More on Little Miss “I’m Not a Homer— Homofolio— Anti-Gay! And Teh Bad Geyhz Are Perco— Persemacut— Being Mean to Me! Waaaaaaah!” California later (I’ve got a business to salvage on this end, thus the sporadic posts), but for now, get a load (llllllllliterally) of this:
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, praised the New Hampshire state Senate’s vote today in favor of legislation that would permit same-sex couples to marry. The Senate voted 13-11, on second reading, in favor of an amended version of House Bill 436, which would allow same-sex couples to marry under state law. The bill passed the House last month by a 186-179 vote. Since the Senate voted on an amended version, the bill will return to the House after third reading in the Senate.
Another relationship comes to an end after five and a half years.
I’m too exhausted to go into detail — I’ve spent most of every waking moment today in a panic, which has since settled into a stormy, unabating rage.
In short, CafePress.com has screwed the shopkeepers — the artists, the designers, us, me. They’ve pulled massively boneheaded crap (designed to increase their profit margin while decreasing ours) before, but this…
“Busted” not as in “arrested” (although that’s a lovely fantasy), but as in “caught red-handed.”
“Given who you are and your professional relationship with the subject, you should have first of all disclosed that to other editors, whether you simply worked for one of Warren’s entities or were in fact detailed with the task of dealing with Wikipedia articles on Warren’s behalf. …
“Meanwhile, over at VS’s talk page you wrote, “If you choose to try and disqualify my edits then I suppose you should also do so for any editor who identifies themselves as gay.” This is another completely absurd, obfuscating straw man…”
Wikipedia’s Mike Doughney sets Mark Carver straight (so to speak)
Precedent was set in New Jersey and Vermont, where churches were sued. It is not a lie. It was a truth, blown out of proportion admittedly, by the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. Please re-read this article and you will find that I have written that exact sentiment.
I implore you, if you haven’t already, to watch the “Storm is Coming” commercial from the National Organization for Marriage. Tell me, what do you think they will do if proposition 8 is overturned? They will return with vigor and another Prop to ban equal marriage. My point is that you must find a way to neutralize the social conservatives somehow. They will never compromise. Good luck to you and your upcoming marriage.
My reply:
Patrick, you just blew your cover. To even suggest anyone watch that putrid NOM video (it’s called “The Gathering Storm,” by the way) reveals your true agenda — which is Anti-Gay with a capital A. That I gave you the benefit of the doubt for even one minute makes me want to vomit. Oh, and say hi to Maggie Gallgher for me.
Can you believe this? Does Patrick think anyone who’s paid any attention at all doesn’t know about the NOM video?
There’s at least one other anti-equality ‘phobe who replies to me (twice, under two different names, “Ben” and “John”), but it’s not worth my time or effort (you know what they say about wrestling with pigs: you just get filthy, and the pig enjoys it too much) — and a few rational replies (worth reading: Alexander).
I do not follow beauty paegants, nor watch much TV either, but I was appalled to hear the commentaries by one of the Judges of the Miss USA pageant Perez Hilton, indicating that the answer of Miss California to the question about “HER OPINION” regarding same sex marriage had cost her the crown. So let me get this straight, according to Perez, since Miss California Carrie Prejean gave an answer according to her convictions regarding same sex marriage, then he voted against her. How INTOLERANT and simply stupid can that be? That is like asking her what you think about the President, and she said she did not agree with many of his policies, then that would mean she would lose the vote. It was not because her answer did not make sense, it was not because she was shallow, it was not because she did not know what she was talking about, it was simply because she happened to have a different opinion than the judge on this particular question, a view which in fact is the majority of the voters within the state of California, and even more so overwhelmingly the view of most Americans. So who is the intolerant? Who is the irrational? Who are the ones that are really close-minded? The answer is clear, the intolerants by experience are those who actively support the homosexual agenda. Here in the state of California, these same people vandalized Churches, and other establishments when proposition 8 was defeated, these are the people what advocate for tolerance and respect. Except that they will have it their way or no way. Their tactics have now turned to intimidation and media management, and they are doing a good job at silencing people, and even more so, they are doing a great job at belittling anybody who happens to oppose their depraved and corrupt agenda. How sad that even a pageant, is controlled by your views on homosexuality as dictated by many of the attendees to this kind of pageant rather than by beauty and common sense. Where has common sense gone??
