A Quiet Revolution

Gay marriage seems to have come to New Mexico. Under the radar, and buoyed by a force no stronger than a simple reading of the law.

In July, State Attorney General Gary King noticed something that state Republicans would have preferred to keep hidden away. New Mexico law does not prohibit gay marriage. Of course, it doesn't specifically authorize it, either, but up until now, nobody has banned it. And any attempts to do so appear to be unconstitutional.

The Associated Press reports that King made the argument after the court asked him to weigh in on a lawsuit filed by a gay Santa Fe couple who were denied a marriage license. In his filing, King urged the court to approve more broadly of gay marriage rights in a ruling in favor of the men.

"New Mexico’s guarantee of equal protection to its citizens demands that same-sex couples be permitted to enjoy the benefits of marriage in the same way and to the same extent as other New Mexico citizens," King said in the filing.

On the strength of that, on Wednesday, Dona Ana County clerk Lynn Ellins, began issuing marriage certificates to gay couples in Las Cruces, NM. Nobody told him that he could - he simply noted that nobody could tell him that he couldn't.

And today, in Albuquerque, a judge ordered the county clerk of the most populous county in New Mexico to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, stating that any seeming prohibitions in New Mexico statutes against same-sex marriage "are unconstitutional and unenforceable."

In his ruling, Judge Alan Malott quoted Article II, Section 18 of the New Mexico State Constitution, which is pretty straight-forward (so to speak).

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall any person be denied equal protection of the laws. Equality of rights under law shall not be denied on account of the sex of any person.

So now, with roughly a hundred same-sex couples legally married in the state of New Mexico, any action by the state government (or our Republican governor Susana Martinez) will be met with an almost-unwinnable lawsuit.

So it would appear that gay marriage is here to stay in New Mexico. Not through what the GOP will undoubtedly be calling "judicial activism," but simply through strict adherence to the law.

That's gonna leave a mark - a big, rainbow-colored one.

Learning Parenthood from the Experts

Let me see if I've got this straight (so to speak).

Bristol Palin really has no business being in the public eye, other than the fact that her mother was a failed candidate for vice president who supported abstinence-only education, and Bristol stands as evidence of that policy's success. Is that about right?

So, given that fact, I suppose there's some ironic humor to be had that she keeps cropping up in the media. Most recently coughing up a short column on patheos.com, where she complained about Obama expressing support for marriage equality.

And there's some spectacular logical facepalms in there.

When Christian women run for high office, people inevitably bring up the question of submission. Once, Michele Bachmann, for example, was asked during a debate, “As president, would you be submissive to your husband?”

People automatically assume that a Christian female President isn’t capable of making decisions without her spouse’s stamp of approval. (I should add female Republican candidates –liberal women don’t get the same kind of questions.)

Well, technically, the reason for that is that Christian women are claiming support for a Bible that says:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." (Ephesians 5:22-25 NIV)

And, for that matter:

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)

Those rules seem pretty straightforward. So, if the women are going to thump their Bibles at everybody, it seems like they should be asked to justify that. That's how it works, young lady - if you don't make the claim, you don't have to justify it.

The main thrust of her argument, though, is that Obama shouldn't have consulted with his teen-aged daughters to establish policy. And she's right: he shouldn't. Of course, Obama didn't set any policy, and didn't consult with his daughters to do so, but in general, she's right.

What he said was (and she even quotes him):

You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.

He even says, in the course of that, "for me, personally." It's opinion, not policy. And he mentioned his daughters in explaining how he reached that conclusion.

That's the way normal people think, Bristol. But then again, you are your mother's daughter, so I guess we can't expect logic out of you, can we?

I've got to say, though, that my favorite part would have to be this:

While it’s great to listen to your kids’ ideas, there’s also a time when dads simply need to be dads. In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage. Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids' worldview.

Gee, Miss Palin, you might think that you've just made a good point, but... well, I hate to bring this up, but do you remember a certain child named Tripp? You know, the bastard baby born out of wedlock to some tramp rich slut single mother and her high-school dropout babydaddy?

Yeah, I wonder if Tripp has seen his daddy in a while?

That frothy mix

I have to assume that Rick Santorum is still in the race to be the GOP nominee because he hopes that some simultaneous outbreak of monkey pox will wipe out the rest of the field. That, or, as a good Catholic, he enjoys a little flagellation every so often - it's good for the soul.

He is probably the thirteenth or fourteenth least-electable candidate in the history of humanity, but we can't seem to get him to just shut the hell up and go away.

Even before the primary, Santorum was surging in Iowa (eeewww!) at 15%, but he still can't seem to consistently break 5% nationally. Not that he isn't optimistic (or possibly sadistic): he put it a few weeks ago, "I'm counting on the people of Iowa to catch fire for me." (Which seems unnecessarily cruel, but what do I know?)

The problem is that Santorum is just the latest flavor of not-Romney to hit the shelves. It's his turn to be touted nationally for the next few weeks, until somebody remembers that we're electing a president, not a pope.

Santorum has two major disabilities that are going to prevent his election: his sanctimonious, unpleasant nature, and his aggressively ignorant and regressive social policies. His entire platform, as far as I can tell, seems to be abortion and gay marriage - everything else is secondary. If he were, by some miracle, to be elected president, we'd have an uninterrupted 4-year fiesta of fag-punching.

We know that Santorum is so homophobic that he'll only eat a corndog with a knife and fork, but is he also racist? Well, that one's a little trickier. He has, for a long time, been consistently in favor of the full GOP stand on immigration: no amnesty for illegal immigrants, and likewise no benefits for them; deport criminals, strengthen border security, and even the somewhat trickier "English as the official language" stance. And while that has overtones of "scary brown people," it's the Republican party line. So no points there.

On the other hand, it's somewhat telling when you stand in front of a group of white people from Iowa (a redundant statement, but let's move on) and explained that "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."



His first explanation was that he didn't remember making the comment. Faced with the video, he huddled with his campaign, but the best they could come up with was that he "mumbled it... I was starting to say one word and I sort of came up with a different word and then moved on."

What he couldn't seem to explain was what that "one word" was. "Blaa" is a pretty unique sound. Who does he not want to help? Bloggers? Bluefin tuna? Blink 182?

Blacks?

But let's move beyond that. What would a Rick Santorum presidency do for America? Well, let's consider his belief system for just a moment. What does Rick Santorum believe in?

His career should have been over after he tried to make political points leading the charge in the Terry Schiavo case, exploiting the pain of the family of a provably brain-dead woman. But he weathered that (presumably, the $250 thousand he earned in campaign contributions from the Schiavo debacle helped a lot).

Rick Santorum believes that birth control is directly responsible for the moral decline of America, saying "the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It’s not OK because it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

He wrote an article in 2002 blaming pedophilia in Catholic priests on "moral relativism" and "cultural liberalism."

This is a man who said that John McCain, who was tortured while a POW in Vietnam, "doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works."

He tried to require the "No Child Left Behind" law to ensure that creationism was taught in schools.

In 2007, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named him one of the twenty most corrupt members of Congress.

Will Bunch, the senior writer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News has covered politics in Pennsylvania since shortly after Rick Santorum was elected for the first time. He wrote a fascinating article from a Philadelphian's point of view entitled "The Rick Santorum That America Doesn't Know." Take a few minutes and read it - it's worth your time.

But the worst thing I know about Rick Santorum is what happened when his wife Karen was 20 weeks pregnant. Her non-viable fetus was not expected to survive, and the mother developed an infection. And Rick Santorum, who is opposed to abortion for any reason, allowed the doctors to give his wife pitocin to speed the birth. And while that may have been wildly hypocritical, what followed was completely insane.

After spending the night with the dead fetus on the bed between them, they took the body home with them, and forced their children to cuddle with it and sing songs to it. Ms Santorum even proudly wrote a book about it.

Where the hell was Child Protective Services when this was going on? Where was the Health Department?

The worst thing that could possibly happen to America would be a Rick Santorum presidency: I wonder how long it would take him to appoint a Grand Inquisitor?

And yet, he is suddenly one of the two front-runners in the GOP field. Is the Republican Party so desperate to find an alternative, any alternative, to the robotic hair-helmet that is Mitt Romney that they're willing to embrace anyone at all?

