Who should we entrust with the care and teaching of our children?

So, let me get this straight. 

A teacher, who had performed in porn prior to her teaching career, can be fired for her past conduct because her students and colleagues are hateful whorephobic fucks who couldn't remember that a sex worker, former or current, is also a human being who deserves respect, with the district superintendent saying that her past experiences in sex work are "incompatible with her responsibilities as a role model for students"...

...but a school counselor who openly says, on the news, that gay kids have no purpose in life unless they un-gay themselves and become straight Christian kids is just "expressing her First Amendment rights," and so no disciplinary action will be taken.

What the flaming, festering fuck?

Does the school counselor not also have responsibilities as a role model for students?  Are gay students not also students for whom this counselor is responsible for being a good role model to?  How can she be a good role model for students who she has already told she believes are worthless and without purpose? 

How is one's past history, which would not have been known to the kids she taught at all, if her colleagues hadn't found her videos and downloaded them onto their phones to share around and show the principal (what a way to treat a colleague, huh?), somehow worse than a recent statement made in a very public forum advocating overt discrimination against a section of the student body for which one is responsible?

Chose at one point in the past to use your body to engage in sex on camera to make money, which you no longer choose to do and have not since becoming an educator?  FOREVER IRREDEEMABLE SHOULD NOT EVER BE PERMITTED TO EXIST IN THE PRESENCE OF DELICATE, PRECIOUS, INNOCENT CHILDREN LEST THEIR HEARTS BE TAINTED BY YOUR SLUTTINESS.

While on camera for the local news, say flat out that non-het children are worthless so long as they continue to be non-het?  HEY THAT'S HER RIGHT SHE CAN BELIEVE WHAT SHE WANTS THERE'S NO NEED TO DO ANYTHING I'M SURE SHE'LL STILL TREAT THE NON-HET KIDS IN HER CARE WITH THE SAME RESPECT AS THE STRAIGHT KIDS, AND THE NON-HET KIDS WON'T AT ALL BE HUMILIATED OR SHAMED OR OTHERWISE AFFECTED BY HER ASSERTIONS.

This is a truly sickening clusterfuck of misogyny, slut-shaming, whorephobia, homophobia, and Christian supremacy in action.  Look at all the messages being sent:

• Once a woman engages in sex work, she is forever worthless and should expect to be thrown aside once any non-sex-work profession she attempts to move into gets wind of her past. 
• Women's sexuality is hot and belongs on-camera, but once a woman has put her sexuality on camera, that's the only place she belongs and the only thing she should expect to do forever because she has sullied herself for anything else. 
• If you find out that someone you work with as an equal was once a sex worker, you are freed from all obligation to treat her with respect, and it's fine to share around the evidence of her prior career among other colleagues while at work.
• If her effectiveness in the classroom is compromised by the blatant and disgusting disrespect and shaming aimed at her by colleagues and students alike, the solution is not to enforce codes of conduct that require everyone to behave their damn selves, but just to throw her out on her ass instead.
• Advocating discrimination against as many as possibly one in ten of the kids you serve, telling children who are in a high-risk category for self-harm and suicide that they're worthless and their lives have no purpose, is totally fine, and you'll be protected from consequences. 
• Gay children's emotional and mental health isn't worth protecting, and they should be expected to still work with and under the "guidance" of someone who has outright told them they're worthless, so long as she said it because Jesus.

Fuck every single person involved in the handling of both of these situations.  Principals, colleagues, judges, superintendents, everyone.  Y'all can just rot in hell for being terrible, terrible examples of human beings.

@JerryBrownGov Vetoes Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

While Gov. Brown deserves some praise for signing a first-of-its-kind bill to ban pray-away-the-gay "therapy" for minors*, and signing a bill to allow young undocumented immigrants to obtain CA driver's licenses, he also deserves a massive whack upside the head for his decision to veto AB889, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Protip: You can't claim that the (overwhelmingly brown and female) workers of an industry deserve protections - and we're talking basic shit like guaranteed meal breaks, rest periods for live-in caretakers, and overtime pay - but turn around and veto it because it might cost more.  Yes, it will.  Duh.  That has always been how worker protections are.  But, see, the principle here is that people's safety and basic needs and ability to do their job without abuses are more important than the almighty dollar.  Just to clear that up for you, since you seemed to be confused.

It's couched in claims of concern for the poor and elderly who might have to pay more and thus not be able to afford caretaker support.  This is a legitimate concern.  You know how to address that, though?  Social support programs to make up the difference.  Fuck, go right to single-payer healthcare and you'll skip a lot of the trouble with that in the first place.  You know how not to address it?  By refusing to institute basic protections for the workers.  Don't take it out on them.  They deserve better.

He also pulls a line straight out of the anti-union-big-business playbook by saying that requiring such protections might mean there are fewer jobs overall because employers are having to pay more.  Gee, that sounds an awful lot like the arguments businesses have used against every union and every labor law ever - "We can't pay healthcare as well as wages, we'll go bankrupt and you'll all lose your jobs!"  "We can't afford to offer paid time off, it'll raise our costs and we'll have to lay people off to make ends meet!" etc. - and it's just as shitty coming from a supposed Democrat who just vetoed a worker protection bill as it is coming from private-sector PR.

It's especially shitty when it comes from a supposed Democrat who also vetoed two bills that would have instituted more stringent worker protections for agricultural workers by requiring that employers provide water and shade to prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths, basically by saying "yeah but this will actually lead to holding agribusinesses accountable in court (rather than just issuing them citations that are literally planned for in the company's accounting structure), and we don't like that."

But as was pointed out on tumblr, Brown knows what he's doing.  These bills overwhelmingly affect undocumented and migrant workers.  Who can't vote.  So he bolsters his cred with businesses (the California Chamber of Commerce opposed all three bills, gee I wonder why?) without losing much in actual votes come election time.

Smart politics.  Shitty decisions.