My comment:
You’re a priest, and you’re spreading these disgusting lies about “vandalism”? Show me where, Father. Who, when, where, what. Police reports would be nice, but I’ll take mainstream media reports (i.e., not the “Weekly World News” style of “reporting” from LifeSiteNews.com, etc.) Seriously, Father, prove your claims to this ex-Catholic. (And “homosexual agenda”? You should be ashamed of yourself. Some deep self-examination is in order.)
Seriously, this is whack. I do not hold priests (of any variety) to a higher standard (or, really, any standard), but I know how priests talk, and behave, at least in public — and even the most disturbed amongst them do not call anyone else “stupid,” or “depraved and corrupt,” or use Radical Right buzz phrases like “the homosexual agenda.” (That would be a stretch even for Papa “Intrinsically Evil” Ratzinger.) I’m serious — this is not the M.O. of a Catholic priest.
You can continue to post your anti-gay bigotry (gee, look at this new one: “This ain’t faggot country”) all you want, but as I said earlier today, I’m not giving you a platform to spew your bile here, and the comments on the Miss California story are closed (to anti-gay bigots, that is; our allies are welcome to comment — this is my Web site and not your church, so tough).
However, understand that all you’re doing is feeding me your IP addresses, so I know who to ban, site-wide (and so I can trade lists with the rest of the Sooper Seekrit Homo Mafia Network®). So, you’re doing me a favor, kiddies.
Oh, and THANK YOU rightpundits.com! You’ve sent more traffic our way in one day than we’ve had in months — thereby increasing our visibility (which only ups our Google PageRank and Alexa rankings).
I’m sure this guy was trying to do a good thing here, but… oh, my bloody freaking goodness gracious, how can we stem this tide of misinformation — other than by playing an endless game of whack-a-mole?
In light of different activist groups trying to get Proposition 8 overturned, I have begun to think that overturning this legislation is not the correct course for us to follow if we want a permanent resolution to this polarizing issue.
Let me start by clarifying that I am not a man who aspires to marry another man. Nor am I part of any socially conservative organization that proselytizes gay marriage to be immoral. In fact, I opposed Proposition 8 during the recent elections, and I stand by that decision today. …
Most of the Yes on 8 propaganda was utterly ridiculous and misguided. It spread rumors about teaching gay marriage in schools, and lied about loss of tax revenue. However, I have to admit, out of the massive quantity of bologna rhetoric to come out of the Yes on 8 campaigns, there was one legitimate concern.
As the law stood before the passing of Proposition 8, there was no legal protection for churches that refused to marry gay couples. Even an atheist like me can see a microcosm of injustice in this precedent.
As a fan of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech, I feel obligated to defend the First Amendment’s freedom of religion. Churches shouldn’t be forced to perform gay marriage ceremonies if it’s against their moral standings. …
It’s not okay for gays to be discriminated against by anyone. However, if Equal Marriage Rights activists are willing to make this compromise with religious organizations it will convert (forgive the pun) the faithful who voted Yes on 8 out of fear of their churches facing legal problems. This way, while we are waiting for socially conservative religions to catch up, the state is already treating gay couples fairly. …
My comment:
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Patrick, wait a minute: No one in favor of marriage equality is pushing for interference with any church, in any way. That Prop 8 was somehow supposed to “protect” churches against being “forced” to do anything is another lie of the anti-gay brigades. There is no compromise to be made by either side; churches cannot be forced by law to marry anyone (that protection — the “Free Exercise” clause — is right there in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution). You’ll notice that no Catholic church can be “forced” to marry non-Catholics, no Jewish synagogue can be forced to marry Gentiles, etc., etc., and this would not change, whether same-sex couples are allowed to marry or not. That was never at issue. This has nothing to do with any church — only with the *civil* contract of marriage. As one whose own marriage hangs on the whim of seven California Supreme Court justices, I appreciate your good intentions here — but please, PLEASE understand that you have bought into one of the biggest lies on the Yes On 8 campaign, and I *implore* you to retract/correct your mistaken impression immediately, as propagating this lie (even though I know it was not deliberate) only further muddies the issue with misinformation, and does far more harm than good.
