I’m sick of all this hype about homesexual teen suicides. Leviticus 20:13 – “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

That was the status update of a guy a few years younger than me, and a friend (actually more of an acquaintance) on facebook. Frankly I was more than a little bit shocked and offended by it. Not so much by the expression of intolerance, although that’s nauseating too, but by the sheer stupidity of the comment. What followed, in general, was a raft of anti-gay statements from a bunch of other young men:

Anyone who doesn’t agree with you must be a homo themselves. They will try to justify it till they die. God says its wrong. That settles it!
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I think everyone knows that jesus christ established a new covenant that did away with all the stoning and certain people not allowed to go to church and not traveling or cooking on sabbath etc. etc. by being crucified on the cross. He was meek and humble and full of love, but even he said that homosexual’s were worthy of death! Any one with any sense know’s that it is out of ordinary. Mother nature even shows that. I am sure glad that the first man and woman were not homo’s, or a lot of us wouldn’t be here.
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If some Twinkle toes wants to off himself, well here is a gun.If some bleeding heart liberal media nut job wants to try to stone me for my opinion, then heres the business end of my gun.
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it was adam and eve, not adam and steve!!

… and so on. Typical self-righteous close-minded intolerant Christians (and so different from the real Christians i know).

But the fact is, if you’re gonna base your worldview on Leviticus, you’re setting yourself up for a world of hurt, because you don’t get to pick and choose which Biblical rules apply and which don’t: you either embrace them or you don’t.

Ya see, God says a lot of things no one acknowledges: do you think that adulterers should be executed? God does, in Leviticus. Ever curse at your mom and dad? guess what: God says it’s execution for you. For that matter, cursing or blaspheming at all calls for a public stoning, so don’t say “dammit” next time you’re in the shop and whack your finger with a hammer. Handicapped people aren’t allowed to go to church/temple, according to God in Leviticus.

So I told my acquaintance that if you’re going to predicate your beliefs on Leviticus, a text better suited for life more than a millenia ago, make sure you know what you’re getting into. Because I’m pretty sure that every single person on Facebook, if not the entire world, is sentenced to death if you go by those rules.

My acquaintance’s reaction was as sad as it was predicatble:

You know what’s funny- if I had put something liberal on here, no one would say a word but post something conservative and they all pounce. How dare I not care what others think about my having any moral or ethical integrity!!!

I think that’s just sad that a person would take something most biologists would say is a matter of genetics, and make it into a matter of liberal or conservative: there are a LOT of conservatives who strongly support gay rights and gay equality. And I don’t see how biology is a matter if morals or politics. Ethical integrity, yes, but not the way my bigoted buddy sees it: if someone’s born gay, and most evidence suggests that’s how it works, why should that person put him or herself, or worse a wife or husband, through Hell pretending otherwise?

Why am I writing all this? Because, like a lot of other people, I’ve been touched by Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project, which aims to prevent gay teens from committing suicide.

It is not too difficult for me to remember what it was like for me in 6th grade, when someone decided to spread untrue rumors that I was gay. It was awful. There were two or three kids that would chase me during recess and beat me up while yelling “faggot” and “Jew” (Jason Peters of Newport Rhode Island, I’m looking at YOU, you motherfucker), which lasted until I finally snapped. I began wearing steel-toed shit-kickers to school, and fighting back, which inevitably got me in more trouble than my tormentors. The harassment led, in part, to me being left back in 7th grade for the classic reason he won’t apply himself. Well, it’s damn hard to apply yourself when your classmates make you feel like a pariah and tell everyone you’re something you’re not.

It also brought me back to high school, and what our football team did to a nerdy new kid who had the temerity to try out for varsity while being a member of JROTC (home of dorks): they spread rumors that he got an erection in the showers after scrimmage, and for the rest of the year everyone called him “Boner.” I honestly don’t think anyone ever knew his real name.

I never contemplated suicide, thanks to A) transferring to public school and B) the salvation of punk rock and hardcore. The fact that I wasn’t gay also made life a lot easier (if you think the comments above, from relatively enlightened 21st century America are bad, imagine how it was in the 1980s when hating on fags wasn’t just normal, it was socially rewarded).

But when I think of the recent surge in gay teen suicides and read nasty comments from so-called Christians claiming “it’s all a bunch of hype”, it sure brings me back to when I was the target of bullies who decided I was the “other”, and therefore a target for a daily beating.

And ya know, fuck that. Kids, it gets better. Someday you’ll be adults, and leave those close-minded fuckers behind, just like this kid did.

It gets better.

Attorneys for the Obama administration objected Thursday to a proposed worldwide injunction being considered by a California federal judge that would halt the military’s ban on openly gay troops.