Don't Ask redeux

You know, unlike any of these elitist, protected rich boys running for office, I spent essentially a lifetime in the military: 21 years as an enlisted man. (Ron Paul did 2 years as a flight surgeon and 3 years in the National Guard; Rick Perry flew cargo planes - god, I hated C-130s - for 4 years.)

In that time, I know, for a fact, that I served with gays. They were forced to hide it, but most of us knew, and nobody really cared. (Most of the people who would have cared were too damned stupid to figure things out anyway.)

Now, during Clinton's era, he passed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) as an idiotic compromise. (The fact that the GOP hated it at the time, and were, more recently, rabidly trying to protect it, isn't the slightest bit funny. Not at all...)

Now, with DADT repealed, we have brain-dead idiots in Brokeback Mountain jackets telling us how sad it is that gays can serve openly in the military.



But, you know something odd? DADT was repealed, and the military didn't collapse.

It was only last year that the Marine Corps Commandant, Gen James Amos, said that the repeal of DADT would be a "risk." Now, three months after it was shot down, he's singing a different show tune.

Marines across the globe have adapted smoothly and embraced the change, says their top officer, Gen. James F. Amos, who previously had argued against repealing the ban during wartime.

"I'm very pleased with how it has gone," Amos said in an Associated Press interview

It really isn't an issue. You want proof?

Two women share first kiss at US Navy ship's return

A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted "first kiss" on the pier after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif., descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. Gaeta, 23, wore her Navy dress uniform while Snell, 22, wore a black leather jacket, scarf and blue jeans. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.

"It’s something new, that’s for sure," Gaeta told reporters after the kiss. "It’s nice to be able to be myself. It’s been a long time coming..."

Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity. Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets, a figure that she said pales in comparison to amounts that some other sailors and their loved ones had bought. The money was used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.

And, amazingly enough, the world didn't end. Society kept on going. It's weird. It's like it hardly even mattered, in the big picture.



Because, guess what? It makes no real difference to the military. Despite what some morons want you to believe.

About DADT Damned Time

Well, now he's gone and done it. Obama's just lost the vote of the Religious Right.

(Yeah, I make myself laugh sometimes...)

Starting at midnight Tuesday, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been officially repealed, and homosexuals can now serve openly in the military. We were the last industrialized nation that didn't allow gays to serve openly, until just last night.



I'd like to make a prediction. Approximately one year from today, civilization will not crumble, and the military will be just as good as it is now.

Better, even. The gays in the military (and I knew several) won't have to hide it, won't have to keep lying about what they are (here are some of their stories now). Kevin and Kim's daughter Cat can dance openly in the Officer's Club with her girlfriend. And maybe, for the first time since we went into Iraq, we'll be able to keep some Arabic translators, instead of paying civilian contracting companies millions of dollars every year.

Funny thing about DADT: it was implemented in 1993 as a compromise measure, when Congress (to prevent Clinton from doing what Obama just did) added a requirement to the National Defense Authorization Act which forced commanders to enforce homophobic regulations which stated that homosexuality was incompatible with military service.

At the time, Republicans and other homophobes hated DADT. Odd how they switched to defending it in recent years, huh?



(It's harder to find a copy of that video that you can embed than you'd think...)

I'm going to let my president have the last words here.

Today, the discriminatory law known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is finally and formally repealed. As of today, patriotic Americans in uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve the country they love. As of today, our armed forces will no longer lose the extraordinary skills and combat experience of so many gay and lesbian service members. And today, as Commander in Chief, I want those who were discharged under this law to know that your country deeply values your service.

I was proud to sign the Repeal Act into law last December because I knew that it would enhance our national security, increase our military readiness, and bring us closer to the principles of equality and fairness that define us as Americans. Today’s achievement is a tribute to all the patriots who fought and marched for change; to Members of Congress, from both parties, who voted for repeal; to our civilian and military leaders who ensured a smooth transition; and to the professionalism of our men and women in uniform who showed that they were ready to move forward together, as one team, to meet the missions we ask of them.

For more than two centuries, we have worked to extend America’s promise to all our citizens. Our armed forces have been both a mirror and a catalyst of that progress, and our troops, including gays and lesbians, have given their lives to defend the freedoms and liberties that we cherish as Americans. Today, every American can be proud that we have taken another great step toward keeping our military the finest in the world and toward fulfilling our nation’s founding ideals.

Beating up a right-wing meme

There is a fairly standard homophobic meme, which says that decriminalizing homosexuality is a slippery slope which leads to all manner of interesting behavior. The most obvious example of this is our boy Rick "Man-on-Dog" Santorum; I talked about his use of this particular argument yesterday.

But how can you dispute this somewhat idiotic idea?

Answer: You can't. You're wasting your time. The people who find this kind of argument convincing aren't swayed by logic. But personally, I enjoy it, so let's press on.

Well, then, what is the danger, exactly? What is the inevitable result of all this brightly-colored gayness? The usual list includes two or more of the usual suspects.

1. obscenity
2. fornication
3. adultery
4. adult incest
5. bestiality
6. pedophilia (with or without added incestuousness)
7. bigamy
8. the complete destruction of marriage as we know it

And really, that last one, which occasionally stands by itself, is the easiest to rebut.

Just ask "how?" How will marriage becoming more available, to more people, destroy the entire concept of marriage? You'd be amazed how many people can't actually answer that.

Let's consider the rest of these ignorant concepts, in no particular order.

Obscenity: You don't see this one too often. "Freedom of speech" and all that. So fuck it. Let's move on.

Fornication and Adultery: Now, this is a slightly tricky area, and a vaguely sexist one, at that. Fornication is mentioned less frequently these days, but you might run across it. Sex, when not between two people married to each other, is "fornication" if the both partners are single. It's "adultery" if either partner is married.

(Really, it all goes back to the fact that, until fairly recently, women were property. The legal definition just tells you which property crime has occurred.)

But really, both of these are idiotic examples. Fornication isn't a crime, but the results of it can be. Spreading an incurable disease or not taking financial responsibility for the potential pregnancy? That's where the blame should be pointed.

And adultery is a civil matter. In most states, it can be cause for a divorce, but that's between the husband and wife.

So the right answer to this one is simply "You're saying that adultery doesn't go on now? And hasn't gone on since time immemorial? Are you going to claim that more men will fool around on their wives because some other men are in a committed, legally-binding relationship? Why?"

(Notice the pattern here? "How?" and "why?" are the two easiest crowbars to dismantle the argument.)

Bestiality and Pedophilia: You've got to remember that when our idiot wingnut friend try to start listing all the things that homosexuality will lead to, they often like to include these two. (Because, you know, if two men are attracted to each other, they'll be attracted to anything!)

These two examples are stunningly simple to rebut. Just point out the all-important word "consensual." Children and dogs can't consent to anything. If they don't immediately concede the point, go on the attack: "So, by your logic, because heterosexuality is legal, so is rape?"

Incest and Polygamy: Now, these are the only remotely tricky ground that's out there. Because it's true: once you widen the definition of marriage, you have to explain why you don't throw it open to practitioners of either of these activities.

This is particularly true of polygamy. My personal attitude toward polygamy is "why not?" Toss the idea to a couple of lawyers, let them draw up a standard boilerplate contract for multiple party marriages, and let people hook up in whatever polymorphic patterns they want. All kinds of good reasons that this would be beneficial: guidance for the kids, economic stability, and so on. But that's a much longer argument than I want to get into.

Incidentally, the most common polygamous "marriage" in America these days is the creepy cult-like one, with the ugly overtones of misogyny and rape. Those are bad. Of course, it's equally bad when dealing with an overbearing, controlling husband and his wife, too. So, really, that's another, longer discussion that I don't feel the need to open up.

As for incest, well, look into the health problems of purebred dogs: they're just a mobile mass of medical maladies, from hip dysplasia in German Shepherds and Labradors, to epilepsy in beagles, dachshunds and Dalmatians. It's the inevitable result of reinforcing genetic problems by breeding from too small a gene pool.

After all, as we've already shown, these people are making an openly false comparison, and really, there are only two types of people who’d use it:

1. People with limited critical faculties, who never actually think about the talking points they repeat.

2. People who know exactly the size of the lie they’re spewing, and don’t care.

In either case, when you’re faced with this level of lemon-scented bullshit, why should you feel constrained to stick with simple logic, when you can easily turn their own rhetorical style back on them? So, instead of getting completely sidetracked from the issue of gay marriage, I recommend, as I often do, the attack.