William Donohue of the Catholic League is on a mission. Whether it is a “mission from God,” as the Blues Brothers would say, only God knows, but the goal of his mission is clear: to paint me and the movie I directed, Angels & Demons, as anti-Catholic.
For a $5 donation to his organization, Mr. Donohue will send you his glossy new booklet (Angels & Demons: More Demonic Than Angelic), in which he writes that I and the people who made this thriller “do not hide their animus against all things Catholic.”
He’s been making these assertions for years, going back to the theatrical release of The Da Vinci Code. He stepped up his campaign more than a month ago with a series of press releases. And there he goes again, in a Daily News op-ed last Friday, saying that Dan Brown and I “have collaborated in smearing the Catholic Church….”
Let me be clear: neither I nor Angels & Demons are anti-Catholic. And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church, will enjoy the movie for what it is: an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome. After all, in Angels & Demons, Professor Robert Langdon teams up with the Catholic Church to thwart a vicious attack against the Vatican. What, exactly, is anti-Catholic about that? …
I guess Mr. Donohue and I do have one thing in common: we both like to create fictional tales, as he has done with his silly and mean-spirited work of propaganda. …
Oh, and Ron? Congratulations, too — there’s nothing like a good bit of hysteria from the Catholic League to boost a movie’s visibility.
And the first right-winger who hits me with any nonsense about “my” Messiah-President Obama is hereby cursed with an ocean of fleas invading their armpits, forever:
American International Group Inc (AIG.N), which has received more than $150 billion in taxpayer support since last September, has closed a deal to access nearly $30 billion in additional federal funds.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, AIG said it would issue and sell to the U.S. Treasury 300,000 preferred shares, including warrants to purchase common stock, in exchange for up to $29.835 billion.
The original amount agreed in early March was $30 billion, but officials subtracted $165 million in retention bonuses paid to employees of the AIG Financial Products unit last month. …
On the subject of Barbie bobblehead Carrie Prejean’s uninformed and decidedly anti-gay bias, Perez Hilton quotes “an exclusive statement from Keith Lewis, the Executive Director of Miss California USA/Teen USA”:
“As co-executive director of Miss CA USA and one of the leaders of the Miss CA family, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss CA USA 2009 believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman. Although I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit, I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone. Religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss CA family.”
“And on another positive note,” Hilton continues, “PerezHilton.com has received confirmation from Shanna Moakler’s rep that the 2001 Miss USA winner ’supports Keith’s views 100%.’”
Good. And we’d always thought beauty pageants were run by nothing but big-haired stage mothers whose overuse of AquaNet had withered their brains to mush.
A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”
The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes.
The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver’s license on school registrations.
Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.
Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” …
You know what the problem is with racists — and homophobes, and every other kind of -ist and -phobe? They really, truly think they’re not racists (or ‘phobes). They’re really that dumb.
Not dumb in the sense of being incapable of learning; just unedumacated, as Fearless Leader used to say.
Do people like Betty Brown actually not know any Asian-Americans — or anybody who isn’t a white Christian heterosexual with a name like Bubba or Billy Bob?
I suppose I’m privileged to live in a place where so many different cultures (and skin tones) blend together, I take it for granted that it’s up to me to know how to say (and spell) Nguyen (it’s “nwin” for those of you who have never met a Vietnamese-American), or Shreeshankar, or Bacigalupi — and it’s no big deal to simply ask, “How do you say your name?”
As much as I detest having to share my Italian-American heritage with the likes of Rudy Giuliani, I hate the fact that Betty Brown has ovaries.
P.S. My family name was “Americanized” when my great-grandfather got offa da boat, because some dope couldn’t say it or spell it. I’ve spent my entire life explaining that while my surname sounds Anglo, I’m not. And, aside from that annoying little inconvenience, I feel as though something was taken away from me: my name.
RUDY GIULIANI is declaring war on gay marriage — vowing to use his strong opposition of it against the Democrats if he runs for governor next year.
BUT HIS GUY PALS PLAN TO WED …
Giuliani, who is slated to address a Republican fund-raising gala in Albany tonight in what is widely described as further proof of his interest in running for governor, said he’s committed to the traditional definition of marriage.
