Shameful Self-Interest and False Dichotomies

Ah, conservadouches.  If they ever shut the hell up, I don't know what I'd blog about.  Probably eyeshadow and other banalities.

This time, it's Texas governor Rick Perry at the asshole mic.  At a speech to the Texas Eagle Forum (conservative group), he said the election was about more than red and blue states, it was a battle for the soul of the nation:

"We will raise our voices in defense of our values and in defiance of the hollow precepts and shameful self-interests that guide our opponents on the left."

I can feel my inner 10-year-old shouting "I know you are, but what am I?"  Shameful self-interests?  Is it shameful self-interest that feminists called out sexism against both Hillary Clinton AND Sarah Palin, despite our gigantic policy differences with the latter? Is it shameful self-interest when people of solid means advocate for better welfare policies and safety nets?  Is it shameful self-interest that people who already had insurance - including, mind you, the Dems who voted for it - agitated and activisted for the health insurance reform bill?  


Not to mention, where is it writ that self-interest is categorically A Bad Thing?  Is it shameful, to desire and seek out equality for oneself/one's identity group?  Is it a bad thing to try to gain access to the same benefits that other people already enjoy?


Contrast that, of course, with the Republican style of self-interest, wherein they seek to make changes to benefit themselves *at the expense of* others.  Megacorps with personhood rights, giving them power beyond what any other kind of group can hope to match.  Legislating a Christian version of morality to apply to all people, whether Christian or not.  That's the kind of self-interest you see on the Right; personally, I'll take the Left's version of "shameful self-interest" any day.


And of course, it can't stop at one stupid quote.  Tacking on a bonus wtf, Perry continued on to say:

"That's the question: Who do you worship? Do you believe in the primacy of unrestrained federal government? Or do you worship the God of the universe, placing our trust in him?"

Government versus God.  One or the other.  And apparently, those who support the government actually acting to govern (as opposed to letting the megacorps run rampant and waiting for the Free Market to sort it out) are not supporting, but worshiping.  Bwuh?  That's gotta be news for progressive Christians, who both worship the God of the Bible and place their trust in him, and also support the agenda of a liberal federal government.  


This has been today's edition of "...What The Hell Does That Even Mean?"

Don't Brainwash Our Children! We Want To Do It Ourselves!

One of the constant, in-our-face arguments against any progress in LGBT rights or recognition is inevitably some variant on "Think of the children!"  They really like the version that's about their children's delicate minds being "brainwashed" into tolerating queerness/gender variance by the mere presence of unashamed queers/transpeople.  I know - being brainwashed into tolerance?  Terrifying!  But it turns out the real problem with it isn't that they don't want their children being brainwashed.  They just want to have the chance to brainwash them first.


Enter Peter LaBarbera (aka Porno Pete, for his habit of "going undercover" to leather and lifestyle events to describe in graphic detail what those scary homos are really getting up to - seriously, it's a fucking obsession, he goes to Mr Leather EVERY YEAR pretty much) and his Homophobe-In-Training Camp, where students as young as 14 will listen to Porno Pete and his line-up of speakers, including Matt Barber, Ryan Sorba, and Greg Quinlan, for three days, teach them "how to answer the lies and myths that so readily emanate from the “GLBT” (“gay”) camp." 

So it's not that they don't want their kids exposed to depictions of homosexuality/transness.  It's just that they don't want them exposed to depictions of *actual* LGBTs.  Instead, they want to shield them until they're old enough - at 14, mind you - to be trained in the hateful rhetoric of the movement and learn the version of LGBTness that is useful for that cause.  Ahh, the all-too-common stink of conservative hypocrisy.

In all seriousness, snark aside, I am deeply disturbed and offended by the idea of taking high school freshmen and deliberately, systematically teaching them to hate like this.  LGBT bullying is already a serious issue in our schools, and these people want to make it worse by combining the volatility of youthful emotions with focused training in anti-LGBT hate?  That is a recipe for teenage hate crimes right there.  And it is Not. Okay.