*Which I will have way more on tomorrow, because Liberty Counsel is already threatening to sue, and their histrionics are both predictable as fuck and hilarious.

NOM Uses "Some Of My Best Friends Are Black!" Excuse

Yesterday morning, some documents were released as part of an investigation into the National Organization for [Hetero Christian] Marriage's campaign financing, which showed explicit divide-and-conquer strategizing that revolved around pitting Black and Latino communities against the gay community (because, I guess, there are no queer Black people or queer Latinos? lol your intersectionality failure) in an effort to break apart core Democratic constituencies.

Well, after such damning evidence of their unethical race-based manipulation strategies emerged, they had to respond, didn't they?  How could they spin this to come out looking, if not like the good guys, then at least not like total and complete assholes?

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was formed in 2007 and has worked extensively with supporters of traditional marriage from every color, creed and background. We have worked with prominent African-American and Hispanic leaders, including Dr. Alveda C. King, Bishop George McKinney of the COGIC Church, Bishop Harry Jackson and the New York State Senator Reverend Rubén Díaz Sr., all of whom share our concern about protecting marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

NOM used My Best Friend Is Black!  It's not very effective...

Pokemon references aside (I don't even play Pokemon.  I never have.  Goddamnit, internet memes, what have you done to me?), this is basically the organization-level version of "...but I have black friends [therefore this racist thing I said/did can't possibly be racist]".  It's name-dropping certain PoC who are anti-marriage equality, as if to make the case that they do, or should, speak for all of their community (oh, look, that old trope of minority-groups-are-monolithic), while continuing to further erase the existence of PoC who are also part of the LGB community, and their allies.

So I have to wonder: how, exactly, was this supposed to make the case that NOM is not a bunch of terrible, racist assholes, in addition to being homophobic bullies?  Put down the shovel, kids.  You're in deep enough as it is.

Edited to reflect which day stuff was released.  Self, please remember that if you're queuing a post, you need to make sure the conditional references are accurate for the scheduled post time, not for the time when you were writing it.  >.<

Phobia != Bigotry

You may have noticed that my posts of late do not use the terms homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, etc. anymore*.  Basically, I was informed that terms using the -phobia suffix, despite being in wide popular use, conflate mental illness with bigotry and violence, give inappropriate credibility to the "gay panic" or "trans panic" defenses when straight/cis people commit violence against queer/trans people, and, much like calling Glenn Beck or Michele Bachmann "crazy", smear people with actual phobias by appropriating their disability to describe despicable attitudes and people.

Terms like heterosexism (replacing homophobia), cissexism (replacing transphobia), monosexism (replacing biphobia), and Islamobigotry/anti-Islam bigotry (replacing Islamophobia), aren't all that hard to introduce to one's lexicon and convert to general use.  Certainly no harder than learning not to use "lame", or "crazy", or other ableist slurs.  I like them additionally because they put the focus back on the dominant/oppressive side of the dichotomy by clearly noting who the problem is right there in the word.

But even if all the other reasons were wrong**, it would still be better to change from -phobia language, because it makes it a lot harder for asshats to pull shit like this.

For many people “homophobia” is actually about “having a fear of being accused of being bigoted, prejudiced or discriminating against homosexual people”. This fear, which is increasingly common, causes people to take a defensive posture in order to avoid attracting disapproval or adverse publicity. ... For people who don’t hate, dislike or fear gay people, but simply believe that sex between people who are not married (including all sex between those of the same sex) is morally wrong, we need a new term. I’d like to propose the term “homoskeptic” - a term that is not yet in common use and hence arguably open to (re)definition.

Using -phobia language leaves a nice little loophole for the bigots to exploit.  They can say "I don't fear gay people!" and thus deflect critique off into speculation of their *real* feelings about teh gayz, diverting attention from the oppression and bigotry they're perpetuating. It allows this jackass to turn the fear-connotation of using -phobia around and twist it into the Good Christian's fear of The Gay Mafia and their notorious jackbooted enforcers.  It lets him pose bigots as the victim and their ideology as reasonable, not a phobia, but simply skepticism, which is a healthy quality, right?

But the last lol came from a comment to the post on NOM's blog, by commenter Anonygrl:

I would like to suggest that people who don't hate or fear African Americans but simply think that they are morally inferior should be called afroskeptics. And people who don't hate or fear women but think that they just shouldn't get paid the same as men or have control of their own bodies should be gynoskeptics.
No matter what you call yourselves, if you are doing so to justify denying rights to another group (and that is what you are doing with homosexuals) then the correct term you should be using is bigot.

Word.

*If you have seen me slip up in this, please do let me know, either in comments or via email, and I will change it.
**However, they are not wrong, and this will not be up for debate here.  Additional commentary on the harms of -phobia language may be found here and here if you want or need further reading on the subject.

Catholic "Charities": Our Bigotry Is More Important Than Caring For Orphaned Children

Remember what I wrote a few weeks back, about how government money going to religious organizations which insist on operating according to the dictates of their religious beliefs was kind of a Bad Idea, because it meant there would be gaps in service and people who couldn't access services that a government-run institution would provide, because the religious institution refused to offer it, meaning people not of a particular religion would be forced to live by the dictates of that particular religion in the absence of non-religious care providers?

Shit like this would be why.  Adoption by same-gender couples in civil unions is permitted in Illinois, but the local Catholic adoption groups, which rely on financing from the state, want to be able to continue their exclusionary policy of "not placing children with unmarried couples".  This is, of course, their workaround that lets them cover their anti-gay bias in a thin veneer of "it's not about TEH GAYS, it's about ALL unmarried people!"  (This is also an excellent example of why civil unions are Not Good Enough as a "compromise" instead of full marriage equality.) 

Anyway, the point is, these jerks are actually upset enough at having to treat same-gender couples almost-equally that they are suing the state of Illinois for religious infringement, and have said that they will stop offering their state-funded - state-funded!  Taxpayer money!  Let that sink in for a moment - foster and adoption placement services entirely if they don't get their Special Snowflake Jesus Said So exemption. 