“Marriage, I believe, both traditionally and legally, has always been between a man and a woman and should remain between a man and woman,” said Giuliani, who has been married three times. …
And, as I recall, when between wives, Ghouliani once availed himself of the spare bedroom of a gay couple.
Rudy, just give it up. You were a laughingstock as a mayor (only the horrible coincidence of 9/11 came along to salvage your legacy), and now you’re just a failed presidential candidate outing yourself as the say-anything opportunist you’ve always been. And to play games with the lives of real people for perceived political gain is beyond disgusting.
It’s mamalukes like you who make me ashamed of my Italian-American heritage.
You’re not going to believe this, but there is a “beauty” queen even stupider — and definitely more embarrassing to every decent American — than Miss Teen South Carolina, and that is Miss California (who, thankfully, lost the Miss USA Pageant):
What a B-word. Get the hell out of MY state, Little Miss Homophobette, and take your bigotry back to your planet, wherever that may be.
What would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic “The Village of the Damned” with the Broadway staple “A Chorus Line”? You don’t need to use your imagination. It’s there waiting for you on YouTube under the title “Gathering Storm”: a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism. …
Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”
Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.
What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.
Even the anti-Obama “tea parties” flogged by Fox News last week had wider genuine grass-roots support than this so-called national organization. Beyond Princeton, most straight citizens merely shrugged as gay families celebrated in Iowa and Vermont. There was no mass backlash. At ABC and CBS, the Vermont headlines didn’t even make the evening news. …
As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.” …
More crunchy goodness — including mentions of the latest hysteria from Moribund Mormon Glenn Beck, the Rick Warren-like one-eighty of “Dr.” Laura “Biological Error” Schlessinger, and the very fine takedown of Miss Maggie by the New York Post’s “invariably witty and invariably conservative writer” Kyle Smith — and much more, as well as one of the best closing paragraphs, ever, at the link.
Nowhere on the ballot was there a subheading that read “Upholding same-sex marriage rights will not legally mandate you to become homosexual, divorce your current opposite-sex ‘better half,’ and marry a newly-appointed partner of the government’s choosing.” For the skittish and undecided, this likely would have been a welcome crumb of context.
And this brings me to the main misconception about Prop 8. The one that states Californians feel homosexuality and marriage go together like margaritas and mayonnaise. Or sandals and sports socks. Or Madonna and a film career. … The truth however, is that despite Prop 8, gay marriage has been embraced in California since that first studio exec flew business class out of the Earth’s primordial goo four billion years ago. The only twist? …
Say, in the hypothetical realm (read: my fantasy realm), I were to wed uber-enchanting cable newscaster Rachel Maddow. In, I dunno, let’s go with Santa Barbara. July-ish. Using this example, the only flag on the play would come from Ms. Maddow herself, given that she, as is my understanding, ain’t looking for an ‘M’ in her ‘MSNBC.’ Amusingly though, Old Man California would be more than happy to slap us up with a marriage license. The real deal too, not the “just joshin’ ya!” variety he was doling out to gay residents in the months leading up to Election Day. …
You see, that’s the well-kept secret about California. It’s actually gaga for gay marriage! Gay gay gay, all the livelong day. As displayed above, there’s simply one caveat: the marriage in question needs to be dysfunctionally gay. … Here are California’s verboten gay marriage options:
• Gay dude marries gay dude
• Lesbian marries lesbian
The problem many Golden State voters have with allowing such options? Too functional. These nuptial-minded homosexuals would have a shot at long-term monogamous happiness, a joyous sex life, and a true sense of unity. That in turn would piss off a whole whack of ballot casters, who’d be averse to having some random gay couple outwit, outlast and outplay them in the game of marriage.
Yet despite this statewide cockblock, California’s government and voters have perpetually stood by their dysfunctional - and 100% legal - gay marriage options. They are:
• Lesbian marries straight dude
• Gay dude marries straight woman
• Gay dude marries lesbian
. . .
