Sorry, your toaster won't consent to marriage

Some more cool stuff from Tuesday's election:

North Carolina seems to be a hotbed of gay politicians, which is a great thing since the state will vote on a marriage protection amendment next May. I mentioned LaWana Mayfield in Charlotte and Mark Kleinschimdt in Chapel Hill. There is also Lee Storrow, only 22, now on the Chapel Hill city council and Lydia Lavelle back as an Alderwoman in Carrboro.

Dade County, Florida, voted in an equal benefits ordinance. An employer must give same-sex couples the same benefits as straight couples.



Here is a summary of why the argument that gay marriage leads to marrying your toaster (or a dog, or a corpse) is bogus.



The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996. The vote was 10-8, along party lines. The fate of the bill before the whole Senate is unknown. Considering the House leadership is trying to defend DOMA, this bill won't get far there, even with 135 sponsors. This vote is hugely important, even if the bill goes no further.

Unbearably awesome

Rob Tisinai explores the lame homophobic claim, "If everybody was gay the human species would die out." The only way he can see that argument making sense is if the one pushing it were stoned on weed.

What prompted me to tell you about it is the comments others left on the post (which is on two separate blogs). The first one wrote that even if the entire planet was gay, if there is alcohol around there will be babies. Even without alcohol enough gays and lesbians will want to be moms and dads that arrangements would be worked out.

The second one, Dave, wrote:

What I love most about the “if everyone were gay” line is the unspoken fear that it might actually happen. It’s flattering that homophobes think homosexuality is so gosh-darned unbearably awesome that, the minute we let gays and lesbians marry / raise children / not be arbitrarily fired from their jobs, the whole world will be unable to resist the temptation to go gay … It’s also fun to imagine that the only thing preventing any two straight guys from doing each other is that they can’t get married and adopt kids afterwards.

Ben wrote that in a planet where everyone is gay we would have these benefits: fewer abortions, no unwanted children, less need for adoption services, no homophobia as social control and scapegoating.

A couple weeks ago I spent some time on Mackinac Island. There are a lot of shops selling t-shirts, many of them rather rude. That included the shirt with the slogan, "I love boobies." I doubt the majority of their sales were to lesbians. The whole world gay? We'll deal with it when it happens.

Logic? Who needs it?

The Voter Values Summit is going on now. And that can lead to some bizarre statements. D.C. Schwartz, in a workshop on New Masculinity says:

But all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards. And that in fact is what it does. I know couples now who are struggling with the husband’s addiction to pornography. It’s a terrible thing, and that is what happened to him. You know, if it doesn’t turn you homosexual, it at least renders you less capable of loving your wife.

As a commenter reminds us: If porn makes you gay, then states with high consumption of porn, such as Utah, would have legions of gays and would have already voted for gay marriage.

I'm sure Mr. Schwartz could find a course in logic at most any college…

Smiting through meteorology

I've written about the conference of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America being held in Minneapolis this week. A few of the issues to be voted on are gay related.

On Wednesday, a tornado came through Minneapolis, causing minor damage to the roof of the convention center where the Lutherans are meeting and also to the steeple of the Central Lutheran Church. Shortly afterward the assembly passed a statement with exactly the 2/3 required vote which said the denomination cannot agree on the issue of homosexuality and therefore churches will not be punished for blessing same-sex relationships.

Showing he doesn't understand Christianity at all Rev. John Piper of the Bethlehem Baptist Church in town declared the tornado to be a "gentle but firm warning" that God, who controls the wind, won't take kindly to a church that does nice things for gay people.

Insulting Christians from the inside

Pat Robinson spouted off again that most gays are that way because of abuse from a coach, guidance counselor, or other authority figure. None of which explains why I'm gay.

Dan Savage says Robinson isn't an insult to gays. He's an insult to Christians. Robertson's view is very unflattering to Christian America.

All that has me wondering about Robertson. Is he suggesting that gays are sexual predators because so many of the straight men that Robertson knows are also sexual predators and he is projecting what he knows onto us? For the record I am not suggesting Robertson is a sexual predator. It's bad enough he is a religious predator.

Another source gives a better account of Dan Savage's comments. It isn't just that Robertson reveals Fundies to be adrift from reality. There are deeper implications. In Fundie Christian schools, gays are not being hired as coaches, guidance counselors, youth pastors, and dorm captains. Most of these kids haven't met a gay person. Meaning all that sexual abuse is being done, not by gays, but by straight Christian (who should know better) men. Accusing gays only takes the heat off the real perpetrators -- or there aren't any perpetrators and some kids are just naturally gay.

Careful what you say in God's name

As was expected, someone is blaming the fires currently raging in California on gays protesting the marriage ban. One would think God is happy the ban passed. But there's a strange twist -- the fires are in cities and counties that strongly voted for the ban. So lets just stop that nonsense of attributing disasters to God's wrath.

Enough of bashing blacks for their role in passing the Calif. marriage ban. If blacks hadn't voted or had voted in the same percentage as the general population the ban would have still passed, though it would have been a squeaker. There are lots of other ways of slicing up the population that produces sizable groups (over 15% of the voters) who were for the ban by over 60%. Some of these are Republicans (82% yes, 29% of voters) and those who attend church weekly (82% yes, 22% of voters) and even the elderly (61% yes, 15% of the vote). So why are we dissing blacks?