Calling the possible move “untenable,” Department of Justice attorneys filed their objections in U.S. District Court in Riverside.

They said Judge Virginia Phillips, who declared the policy unconstitutional earlier this month, would be overstepping her bounds if she tried to stop it in its tracks.

Instead, she should limit any injunction to the 19,000 members of the Log Cabin Republicans, the gay rights organization that filed the lawsuit to stop enforcement of the ban, the lawyers said.

Riiiiiight. So the gay people who won their legal fight can serve, ie Log Cabin Republicans, but the rest of the gay population can’t?

Why not just set up two sets of water fountains, shove the faggots to the back of the bus (the one they’ve been thrown under, repeatedly) and be done with it?

I really hope someone has the balls to primary Barack Obama in 2012. I really do.

(and as usual, the president’s supporters on the Intertoobs will ignore this because it doesn’t fit their worshipful narrative).

Not for the first time, I find myself seeing the Democrats’ strategy to be as clear as mud. From what I can tell, they wanted the Republicans to filibuster the Defense Appropriations Act. What do I base this on? Partly it is the fact that the White House didn’t put on a full-court press to get it passed. A bigger signal is that the Democrats didn’t come out swinging that the GOP was endangering the troops.
[...]
Still, it appears that the Democrats were fine with this outcome. And, I guess I can’t fully discern why they are okay with it. If they think they can use this as a cudgel against the Republicans in the midterm elections, they haven’t shown me how they plan to wield that cudgel. If the roles were reversed, the Republicans would have screamed to high heaven that the Democrats were defunding our troops in the field. Is that coming? Because I saw no evidence of it today.

If this is all part of setting up the next chapter in the election-season narrative, then I guess that will become clear soon enough. But, for now, the whole thing seems inexplicable.

It’s funny because there IS no strategy. Obama and the Democrats have punted and delayed and delayed and punted over and over again when it comes to equality and civil rights for gay people.

The Democrats can’t figure out what they’re for or against (for that matter a lot of them don’t even believe in their own party platforms).

If the Democrats possessed a strategy that’s clear as mud, it would be an improvement over what they have now.

As a straight man, you’d figure that I don’t have a dog in the marriage equality fight. And you’d be right, sort of.

But I’m the kind of person who backs up his friends, and a lot of those people happen to be gay. So on their behalf, I extend to you a hale and hearty “go fuck yourselves”. I’d like to extend an extra-super-duper fuck you to the state Democratic Party.

The Senate shot down the bill after two and a half hours of debate this afternoon, during which no Republicans spoke. New York’s other legislative body, the state assembly, had approved the bill in May by a vote of 89 to 52.

Gov. David Paterson (D) supported the measure. He called a special session in November for the Senate to consider the bill and vote on budget measures to reconcile a $3.2 billion deficit.

Democrats have a one-seat majority in the Senate. No Republicans voted for it, and several Dems voted against.

You guys and gals are fucking morons. I wish you nothing but the worst, you slackjawed, backwards, yokels.

Eat shit!
Brendan Skwire

I told you we weren’t getting health care reform:

Sources say that it’s a major scale-back of the outline they had before. Specifically, subsidies have dropped from 400 percent of the poverty line to 300 percent. Medicaid eligibility has been tightened to 133 percent of poverty for children and pregnant women and 100 percent of poverty for parents and childless adults. The plans being offered in the exchange have seen their actuarial values sharply lowered.

Beyond the changes, this is also the clearest look we’ve had at the specific policies being considered. There’s a fairly strong individual mandate, albeit with exemptions for those beneath the poverty line, those who would have to spend more than 15 percent of income for a plan, and undocumented workers. There are a variety of options for an employer mandate, or the absence of one. Sen. Kent Conrad’s co-op idea is up for discussion. There’s no public plan mentioned anywhere in the document.

I told you so.
And this comes on the heels of betrayal on the war supplemental, which we weren’t supposed to have any more of.

And on the heels of the DADT/DOMA betrayals.

And on the heels of the bailouts, aka “socialism for the rich”.

And on the heels of the betrayal on FISA.

Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

You can express your displeasure on “health care” “reform” (for what it’s worth) to the senate finance commitee: 202-224-4515.

Just don’t expect them to care: your taxes pay for THEIR health care, why should your taxes be used to pay for your own?

And then they walked up the steps of MY front porch.

“Who are you?” I asked, poking my head out the door and putting on my grumpiest Philly face, “and what are you doing on my porch?”

“We’re from the Church of Latter Day–,” one of the shiny white faces began to say when I cut him off.

“You’re the folks responsible for that awful Proposition 8 crap!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “We don’t support hate in this household. You get the hell off my porch, and don’t you DARE come back here!”

As they turned to leave, I added “And that whole posthumous baptism shit is wrong too!”