Naturally, the assumption is that conservative Californians would rally against these sitcomy pairings, citing potential erosion of the ‘traditional definition’ of marriage. And yet this isn’t the case. …
We’ve been paying zero attention to this “teabagging” idiocy that took place yesterday (other than to LOL every time we heard the word “teabagging”; next time, we suggest using a certain other compound word containing “bagging,” as it would be more descriptive of the participants themselves), but this observation from Daniel De Groot at OpenLeft caught our attention (and made us smile):
… I don’t know whether [Amy] Bailliett’s claim of 1 million people worldwide participating in the [”Join the Impact”] protest is accurate, but at the current moment Pajamas TV is estimating the total turnout of the tea parties at 208,000. …
So from 19 February to 15 April, the tea party people only manage to muster 200K for their great cause.
So unless Bailliett is overestimating by a factor of more than five, she was able, without the help of ACORN, Soros or Michael Moore to organize more people in 8 days than all the Koch’s horses and men could do in almost 2 months.
We’re also comparing the tea baggers to a protest about an issue that only directly affects at most 10% of the population (the usual upward estimate of the proportion of the population that is homosexual), including at least one fairly big protest (Boston) in a state where gay marriage is already legal. A whole lot of people showed up in true solidarity even though they had no direct stake in the outcome. …
From the author of Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America (which was “glitched”) who finds (as I do) Amazon’s explanation that “a mid-level employee began to tag books as ‘adult’ using very loose criteria … still troubling.”
If this is indeed what happened, it says some pretty bad things not only about Amazon, but about what probably a large swath of the population assumes but doesn’t always articulate: that things gay are automatically sexual and, by extension, bad. It would be pretty ironic if a book about the censorship of a gay presence — which is what “don’t ask, don’t tell” succeeded at accomplishing — was censored because of its gay presence. And censored by a large company eager to profit from selling that book but all too happy to cave to social conservatives griping about gay themes appearing on a website where millions of books about everything under the sun never warrant a peep. …
Richard Nash wrote that it doesn’t so much matter if Amazon deliberately targeted gay books: “In a world where whiteness and straightness are ‘norms’ and males benefit from our patriarchial [sic] history, it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.”
This, I think, is where the debate now stands. Too many Americans still can’t separate “gay” from “sex.” And I don’t mean that gays should stop admitting they are sexual beings. I mean gays should be able to be proud and out about our sexuality while not being defined by it, and certainly not being defined by the sloppy assumption that our demand for first-class citizenship is somehow an instance of endemic self-indulgence, an incorrigible impulse toward uncontrollable pleasure-seeking.
As Queer theory has rightly taught, the “problem” with homosexuality in America is really a problem with straight America: until they get over the notion that gay = sex and sex = bad, we’ll continue to face the harmful effects of sexual repression, we’ll remain vigilant about ham-fisted homophobic glitches, and we’ll proudly keep the doors to our gay rights groups wide open.
Discussing the April 3 Iowa Supreme Court ruling striking down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Glenn Beck falsely asserted on the April 13 broadcast of his Fox News program, “I believe this case is actually about going into churches and going in and attacking churches and saying you can’t teach anything else.” In fact, the unanimous court ruling explicitly states that constitutional principles “require that the state recognize both opposite-sex and same-sex civil marriage. Religious doctrine and views contrary to this principle of law are unaffected.”
The Iowa Supreme Court further stated that the ruling does not affect religious institutions’ definitions of marriage:
A religious denomination can still define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and a marriage ceremony performed by a minister, priest, rabbi, or other person ordained or designated as a leader of the person’s religious faith does not lose its meaning as a sacrament or other religious institution. The sanctity of all religious marriages celebrated in the future will have the same meaning as those celebrated in the past. The only difference is civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law. This result is what our constitution requires.
As Media Matters for America noted, media figures advanced similar falsehoods about the 2008 decision by the California Supreme Court that affirmed the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry. That ruling was reversed by Proposition 8, the ballot measure that amended California’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage in that state. …
More at the link.
As my lovely wife just said as I read her the headline: “When are they going to realize we don’t care about their [expletive deleted] churches — we just want them to leave us the [expletive deleted] alone!“
Well, for every minute they run around like chickens getting clips pulled, that’s one less minute they have to spend bothering us (and one more minute they spend garnering even more bad publicity for themselves):
The National Organization for Marriage seems to be ratcheting up its efforts to suppress the audition videos that leaked from its anti-gay-rights “gathering storm” shoot. According to YouTube, the group has gotten a clip from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show pulled from the site.