The Calif. Supremes will hear whether the marriage ban is a valid constitution amendment and whether existing gay marriages are legal. They will act swiftly and hold hearings in March. That means there may not be a ruling for a year. Alas, they said the ban is to remain in effect until their ruling. Naturally, there are threats to subject any justice who votes to overturn the ban with a recall vote.

Another voice says, so what if they toss out a justice?

* The repeal of the amendment still stands, meaning the Calif. legislature must approve a replacement amendment.
* Getting that ban through this legislature will fail.
* Defeating enough state legislators to get a ban through will fail.
* Any replacement justice appointed by Arnold or a future Democratic governor won't revisit the ruling.
* The amendment push has played out. Only 3-5 of the 20 remaining states will attempt it.
* There will be no federal amendment until after the federal Supremes rule and it only takes 13 states to block that.

There is a possible downside to overturning the ban -- gays haven't been this stirred up since Stonewall and we're ready to take on the world. Reinstituting gay marriage may let the steam out of the movement. However, the simple fact of gay marriage in Calif. will probably more than make up for it.

God ordained trickle up economics

Where do they come up with such nonsense? I thought the Prosperity Gospel was unsupported by the Bible, but that's rather tame. I've also been reading that while Trickle Down Economics has been shown to be a hoax, Trickle Up Economics is doing quite well, thank you, and lives on in the government bailout (where rich people are scrambling to get their slice while Bush is still in office. But now we see some religious justification for it. C. Peter Wagner declared, "God has declared through His prophets that the wealth of the wicked will be released to the Kingdom of God," and, "the enemies' camp will be plundered." Bishop Thomas Murthee, a Wagner colleague, adds, "The Bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous." He said this just before anointing Saran Palin for governor.

Now I went looking into a searchable online Bible database (bible.com) and went looking just for "wealth" and "wicked." There was no match in the King James Version and in newer translations the only passage that came close was Job 27, where the wicked are described with, "They go to bed wealthy and wake up poor."

Wagner is calling on God's Kingdom to infiltrate "Seven Mountains" of society: business, education, media, and government being four of them. The takeover of business includes permission to plunder the wealth of the wicked so that it can be used to implement a theocracy and wield spiritual warfare. No wonder McCain decries Obama's tax plans as "socialism." This spiritual warfare is supposedly done by:

…mapping strongholds of demons, witches and "spirits of witchcraft", and through driving those out through "spiritual warfare". The result will be the almost complete cessation of crime and addiction, almost 100% Christian church membership, the growth of farm vegetables to enormous size, and a miraculous reversal of environmental degradation.

It is amazing how easily and how completely the Bible can be twisted from its original message of love, grace, and forgiveness. Sheesh.

Scapegoat, again

I think we've already seen the anti-gay crowd is a sandwich short of a picnic, but this one implies the whole picnic is missing. From the website of the gang promoting marriage protection in Arizona (and, no, I'm not linking directly):

It is estimated that, since 2006, approximately 20,000 heterosexual marriages have failed in Arizona due to inadequate protections from the possibility of activist judges ruling in favor of some future homosexual plaintiffs.

It's all in the genes

A bit of fun: Gay Scientists Have Isolated the Christian Gene. As ridiculous as this is it is annoying that so many people believe the opposite. The video is 1 minute 15 seconds.

Sorry, Dad, no more Father's Day

Here's a twist: The Family Research Council is shrieking that now that gays can marry in Calif. straight dads won't be able to celebrate Father's Day anymore. The reason is that marriage licenses will no longer have the term "husband" (it never did, the term was "groom") and they claim Calif. will soon remove the term "father" from birth certificates.

Sorry, no. Men will still be fathers and can still celebrate Father's Day and allowing gay men (who already do) to do the same has no effect on the day. Which leads to the question: Why do these organizations reach for the most hysterical, lurid -- and foolish -- explanations they can find? Do they actually raise money through using such nonsense? The rest of the country is quite aware of how empty their arguments are.

Stormy Weather

Union University in Jackson, Tenn., a very conservative school, was flattened in the recent cluster of tornados that hit the South. While I sympathize with the loss it brings to mind recent comments of Rev. John Hagee (who has said even worse things than Obama's Rev. Wright, yet still embraced by the McCain campaign). Hagee said that Katrina was God's vengeance on gays. That comment prompted a YouTube video (reached through this link) promoting Hagee as McCain's nominee to head the National Weather Service -- he could identify events that could prompt God's displeasure, allow the State Security Apparatus to clean it up, and thus prevent weather-related disasters. Yet a conservative Christian school was flattened. Did God miss his intended target?

Playful? Me?

Desmond Morris wrote a famous book The Naked Ape to explain human behavior through evolution. He's back with The Naked Man and at least part of the book "explains" homosexuality as neoteny, childhood traits that extend into adulthood. Gays, he says, "tend to be more inventive and creative than heterosexuals because they are more likely to retain the mental agility and playfulness of childhood." While I claim a lot of creativity and some think of me as playful, his work is dependent on stereotypes, useful at keeping a class of people as "the other," not like us, and not worthy of full rights.

Morris keeps saying that the difference is positive but this commentator isn't buying. It is still labeling gays as intrinsically disordered.