Let's just hope nobody signs up and the whole thing is a terrible flop.

Will The Real Bryan Fischer, Please Shut Up?

Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association - for which, of course, "family" only means straight, Christian, two-parent, would-never-consider-abortion, etc. - is not exactly known for his moderate or temperate rhetoric.  He's advocated for deporting Muslim Americans, refusing to allow Muslims in the military, recriminalizing homosexuality, killing sexually immoral people with spears (the Biblical story of Phinehas, which he approvingly cited a couple weeks ago on his radio show; he claims he was just holding up Phinehas' courage, but since that courage was expressed by killing a fornicating couple...), and my favorite on the sheer WTF??? scale, stoning to death a whale that attacked its trainers under Old Testament Law.  But today...he's just about reached Glenn Beck levels of bwuh?.

He describes a supposed tactic of insurgency fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is to bury hepatitis- and HIV-contaminated needles point-up in the ground around roadside bombs, in the hopes that U.S. military personnel will, while digging up the bomb, prick themselves and become infected.  No idea whether or not this is true, but it's the line AFTER that paragraph that has me reeling with bwuh?.

If we connect the dots here, the inescapable conclusion is that gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism.

Um.  It is?  Inescapably?  He must be playing with a different set of dots than I am, because no matter how I shuffle those dots around and connect them in my head, there is no way I can ever get "domestic terrorism" and "gay sex" to connect.  But don't worry, he will be happy to mansplain his off-this-planet conclusion!

Every time an HIV-infected male person has [unprotected] sex with another male person, it's essentially the same as plunging an infected heroin needle into his arm.

There, I fixed that for you.  Of course, it's still not true (HIV transmission is not *guaranteed* if one has unprotected sex with someone who has it, it's more of a Russian Roulette sort of thing) but it's at least less wrong.

He's passing on a potential death sentence, just as the Taliban seeks to do on a foreign battlefield.

Ok, so we're trying to draw a parallel between the Taliban and gay DEATHSEX.  Is it sad that I can honestly say I've seen weirder parallels drawn?  

It is because of the risk of HIV transmission that the FDA will not allow a male homosexual to donate blood if he has had sex with another male even one single solitary time since 1977. The second riskiest behavior for HIV infection is injection drug use.

Hopefully not for much longer, what with the whole science-doesn't-support-that thing.  But you go ahead and uncritically accept the Government Knows Best attitude about it, since it's convenient for your argument.

Now if gays are allowed into the military, they will be inevitably be put in battlefield situations where donated blood from soldiers may be necessary to save the lives of wounded comrades. An HIV-infected American soldier whose blood is used in those circumstances may very well condemn his fellow soldier to death rather than save his life.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the military screens entrants, including a medical exam, and I'd imagine HIV is on the list of disqualifiers for military service.  A quick google confirms my suspicions in all of 3 clicks and 20 seconds, so the score for fact-checking stands at Bryan Fischer: 0, Random Blogger: 1.  Also, my military-medical knowledge is fairly limited, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that the odds of needing an in-the-field, direct transfusion from one soldier to another are vanishingly small in this day and age.  Combine that with the odds of an active-duty soldier having HIV in the first place, and this scary scenario is laughably unlikely.

If open homosexuals are allowed into the United States military, the Taliban won't need to plant dirty needles to infect our soldiers with HIV. Our own soldiers will take care of that for them.

Oh, for the love of...I seem to recall saying this in my last post, and I know I said it on Twitter earlier, but it seems I need to say it again: THIS IS NOT ABOUT *ALLOWING* LGBs INTO THE MILITARY.  THEY ARE ALREADY THERE.  Kthx.

But I was right.  He's playing with a very different set of dots than I am, since his set apparently includes dots like GAY SEX IS DEATHSEX and THERE ARE NO GAYS IN THE MILITARY UNLESS WE LET THEM IN and ALL GAYS HAVE HIV BECAUSE THEY'RE HAVING GAY DEATHSEX.  Can we just send Fischer and Beck off to rave at each other in a dark corner somewhere away from the rest of us, please?

