man’s Breast Cancer Nightmare Exemplifies The Problem With Transgender Health Care.
What Religious People Actually Think About Using ‘Religious Liberty’ To Justify Anti-Gay Discrimination. 59 percent of white mainline Protestants, 63 percent of non-white Protestants, and 64 percent of Catholics reject “religious liberty” bills.
‘Oranges, Baby Powder, Handcuffs And Duct Tape’: Inside The Trial That May End The Gay ‘Cure’.
Southern Baptist Manual Offers Suggestions on How to Get Around LGBT Anti-Discrimination Laws. Because, obviously, Jesus wants them to disobey the law and discriminate against their neighbors. Because when he said “love your neighbor as you love yourself” he didn’t mean literally love them…
You Have Two Men To Thank For The Greatest Strides In LGBT Representation On TV.
Gay Marriage Isn’t About Assimilation. My Engagement Was a Radical Act.
Don’t Listen To Same-Sex Marriage Foes: It Was Always About Hating On The Gays.
California attorney general moves to dismiss ‘shoot the gays’ ballot proposal.
‘As a Christian, I am Sorry:’ Evangelical Pastor’s Reflections on Attending First Pride Parade.
Southern Baptist President Bravely Pledges Resistance Against Non-Existent Forced-Marriage Threat.
How Schools Justify Canceling Valedictorian Speeches About Coming Out.
Meet Ryan Anderson, The Anti-LGBT ‘Scholar’ Peddling Junk Science To National Media.
What Are the Sounds of Transphobic Dinosaurs Dying?
Richard Land Bigotsplains Why Acceptance of Gay Rights is Growing.
Black gay men face shocking bigotry.
The obligatory Sad Puppies/Hugo Awards update:
Infoxicated Corner: ALL THESE THINGS ARE TRUE: Saumya Arya Haas. “It is true. As in many SF/F tales, a world is at risk. The world of “tradition,” the world where straight, cis, white guys are the inheritors of the throne, the world where women and minorities have their identities dictated and blunted by a dominant narrative: that world is gravely at risk.”
The “Heinlein Couldn’t Win a Hugo Today” crowd is now boycotting Heinlein’s publisher.
I am a real person and I stand with Irene Gallo.
And other news:
JACKASS OF THE WEEK: CHRISTOPHER MIMS.
Happy News!
Christian Homeowner Threatens Neighbor Over ‘Relentlessly Gay’ Rainbow Yard Lamps, Because Children; Homeowner Promises More Rainbows. “Needless to say… I need more rainbows… Many, many more rainbows….”
Pete Buttigieg, Mayor Of South Bend, Indiana, Comes Out As Gay.
Meet The First Gay Couple To Graduate Together From The Boston Police Academy.
Boy Who Lost Stuffed Tiger At Airport Finds Tiger Stayed Very Busy.
Things I wrote:
Hugo Ballot Reviews: Graphic Story.
The Best Kind of Books Are Magic Books – more of why I love sf/f.
Videos!
THICK THIGHS by Willam feat. Latrice Royale:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
How Much Would it Cost to Build Jurassic Park?:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Thousands drawn to Indy Pride Parade:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Curious otter pup:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Long After You’re Gone: A Leverage Tribute:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Greg Holden – Boys In The Street (Official Music Video):
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Font Folly 