Just ask a simple question: Why do you oppose polygamy and incest? After all, the Bible is in favor of both of them.

First of all, Jesus didn't say that "Marriage is between one man and one woman." What he said was "at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female... For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

So, first, he wasn't defining marriage, he was justifying not getting divorced. And it's really rude to take your Lord and Savior out of context like that. Especially since you don't then go on one more verse to where He explains, "you shouldn't get divorced, you shouldn't get married,l and you shouldn't have sex at all." (Matthew 19:8-12)

It was the Apostle Paul who later added, "Well, if you can't keep your pants on, you should marry somebody." (1 Corinthians 7:8-9) And he never even met Jesus, so why are you taking his word?

The Bible can't even figure out what incest is. The definition comes from three different places in the Old Testament: Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, and scattered around Deuteronomy. They're all very specifically written for men (remember, women are property), and the three sources don't even agree.

Best example: nowhere in the Bible does it say you can't have sex with your daughter. Both chapters of Leviticus tell you that your stepdaughter and your daughter-in-law are off-limits, but it's apparently open season on your own girlspawn.

(Also completely available as partners: all your cousins, your step-sister, your niece, any aunt on your mother's side, and Grandma.)

This biblical confusion about incest is emphasized with the fact that Lot, the only good man in Sodom or Gommorah, had drunken sex with both his daughters and conceived two sons: his son through his older daughter founded the Kingdom of Moab, and the one through his baby girl founded the Kingdom of Ammon. (Genesis 19:30-38)

More than that, though, Abraham, the holiest man in the Bible, is considered the father of all Christendom (and all the Jews, and Mohammed); he married his half-sister on his father's side. (Genesis 20:12) His son Isaac married his cousin Rebekah (Genesis 24:15). And both of the sons of Isaac married their cousins (Genesis 28:9, Genesis 29)

I'm not entirely clear what this says about the "Children of Abraham."

And most people already know that the Bible is full of examples of polygamy. Many, if not most, of the major prophets of God had two or more wives - Abraham and Jacob (obviously), Gideon (the guy who put all the Bibles in the hotel rooms), King David and the wisest of all men, King Solomon, are all fine examples.

And if anybody tries to claim that the Old Testament doesn't matter any more, thanks to Jesus? Well, you've just hit the jackpot.

First of all, Jesus said, over and over, that the Old Testament was still important, still valid, and, indeed, "all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16; also see Matthew 5:18-19, Luke 16:17, and Matthew 5:17, among many other places)

On top of which, and possibly more important, if the words of the Old Testament don't matter, then why is it they're opposed to homosexuals again?

Religion is fun.

Speak, Ricky, speak!

In an interview last week on CNN, Rick Santorum got a little cranky when the often-tedious Piers Morgan suggested he (Ricky) might, just possibly, be a little homophobic.



Now, that's a seven-minute video, and if you don't want to wade through all that, the money shot (heh) is as follows.

...the quote that I have been, quote, "criticized" for was almost identical to a quote in a 1980 Supreme Court case where the majority decision basically said what I said. And, by the way, the minority, Justice Scalia in this case -- it was Justice White who was Democratic appointee under John Kennedy who said pretty much exactly what I said and Justice Scalia pretty much said exactly what I said which is that if the Supreme Court establishes a right to consensual sexual activity, then it's hard to draw the line between what sexual activity will be permitted under the Constitution and it leaves open a long list of consensual activities that most people I think would find rather unappealing.

And so, that's what I said. I stand by the comment. Just like I'm sure Justice Scalia and Justice White stood by their comments.

So, here we have a fine example of Frothy trying to lube up his own record, so that he can ass-rape the Supreme Court.

(Note: I left all the meaningless crap in that second paragraph of his, just to show that I'm not taking him out of context. Please compare to the original, as well.)

See, little Ricky is a lawyer, but he's been mouthing meaningless political platitudes for so long that he can't keep his case-law straight. Because that "1980" Supreme Court decision? What he's thinking of is the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, which upheld an anti-sodomy law in Georgia. (This was the majority opinion, written by Justice Byron White, that Santorum was trying to talk about, but then he got all confused.)


Now, while Santorum is trying to shove his "man on dog" quote down Justice White's throat, what White actually said was, in short, "There are victimless crimes, but they're still illegal. So even if you want to do something in private, there are other sexual crimes that we'd have to start listing and debating, and we don't want to do that." (Or, in his words, "We are unwilling to start down that road.")

So, not quite as extensive as Santorum's statement. And, more important, it was kind of stupid of Frothy to bring it up, since in 2003, Bowers was formally reversed by Lawrence v. Texas (which destroyed a sodomy law still on the books). That case was when Scalia wrote a pissy minority opinion (and that's why Frothy couldn't keep his "minority" and "majority" opinions straight).

Now, in dissenting against Lawrence Scalia whined:

...(the Texas law says that) certain forms of sexual behavior are "immoral and unacceptable," ... the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity...

If, as the Court asserts, the promotion of majoritarian sexual morality is not even a legitimate state interest, none of the above-mentioned laws can survive rational-basis review.

So that was at least a little closer to what Santorum actually said. He misquoted the losing side of an argument.

Which I think pretty much sums up his candidacy in one fell swoop.

Eugene Delgaudio needs to come out of the closet

For some time now, I've been getting emails from a group calling itself "Public Advocate of the US." I'm really not sure how this happened - I don't recall ever clicking a box saying "Please send me hot, steamy chunks of hate," but I've been known to drink occasionally when I'm on-line. (You know, red wine is not good for a keyboard...)

The guy in charge of Public Advocate (and potentially the sole employee) is named Eugene Delgaudio, and he's a twisted piece of work. He's apparently a member of the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun County, Virginia. He also likes to set up over-the-top protests of anything he feels is even dimly related to homosexuality.

When the GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) started a campaign to create a “safe space” to prevent the bullying of gay teens, Eugene came out in support of beating up children.

While the stickers and posters blatantly display the upside-down rainbow triangle and pro-homosexual slogan, the booklet is the real threat.

It includes detailed strategies to instruct teachers and students how to create a school environment more accepting of homosexual students and teach other students their lifestyle as a healthy alternative.

It also tells students how to get involved in school policy and how to initiate change to promote the Homosexual Agenda in everyday school life.

Because, you see, every student's right to beat up on fags is protected in the Constitution. ("I'm sure it's in there somewhere! Probably under "pursuit of happiness" or something...")

I think my favorite, though, would have to be his objection to the TSA pat-downs. Now, having been a military cop for 21 years, I can tell you that getting young cops to actually check the groin is one of the hardest taboos to get around. And I have found a knives taped to a guy's underwear. So an effective search has to be a little more "intrusive" than some people are comfortable with. However, as generations of drug mules can attest, you can still stuff quite a bit of stuff up your butt, or hang it down your throat. So the searches aren't really making us more safe.

That, however, is not Eugene's problem with the searches. He doesn't care if terrorists are allowed onto planes cradling bombs like small children. He's just worried that it's all part of the homosexual agenda!

That means the next TSA official that gives you an “enhanced pat down” could be a practicing homosexual secretly getting pleasure from your submission.

Or it could be any sexual pervert, homosexual or heterosexual, or even pedophile that operates the "naked scanner".

That means the next TSA official that operates the “porno scanners” you or your child or mother walk through could be lusting after the image on his screen.

The thought makes me sick.

Other things make him sick, as well. In fact, the idea of repealing DADT pretty much gives him a coronary embolism.

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen says he supports Congress using its lame-duck session to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

Mullen sides with the Radical Homosexuals instead of the troops, vowing that he would do what it takes to end the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy as soon as possible.

A Pentagon report on the impact of lifting the ban is set for release Dec. 1st, timed nicely with the return of the new Congress.

Of course nobody has asked the soldiers their opinions, and our troops are prohibited from any political activity other than voting.

You know, other than those surveys showing that repealing DADT is supported by most of the military, their families, and even by military chaplains. But, you know, other than them, nobody ever asks the military how they feel, right?

(Incidentally, our troops are only prohibited from political activity in uniform - it's a subtle distinction, but one that's lost on Eugene.)