Blogswarm: Revise the FDA's Ban On Gay Men Giving Blood

Currently, the FDA bans gay and bisexual men (and any other man who has had sex with men [MSM]) from giving blood.  If a man has had sex with another man even once since 1977, he is permanently disqualified from donating blood.  The ban is a relic of the AIDS panic of the 80's, when HIV/AIDS was "the gay disease", couldn't be tested for reliably, etc.  It made sense then.  But now?  Now, HIV affects every demographic.  Now, it can be detected by testing within 2 weeks of exposure.  And yet the rules are still such that if a man once had protected sex with another man 30 years ago, he will never be allowed to donate blood, while a man who has had sex with a known HIV-positive woman is only deferred for a year, after which he may donate blood again.  This is anti-gay (and apparently is sometimes used as anti-trans, depending on the personnel at a given blood center) discrimination, pure and simple, and it needs to go away. 


Right now, the FDA is convening a committee on whether or not to reconsider the ban.  They are open to public comments.  Please, email Dr. Holmberg - jerry.holmberg@hhs.gov - to encourage the committee to replace the ban with a policy grounded in science in fact, rather than discrimination.  Additional talking points and a form letter can be found here, if you want to use that.


Please email!!

Lacy-Drawered, Limp-Wristed, Will Still Kick Your Ass.

Arizona, I'm sorry.  I've tried to be patient.  But in the last two years, you gave us McCain, two separate towns have had freakouts over showing PoC on murals, you've started constructing a tent city in the desert in anticipation of all the "illegals" you're going to round up under your new Show Me Your Papers law, and now Yuma's mayor let a heaping bucket of fail fall out of his mouth during Memorial Day Weekend, on DADT.  I may have to start making "let 'em secede, no really, please!" jokes about you the way I used to about Texas.*

So what did Mayor Al Krieger say, about allowing LGBs to serve openly in the military?

“I cannot believe a bunch of lacey-drawered, limp-wristed people could do what those men have done in the past...We need solid, strong men to fight those battles.  Not pacifists.”

...Yeeeeah.  This is so stultifyingly full of fail, I hardly know where to begin.  With the erasure of women in the military ("We need solid, strong men")?  With the refusal to acknowledge that there are already LGBs serving, there have been LGBs serving throughout our military's history, that they were some of the "solid, strong men" fighting our nation's battles, they just couldn't do it openly?  With the assumption, founded on absolutely, utterly nothing, that gay=pacifist?  With the "lacy-drawered, limp-wristed" shit, drawing on ridiculous and offensive stereotypes a few decades old which have never, ever been true across the board?  With the erasure of lesbians - because going by the stereotypes this jackhole seems to be working from, gay men aren't capable of fighting, but lesbians are supposed to be as solid and strong as any man, and twice as scary?


Oh, and for a megafail bonus round, Mayor Krieger defended his statement by invoking the names of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, claiming that they would have backed him up so it's ok to be an offensive shithead who's wrong about everything.


Can we please stop acting like DADT is somehow going to "let gays into" the military?  LGB servicemembers are already serving in the military.  There are "lacy-drawered, limp-wristed" gay men already fighting these battles, so that a fuckwit like Mayor Krieger can run his mouth and denigrate the very people who have given, are giving, will give their lives for this country we share.  


You can let Mayor Dipshit know what you think of his asshattery by emailing him at Alan.Krieger@YumaAz.gov

*I know not all Arizonans are on board with their state's terrible policies of late; this doesn't change the fact that AZ is earning a metric shit-ton of horrid publicity lately, and yeah, I'm going to joke about it from time to time.

It's Personal.

There's a cop-out I see come up fairly often, among homophobes, that I'm feeling the need to address.  Because they don't want to be rightfully seen as the hateful fucks they are, they try to "soften" it - you all know the drill.  "Love the sinner, hate the sin," and all that crap.  I see that one a lot.  But there's another one I see a lot, too.  "It's nothing personal."  It's a variant on LTS,HTS.  "It's nothing personal; I don't have a problem with you as a person, I just can't support your lifestyle."  That's one I heard a couple of times in that one awful class period, the purported separation of hate for a person from hate for their sexual orientation.