In the segment, which aired Thursday, Maddow criticizes the group’s ad, and shows 40 seconds of the audition tapes. “We do not know how Human Rights Campaign got access to the audition tapes, but because they did, we do know that pretending to be a straight person hurt by gay marriage is apparently very, very challenging,” she says. …
MSNBC, of course, would have been well within its rights to demand the clip be removed. But NOM asserting a copyright interest to have a critical newscast scrubbed from the net? That sets an extraordinary precedent. …
That’s OK — you can watch it anyway, courtesy of MSNBC (the segment starts a little after the 2:00 mark):
I remarked (”remarked” being a subjective word; my verbosity IRL even surpasses my verbosity online) to my lovely wife this evening that I never imagined, at this stage in my life, I’d be trying to understand all the peculiar (and I do mean “peculiar”), under-the-radar quirks and rules and code words and the like of religions I neither believed in, nor cared much about. Oh, it’s very important to know a thing or two about religion in general (that Passover has nothing to do with Easter, for instance) just to keep from making a fool of yourself, and very helpful to have a good grasp on others’ belief systems, if for no other reason than to understand what you believe or not, and why (or why not), and to prevent you from getting suckered into snake handling.
But here I am, feeling, in the immortal words of Edina Monsoon, like I hit an oil patch at 35, and have been sliding toward the grave ever since — and, when I’d much rather be gardening, or engaging in hot monkey love, I’m learning about strange, usually bizarre, belief systems I’d rather have kept only at the furthestmost outer fringes of my peripheral vision.
“Know thine enemy” goes the oft-quoted and nearly always mis-cited saying. As I wrote some months ago to Mormons at large, I was quite content to leave you and your church be, and blithely ignore your missionaries on my doorstep. Now, I know more about Mormonism than I ever wanted to, because the Salt Lake PTB decided they weren’t content to leave me be, and barged into my home to rip up my marriage license. Thus, I need to know about Mormonism, so I know what I’m dealing with. And, besides, when you know all about a thing, it ceases to be scary. The Mormon church is no longer scary; the more I know, the more it’s like that fine piece of advice to folks who fear speaking in public: Picture your audience naked. (Granted, I now picture Mormons in their magic underwear — or, since that episode of “Big Love,” in their baker hats and green aprons — which is far less taxing on my imagination. News flash: Gay people do not want to see everyone naked. In fact, most of us want to see very few people naked.)
(Oh, while I’m thinking about it: Our friend and tireless freedom fighter Chino left a comment explaining some Mormon code that flew right past me; if you’d like to know about the “White Horse prophecy,” see his comment here.)
Anyway… I stumbled across a fairly new blog that offers a fascinating look into the mindset of the “Quiverfull” Christians — the sort of “biblical patriarchy” cult (spread through the usually disturbing homeschooling movement) I think Maggie Gallagher would belong to if she weren’t constantly compelled to run off at the mouth, unlike a submissive little wife shouldn’t. It’s called “No Longer Quivering,” written by one Vyckie Garrison, who, after quite the unstable childhood, dove headfirst into the wifely-submission role (she “adored” her role model, Michelle Duggar), popping out as many babies as possible for her ungrateful and domineering husband, even at risk to her own life, because, well, of course, God wants women to be miserable (and gender equality is the tool of Satan).
Vyckie — thank God — emerged from this destructive lifestyle after a year’s correspondence with her un-believing uncle (yes, Christians, g’head, blame the atheist; you will anyway), not unscathed, but definitely far more rational. She takes you through her ongoing journey in lengthy, well-thought-out posts, with, as a big bonus, comments from readers who are, overall, smart, articulate, and compassionate.
Rather than just hit the main link, you might want to start with this article about Vyckie first: “All God’s children” by Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.
There are also some good related articles linked downpage, particularly “Submit, woman!,” which explores the line (is there one?) between “wifely submission” and domestic abuse. Within this second article is another link, this time to Joyce’s article, “Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: Christian Women and Domestic Violence,” also a worthy read — especially if you want to know where Rick Warren is coming from.