(His brother, incidentally, plead guilty to child pornography after he paid two teenaged girls to pose all nekkid in a motel room. Not directly related, but makes you wonder about the gene pool our boy Eugene jumped out of.)

There's a strong tinge of paranoia about the man: aside from his assertions that "the homos want to kill me" (he would so love to be a martyr), he openly lies in his fundraising letters. And more than that, when he's called out about his lies, he just lies some more: when he lost a vote about treating transgendered people equally, he sent out an email to his followers stating:

If a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat "it" the same as a normal person.

When people called him on referring to a person as "it," he tried to claim that the word "it" referred to the "action of hiring a man or a woman."

Read that explanation again; can you parse his statement to mean that? Especially when the same letter referred to "cross-dressing freaks"?

Come on, Eugene. Remember the state slogan? "Virginia is for lovers"?

Why do you hate Virginia, Eugene?

Unrelated Arguments and Murderous Queers

In the aftermath of the ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, there's a lot of confusion on the right side of the blogworld about how to react.

After all, their pet legislation, making same-sex marriage illegal, has just been thoroughly and completely hammered down by a simple, intelligent argument. "A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite sex couples is not a proper basis for legislation."

That's not all of it, of course - there's another 134 pages of rational, measured discussion on the unconstitutionality of this bill. And they don't know what to say in response.

But while I was wandering around rightwing blogs and checking out the incoherent shrieking, I noticed something that I'd managed to miss before.

Part of the strategy to deny gay rights is to demonize homosexuals. The argument is both simple, and simplistic: "homosexuality is unnatural" (or "against God's plan"), "and therefore, all homosexuals are evil and perverse; we're better than they are."

And one way to demonize homosexuality is to conflate all perversions as the same thing: bestiality, sadomasochism, and in this case, pedophilia. As a wise man once said,

One of the weirdest quirks of the gay-haters is the fact that they can't seem to stop themselves from conflating consenting sexual practices between two adults, with forced intercourse with a non-consenting partner: bestiality (where Rick Santorum famously prefers german shepherds, John Cornyn apparently gets all hot and sweaty thinking about box turtles), pedophilia, necrophilia.

Your average right-wing hater refuses to see a difference (probably because they tend to have suffered brain damage due to the genetic incompatibility of closely-related parents).

"See? Homosexuality is a sex crime! And all sex crimes are the same!" It's an interesting theory: are all crimes the same? Is every pickpocket just as capable of murder? Then why aren't there more serial killers?

Unfortunately for that argument, several years ago in Laramie, Wyoming, a young man named Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered for the "crime" of being gay. And sadly, this action doesn't fit into the world-view that the average homophobe wants to build up.

A couple of straight men were willing to torture and kill a gay man, because he was gay and they felt entitled; they were allowed to do this, because he was, after all, an inferior, even subhuman. And suddenly, "we" aren't any better than "they" are.

You can almost understand the reaction of the right wing. When you threaten someone's world-view, they feel that their core beliefs are being attacked. Sometimes, this leads to denial, like in the case of Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who tried to claim that it was all a hoax, and that Shepard was killed accidentally as part of a robbery, not because he was gay:

"The bill was named for him, the hate-crimes bill was named for him, but it's really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."

However, there's another mythology on the Right, which is built around the concept of straight people "getting targeted" because they're heterosexual. Apparently, this will make everything all better - if straight people are mistreated by gays, then, by the laws of the schoolyard, we can mistreat them right back.

The first example they like to bring up, often giving it a pithy title like "a Tale of Two Shepherds" is a guy named Jason Shephard of Pennsylvania. And he's not the only one: they've got a whole list of names, like Amanda Collette, a 15 year old from Miami; Jesse Dirkhising from Arkansas; and Mary Stachowicz from Chicago.

("And you've never heard about them, have you? The Mainstream Media completely ignored these cases, because it doesn't fit their gay agenda!")

But here's the strange part: when they bring up these victims, they tend to be a little scanty on the details. There's a reason for that, of course; once you look into the cases, these are obviously false comparisons.

See, Jason Shepherd and Jesse Dirkhising were both drugged, raped and then killed (Jesse was tortured prior, whereas Jason's corpse was abused after death) by sexual predators. Who happened to be male.

(Jesse, incidentally, was also 13 years old at the time. Again, we have the Right Wing perfectly happy to conflate pedophilia and homosexuality.)

Sure, you can say Jesse and Jason were killed for being straight. Of course, by that logic, every woman who has spurned a rapist's advances and ended up killed, must have been murdered for being gay. After all, if she didn't immediately have sex with a random stranger, it must be because she didn't like men!

Even if Shephard and Dirkhising had been gay, but had simply found their assailants unattractive, it would have led to the same result. They were faced with sexual predators, not gay men unable to control their lust.

Sometimes, one thing doesn't lead to another; a logical leap can often go right off a cliff.

Amanda Collette was apparently shot by a jealous teenaged girl. This case might almost make their homophobic point, if teenagers were rational. But at the mercy of their hormones, all teenagers are high-strung, excitable and stupid. Or, as psychologists put it:

Experts say teenage girls crave approval, that they want to be special, that their feelings are often too intense for them to handle. They don't feel in control of anything, and they yearn for power over their lives.

"So," said Dr. Mitch Spero, a Plantation psychologist who specializes in teens, "when they finally feel like they belong to someone, or that someone belongs to them, it comes down to ownership."
_____

For girls, murder is personal.

"Girls are much more likely to kill over relationships: their parents, siblings, boyfriends," said University of South Florida criminology professor Kathleen Heide.

Girls don't tend to go on murder sprees, and it's not the most common crime. But, again, have all the teenaged boys killed by heartbroken teenaged girls been killed for being gay?

Which brings us to the closest thing you have to a correlation with the Matthew Shepard case: the Mary Stachowicz murder in Chicago, which was committed by a young gay man named Nicholas Gutierrez.

Mary Stachowicz was a devout Catholic who worked as a Polish translator in a Chicago funeral home. Gutierrez was a former abused youth, who'd just been fired and was being evicted from his apartment: it's possible that he was under a little stress at the time.

Stachowicz tried to persuade him to give up the "gay lifestyle," and he testified that she asked him "why do you sleep with boys?" In his words:

"She had this sneer, which reminded me of my mother when she used to beat me...I saw nothing but red..."

And he killed her, hid the body, and tried to cover up his part in her murder.

(Incidentally, did you notice her phrasing? "Why do you sleep with boys?" Not "other men," but boys. Funny how often these arguments fall into a pattern...)

Stachowicz was killed because Gutierrez felt she was sneering at him. And whether or not she was sneering, she was trying to get him to stop being gay. (Remember what happens when you threaten somebody's world-view?)

Technically, you could just as easily say that Stachowicz was killed for being a busybody. Or for making fun of somebody. Or for being a Catholic who thought her beliefs overrode other people's right to privacy. Or for talking to a troubled youth who'd just been fired, was being evicted, and was on the edge of violence anyway.

There's the problem. People who want to say these victims were killed for being straight are conflating unrelated cases, merely because they found a homosexual (or purported homosexual) killing a heterosexual.

Matthew Shepard was killed because he was gay, and his assailants thought that made him fair game. The motives are entirely different.

I don't like the idea of "hate crimes," if it matters. We shouldn't try to read people's minds. But following the logic of "they were killed for being heterosexual," what should we do about ordinary, heterosexual rape? Outlaw straight sex?

Just take it like a man

If there's one issue that shows most clearly how completely twisted the American value system is, that issue would probably be homosexuality. Well, OK, homosexuality and race relations. Oh, and the weird fixation on pro football.

(OK, the pro football thing ties in with homosexuality. I mean, really: sweaty guys in tight pants running up and down a field? It doesn't take Sigmund Freud. And then they put on weird padding to look even more buff, and start hugging each other if they do something right, and start prancing around the end zone like a Rockette tweaking on crystal meth. And when it's all over, they go and take showers together. Any random NFL player probably handles more pipe than Joe the Plumber ever did.)

(Speaking of Joe the Plumber - a body-obsessed, head-shaving drama queen fixated on ensuring that he's the center of attention? Was he trying out for the Village People too? This guy's so far into the closet he's probably found those red strappy pumps that look so good with that sequined off-the-shoulder number he got for that trip to Fire Island...)