This is why I am leery at best (and actively hostile toward, at worst) when it comes to the idea of Faith-Based Outreach.  I didn't like the federal office of faith-based outreach when Bush instituted it, and I like it no better now that Obama has kept and expanded and reworked it.  (My ire is bipartisan!  Are you willing to treat my objections as reasonable now, Mr. President?)  If religious institutions want to offer charity and services, by all means let them do so, but let them do so with their own and their tithers' money.  And do not treat them like a substitute for publicly-funded and government-run social services, because they are not.  Spend the tax dollars that previously went to religious charities on building the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to provide those services.  (Yes, I realize it's a hair's breadth from COMMUNISM! to suggest that the government should spend any money providing any services, much less social services, but we all know I'm a dirty pinko leftist anyway, so.)

Look, if anti-choice extremists can get all huffy about "my tax dollars" going to fund Planned Parenthood, I'm entitled to make a fuss about my tax dollars going to fund religious organizations who would rather abandon their mission to help children in need of families, than be forced to treat same-gender couples as equal to mixed-gender couples. 

These Catholic charities apparently need to give back the taxpayer money, find a fainting couch, and lie down to have the vapors quietly for awhile, cause obviously they can't handle the idea of putting the needs of children ahead of their bigotries.  And in the meantime, why don't we see about finding those children some loving homes - no matter the genders of the adults providing them.

The Pagans Are Coming! The Pagans Are Coming!

I like to imagine the preshow meeting going something like this:

Ed:  Our anti-gay routine has been feeling pretty stale lately.  I mean, Bryan's compared them to Nazis like a million times, and we've worked the pedophilia, bestiality, and fecal matter angles half to death.  NOM's got the "they're coming for your children" angle covered.  What can we do to keep this fresh and interesting?  What possible tone can we take that will be something new, something they haven't heard before?
Buster:  Hmm.  You're right.  Let's see...we could try to work patriotism in there?  Paint gays as anti-American.
Ed:  But we've done that before, too.
Buster:  Oh!  I know!  We'll use the patriotism angle, but we'll make it about the Founding Fathers, specifically.  Nobody can argue about the Founding Fathers, criticizing them is totally off-limits and everyone knows it, right?
Ed:  I just don't know if that's enough, though.  It's not scary enough.
Buster:  Scary?  What could be scarier than un-American Americans everywhere?  It worked for McCarthy, didn't it?
Ed:  Yeah, but...oh!  Oh, I got it.  We're talking to a really fundamentalist Christian audience here, right?
Buster:  Of course.  We've alienated pretty much everyone else who ever existed.
Ed:  Well, what is this kind of Christian scared of?
Buster:  ...non-Christians?
Ed:  Bingo, buddy.  Bingo.  So we'll make it about being unChristian!  Not just generically anti-Christian, cause that's been overplayed too, we will make it about...PAGANS.
Buster:  Ooh, I like that!  Paganism.  It calls up mental images of the decadence of Rome...
Ed: ...and specifically, the fall of Rome.  So we associate the gays with paganism, everyone thinks of Rome and falling empires, and bam!  Scared shitless and ready to do what we tell 'em.
Buster:  Falling empires...that's deep, man.
Ed:  Thanks.  So, that's our thing, then?  Founding Fathers and paganism?
Buster:  Yep.  Let's do it.

Two middle-aged white men sit behind microphones and self-righteously mansplain at each other and the viewer.  Relevant quote from 2:03:
Buster:  Dr. Gary Gates at the Williams Institute, an arm of the UCLA School of Law, [says] an estimated 3.5% of all adults in the United States identify themselves as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and an estimated 0.3% of adults recognize themselves as transgender.  Ed, your thoughts on those figures first?
Ed:  Well, 3.5%, of course, includes bisexuals in that estimate. [Yes, because they were measuring lesbian, gay, AND BISEXUAL, it was right there in the quote.  I'm not sure I see the problem here.]  Um, most of the recent surveys in this country show that those who self-identify as homosexual men or women is lower than that [with Very Serious Concern Troll Face].  It's actually closer to 2.5%.  But some people say, well, you're just arguing over a few percentage points.  [Because you are.  Actually you're not; you're arguing over a single percentage point, and it looks very much like you're doing so just to make the queer community seem as small and easy to dismiss as possible, as if bisexual people somehow don't count as part of that community.  Which makes you even more of an inane jackass.  But do go on.]  But the point of, the point we take issue with, is not the percentage, it is the ideology behind the normalization of sexuality.  It wouldn't matter if it was 20% - if it was 20% we'd be in big trouble [yes, you would be; bigger communities have more voting clout, usually, and you'd have a lot harder time trying to stuff that many people back in the closet] - but um.  We're talking about a return to pagan sexuality, a pagan view of sexuality, that says that it doesn't matter with whom you have sex, and uh, that God's laws do not apply to us and there are no absolutes when it comes to sex.  And, frankly, even if you are not a Christian, you do not believe the Bible, or you have no real Christian viewpoint in this - we are talking about a departure from the view of our Founding Fathers, who held to the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God," as it says in the Declaration of Independence! 

You know, the Founding Fathers (and can I just say, I'm ridiculously over that phrase and the patriocentrism it's got going on?  Ugh ugh ugh.  There were women involved in the founding of this nation, asshats) used the phrase "the Laws of Nature's God" to refer to freedom and self-determination as an independent nation.  IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH TEH GAYS OR TEH BUTTSECKS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.  It wasn't about sexuality at all.  Y'all have seized on this one tiny phrase, taken it out of context, twisted it, and are milking the everloving fuck out of it to try to promote your Dominionist aims.  For the record, it's part of a much longer sentence, called the preamble to the Declaration of Independence - you may have heard of it? - which goes like this:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In this context, they're talking about more of a philosophical question of rights and freedoms and such, in contradiction to such philosophies of governance as the whole divine right of kings thing.  It's not about Christianity.  It's not about the Bible.  It's about countering the idea that the Creator (science hadn't really gotten to the point of explaining how we could come into existence without a creator being, therefore it was assumed almost universally that there was *some* kind of Creator.  This does not mean they all believed in the Bible or Christianity; most of the FFs were actually Deists.) had endowed certain special people with the divine right to rule, and replacing it with the idea that the Creator had endowed all people* with the divine right of self-determination and self-rule.