If you read these pieces first (and they’re quite riveting and digestible, albeit infuriating to anyone with even a shred of self-worth), you’ll go into Garrison’s blog with a good overview of what Garrison herself endured — and more importantly, why.
Joyce writes: “The experience of Garrison’s friend Laura — a mother of 11 who collapsed under the demands of the lifestyle — also helps explain why many unhappy women are afraid to turn their backs on the movement, when they’ll be left with scant financial resources, years without work experience, and a dearth of references from a community that often shuns them.” Which has all the earmaks of any cult: Isolate the victim, destroy her independence, and hold the threat of ostracization over her head.
(Which always makes me think of Mormonism. I’m not just getting in a jab at the Mormons here, honest, but: Consider the vast “support” network the Mormons have set up solely for the care and feeding of one another — right down to silos full of food to be distributed in case of Armageddon — and then consider the fate of Mormons who are excommunicated or leave the church voluntarily; they are often completely cut off, and may as well be dead, even to their own families. And Mormons wonder why so many, especially Christians, consider their church a cult? Such Mafia-like intimidation tactics — once you’re in the family, you can never leave — under the mask of Us Against the World, is but onewarning sign of a cult.)
While Garrison’s blog, which she writes in tandem with her friend Laura, who is undergoing a similar — and in some ways, much more difficult — journey (Laura’s ex-husband wrenched custody of all eleven of their children from her), is only a little more than a month old, there is much material to absorb, and there is a natural chronology to it. So I would suggest reading the introductory links under “What It’s All About” (in the righthand menu), and then navigating your way back to the women’s first posts (Laura: “Part 1 ~ In The Beginning”; Vyckie: “Part 1 ~ Married At 16″), and proceeding from there.
Even if you have no interest in “biblical patriarchy” to begin with, I assure you that you will after you’ve read a few posts (and the many comments). You may never come to truly understand this mindset (I doubt I ever will), much less relate to it (I know I never will), but you will come away with a few more pieces to the puzzle that stymies those of us who cannot imagine life without having, and fighting to maintain, our freedom, our dignity, and our very personhood.
And, while this may sound flip (as I’ve really been ragging on her this week) you will actually come to understand Maggie Gallagher… and Phyllis Schlafly, and all the others like them. There’s really no difference among them at all.
I have only ever worn out one book. … That book is Epistemology of the Closet, and its author is the brilliant, inimitable, explosive intellectual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who died last night from breast cancer at the age of 58.
It is difficult to calculate the impact of Sedgwick’s scholarship, in part because its legacy is still in the making, but also because she worked at a skew to so many fields of inquiry. Feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis and literary, legal and disability studies — Sedgwick complicated and upended them all, sometimes in ways that infuriated more anodyne scholars, but always in ways that pushed established parameters.
In one of her more audacious insights, Sedgwick proposed two ways of understanding homosexuality: a “minoritizing view” in which there is “a distinct population of persons who ‘really are’ gay,” and a “universalizing view” in which sexual desire is unpredictable and fluid, in which “apparently heterosexual persons…are strongly marked by same-sex influences.” Think of it, in shorthand, as the difference between Ellen Degeneres’ “Yep, I’m gay!” and Gore Vidal’s “There is no such thing as a homosexual or heterosexual person; there are only homo- or heterosexual acts.”
Sedgwick wasn’t interested in validating either view, but rather in how these two views compete and collude in ways that produce an “irreducible incoherence”… Consider, for example, her analysis of homosexual panic defense, which was once accepted by juries as a rationale for reducing sentences for gay bashers. …
Sedgwick’s work was marked throughout by an abiding love for gay people, gay men in particular. She once proposed that in a gay-affirmative world, there would be guide books on how to bring your kids up gay. “Advice on how to make sure your kids turn out gay, not to mention your students, your parishoners, your therapy clients, or your military subordinates, is less ubiquitous than one might think,” she deadpanned in Epistemology. It’s funny, and then, after you laugh, it hits you like a rock. …
Tweet This Post! 
And the first right-winger who hits me with any nonsense about “my” Messiah-President Obama is hereby cursed with an ocean of fleas invading their armpits, forever:
