I say this because I’m secretly hoping that tomorrow, when the California Supreme Court releases its decision on same sex marriage, that we lose.
I know. Shocking for me to say, isn’t it? But it’s true. I hope the court lets Proposition 8 stand.
Go ahead, call me a traitor if you like. Not like that’s never happened before. But I have what I think are some pretty good reasons. Two of them, if you’re looking for details.
First, in the event of an adverse ruling, the same-sex marriage folks in California will do the same thing the Prop 8 people have done – they’ll put a ballot initiative up every year, over and over again, until it wins. And it will win. The river progress is with us on this. It’s only a matter of time. We’d just trade immediate gratification for – in my view – a more secure decision later.
Which brings me to reason No. 2. We’re dealing with some very unstable people here. A significant number of the anti-same-sex marriage crowd is not dealing with a full deck on this or very many other issues.
They sincerely believe that allowing gay men and lesbians to marry would be the end of civilization as we know it. In a way, they’re right – but they’re predicting a decline into depravity and wanton sin, while I’m seeing a more holistic society that fully values every member. Two completely different views that have absolutely nothing in common.
Because they see nothing good ever coming from same-sex marriage, they’re pretty much prepared to do anything they have to in order to prevent that from ever happening.
Anything.
If they lose, it won’t be because their proposition violated the California constitution. It’ll be because liberal activist judges nullified the will of the people. It will piss them off. A lot. It will make them crazier than they already are. Dave Neiwart at Orcinus:
And you can bet that right-wing True Believers across the country are going to be looking for targets to take out their frustration on. As I’ve written recently, they already think this government is not their own, and are moving into opposition to it. They really believe that the continued greatness of America is at stake, and they are the last line of defense against complete moral chaos. If this happens, God will withdraw his blessing from the US, and America will lose everything. They will not let that happen. Passing a gay marriage law in California -- the biggest and most influential state of all -- will be their Harper's Ferry, their Pearl Harbor. After that -- the deluge.
And there are more of them than you think. Not enough to win. But enough to inflict serious damage on this country – already reeling from the moral, legal and economic disaster that was the Bush administration.
And worse yet is the potential damage they could inflict on us. They don’t see us as human, not we gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered folk and not you “normal” folk who support us. We’re the enemy. We’re what’s keeping them from God’s kingdom. And God, that jealous, vengeful and spiteful deity, has no use for us.
We’re expendable.
The country is strong enough to withstand this demagoguery. It would suffer a blow, perhaps even a devastating one that brings us to our knees. But it won’t kill us as a country.
It could kill us as a people, as innocent humans doing nothing more than living our lives as we have a right to do.
So, I hope we lose. We don’t need to be in such a hurry, not at the price we could be forced to pay for victory. California is too big – it’s not Vermont, or New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut or Massachusetts. For the right wing to lose there push those among them already too close to the edge over that lip and into the abyss of complete insanity.
The potential for violence is undeniable. And frankly, I’d rather see us avoid a bloodbath and wait just a little longer. I know I’d feel safer. And I'd feel better about the rest of you, too.
We'll win this one. If not now, later, but it will happen. I'd just like to see us do it with no loss of life.
I'm sure you've all heard by now how Fox "News's" Neil Cavuto responded to criticism about the network's sponsorship of the heavily funded and think-tank coordinated tea parties -- featuring that new Republican pastime, teabagging -- by pointing to how strongly Fox covered Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March in October 1995.
We are are going to be in the middle of these protests because at Fox, we do not pick and choose these rallies and protests. We were there for the Million Man March, even though, as I pointed out, it turned out to be well shy of a million men. We were there for the Iraq war protest, and the protest against the Iraq war protest. So you see, we really don't decide what populist causes matter -- just that when a whole lot of people gather in a whole lot of towns and cities across America, it is indeed worth checking out not just shutting down,
Neil said. He didn't, of course, air any clips from Fox's stellar coverage of that event, probably because Fox didn't go on the air until October 1996, a year later.
And, bless their hearts, they're promoting this "whole lot of people gather(ing) in a whole lot of towns and cities across America" as some kind of populist outpouring, even though its being put together by Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity and Dick Armey's Freedom Works. Both groups have quite a history of this sort of thing -- and by this sort of thing I mean promoting a false idea of mass support for their anti-American and conservative tricks -- and Think Progress has reported on its usual tactics:
– Freedom Works staffers coordinate conference calls among protesters,contacting conservative activists to give them “sign ideas, sample press releases, and a map of events around the country.”
– Freedom Works staffers apparently moved to “take over” the planning of local events in Florida.
– Freedom Works provides how-to guides for delivering a “clear message” to the public and media.
– Freedom Works has severaldomain addresses — some of them made to look like they were set up by amateurs — to promote the protests.
Further, Think Progress reminds us that Freedom Works was last seen planting a "single mom" in the audience to ask questions at a GW town hall and setting up fake "amateur" Web sites to promote Armey's lobbying interests. And Americans for Prosperity runs the fake grassroots "Drill baby drill" events around the country.
In other words, big business, conservative-backing lobbyists are organizing the teabaggers, with their promotion handled by Fox "News." Which may actually explain the inexplicable use of the term "teabaggers" by these lions of intellect. For shits and giggles, check out the Urban Dictionary if you don't know what that really is.
And then, after that, Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox can explain it all you. Well, maybe not actually explain. But there's enough innuendo there that you should get the picture, right down to the fiscal teabagging.
And honestly, don't you think it's really rude to urge citizens to teabag the president of the United States?
Fox, meanwhile, really is going all a-Twitter over critics' complaining that the network isn't just "reporting" (as if they ever actually do that) on the teabaggers' parties, but are actually promoting them.
I, for one cannot possibly understand where anyone would get an idea like that. It simply boggles the mind.
But I bring all this up to you, and in considerable detail, because it seems to glaringly illustrate the the modern conservative and Republican movement's complete departure from anything approaching reality.
These lying scumbags are convincing the gullible that they should protest a tax cut. They don't like the president's plan to give a tax cut to 95 percent of the taxpaying public. The five percent that will see a tax increase? The richest people in America. And their taxes will only go up to what they were during the Clinton years -- about 4 percentage points -- which was, in fact, lower than during the Reagan years. Of course, that's the real reason for the conservative/Republicans' outrage. But they have to frame it differently so the gullible will buy into it.
But there is more evidence of the movement's rapid decline. There's the zombie "storm clouds are moving in" ad created by the National Organization for Marriage to warn us about the horrors that await if same sex couples are allowed to partake in that most holy of all rituals that should be reserved only for pure and unpolluted heterosexuals.
As Blanca Debree says in her letter to NOM leader and truly horrible writer Maggie Gallagher,
And speaking of storms, if you had just gone to one gay bar or hung out in one gay ghetto for five minutes, you would have known the mere mention of 'storm clouds moving in' will cause the entirety of gaydom to erupt into a chorus of 'It's Raining Men' by The Weather Girls. Now I know you keep away from the homos and all, but don't you at least go to a hair salon once in a while? Maybe you could run some of this crap by a couple of the 'girls' and see what works.
Not quite as horrifying as teabagging, but still quite a blunder.And NOM is really going after this "rainbow coalition" idea by putting people of all colors in their fearmongering ad. And then posting, on their Web site, the audition tapes of said people, which means you can see all those actors saying "I'm a teacher" in one video and then "I'm a doctor" in another, along with whatever one they ended up as on the ad. Kinda blows that credibility thing a little bit, not to mention the "rainbow" thing. Surely, they are not that stupid.
Then there's NOM's idea, "2 Million for Marriage." Now, never mind that I'm quite in favor of marriage, just for everybody and not the chosen few -- so I could be part of the 2 million -- but when you break that down, as NOM as done, to 2M4M, you get yet another sexually charged reference from the right. We've know for some time that they are abnormally obsessed with what other people do in bed, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Allow me to refer to Blanca again for the unitiated:
Also, while we are at it, if you feel the urge to use acronyms, take a deep breath and don't. Your latest push called '2 Million 4 Marriage' ended up being gay code for a gay orgy. 2M4M means 2 Men for Men. If you had picked up one issue of the Washington Blade, the Philadelphia Gay News, the Village Voice, or anything printed in San Francisco, you would know this. I know it's gay, but research wouldn't kill you.
And then, of course, there is NOM itself. I can't even look at that acronym without getting a smirk and an uncontrollable urge to rush to I Can Has Cheezburger, where no doubt I'd be wholly welcomed and not alienated by a movement that claims to be some sort of "big tent" while doing its damndest to push out everything but the elephants.
Now, while these examples of modern conservative/Republican disconnect are hysterically funny, there's one that truly isn't. A group called Morality in Media has new fundraising idea: Connect all the recent shootings to same-sex marriage.