The wide availability of home video has had an impact on society (wow - was that a non sequiter or what? I think I'm suffering from whiplash...): the Rodney King affair highlighted the problem of police brutality in the LAPD, but also was the direct cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots where more than 50 people lost their lives. And remember Derrion Albert getting beaten up last month? Suddenly, everybody got concerned over the violence in our schools.

Of course, the flipside to that is that when some white kid gets pounded on by a couple of black bullies up on a bus, cowardly drugged-out sacks of vomit like Rush Limbaugh tried to insist that, because we had a black president, the beating was Obama's fault.

But you have to forgive Rush - logic doesn't really apply to a man who calls for harsher penalties on drug abusers when he's popping oxycontin like Tic-tacs.

(The humor, of course, is found in the fact that it had already been shown that the attack wasn't racially motivated. But why pay attention to "facts"? In Rush's tiny little pilonoidal cyst of a brain, this whole incident was obviously a resurgence of the Mau Mau rebellion.)

However, the videotaped assault on Jack Price, a gay man from Queens, has one possible upside (aside from the fact that, with their faces and names prominently in the local media, the two wads of fuck who attacked him - Daniel Aleman and Daniel Rodriguez - will be spending the next several years getting traded for cigarettes throughout the New York penal system).

This particular assault is evidence that homosexuality is still a boil on the backside of America, and even in the opening decade of the 21st century, we haven't found the right way to lance it.

There is no reason that any American should be discriminated against due to their sexual orientation. This seems like a simple rule, but for some reason, it still causes controversy. The most commonly given reason for homophobia is religion, and most of that is due to misreadings, mistranslations and selective misuse of bible verses. Of course, even when you make an effort to show them why they're wrong, you're not going to change their tiny little minds.

Once in a while, you'll find somebody trying to claim that homosexuality is "unnatural." This, of course, ignores the wide range of homosexual behavior on view in the wild. ("A homosexual species would wipe itself out in one generation!" Well, there's still bonobos around, right? And trust me, they'll fuck anything.)

And with the rest of these losers, they gain their homophobia the old-fashioned way: they were raised to hate gays, much in the way that many people in the South have been raised to hate blacks, Jews, Yankees, and generally anybody who isn't a close relative (of course, with the inbreeding, that's a fairly large pool of people, at least in their neighborhood); these are people who hate gays because they're savage, knuckle-dragging homophobic subhumans who should be hauled out into the alley and beaten with 13-inch dildos until they bleed out their ears.

One of the weirdest quirks of the gay-haters is the fact that they can't seem to stop themselves from conflating consenting sexual practices between two adults, with forced intercourse with a non-consenting partner: bestiality (where Rick Santorum famously prefers german shepherds, John Cornyn apparently gets all hot and sweaty thinking about box turtles), pedophilia, necrophilia. Your average right-wing hater refuses to see a difference (probably because they tend to have suffered brain damage due to the genetic incompatibility of closely-related parents).

And when this rampant homophobia gets to attach itself to the already-present hatred of our first black president, you get a steaming cauldron of odiferous stupidity, just waiting for a chance to pour out all over everybody. For example, in the outcry over Obama hiring an openly homosexual man as head of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, people like Rep Steve King continues to try to link Jennings to NAMBLA, even though this claim has been so thoroughly debunked that even Fox "News" was forced to admit it. (And you know that had to cause Rupert Murdoch's bowels to clench up like a vise.)

The more recent news that Obama is revisiting "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is causing conservative brains to explode like a Palestinian at the Wailing Wall. And the GOP survivors are really hating the fact that they're going to have to keep that homo-rage bottled up - the new hate crimes bill is about to become law.

Trust me, folks, homosexuality is normal. Some people are into it, and some people aren't. You can try to suppress it, but it will still be around; and the harder you try, the more it will burst out in unexpected places (you know, like in airport bathrooms).

2010 California Marriage Protection Act

My friends, there's a spectacular movement going on in California right now, which will definitely protect the institution of marriage far better than Proposition 8 ever will.

It's the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act, and it has one simple goal. To prevent any married couple from getting divorced. Ever.

The whole thing takes just over 75 words (including the title):

2010 California Marriage Protection Amendment.

SECTION 1. Title. This act shall be known as the “2010 California Marriage Protection Amendment.”

SECTION 2. Section 7.6 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:

No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of an unmarried person during the lifetime of the other party unless the marriage is void or voidable, as set forth in Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code.

Simple, right?

He gave the following web interview to one of the better 'zines out there, cockeyed.com:

Rob Cockerham: John Marcotte. You've filed a petition with the Secretary of State, in an effort to get a voter's initative on the California 2010 ballot.

John Marcotte: Yes. Filed the paperwork on September 1. It's the "2010 California Marriage Protection Act." I am trying to ban divorce in the state of California.

RC: Ok. So your act, if it became law, would make marriage undissolvable.

John: Exactly. The only exception would be if the marriage was "voidable" -- if you married an 8-year-old, you don't get to keep her. She goes back on the shelf. You can't marry the mentally incapacitated, etc... 99.99% of all marriages would be set in stone. It's a return to traditional values.

RC: Wow, that is amazing. Could it really happen? What steps remain to make this initiative into a valid, enforced law?

John: I am trying to extend the good work done with Proposition 8 last year. It could really happen. The United States has not always had divorce as an institution the way we do now. As a ballot initiative it bypasses the legislature and the governor. It's the will of the people made law...

RC: Who is providing the bulk of funding for this initiative?

John: It began as a self-funded initiative, but we've been collecting donations and already recouped a fair percentage of the filing fees. We hope to collect more donations and maybe start selling t-shirts, etc. to raise more funds.

RC: Are you going to hit the streets collecting signatures for the initiative?

John: We're going to set up a table in front of Wal*Mart and ask people to sign a petition to protect traditional marriage. We're going to interview them about why they thing traditional marriage is important, and then we'll tell them that we are trying to ban divorce. People who supported Prop 8 weren't trying to take rights away from gays, they just wanted to protect traditional marriage. That's why I'm confident that they will support this initiative, even though this time it will be their rights that are diminished. To not support it would be hypocritical. We're also going to collect signatures in front of "Faces," the largest gay nightclub in Sacramento.

RC: Can gay and unmarried people sign the petition to make this California Law?

John: Anyone can sign the petition as long as they are a registered voter in California. Sinners signatures work just as well as saints. That brings up and interesting point. We are a Christian nation. Jesus said, "What God has put together, let no man separate." Divorce is a sin. Fun fact: Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality. Probably some sort of clerical oversight that will be rectified in the end of days...

RC: This initiative does seem like it would "Protect Marriage", but if two people decide to not be married anymore, shouldn't they be in charge of their own lives?

John: Sometimes other people need to sacrifice in order to protect my ideas about traditional marriage. It's just a fact of life. It's not about their soul-sucking sham of a marriage, it's about what we value as a society. We live in a divorce-promiscuous society. It's on the television, it's in movies, the newspapers. It's even in our kids' textbooks. I'm Catholic. In my religion, divorce is a sin -- completely impermissible.

RC: Sounds like you'd like to shield kids from learning too much about divorce.

John: I don't want the government teaching my child (what) is "cool" or "legally permissible." That's a conversation that should happen in the family. It's the parents' role to teach the kids about reality -- not the state's.

RC: well, this is a bold step. Do you think you face a strong opposition?

John: The opposition will always be there. The secular progressives, gays and MSNBC hosts -- but we beat them once with Prop 8 and we'll beat them again. If people are thinking about getting a divorce, just remember "Hell is eternal, just like your marriage was supposed to be." Jesus still loves you if you get divorced, just not as much as before.

RC: What about people who are currently married? Will this law apply to them, or only new marriages?

John: I wish that I could force people that hate each other with the intensity of a thousand white suns back into a loveless marriage, but my attorneys tell me that getting that law passed would be unlikely in the current political climate. I'll try to get a "win" by banning divorce and save that for 2012 -- when Sarah Palin will be president and/or the end of the world will occur.

RC: Its good to have a plan.

John: One step at a time. We can return this country back to its proud, traditional Judeo-Christian roots.

They even sell T-shirts to that effect, reading: You said "Til death do us part." You're not dead yet.