Which, y'know.  HAS SHIT ALL TO DO WITH THE BIBLE AND DOMINIONISM AND AMERICA-AS-A-CHRISTIAN-NATION AND ALL THE BULLSHIT YOU KEEP TRYING TO MAKE IT MEAN!  It's a POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

Ahem.  That aside (she says, three paragraphs and much swearing later), I am cracking the fuck up at the whole "zomg pagan sexuality" thing.  This is...meant to be a problem of some kind?  In case ye olde mansplainers were unaware, there are actual, real, live Pagans in this country.  PRACTICING A PAGAN SEXUALITY ALREADY.  So.  Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted, and has already jumped the fence and is in its partner's paddock and they're getting it on, to stretch a metaphor uncomfortably far, is not particularly effective here.

I'm also not getting why the idea that "God's laws don't apply to us" is such a thing to be afraid of.  Shouldn't a particular deity's laws only apply to those who have chosen to follow that deity in some way?  One of my favorite fantasy novels** takes place in a culture in which there are four main sub-deities, and when a person comes of age, they choose which one of them to be a devotee of, and there are different codes of law that apply to followers of each.  Like, one character is struggling at one point with whether she should marry a guy from a different sect, because he wants her to marry him under the laws of his deity, which removes her right to divorce and makes her property his after they marry, while she wants to marry under the laws of her deity, which allow for free divorce and equitable division of property.  This makes sense to me.  I have never, and probably will never, understood why the laws of one religious tradition should apply to those not of that tradition.

Lastly, let me correct a misconception here.  Saying that pagan sexuality has no absolutes when it comes to sex is deeply incorrect.  This pagan, at least, has precisely one absolute when it comes to sex: consent.  Affirmative, explicit, overt consent (in whatever form that takes for a given partnering) must exist prior to and during all sexual activity.  That's it.  That's all.  And I even like to think this is an absolute we could agree on (although sadly I'm probably wrong)!  So I propose an experiment:  Let's try out this "pagan sexuality/pagan view of sexuality" that you're so afraid of.  Based on the single absolute I've put forth here.  Give it, say, ten years?  Of this as the sexual norm.  See if the Universe disintegrates or the Earth spins from its axis or anything catastrophic.  If so, I will personally buy billboards all over the nation proclaiming how right you were.  If not, you have to STFU and quit using my religion as a scare tactic to make people hate my sexuality.  Okay?  Okay.

Edited to add: Now that you've read the post, look at the title again.  Am I the only one who giggles and goes "Damn right, we are" at that? ^_^
*In the sense that "all people" meant at the time, which is to say, all white landowning males, more or less.
**Talyn, by Holly Lisle.  Trigger warnings for rape, sexual abuse, and torture.  It does, however, pass the Bechdel test, multiple times over, and while the main love pairing is hetero, it involves them as equals sharing their different skills to defeat the Big Bad, so.  Pretty awesome.  Magic and war and infiltration. 

Bryan Fischer's Godwin on Steroids

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

              - Godwin's Law, the main corollary of which is that the first person to invoke a Nazi comparison loses by forfeit.  I also use it as a verb, as in "to Godwin a discussion".

If we were holding to that standard, Bryan Fischer (and indeed the whole Teabagger movement) would have lost the debate by Godwinning long ago.  However, on Tuesday Fischer, as he does with so many things, cranked the Godwin up to 11 with this epic screed [TW gratuitous Nazi comparisons and vicious anti-gay fearmongering]:

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. ... Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.

Wow.  Just...wow.  I mean, SIX instances of the word Nazi in six sentences.  Clearly Fischer means business.  Srs bizness.  Of the bearing-no-resemblance-to-reality-or-logic variety.

The AFA yet again tried to get its pet runaway train under control; of course, since it was on his radio show, they couldn't just edit it like they do to his blog posts.  So instead, they simply removed the video from their archive.  Unfortunately, as I keep trying to remind people, once you're on the internet as having said something, it's on the record forever, no matter how much deleting or redacting you try to do.

Of course, Fischer didn't help matters by going on another unhinged rant Wednesday about DADT, how the "homosexual lobby" (immaculately decorated, natch) is "just like the Nazis", and how any soldier who "[says] a word of complaint about homosexual behavior" will be, I'm not even fucking kidding, "sent to a reeducation camp ... to get your brain washed ... you're not getting out of that room until you crumble and admit you support sexual deviancy ... that's where it's going in the military."

How long before AFA finally wises up and drops this fuckbag like a ton of bricks?  How long before right-wing politicians stop appearing on his show?  Why the fuck is anyone fucking legitimizing such raw hatred and bigotry?

That Same Day On All The Other Streets

Some shitball in Texas has introduced an amendment in the budget process that would require any state-funded university which maintains a "gender and sexuality center or other center for students focused on gay, lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, transsexual, gender questioning, or other gender identity issues" to spend an equal amount on a "family and traditional values center". Those uppity queer students, trying to have places where they can focus on their issues without being shouted over by heteronormative, gender-policing society!  Why, it's just like the reverse discrimination of Black History month and Women's History month and gay pride parades! 

I think the best response here to quote the sometimes-disturbing, often-brilliant A Softer World comic (click the image to enlarge):

Comic reading, in three panels, over a backdrop of photos of a ferris wheel: I don't understand your complaint./There totally is a straight pride march./That same day, too. On all the other streets.

Look, 'phobes, I know you're scared.  But there's no need to be.  We're not trying to eradicate "traditional values" entirely or anything.  You're welcome to them if you want them.  We just want a space to be ourselves alongside without coercive attempts to remold us in the image you want, and currently, that means having our own centers dedicated to our issues.

If you *really* want to make LGBT/gender centers obsolete, you could always try overturning our culture's heteronormativity and gender-policing and transphobia, and then we wouldn't need them anymore.  Sadly, forcing your little "traditional values centers" on people is actually just going to exacerbate the issue and make our centers stick around a lot longer to combat the damage you're doing.

Suit yourself.  Asshole.

Turns Out, Army Chaplains *Not* The Unprofessional Crybabies DADT Repeal Opponents Made Them Out To Be

Spoiler alert: the conservatives were wrong again!

CNN had a brief article the other day about the Army chaplain corps working on training in preparation for DADT repeal to go into effect.  I'm sure y'all remember the claims made by anti-gay bigots during the DADT repeal fiasco, that it would cause chaplains to be unable to exercise their religion and thus abandon the service en masse, right?  Well, guess how many chaplains have applied for voluntary separation, now that they're actually training them in how to appropriately counsel and help openly LGB soldiers?

None.  That's right, not a single one, according to the spokesman for the chaplain corps.  Apparently one did ask for separation before the training began, but since it has, not a single one has asked to leave.  Further, no endorsing organizations (military chaplains must be endorsed by a religious group in order to qualify for service as a chaplain, it seems) have threatened to pull their endorsements, which would force their endorsed chaplains to leave the service.  The Army chaplain corps has some 2,900 members, and out of that, precisely ONE has left since the repeal bill was signed.

The CNN article is sprinkled with quotes about how the chaplains are basically shrugging and going about their business, already being fairly used to counseling and ministering to members of diverse faith groups, and not seeing this as much of an issue.

Looks like FRC underestimated the maturity and coping capacity of military chaplains.  But that's not much of a surprise.  I'd hope they're used to being wrong by now; they have so much practice at it, after all.

National Coming Out Day: Because I Can

I have a hard time believing that someone could be reading this blog and not have yet noticed that I am Very Queer (And Talk About It A Lot).  But for those who haven't heard the formal announcement yet:


I am queer.  I am bisexual (mostly), although I've mostly dated men and mostly prefer women, which is kind of a weird combination.  I am polyamorous; although I am in a monogamous relationship right now, I still hope that someday we might find a third to join our relationship.  And I am very, very out about it.


Why?


Because I can be.  Because I live in a state that offers robust employment protections for LGBTs - I can't be fired for being openly queer, and if I suffer retaliations at work because of my outness, I have legal recourse.  Because I am the kind of person who is willing and able to handle intrusive questions and the curiosity of strangers, in service of normalizing non-hetero-monogamous sexuality to the wider public.  Because I believe that only with openness and talking about it will the wider culture ever come to be truly accepting of non-hetero-monogamous sexuality, to the point where we won't assume a married woman has a husband and not a wife, to the point where we ask people if they have a significant other, not a boyfriend (for women) or a girlfriend (for men).  I want nobody to bat an eyelash when a woman talks about her female ex, or when a man says he and his husband and their girlfriend are going away this weekend.  I have the kinds of privilege (stable employment in a state with good protections, supportive family to back me up, etc) that make it possible for me to be visible like that, and I'm damn well going to put that to good use.


So at work, I talk very matter-of-factly about my exes, male and female, as if there's nothing strange about that (because there isn't, and there shouldn't be).  So in my very personally-sharing psychology class last spring, I fielded questions from curious classmates about the difference between dating men and women, and how does that poly thing you talk about work, and where do you go to pick up women?  (It's hard to explain, it's *really* hard to explain briefly but here are some links, and I don't, respectively.)


This is something I can do for the community.  I can't donate much, and social anxiety makes it difficult to be part of meetings and organizations and direct actions...but I can be one more queer on the ground, so to speak, making a statement simply by openly and honestly being myself to other people.  


So I am out.  Because I can.

Bryan Fischer, Yet Again: Hetero Anal Sex, Lesbians Do Not Exist

Bryan Fischer, the one-man 3-ring circus of bigotry and fuckbaggery, is at it yet a-fucking-gain.  He, like so many anti-gay bigots, has huge hangups about teh buttsecks, and so focuses his bigotry on ass-sex to an embarrassing degree, a la Porno Pete LaBarbera.  Honestly, if you're this obsessive over other people's sexual proclivities, you need therapy, not your own radio show.


Here's the prize quote, from Fischer's anti-DADT rant-turned-blog-post (via Bryan Fischer Right Wing Watch):

Homosexual conduct is deviant sexual conduct. Homosexuals are defined by one characteristic and one characteristic only: they want to use the anal cavity for sex. This kind of sexual conduct is aberrant and carries enormous health risks.

Attention Bryan Fischer: straight couples do it up the butt, too.  This public service announcement brought to you by the reality-based sexual facts community.  Where have you been while the media has freakouts about teens who have (straight) anal sex to preserve their technical virginity?  And articles show up about whether or not men have come to *expect* anal from women they date?  For the love of all the gods, man, go browse a mainstream porn store for ten minutes.  I doubt it would even take that long to find "Ass Titans #4"*.  Also?  Not all male-homosexual couples have anal sex.  Some do, some don't.  Just like not all hetero couples have vaginal-penetrative sex.  And aren't you forgetting something?  Or rather, someone?  Very many someones?  Who are also categorized under the general term "homosexual", but who are not men?  Yes, them.  Lesbians.  Some of whom *also* enjoy anal sex, and some of whom do not.  


At any rate, this is a ludicrous level of Othering based on sexuality.  Male homosexuality is defined solely by buttsex?  As well to say that "heterosexuals are defined by one characteristic and one characteristic only: they want to stick their penises in vaginas/they want to have penises stuck in their vaginas."  See how stupidly reductive that is?  No one rational would claim that hetero relationships are based solely on wanting to have PIV sex.  Heterosexuals are defined by being attracted to and forming loving relationships with members of a different gender from their own.  Likewise, homosexuals are defined by being attracted to and forming loving relationships with members of their own gender.  And bisexuals are defined by being attracted to and forming loving relationships with members of multiple genders, and asexuals are defined by not being attracted sexually to other people, but forming loving relationships nonetheless.  See how that works?  