Because we know that Fox "News" and others promoting lies and conspiracy theories about the end of the world as we know it could not possible have anything to do with it, nor could the absolute desperation that many people are feeling these days because of what the Republicans and Blue Dawg Democrats have done to our economy.
No, for MIM (which appears to have no more nefarious meaning that "metal injection molding" and "Masonry Institute of Michigan") the
underlying problem is that increasingly we live in a 'post-Christian' society, where Judeo-Christian faith and values have less and less influence (and this) secular value system is also reflected in the 'sexual revolution,' which is the driving force behind the push for 'gay marriage.'
followed by
It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.
Because we all know that seeking to legitimize healthy, loving relationships and bring to those couples the benefits received by all other such relationships (even if they're not in the least healthy or loving) certainly contributes to the decline in morality, and probably much more than pedophile priests.
>And for the final proof that these folks are absolutely off their collective rockers, they all keep going on about how "scared" we liberal, progressive, sane types are of their nuttiness. Really. I know I'm quaking in my ankle length socks.
Now, I admit to being a little nervous at the nutcases the well-paid nutcases are stirring up with their bullshit -- those folks have lots of firepower and clearly are not afraid to use it. But afraid of these folks' childish antics? Oh please. I'm more afraid for the safety of my toes when I go to sleep and the kitten is still awake.
Thers at firedoglake notes that the Dont Go movement, whatever the hell that is, has adopted "Silent Majority No More" as the slogan for their teabagging parties and says
Oddly enough, this is true. The majority has spoken. It is not silent. And hard-right 'conservatives' do not belong to it.
Thers also gets a big laugh, and so did I, about a conservative blog's contention that the eVille librul media is out to get Sarah Palin, who, may I point out, cannot seem to shut up and stop making even more of fool of herself than she already has. Said blog wrote:
So their media efforts to put down this extraordinary woman continue today, and perhaps ad infinitum, based on an irrational fear that someday Sarah Palin might just be President of the United States.
to which Thers replies
And I agree! Worrying that Sarah Palin will ever become President of the United States would indeed be extraordinarily irrational.
So, who's really scared? I'd say these modern conservicans are completely terrified, so much so that they can't even think straight, as evidenced by their "rainbow" coalition, teabagging and 2M4M.
What they're doing is all just a distraction anyway -- anything to keep Americans from looking at the truth, and that is that their polices have put us in a prolonged period of economic crisis that isn't going to end any time soon. And they're trying to fix it all up so we notice that they're still the same old conservatives they always were -- tax breaks for the rich, cut social programs and sink billions into wars that we don't need.
Well, boys and girls, Vermont's gone and done it. Yes, the state that first brought us civil unions has now decided that separate but not even close to equal just isn't good enough.
And it wasn't those dastardly, black-robed activist judges who made it happen. Oh, no. Vermont, my dear friends, is now the first state to legislate marriage for same-sex couples. And they did it by overriding a Republican governor's veto.
It was kind of a "Fuck you, Jim Douglas," too. See, Gov. Jim announced that he was going to veto the bill before the Vermont House even voted for it. They voted, and passed it, but not by enough to override. But then the handful of Democrats who voted against it got a little pissed off at the governor's arrogance, and, well, they voted for it the second time around.
So, fuck you, Gov. Douglas.
Even now, heterosexual couples in Vermont are filing for divorce in record numbers, knowing that their marriages have been torn assunder by the wicked legislature.
Of course, it's still unequal, since the federal government, to placate the religious fundamentalists in this country, made sure that no other state had to recognize another state's same-sex couple marriage, and no federal law governing things like taxes and such applies, but hey, we're moving in the right direction.
And good lord, does that scare the bejesus out of those anachronistic lost souls. Pam Spaulding, who is a far braver woman than I, went fishing on the Free Republic sites and came back with a sampling of their drivel. This was my favorite:
This looks like the MO of the gay marriage activists: 1. Have gay marriage put on the ballot. 2. Ignore the results if they don’t go your way, throw a fit. 3. Take your case to the legislature, where it’s legalized anyway. Screw the people! 4. Gay marriage legalized. Those silly citizens, thinking they had a say ... Checkmate!
Actually, it's never been the "gay marriage activists" who "have gay marriage put on the ballot." It's always the backwards-thinking bigots who are a) trying to make sure that no such travesty as same-sex marriage ever comes near them or b) trying to reverse a decision in favor of same-sex marriage that's already been taken, usually a decision of the aforementioned black-hearted activist judges.
And now it's screwing the people to have state legislators, elected by the people, make the decisions they were elected to make. I guess next we'll be hearing about activist legislators.