Admittedly, there may need to be a "fornication" clause added in. After all, it's right there in Matthew 19:9, where Jesus said "Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." But that would be difficult to regulate. And really, isn't it better to be too harsh at the beginning?

Now, Mr Marcotte is not the perfect man. He has been known to read comic books, and occasionally uses foul language. But which of us is perfect? This man is doing God's Work. And what more can we ask of him?

Huh. Imagine that.

You know, I never figured that I'd be writing a religious blog. But I seem to have struck a nerve somewhere with my recent activities.

One of my "anonymous" responses was signed by (and therefore, I'm willing to accept that it was from) this hypocrite, who not only refused to allow a comment that he disagreed with, he decided to inform me:

It is obvious that you are not a Christian in any way shape and form. As for your military service doesn't mean squat when compared to your immature knwolwdge of the Bible and the Word of God. Truth is unchangeable and Jesus Christ is Truth. Homosexuals are by their very act condmened less they repent of their Evil Life style.
I'm glad you responed on my blog. I Knew their were people of no moral convictions out there and you obviosly are one of them. I'll pray for you and your family that you come back to the Truth.

David Drysdale Sr.

So, aside from being homophobic and illiterate (and his illiteracy matches what's on his blog - hence my acceptance that it's him), he's making some major assumptions about me simply because I disagree with him.

And, incidentally, his problems are more extensive than that. Based on the lack of balance in his thinking, I suspect that "Master Drysdale" is not as effective a teacher of the martial arts as he claims. If nothing else, the fact that he insists on referring to himself as "Master Drysdale" shows a fascinatingly large ego. He may think that he's found his center, but he's tilting pretty heavily in the wrong direction.

Oh, and by the way, Davy. There are a number of very useful spellcheck programs out there. Of course, they wouldn't solve all of your problems, like on your blog, where you air your ignorance for all the world to see.

Yeah, scroll down that left column there. Past five or six anti-gay screeds (many followed by "Master Drysdale" - not that you have an ego problem... are you short, by some chance? Because I see a little short-guy complex going on here...), couple of anti-abortion things, couple of politicians (Sarah Palin? "Governor of Alaska and trouble for Liberals"? Really? No, Davy, we want her to run in 2012. Please. She makes you look intelligent...), couple of conservative commentators (Christ, do you have enough crap on here?), way down at the bottom, where you prove how much you love your wife by having pictures of pretty girls on there... well, Spellcheck probably wouldn't tell you about this one, but you know Kiera Knightley? Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's never written a book...


However, let me expand on that shakab argument, in case anybody's interested.

If you accept that the Old Testament considered homosexual rape a particularly heinous sin, it also explains one of the worst stories in the Old Testament: Genesis 19. In a nutshell, two angels visit Lot in Sodom and he treats them to dinner and convinces them to stay the night. Outside, a group of men gather, asking to "know" the men staying with Lot — to "know them in the Biblical sense." Lot discourages the crowd by offering them his daughters, telling the men they can do whatever they want to the girls. But the daughters are refused.

Now, while this chapter is commonly used to denigrate loving, same-sex relationships by comparing them to homosexual rape, which is really a nonsensical comparison - it's exactly the same as saying that the existence of an abusive husband proves that any marriage will always be a crime, or the fact that a heterosexual rapist exists is evidence that all men are evil animals.

(OK, there's actually some truth in that...)

However, consider the fact that Lot was supposed to be a righteous man, and yet he offers his daughters to a violent mob to be gang-raped. And this story is mirrored in Judges 19 (only in Judges, the woman is accepted, and, having survived being gang-raped all night, is then killed by her lover when she limps back home).

First of all, those stories prove how little value women had in that society. But if you think about it hard enough (and lock away that little voice in your brain that tells you how evil this whole scenario is), the stories are somewhat mitigated if the society also had a strong, religious prohibition against homosexual rape.

(The way I see it, it might explain it, but it doesn't make it right. I have a hard time not seeing any society that could think that way as evil - however, I'm also viewing that society from the outside.)

In the end, if these people thought that homosexual rape was so bad that heterosexual rape was considered positive in comparison, that explains a great deal about both chapters of the Old Testament.

Fun with Christians III

Let me just start out by saying this: I apparently need a hobby. Very, very badly.

I have started trolling innocent blogs.

OK, to be honest, they aren't that innocent. They're conservative Christian websites, loaded with the stink of smug superiority exclusive to the self-satisfied hypocrite with a ready-made group of victims to look down on. And I wasn't really trolling, as such, since I was on-topic, and merely waited for them to post something saying that "homosexuality is a sin." And, really, I can't say that I've started doing that, since I tend to chime in with annoying chunks of reality whenever I run across somebody being stupid.

So, really, in the larger sense, the only true parts of that sentence involved the fact that I did it (whatever it was), and that whatever it was that I did, I did it on other blogs.

OK, maybe I started this whole thing out badly. Let me back up, and I'll see if I can start making sense. Wouldn't that be a nice change?

Some time ago, I was skimming through some of the various blogs I like to read, and I happened upon a post on Adult Christianity which I found fascinating.

Let me just put in an unrequested plug: I first found Adult Christianity because I happened upon MissPoppy.com, the best place for religious, irreligious, and anti-religious swag in the world (and yes, it has all three - just thumb around in there for a while; you'll see what I mean). In the fullness of time, I learned of her blog, and have been reading it ever since.

Anyway, the article which I found so fascinating (and which doesn't seem to be on her Blogspot mirror - maybe I just missed it) is entitled "One More Article Explaining That The Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality." It took a number of ideas that I was already familiar with, one piece of brilliant scholarship, and a number of lesser ideas which were cleverly put together, and melded them into a beautiful, logical whole.

I was entranced. Specifically with her main thesis (which I used as my central thesis in my initial foray into Christian Logic), that two famously homophobic verses from the Bible are simple translation errors. Specifically:

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

See, in the Ancient Hebrew, the verb for "to lie with" used on the "mankind" side of that equation is shakab, and the verb used on the "womankind" side is mishkab. And in the primitive, 30,000-word vocabulary of Ancient Hebrew, it makes no sense to decide that they would have two words with exactly the same meaning.

So what Miss Poppy Dixon did, in a burst of (as I said earlier) brilliant scholarship, was to go through the Ancient Hebrew books of the Bible and count the number of uses of each word (in the original tongue, not the translation), and then consider the usage of each. This simple exercise pointed out the fact that shakab, in the sexual sense, refers to non-consensual coitus (or, to put it bluntly, rape).

Incidentally, I wrote Miss Poppy to thank her for her brilliance, and to be sure that she didn't mind me using her work, and... well, for just being her. Her response was as follows:

Oh, I'm always so afraid to open a post with the subject line "homosexuality," and rehearse in my mind my standard reply, "Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me," but this time I need not have feared.

I appreciate your writing, and even more so your quoting me. I am no scholar. I just spent a couple of hours with a blue letter Bible and put the thing together.

Thanks for linking to me, and for fighting the good fight. It's an important message.

Miss Poppy

So, two things.

1. Despite her erudition, Miss Poppy is not actually aware of the meaning of the word "scholar." Hint: There doesn't have to be a school involved.

2. She's a wonderful, brilliant woman, who I would have to marry if... well, if I wasn't already married. And if she wasn't (I assume).

But anyway, I took her work, and boiled it down to the following few paragraphs.

Let's look at "homosexuality as sin." The primary sources for this belief are the two mistranslated verses from Leviticus, 18:22 and 20:13.

If you go back to the source material, in Ancient Hebrew, you'll find that the verb used for "mankind" is shakab, and the one used for "womankind" is mishkab. And shakab, in its sexual sense, is used when you are talking about forcible sex (such as, say, rape), or any sex against the will of the victim.

For example, shakab is also the word used in Genesis 34:2, when Shechem defiles Hamor the Hivite; and in 2 Samuel 13:14 - "...but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her." And in Isaiah 13:16 - "Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished." It's even used in Exodus 22:19, "Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death."

There are references to consensual sex in the Bible, but none of them, if you look at the source material (before the translation errors crept in) use the word shakab. So the correct translation of the passages from Leviticus is an exhortation against homosexual rape: "Thou shalt not force sexual congress on a man, as (or instead of) with a woman."