And it is, flatly, pure Grade-A bullshit.


To anyone who has ever said this - for example, Oklahoma City Councilman Brian Walters, whose quote of "It's not personal. I don't hate these people. It's just a moral conviction; I cannot support them" inspired this post - let me say it simply so you can never say you misunderstood.


This is never not personal.


It cannot ever be not personal.


For you, sitting high on your good fortune to be born with a sexual orientation widely accepted and promoted by the culture you live in, it's not personal.  For you, who has never been challenged or threatened or had people insist that you "chose" to love who you love, it's not personal.  For you, who never faced being thrown out of your home and family, harassed, taunted, even murdered for loving who you love, it can be not personal.  For you, to whom the laws provide support and encouragement in your establishment of a family, it can be not personal.  For you, who have never been accused of "shoving your preferences in other peoples' faces" for the simple act of holding hands, or kissing your partner on the cheek, or even just talking with coworkers about going to the movies with your partner over the weekend, it can be not personal.


But for those of us who are queer in one flavor or another, it is always, inevitably, unshakably personal.  You are not, with your half-masked hateful words, attacking some nebulous, hypothetical "lifestyle".  You are attacking us.  You are telling me that the love I felt for my ex-girlfriend wasn't real, or was somehow bad, wrong, deviant, immoral, etc.  You are telling the children of LGB parents that their moms or dads are bad people.  You cannot speak out against such a core identity as who one loves and partners with, without speaking out against the people who hold that identity.  These are not separate or separable things.  Yes, we are more than just sexual orientation, but that orientation forms a deep and abiding part of the whole, and you cannot extract it to attack without hitting the person around it, too.


So please.  Stop trying to pretend you'd like us as people if only we wouldn't be so very gay at you.  If you're going to hate us, be honest and hate us.  The compassionate face you try to put on it is not compassionate at all, and it's not fooling anybody. 

I Think My Ironymeter Just Asploded...

I know I've been gone for a long time, and I'm sorry, Internet.  Finals ate me alive - although I made out with my first straight-A semester IN MY LIFE EVAR, woot! - and I just got hired at a new job for which I am still jumping through setup hoops.  But I'm still alive, and still here, and I'm back.  On to the irony!


So.  DADT, right?  That whole bullshit "compromise", which is basically a sop to the activists in that DADT will be *technically* repealed, but the discharges won't actually stop unless and until the Pentagon says so along with the President and that goddamn "working group", and which does not include any actual nondiscrimination policy, meaning that DADT discharges, even if they ARE stopped by the current Pentagon and administration, can be started right back up again by a Republican administration/more conservative higher-ups at the Pentagon.  What we end up with, then, is a DADT that acts like the Mexico City Policy (the ban on the U.S.'s international family-planning funding going to groups that provide abortion or references for abortion services), on then off then on then off then on then off...ping-ponging its status depending purely on which letter the POTUS has after hir name.  I could write pages on this shit, and how it's not a compromise, it's a bone like the others this administration has tossed us - "Here, have an unenforceable symbolic cookie, now will you shut up and get under the bus like we told you to???" - but it's been covered plenty elsewhere.  So instead, I will share this bit of WTF going down on the House floor in debate right now:

REP. TRENT FRANKS (R-AZ), on what pushing for repeal without waiting for the study's completion tells straight soldiers: "We're going to say, 'No. We don't care what you say.  You can die for us on the battlefield, but you have no input into this process.'"