Update: Well, low and behold. The Rude Pundit, who weekly receives directions for his prayers from the Family Research Council (which will be mentioned in two more paragraphs here), got his weekly prayer targets and guess what it says.
Give consolation, strength and courage to pro-family believers in Vermont. May other states take warning and secure marriage against usurpation by determined homosexual activists and judicial and legislative activists!
End update.
Better to put it on the ballot so the Mormons and Catholics can spend millions to promote lies and make sure it goes down to defeat.
Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council, which, in case you didn't know, is an offshoot of Jim Dobson's Focus on the Family, was all in a tither about Vermont, along with a DC city council vote saying that the District of Columbia would recognize all marriages performed in the states -- even though Tony really doesn't have to worry about that. Congress has to approve anything like that, because DC doesn't have home rule, and Congress doesn't yet understand that the religious fundamentalists here have pretty much lost their mojo. But here's what poor Tony said.
Same-sex 'marriage' is a movement driven by wealthy homosexual activists and a liberal elite determined to destroy not only the institution of marriage, but democracy as well. Time and again, we see when citizens have the opportunity to vote at the ballot box, they consistently opt to support traditional marriage.
Notice how he had to put quotes around "marriage" there to show us his disdain for the very idea of same-sex marriage, that it most certainly is not marriage. And wow, after eight years of the Bush administration ripping the Constitution to shreds, its us little ole queers who are destroying democracy. Such power. I feel positively giddy with it.
I imagine marriage for Tony is probably still the exchange of property between a woman's father and her husband like it was for centuries, because he and others like him sure go on about "tradition" when they get started talking about marriage.
So if you really want to talk about tradition, I suppose Tony should decide which tradition. He's a white guy, so let's assume he'll want to go with some European tradition. Now, the oldest European traditions that we know of are the Greeks and Romans, and for the most part, marriage for Greeks and Romans just required that you kinda stand there and say, "We're married," or whatever the equivalent was in Greek or Latin. There was nothing civil or religious about it. Marriage was just a business deal, Dad selling off the product (his daughter) to the husband.
The Romans did have one type of marriage wherein the woman remained the property of her family and under her father's authority. Not sure what that was about.
In fact, it wasn't until 1545 that there was any real marriage ceremony at all, and that was decreed by the Roman Catholic church. Protestant religions kept the old style marriage for a while longer. But now you have religious intrusion into marriage, which had previously been a family thing. The religious intrusion didn't change the property aspects, though. Since Tony's a real religious guy, I'm guessing this is probably the tradition he's talking about.
I'm sure he didn't like the late entry of the government into marriage, which came about in the 19th century. Under state marriage acts, couples could declare their marriage before the appropriate government official, and still have a religious ceremony, if they so chose, but it wasn't necessary.
Tony, and the rest of the sex-obsessed fundamentalists, never really understood civil marriage. That's why they keep screaming about traditional marriage, as if it's always been the way it is in their foggy little brains, weak from too little use.
But times are changing, Tony et al. You ain't gonna put this genie back in the bottle, no matter how many millions you spend trying to do it.
And the only activist judges I see are the ones who are trying to stop the clock on progress. Give me a thoughful, open-minded jurist any day to one whose ideas haven't moved out of the 16th century.
And really, backwards religionists, you can have whatever kind of marriage you want in your establishments. Nobody's gonna stop you. That's just another one of the little lies you use to delude yourselves and to trick others into believing that same-sex marriage will interfere with their rights of free association.
It won't. It was religion, not the state, that inserted itself into marriage, which, while not at all equitable to women, at least didn't have the ridiculous rules the church put on it. It could have evolved (oh, I know, you hate that word) much better without that limiting input.
We've still got a ways to go before the United States can join the sane nations like Canada and Sweden, but we'll get there.
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Sometimes, to lose is to win.
They sincerely believe that allowing gay men and lesbians to marry would be the end of civilization as we know it. In a way, they’re right – but they’re predicting a decline into depravity and wanton sin, while I’m seeing a more holistic society that fully values every member. Two completely different views that have absolutely nothing in common.
And worse yet is the potential damage they could inflict on us. They don’t see us as human, not we gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered folk and not you “normal” folk who support us. We’re the enemy. We’re what’s keeping them from God’s kingdom. And God, that jealous, vengeful and spiteful deity, has no use for us. 
The potential for violence is undeniable. And frankly, I’d rather see us avoid a bloodbath and wait just a little longer. I know I’d feel safer. And I'd feel better about the rest of you, too.
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