Personally, I prefer the Word of God over the Mistranslation of God. Simply because you happen to disapprove of homosexuality, you shouldn't push your own prejudices as the teachings of the Lord.

"But in vain do they worship me, Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men." (Matthew 15:9).

Armed with this brief statement, I googled "homosexuality sin" with the filter "blogs", and then sorted by date (to be sure that I was beating on the freshest horse).

I had the following results:

Some blogs moderate their posts, and simply wouldn't allow my words to appear at all. (In fact, I contacted this one to ask if they'd received it, and got a terse "Please see our 'Comments' tab" in response, where they open with "We do not promote false doctrine." So, yeah. Real open-minded guys, there...)

Some blogs, interestingly, moderate after the fact: my response would appear, and then would disappear shortly thereafter. (You know, that seems even more hypocritical than not letting it appear in the first place. At least, it seems that way to me.)

On some blogs, they allowed me to post it, but nobody had an answer.

But thankfully, there were some signs of life in the theological world. After all that, I managed to engage two groups, one evangelical site and one (I came to find out) Mormon site, where they ended with "OK, you stated your case well. I reject it."

(I even had a brief discussion with one kid, who seemed surprised that anybody read his stuff.)

So overall, I think that all I've managed to do is to prove something that I already knew: logic doesn't do a damned thing in arguing with Christians about their beliefs.

And so it goes.

Fun with Christians II-B

Well, that game seems to be over. Sad, but there it is. He responded, and his post ended:

I wouldn’t bother continuing to post comments, there is plenty for others to read and I’ll post some links to refutations of your assertions so those who wish can do the research themselves, after all…that’s why I let your comments stand in the first place.

I won’t link to Cynic’s blog, there is too much horrible language used there. If you want it you can search it.

That was a clue for me that he'd actually gone to my blog. It wasn't like I hid it. It was included in every post; the post headers link to it every time.

Obviously, in retrospect, that was much too easy a clue. But I always post linked to this blog; I wasn't hiding who I was, just what my personal beliefs are. Ah, well. Life goes on...

Anyway, I sent the following final shot, which (outside of here) will never see the light of day:

Although I suspect that this response will never be seen, let just point out a few inconsistencies (or misunderstandings) in your post.

I’m going to assume from your comments that you have no issue with the bible calling Homosexuality a sin, it’s just that Leviticus 18:22 has been mistranslated, and taken out of context.

Not quite. I do not believe that homosexuality is a sin. I believe that much of the Old Testament has been mistranslated or taken out of context, and this is what leads to the prohibition against homosexuality.

I believe that ALL scripture is “breathed out by God” and is as described in 2nd Timothy 3:16.

But you ignore Colossians 2:14, where he "canceled out the written code." Further, although you once again bring up the now-canceled dietary laws, you continue to ignore other strictures laid out in the OT, which, having been "breathed out by God," should be just as valid today. I mentioned a few of them - this is by no means exhaustive, though. Particularly Leviticus and, to a lesser extent Exodus, are full of these ignored Lesser Commandments:

Have you killed a teenager for yelling at their parents lately? Leviticus 20:9:
"For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him."

Leviticus 19 is pretty straight-forward, Ten-Commandments-like stuff, but there are a few exceptions: not planting your field with two different seeds won’t come up a lot for the average city-dweller, but have you worn a cotton-poly shirt? Forbidden. (Lev 19:19) Haircuts and shaving are right out (Lev 19:27), as are tattoos (Lev 19:28), astrology (Lev 19:26) or fortune tellers (Lev 19:31).

...the daily animal sacrifices were stopped by the selective reading of Hebrews 10:2-11 (of course, it doesn’t say that you should stop, just that it can never “take away sins” – oddly, the purpose is not simply to take away sins, but because the Lord Thy God commanded it, so is that really a good argument?)

Leviticus 12:1-8 declares that a woman is unclean for 33 days after giving birth to a boy and for 66 days after giving birth to a girl. It goes on to demand that certain animals must be offered as a burnt offering. Read Leviticus 23 to see the detailed regulations concerning “complete rest” on the Sabbath day, and the demands of animal sacrifice. Leviticus 18:19 forbids a husband from having sex with his wife during her menstrual period. Leviticus 19:19 forbids mixed breeding of various kinds of cattle, sowing various kinds of seeds in your field or wearing “a garment made from two kinds of material mixed together.”

For that matter, Leviticus 25:44 says that you may own slaves, as long as they’re from neighboring nations (which would be, for Americans, Mexico and Canada). On the other hand, Leviticus 21:20 says that you can’t approach the altar of God if you have a defect in your sight. I’m pretty sure that would include glasses.

Exodus tells us some interesting facts. For example, 21:7 tells you how to sell your daughter into slavery, while 35:2 tells you to kill someone who works on the Sabbath.

And those are the ones I've mentioned before, that you choose to ignore. Entirely non-dietary, but ignored. I could go on, but why? Based on your responses so far, you'll continue to ignore these requirements that were "breathed out by God."

I was right, though. He moderates which responses he allows, and if I hadn't engaged with him in the first place, the original debate wouldn't have taken place. But go to the original post, and way down at the bottom, you'll find the final response, under my name, which now reads:

Cynic,
You are right. I’m tired of posting your rants disguised as “proof” of your assertions. Your “proofs” haven’t changed since your first comment post…assertions and no support.

Category error ring a bell?

Context of passage ring a bell?

All you’ve done is show you can cut and paste from your favorite Homosexual revisionist tracts…nothing more.

I was naive to believe you were actually looking for my exegesis…you are looking for an excuse to spew your hate and your unfounded views of scripture.

Spew them on your own blog…not here.

I challenge anyone to find anything I wrote which qualified as a "rant." All passages were taken in context. All translation issues are accurate.

Hypocrisy is a lovely thing, isn't it?

But, yeah. I think he's ticked at me.

Fun with Christians II-A

You know, I've had a lot of arguments with christians over the years. I've used logic, insults, scholarly analysis; I've reduced them to tears and impotent rage. It's never worked. Little fuckers are too pigheaded. Plus, I have this suspicion that, once they start arguing with a heathen, they automatically discount any argument, regardless of how obvious or reasonable it seems, as coming from a poisoned well. So I decided to do a very bad thing.

I was going to lie, and pretend to be another christian, but one with a different slant on the scriptures.

There were challenges involved (for example, I was going to have to remember to capitalize "Christian" and "Scripture"). But I figured I was up to the challenge.

(Oh, by the way, if you didn't read the original post, now might be a good time. And feel free to borrow any of the following arguments that you like. Few of them are original to me, anyway.)

I'm not going to go over the entire argument. You can read it on your own if you want. What I explained seemed quite reasonable to me, and between years of arguing with Christians, and with the benefit of having the internet for research, I figured that I could throw down with the best of the theocrats.

But here's how it went. With our boy Bobby interjecting variations on "I don't understand what you're getting at," I wrote pretty much the following thesis. Feel free to use it, but give me credit. I'm relatively proud of it.

I mentioned the tired old "shellfish" argument, but only as one piece of a set of three. I’m fully aware of Matthew 15:11, where He cast off the kosher rules ("Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man."), but on that same subject, you should remember Matthew 5:17-19, where Jesus upheld the Jewish dietary laws:

"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

However, let’s put aside that argument. There’s more to Leviticus than just chapters 18 and 20. Why are you demeaning gay people, but not the other abominators? Because seafood and gay sex aren’t the only abominations in the Bible.

Have you killed a teenager for yelling at their parents lately? Leviticus 20:9:

For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

(KJV, of course. I’m normally an NIV kind of guy, but you can’t beat King James for the beauty of the language.)

For that matter, all of Leviticus 20 is a killer. Literally in some cases; in others, the violator is left either childless or shunned: adultery or marrying your mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, are apparently capital offenses; weirdly, having sex with your sister just gets you shunned.

But, of course you know that, since that’s one of the chapters you quoted.

A lot of Leviticus 19 is pretty straight-forward, Ten-Commandments-like stuff, but there are a few exceptions: not planting your field with two different seeds won’t come up a lot for the average city-dweller, but have you worn a cotton-poly shirt? It's forbidden (Lev 19:19). Haircuts and shaving are right out (Lev 19:27), as are tattoos (Lev 19:28), astrology (Lev 19:26) and fortune tellers (Lev 19:31).

While you’re at Leviticus 19, please note that you are allowed to have sex with another man’s slave, but you have to sacrifice a ram to do it. (Lev 19:20-22).

And that’s just Leviticus. Why do you choose to selectively follow some parts of the Old Testament, but not others? The dietary laws were pulled (or not, depending on your reading of Matthew 5), and the daily animal sacrifices were stopped by the selective reading of Hebrews 10:2-11 (of course, it doesn’t say that you should stop, just that it can never “take away sins” – oddly, the purpose is not simply to take away sins, but because the Lord Thy God commanded it, so is that really a good argument?). But I’ll bet you still get haircuts, and I’ll bet that, even if you have a wool suit, the thread holding it together is cotton.

You can't just selectively decide which parts of the Old Testament to follow. Particularly not when (as I said before) you aren't even necessarily following an accurate translation.

Being straight myself, I don’t have any particular stake in the question, other than Christ’s exhortation to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Like I said, I may use NIV [New International Version of the Bible] simply for clarity, but I love the KJV [King James] language.)

But I’ve found that most arguments regarding homosexuality being a sin are simply mistranslations and phrases taken out of context.

One of the words mistranslated that way is arsenokoites. It’s a Greek word formed from the words for “male” and “bed.” It isn’t not found anywhere else in the Bible, and has not been found anywhere in the contemporary Greek of Paul’s time. We don’t know what it means. Although you can see where some translators might have decided on that meaning, it could also refer to male prostitutes with female customers (a common practice in the Roman world - look at Pompeii).

Furthermore, the word often translated as “effeminate” (1 Corinthians 6:9, for example; the Greek word malakoi) means “soft” or “vulnerable.” The same word is translated as “soft” in reference to clothing (Matthew 11:8, Luke 7:25) and as “illness” (Matthew 4:23 and 9:35). It is not used anywhere else in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 6:9, it probably refers those who are “soft,” “pliable,” “unreliable,” or “without courage or stability.” The translation of malakoi as “effeminate” is incorrect and impossible to justify based on ancient usage.

One of my very good friends was kicked out of the Air Force because of her beliefs and her lifestyle. The mealy-mouthed phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin” makes very little sense when you consider that the “sin” in question is an important part (possibly the most important part) of someone’s personality and emotional life.

I can’t change anyone’s beliefs. But I can point out some logical inconsistencies in your arguments.

First of all, marriage in biblical times was not based on romantic love but on a legal contract usually entered by parents on behalf of their children. The Biblical view held that the role of women was property belonging to their father or husband. Women were members of the people of God only because of their relationship to their father, brother or husband; women could not carry circumcision (the “sign of the covenant”) in their bodies, and were therefore less important, except as breeding stock. (Women were listed in there among the “do not covets,” right next to the house, the servants and the animals - Exodus 20:17.)

People had children specifically to continue the family; the only way a man could live on after his death was through his children, and should never remain unmarried (one of the many words that ancient Hebrew did not contain was any term for “bachelor”). And if you want to see a blatant demonstration of male dominance over women, check out Genesis 38.

The Greek word for romantic love (eros) is never used in the New Testament, though it was the most common word for love in the Greek-speaking world. In fact, the Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek do not have a word for “homosexual.” Old Testament Hebrew is a primitive language, the first step above picture writing (some historians think that it might be the first alphabetic language). Like Egyptian, it originally had only consonants (no vowels). It had about a 30,000-word vocabulary (modern English has over 300,000 words). One Hebrew word could be used in dozens of different ways, with the meaning determined by the context. Each word was made up of 3 letters of the alphabet and usually expressed some form of activity or action. It is impossible to translate most Hebrew words exactly into modern English. Linguists and translators end up having to guess a lot.

The Greek of the New Testament was more complex than Hebrew, with a 250,000-word vocabulary and several words for “soft” concepts (feelings, philosophical concepts, and so on) which were somewhat beyond the Hebrew language. For example, Greek had four different words for “love.” The Greek used in the New Testament is different from classical or modern Greek. For many years, some scholars thought that New Testament Greek was a special language created by the Holy Spirit. Then, in the late nineteenth century, documents from the time of the New Testament (letters, bills of sale, and news reports) were discovered written in exactly the same kind of Greek (called koine) that the Bible used. The King James Version of the Bible, on the other hand, was translated in 1611, long before these manuscripts were discovered.

The reason that there are so many different Bible translations (about 30 major ones) today is because the exact meaning of many words is still in question, and even what should be included as original material is hotly debated by Biblical scholars. To read bits and pieces of biblical material into present-day culture is to misrepresent the Bible and to distort its message of God’s love in Christ for all people in today’s world.

For example, “sodomy” is a modern word, and its origin is taken out of context. A “Sodomite” in the Bible is simply a person who lives in Sodom (which includes, by the way, Lot and his family). The term “Sodomite” in the King James version of Deuteronomy 23:17 and I Kings 14:24 is an incorrect translation of the Hebrew word for “temple prostitute.” (See “The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology” by Mark D. Jordan, University of Chicago Press, 1997.)

No Jewish scholars before the first Christian century taught that the sin of Sodom was sexual. None of the biblical references to Sodom mention sexual sins, but view Sodom as an example of injustice, lack of hospitality to strangers, idolatry and as a symbol for desolation and destruction (see Deuteronomy 29:22-28 and 32:32; Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jeremiah 49:18; 50:41; Isaiah 13:19-22 and Matthew 10:14-15).

And not only are you misunderstanding both the language or culture of the time, many aspects of the Bible are completely ignored.

Leviticus 12:1-8 declares that a woman is unclean for 33 days after giving birth to a boy and for 66 days after giving birth to a girl. It goes on to demand that certain animals must be offered as a burnt offering. Read Leviticus 23 to see the detailed regulations concerning “complete rest” on the Sabbath day, and the demands of animal sacrifice. Leviticus 18:19 forbids a husband from having sex with his wife during her menstrual period. Leviticus 19:19 forbids mixed breeding of various kinds of cattle, sowing various kinds of seeds in your field or wearing “a garment made from two kinds of material mixed together.”

For that matter, Leviticus 25:44 says that you may own slaves, as long as they’re from neighboring nations (which would be, for Americans, Mexico and Canada). On the other hand, Leviticus 21:20 says that you can’t approach the altar of God if you have a defect in your sight. I’m pretty sure that would include glasses.

Exodus tells us some interesting facts. For example, 21:7 tells you how to sell your daughter into slavery, while 35:2 tells you to kill someone who works on the Sabbath.

That’s why I prefer to take my faith from the New Testament. (For example, Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”) After all, it says right in Colossians 2:14, “He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” (This of course, ignores the “jot and tittle” argument, but I have no problem reconciling that.)

Jesus and Paul both spoke against the misuse of Leviticus, both in Mark 7 and Colossians 2. In fact, I kind of like part of that last bit from Mark. “And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

Of course, on the subject of Paul, let’s remember that he only came around after Jesus was crucified, and like many people who end up “born again,” he went a little overboard. He wrote more than any other author of the Bible. Paul’s writings have been taken out of context and twisted to punish and oppress every identifiable minority in the world: Jews, children, women, blacks, slaves, politicians, divorced people, convicts, pro choice people, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, religious reformers, the mentally ill… the list goes on and on.

Paul is often difficult and confusing to understand. Since most of his letters were written in response to news from other people, reading Paul can be like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. We know, or think we know, what Paul is saying, but we have to guess what the other side has said. As 2 Peter 3:16-18 pointed out, we have to be on guard against using Paul’s writings in unhealthy and destructive ways.

A few final verses, and I guess I’ll be done (and it’s about time, isn’t it?). Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” It doesn’t specify where they find love, but merely that they love God and His Son. That is the path to deliverance.

Romans 2:1: “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.” That must be an important message - it’s repeated several times.

Actually, I’ve quoted enough. For further reading, you can look up the following (in no particular order). John 12:47; 13:34-35; all of Acts 10 (but specifically verses 28 and 34); I Corinthians 13 (yes, the whole thing); all of Galatians (especially 3:1-5 and 23-28; 5:14-15 and 22-23); all of Ephesians (especially chapter 2); Philippians 2:1-13; I John 3:13-21; 4:7-19; and, most of all, Romans 15:1-7.
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(Final update, if anyone cares.)