Um.  Really?  Seriously?  Because that sounds oddly familiar.  Why is that?  Oh, that's right.  BECAUSE IT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU HOMOPHOBES HAVE BEEN SAYING TO THE LGB TROOPS WHO ARE ALREADY SERVING IN THE MILITARY, ASSHOLE!  Newsflash: there are already LGB servicemembers (T, too, but they're not covered by DADT in the same way IIRC) who are and have been actively working toward repeal, and when you and your ilk keep saying "No, no, no" or even "Well, we have to study this first", you are saying to them, "We don't care what you say.  You can die for us on the battlefield, but you have no input into this process."  


Wow.  I really think my ironymeter just broke.  I cannot believe he said that with a straight face.  I guess it's ok to say "You have no input" to those icky gays, but by god if you try to change anything without Straight Approval (tm) you are Oppressing The Heteros!!eleventy!


Rep Franks, please, do us all a favor and STFU.

Wednesday WTF: Well, At Least You're Being Honest

Wednesday WTF is back!  For my newer readers, it was a thing I used to do, every Wednesday, posting the most ridiculously WTF thing of the week as my Wednesday WTF.  I quit for awhile, but I'm reinstating the practice as of this week.  Yay!

This renewal of the Wednesday WTF comes courtesy of the burqa fight in Europe.  It's already been covered elsewhere just how fucked up this idea is, particularly as it uses an appropriation of feminist principles and language to justify racism and further oppressing the women of the already-oppressed group by targeting their specific accoutrements, thus neatly allowing anti-Muslim governments to oppress Muslim women in the name of women's liberation.  But I want to point out something very simple that apparently did not manage to make it to the notice of Jean-Francois Cope, majority leader in the French National Assembly, when he was writing and titling his op-ed.

Titling it "Tearing Away the Veil" does nothing to advance your claim that it's not about stigmatizing or oppressing Muslim women.  I don't care how cute the phrase is, you're arguing that this is not a targeted move against women who veil in the same breath that you use a title of violent imagery that summons a mental picture of someone forcibly ripping off a woman's burqa/niqab.  Message consistency FAIL.

But hey, at least you're being honest about what you're trying to do here. 

This Photo Is Important (to me).

I was blessed a few weeks ago to be in the right place at the right time to borrow my brother's camera and take a photo I've been wanting to capture for nearly eight years.  And I want to share it with you, my readers, because I think you will understand why it is so important to me.

When I was in my teens, pre-9/11, I took flute lessons.  The drive to my teacher's studio took me out on a semi-rural road near my hometown, where I would pass by the shed in the picture.  In those days, though, it was just a white shed with a big black peace symbol painted on it.  My budding-hippie-self always smiled to see it.  I thought it would be there like that forever.

And then 9/11 happened.  And then we declared war.  And then later on we declared another war, this time against Iraq.  And some time later in that school year, my senior year of high school, I drove home from my lesson, and where there had been a white shed with a black peace sign, there was a white shed, with a mostly-painted-over black peace sign covered by a freshly-painted-on American flag.  That moment, that shed, printed itself indelibly in my mind, as the perfect symbol of everything that had suddenly gone so wrong in my world.  I've always intended to go back and take a picture of it, to preserve the terrible sad contrast, of the symbol of peace abandoned and painted over in favor of the gaudy display of patriotism.  After all, you can only have one.  And we all know that a True American would rather have patriotism than peace.

Right?

Epic Quote of the Day

During the debate on Florida's abortion ultrasound bill (which, despite Dem efforts to block it from coming to a vote, got brought and voted on and passed Friday), Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, said the following:

Members, we constantly hear that this chamber is all about small government. The only thing this body has proven in the last six years is how this Legislature defines small government — six years ago this Legislature wanted government so small that it could fit down a tube into an individual woman's throat named Terri Schiavo; this decade we have shown time and again that you want government so small that it can fit under someone's bedroom door; and members, this year you are showing that you want government so small that it could fit between a woman's leg and into her uterus. It's not the small government that anyone wants.  

I have never heard it put so beautifully, so succinctly.  I want to send this man flowers.  This is what we have been saying again and again: Republicans claim to want "small government", except for when it comes to interfering in the lives of people who are making choices they disagree with.  And that's not small government at all.  That's hypocrisy.