But by that time they were talking to my neighbor Caralyn. As I unloaded my car, I could hear her telling them to go away too (albeit in much more polite terms).

I have no problem with anyone’s religion, but once they start shoving their beliefs down the throats of other people, they can go jump in a lake. And if I’d had a bucket of water on hand, they might have walked away just as wet.

The right-wing Nevada senator admitted this week that he’d had an affair with a campaign aide, the wife of one of his employees. Ensign called it “the worst thing I have ever done in my life. If there was ever anything in my life that I could take back, this would be it.”

Snort. I’ll bet.

After all, this blow-dried hypocrite from the craps ‘n’ blackjack state has been a defender of the sanctity of “traditional” marriage ever since he backed a proposed constitutional amendment defining the institution as a union between a man and a woman only….

That’s why I thought it would be helpful to solicit marital advice for Ensign from some local couples whose sturdy unions make them experts on how to keep marriage healthy.

Unlike Ensign, these people are gay. But they seem to have a better handle on the sanctity of the institution than he does.

Let it rip, Kate Williamson.

“My marriage is more about fidelity” than Ensign’s is, says Williamson. She’s a human-resources exec at Campbell’s Soup who recently sanctified her 12-year union with Susan Preston in a church ceremony.

“He should live so long to have what we have,” she sputters.

Williamson goes bonkers at the notion that Ensign is somehow less culpable for his infidelity because he was separated from his wife during his affair. And here’s what she’d say to him about that:

“Your marriage vows don’t include a ‘time-out’,” she says. “There are no ‘except whens.’ You don’t say, ‘I promise to be faithful to you except when I need a breather’ or ‘except when something else comes along.’ “

,a href=”http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20090618_Ronnie_Polaneczky__Need_marital_help__Sen__Ensign__Ask_a_gay_couple.html”>go read the rest.

at 5:45 pm ET, Obama signs a presidential memo granting same-sex benefits to federal workers. This move, however, seems mostly about placating gay-rights advocates who have been angered by 1) the administration’s hesitance in overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; 2) its brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act, which Obama has promised to repeal; and 3) Obama’s invitation of Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the prayer at the inauguration. In fact, some wealthy gay supporters of Obama have become so mad that they’re taking their names off an upcoming Biden fundraiser.

That is 100% correct, and as a straight man in the 21st century (ie, someone who could give a rat’s ass if someone’s gay and who believes everyone is equal under the law), I am virulently offended by this. And the only reason he’s extending any benefits at all because the gay people decided to stop being an ATM. “Here’s a crumb, faggot, now shut up.”

Because it’s not just gays. This is the way the Obama Administration has acted on a whole host of issues important to progressives.

Never mind single payer health care, which even Obama acknowledges is the best route, HHS Secretary Sebelius signaled the Adminsitration is backing away from even a public option. “Here’s a crumb, hippy, now shut up.”

Or the war supplemental which we were supposed to be done with, and which gives a hundred billion dollar bailout to european banks. “You don’t even GET a crumb hippy peacenik.”

So fuck Barack Obama, fuck his war, fuck his bailout, fuck his fake-ass health care, and fuck his homophobia.

I’ve had it with this shit.

The blogosphere is ablaze with buzz about topless and semi-nude photos of controversial anti-gay marriage activist Miss California Carrie Prejean. We hear there’s a whole series of these suckers about to leak. The first photo, which appeared just a few minutes ago on TheDirty.com, shows a woman — who bares a stricking resemblance to the beauty queen — staring seductively into a camera while wearing only a pair of pink panties and using a strategically placed arm to cover her naughty bits.

And the only thing i like more than naked hypocrisy is beer, so in honor (if that’s the right word) of Carrie Prejean’s bible-thumbing sideboob action and sweet-Jesus-tushie, here’s Frank Zappa’s immortal “Titties and Beer”.

Aravosis nails him:

In the new video, Warren accuses gays of “hate speech,” of launching “hateful attacks” against him, and he then says that gay and lesbian Americans have “Christ-ophobia,” a clear effort to mock the term “homophobia.” He goes on to explain that gays are “afraid of any Christian,” suggesting that gay and lesbian Americans – gay and lesbian Obama voters – are not Christians. He then goes on to call gays criticizing him “evil.” All this from a man who compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, and who explicitly bans “unrepentant gays” from his church membership.

Personally, my favorite part of the video is that (on my computer at least) the video tends to freeze, so I hear a few snippets of Rick’s Rant, at which point the video freezes as more content loads up. each time, Rick’s gluttonous head seizes up mid-sentence, usually with his mouth gaping open like a trout.

This guy is a hateful, divisive bigot, and I for one am not seeing the “change we can believe in.”