Bonus points to the metric fucknugget for these snippets, too...

We would be left with a military comprised of nothing but sexual deviants and those who celebrate sexual deviancy. That is a guaranteed path to a permanently and irreversibly emasculated military

and

The impact on readiness, retention, and recruitment would have been utterly catastrophic. Character-driven officers, gone. Character-driven service members, gone. Character-driven chaplains, gone. Character-driven recruits, gone.

So, masculinity is what defines our military and protects us (from what?  Aside from 9/11, which, terrorism is not the kind of thing you can effectively use a military against, we haven't been attacked by anything or anyone we could reliably need the military to defend against), and if we allow it to be "emasculated" it will become worthless.  I'm sure that's news to the many women serving in the military currently.  Nice little dose of misogyny and patriarchal framing there.  And apparently, LGBs and our allies have no character, and are in fact antithetical to retaining people of character.


Frankly, Fischer, given a choice between an all-rainbow-uniforms military composed entirely of buttsex-having gays and lesbians, and your "$MILITARY_TITLEs of character", I will happily welcome our new buttsexing overlords.  Now please, STFU.

*Why yes, I totally did go google "anal porn dvds" in order to give you an authentic anal sex porn DVD title.  See how dedicated I am to you? ;-)

The Religious Reich: Without Lies, What Would They Be?

...Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what.* Via Right Wing Watch (what would I do without you?), comes a clip of some right-wing assholes talking about their strategy for getting SCOTUS to reinstate Prop H8.  In essence, their belief is that if they just bring enough public opinion to bear on their side, the justices will capitulate to the tyranny will of the people.  But really, the best bit is right at the beginning:

The Supreme Court has not, ever, handed down a decision which flew into the face and teeth of a strong moral consensus against it.

Wow, really?  So Brown v Board of Education was totally uncontroversial, with massive public moral consensus on its side, and the National Guard was called in to escort the black students into newly-desegregated schools as an honor guard!  Also, Roe v Wade was and has always been supported by a strong moral consensus, which is why certain segments keep on attacking it and trying to have it overturned.  Oh, and Loving v Virginia was a total no-brainer, despite more than 40 states having anti-miscegenation laws on the books at the time.  No moral consensus against interracial marriage there!  


I mean, really.  This is one of the stupider boldfaced lies I've seen come from the Religious Wrong.  Someone please do correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the function of SCOTUS is to scrutinize contested laws through a Constitutional lens and decide if the law in question is permissible under the Constitution, yes?  Not to have a popularity contest and say "Well, most people feel strongly against this, so we'll have to rule against it."  The popularity-contest part is the voting which enacts the law; SCOTUS is supposed to stand independent of public opinion and decide pure questions of the Constitutionality of the laws.  Sure, there's a "moral consensus" against same-gender marriage, although it's not such a strong one as they'd like to claim, and its hold has been diminishing considerably with the passage of time.  And with that moral consensus, they won the popularity contest that is voting, and enacted their law.  That part has already been decided.  The question now is not whether it's popular or in step with a "moral consensus", but whether it abides by the strictures of the Constitution.  Which Judge Walker held it did not, and which is the question the 9th Circuit Court and, eventually, SCOTUS will be deciding on, not whether or not there's a "moral consensus" about the issue.


No wonder they're getting all the wrong answers here.  They're asking the wrong questions.



*Gamer joke; from a Zero Punctuation review for Dragon Age in which Yahtzee asked, "What would a Bioware RPG be without text?  Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what."

To Correct Some Misapprehensions The Right-Wing Seems To Be Laboring Under

PROP H8 HAS BEEN OVERTURNED IN FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT!  

Judge Walker issued a 136-page ruling (available here) declaring that Prop H8 was a violation, separately, of BOTH the due process AND equal protection clauses of the federal Constitution, AND that the claims of the anti-equality side couldn't even stand up to the "rational basis" standard of review, which is the least stringent standard!  Additionally, he set forth a wonderful list of "findings of fact" tearing apart the secular arguments against marriage equality ("findings of fact" in a case are given very heavy weight in appeals to a higher court, while "findings of law" are basically tossed and redone from scratch on appeal, so these findings are a lasting gift to our side).  This is an absolute, unqualified win for the forces of equality in this state and the country.  No word yet (that I've heard) as to whether or not Walker will issue a stay pending appeal, as requested by the anti-equality side.  [EDIT: Walker has issued a temporary stay pending hearings on a longer-term stay]  So far, it seems that Prop H8 has been overturned entirely.  Next step is the 9th Circuit, then after that, SCOTUS.*

It's been highly entertaining, if a bit predictable, watching wingnut heads explode over the decision.  I've been following the coverage on Right Wing Watch (available here; refresh for updates as they come available) and it is every bit as over-the-top and panicky and filled with hateful bile as you might expect.  Some select quotes:

Focus on [Your Own Damn] Family:

Judge Walker’s ruling raises a shocking notion that a single federal judge can nullify the votes of more than 7 million California voters, binding Supreme Court precedent, and several millennia-worth of evidence that children need both a mom and a dad.

Concerned [Self-Hating] Women for America:

Judge Walker’s decision goes far beyond homosexual ‘marriage’ to strike at the heart of our representative democracy. Judge Walker has declared, in effect, that his opinion is supreme and ‘We the People’ are no longer free to govern ourselves.

CWA CA Chapter:

Today Judge Vaughn Walker has chosen to side with political activism over the will of the people. His ruling is slap in the face to the more than seven million Californians who voted to uphold the definition of marriage as it has been understood for millennia.

Family [Discredited] Research Council:

It's time for the far Left to stop insisting that judges redefine our most fundamental social institution and using liberal courts to obtain a political goal they cannot obtain at the ballot box.

Alliance [of Hateful Heteros] Defense Fund:

It’s not radical for more than 7 million Californians to protect marriage as they’ve always known it. What would be radical would be to allow a handful of activists to gut the core of the American democratic system and, in addition, force the entire country to accept a system that intentionally denies children the mom and the dad they deserve.

American [Hetero, Monogamous, Childbearing] Family Association:

This is a tyrannical, abusive and utterly unconstitutional display of judicial arrogance. Judge Walker has turned ‘We the People’ into ‘I the Judge.’ “It’s inexcusable for him to deprive the citizens of California of their right to govern themselves, and cavalierly trash the will of over seven million voters.

Notice a pattern here?  It's all variations on one theme: the Activist! Judge! overturning the Will! Of! The! People!  And after reading these, it becomes quite clear that this wingers need a remedial course in American gov't and various types of governing systems.


As a Twiend of mine pointed out after seeing Walker's ruling, now is a good time to ruminate on the difference between a raw democracy and a constitutional republic.  The USofA is a constitutional republic.  Features of a constitutional republic include: a founding document which lays out a meta-framework of guidelines and principles for establishing the rules and laws of the land, and a limited type of democracy that allows the citizenry at large to elect representatives, who then go on to do the actual lawmaking independent of direct interference by the citizens who elected them.  A raw or pure democracy, on the other hand, is characterized by every decision being made by general election, or "the will of the people is the law".  


Since the US is a constitutional republic, the directly-expressed "will of the people" (mind you, that's the will of 52% of the people, not exactly a resounding majority; I wonder why they're not screaming about the will of the 6.5 million people who voted against Prop H8 in between shrieks about the 7 million who voted for it?) cannot overrule the meta-guidelines laid out in the foundational document.  And I don't know what Constitution they're reading while they're having their little headsplosions, cause my copy has these nifty bits about the government not impeding citizens' rights without due process, and having an obligation to protect the rights of all citizens, and it seems like Walker's copy corresponds with mine.  


I mean, really, when the judge's decision extensively cites not only the Constitution (with which conservatives seem determined to wipe their asses *coughBushAdministrationcough* right up until a progressive does something they don't like, at which point it's all THE!CONSTITUTION! YOU!CAN'T!DO!THAT! whether or not the document in question supports their freakout) but a not-insignificant body of established case law as precedent, the whiny bile of right-wingers is pretty clearly exposed for what it is: petty bigotry trying to cover itself with the flimsy shield of deliberate misinterpretation of and selective inattention to the Constitution under which all our other laws fall.


So here it is, right-wingers: Go and reread the fucking Constitution.  Nowhere in there is there a right, either explicit or implied (and no, you cannot pull the 10th amendment on this one, because due process and equal protection are in the federal Constitution, and the 10th says all powers/responsibilities not enumerated herein go to the states), of the people to vote to deprive other citizens of their rights in violation of the Constitution.  Period, the end, that is all, THE GENTLEMAN WILL SIT!

*According to a legal-issues reporter who's been following the Prop H8 trial and who I've been following on Twitter, @FedcourtJunkie, the State of CA is not going to appeal this decision, and the 9th Circuit may decide that the pro-H8 campaign doesn't have standing to appeal, saying: "Btw, Yes on #prop8 has serious standing problems for an appeal. This will become a huge issue very shortly- they might not be able to appeal".  So we may or may not see this go any further.  

The Bible Is Not Cut-and-Paste, kthx.

I was reading a post at Right Wing Watch (bringing me the best of wingnuttery daily since...whenever I RSS'ed them) about some jackhole (Rick Barton of Wallbuilders, if anyone cares) laying out a Biblical case for industry deregulation (for the love of all the gods, the Bible laid out rules for a tribal society in the Bronze Age.  We are not there anymore.  Can we stop trying to pattern our laws on that?)...and this bit caught my eye.  He was quoting the Bible, a few verses in 1 Timothy that describes who the laws should be applied to:

So it says "we know the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, and homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine."

That caught my eye.  I haven't read the whole Bible, but I'm fairly well-versed in the arguments for and against a Biblical treatment of homosexuality, and one of the things I know is that the Bible is really, really nonspecific about homosexuality per se.  There's much talk of "sexual immorality" but it's not really defined as a homosexual thing.  It seemed odd to see it in this context, so I went to one of the many Bible-verse-lookup websites out there and searched.  This is the version of this passage that I found, 1 Timothy 1:9-10:

We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, ¹⁰for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine

Funny.  I don't see "and homosexuals" in there.  Even in a discussion of Biblical economic policy, the gay-hating was SO IMPORTANT that this asshole felt the need to insert homosexuality into the list of Bad People.  


Dude.  It's your holy book, which you believe was inspired by your omnipotent God.  If he'd meant for homosexuals to be on the list of Bad People, don't you think he would have put that there himself?  And since he didn't, who the fuck do you think you are to do it for him?  If you're going to claim the excuse of religion to support your bigotry, you could at least have the courtesy to work with the religious text as-is, not your edited version of it.  I seem to recall that the God of the Bible was not a huge fan of arrogance.  You might want to re-think yours.

Wednesday WTF is this I don't even...

Last week it was partial clitoridectomies on intersex children and/or girls deemed to have "abnormally large" clitorises, and doctors using a vibrator on them to "test sensitivity".  


This week?  Experimental, off-label use of a drug contraindicated for pregnant women, given to women pregnant with fetuses suspected of having congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) - an intersex condition whereby a female (XX chromosomes) fetus develops "masculinized" genitalia - *without* the oversight or approval of an IRB. They allege that this off-label usage will "...restore this baby to the normal female appearance...compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother."

So these doctors, and these parents-to-be, are willing to give/take potentially dangerous drugs that have *not* been approved for this activity, purely so that their daughters' bits will "look right" according to their definition of what women's bits should look like.  As if a child born with "ambiguous genitals" is incapable of growing up, having "normal sexual development" - and who defines "normal" for this, anyway? - and, if she chooses, getting married and having children, unless the doctors "fix" her with potentially dangerous medication before she's even fucking born.  Intersex people are not "broken", they do not need to be "fixed", and that's the assumption this non-clinical trial is working off of.  Truly worthy of a Wednesday WTF.

But wait!  It gets worse!

A few researchers in particular believe that this drug could not only prevent "ambiguous" genitalia...it could prevent lesbians and tomboys.  It seems that higher prenatal exposure to the androgens this drug suppresses correlates moderately with homo- or bi-sexuality in women - and also with insufficiently-womanly behavior, such as "...lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”  Oh noes!  How terrible!  Women who don't want to be housewives and girls who don't spend their childhoods fantasizing about having babies!  Get me to a fainting couch so I may clutch my pearls in safety!

But I think this is my favorite quote from this metric fuckton of FAIL:

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior...We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization . . .”

You've got to be fucking kidding me.  So low maternalism and "career and leisure time preferences" that have "become masculinized" are abnormalities to be cured?  This is, quite literally, doctors saying that they want to *medically treat* female fetuses in utero to be "more appropriately feminine".  And where is the line drawn?  How do we define "low maternalism" here?  I'm sure a woman like me, who doesn't even like children and is vehemently opposed to ever having any, would be considered insufficiently maternal.  But what about a woman who hasn't thought much about it beyond the "Eh, maybe someday" point?  Is that maternal enough?  What about a woman who knows she wants kids, but not until she's 30?  What about a woman who assumes she'll have kids someday, but who never thought about it as a child?  Remember, they were worried about childhood fantasies of pregnancy and babies as a marker of appropriate gender behavior. 

Talk about playing God.  These fuckers are literally trying to change future women's personalities, desires, and bodies before they are even born, in order to better enforce our society's vision of "appropriate" gendered behavior.  This is absolutely sickening.  I desperately hope our sense of ethics catches up to our sense of technology SOON, for all our sakes.

Quote of the Day, Too Long for Twitter Edition

Seen at Pam's House Blend, in comments on a guest-post from a lobbyist telling us we "ought to thank the President" - in other words, shut up, you impatient queers, and be grateful for the crumbs we've tossed you! - a beautifully succinct description of the real difference between Dems and Repubs (and why I'll be voting Green from now on, until the Dems actually grow a spine and start keeping their campaign promises and getting shit done):

The choice between Republicans and Democrats...

... is a choice between being deliberately murdered and being locked out in the bitter cold until exposure does their dirty work for them.

Yeah.  Sadly, this really does sum it up.  /sigh

Wednesday WTF: The Religious Wrong's Hypocrisy...

...It never ceases to amaze me.  


The Northwest Arkansas Pride Parade has named for its grand marshal a 10-year-old boy, Will Phillips.  You might recognize the name.  He was in the news for awhile some months back, for publicly refusing to stand and recite the pledge on the grounds that the "liberty and justice for all" is a lie, since LGBT people/couples/families are denied legal equality - despite pressure from his teacher, principal, and classmates.  An awesome and brave kid, you'd think, right?


Not if you're the American [White, Christian, Straight, Married] Family Association.  And for once, it's not even Bryan fucking Fischer!  The level of asshattery is about the same, though.  Anyway, the Pride parade is honoring this kid for his courage in the cause, and what does the AFA call that?


Child abuse.


No, I'm not kidding.  The AFA sent an e-blast to their groupies today that included this passage:

‘It’s shameful that adults would abuse a brain-washed child in this way,’ said AFA president Tim Wildmon. ‘He’s obviously just parroting the nonsense he’s been told by manipulative adults. For gay activists to trot out this child and make him the poster child for promoting unnatural sexual expression is a form of child abuse.

Um, wow.  Seriously?  You know, there are women's-clinic protesters who bring their children with them to harass, chase, wave signs at, and scream at women accessing reproductive health services.  Read the everysaturdaymorning blog.  Numerous stories, with pictures, of parents bringing their children - many younger than Will's 10 years - out into freezing cold weather, ass-early in the morning, to protest, often without decent protection from the elements.  They tell of one woman who likes to hold out her infant toward the women, walking backwards in front of them down the sidewalk.  I don't see the AFA condemning these people, these "manipulative adults" bringing out their "brain-washed children" and making them the "poster children for promoting unnatural hatred of women", for the "child abuse" they're perpetrating.  Wonder why that is...?


Listen, by age 10 a child should have at least a reasonable ability to conduct independent reasoning and begin questioning the beliefs of the adults around hir.  (I know that was about the age I started asking questions that got me in trouble. ;-) )  And you know these people would pitch a gigantor fit if anyone said they were "brainwashing" their children into believing in God/Jesus/conservatism/w'ev!  So what the hell is up with this assumption that Phillips is "brainwashed" because he supports an ideology different from theirs?


And let's not forget, these are the people affiliated with some of the "teachers" at Porno Pete LaBarbera's Gay Hate Camp for Kids.  So it's fine to brainwash kids to be anti-gay, outright and openly "training" them to "combat the lies of the homosexual agenda"...but gods forbid a kid decides on his own that gay people are ok and maybe we should treat them better, because then he's a brainwashed poster child for teh buttsecks and that's a form of child abuse.

Of course, all this is merely ideological prelude to pointing out the base, simple fact that this asshole is appropriating child abuse to describe a child's lack of hatred toward gay people.  I imagine *actual* survivors of *actual* child abuse - you know, the kind that involves neglect, emotional torture, physical violence, sexual violence, all those kinds of things - might have a thing or two to say about the difference between FUCKING CHILD ABUSE and a child being pro-gay-rights.  These things are not equivalent, and it is exceedingly, deeply, and in all ways wrong and offensive to conflate the two.


This rates more than the usual WTF.  This calls for something with more fuck.

What the allfucking retrofuck?

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!!