NOM has decided to ban a contributor to one of its blogs. Not a commenter, mind you (that would be nothing new), but a contributor, an official NOM blogger:
We at the Ruth blog have decided to no longer allow Ari to have posting privileges over here. His sarcasm has gone over the line and we don’t care to be associated with it. Those who are interested in hearing what Ari has to say can find him at his own blog. We will stick to reporting on all aspects of the marriage issue in a civil way.
This Ari has recently called gay activists “the most loathsome people in the world.” In the same post, he declared that folks who want discrimination laws enforced “should not be able to go out in the streets for fear of being spat upon by decent people.” The post was removed, but not before NOM took some heat for it.
The irony is so delicious I want to smear it on toast and eat it for lunch.
NOM’s been on a crusade (and fundraising mission) lately about people who are persecuted for their anti-gay views.
Gerald Buell, a teacher who called committed same-sex relationships a “cesspool” that make him “almost throw up,” vowing (and this is important) to teach “God’s truth” in his public school classes.
Viki Knox, a teacher who says homosexuality is “a perverted spirit that has existed from the beginning of creation” that “breeds like cancer,” declaring (and this important), “THAT’S WHAT I TEACH AND PREACH!” (her caps, not mine).
Frank Turek, a private consultant who publishes material characterizing gays as immoral, depraved, America-hating people comparable to murderers and rapists, who reduce their children to trophies and cannot love their partners. And then he presumes (and this is important) to teach workshops on leadership — and team-building — to companies that employ gays and lesbians.
NOM has championed these poor victims, all of whom play ball in the same park as Ari, all of whom have made their public statements relevant to their jobs. NOM has denounced alleged attempts by the evil gay mafia to “silence” them. NOM has declared it to be persecution, a violation of liberty, for an organization to decide someone’s rhetoric “has gone over the line and we don’t care to be associated with it.”
Unless of course the organization is NOM. In that case, apparently, it’s a special right they reserve for themselves.
Start with this video of UC Davis Police Officer Lt. John Pike pepper spraying a group of seated students on the UC Davis campus. You only need watch a few seconds.
Now watch the students’ protest later. All they do is silently watch UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi walk to her car.
That’s all.
UPDATE: I guess that’s not all. When I watched the video I was struck by how solemn and humble the Chancellor seemed to be. That might just be my imagination. Apparently, though, she had just watched a video the students being pepper-sprayed before leaving her office. Here is an account of how this silent walk came to be.
Someone came to my site through this link. All I can figure is that somebody tried to pass off one of my blog entries on their own. The teacher, obviously blown away by the extraordinary and edifying effects of my eloquent, er, eloquence, decided to check whether the student had in fact turned in original work. And was directed here.
Please don’t plagiarize me. At least you got caught.
And because that’s kind of a downer, here’s a picture of Chloe’s new collar. It’s sparkly!
Chloe outgrew (and wore out) the original pink cloth collar we got her when she weighed eight pounds. First we replaced it with one of Lucas’s old black collars, but that was a travesty. Yes, a travesty. You think this new one’s over the top? You are wrong. It’s perfectly suited to the mighty warrior princess. Here she is a few weeks ago after rooting out some villains from her kingdom
Oh, and let me give a special shout-out to “centrist” pundits who won’t admit that President Obama has already given them what they want. The dialogue seems to go like this. Pundit: “Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?” Mr. Obama: “I support a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes.” Pundit: “Why won’t the president come out for a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes?”
Apparently the Times has a rule against columnists calling out each other by name. Krugman’s fans, though, are pretty sure he’s responding to what Thomas Friedman wrote earlier in the week:
Here we are in America again on the eve of a major budgetary decision by yet another bipartisan “supercommittee,” and does anyone know what President Obama’s preferred outcome is? Exactly which taxes does he want raised, and which spending does he want cut? The president’s politics on this issue seems to be a bowl of poll-tested mush.
Krugman hasn’t demolished Friedman here. Any fool on the street can say, “Yeah, man, yo, we need some of them spending cuts. And some of them tax hikes. Fist pump!” That doesn’t come close to defining an economic policy. In fact, it sounds exactly like a bowl of poll-tested mush.
You know why it’s so frustrating? Because I like to mock Tea Partiers for this kind of mush. They want to cut spending but can’t agree on what that looks like, at least not enough to make a genuine dent in our fiscal crisis.
I don’t expect much from Tea Partiers, though, either individually or as a group. But I voted for Obama. And given the seven dwarves vying for the Republican nomination, I’ll have to vote for him again. This is my guy, for better or worse — but it needs to be better.
Perhaps this is nothing but a brilliant campaign strategy. He’s faced with a Republican party that shows no serious interest in governing. (Winning back power? Yes. Governing? No.) Maybe he’s trying to drive home the message that the Republican leadership is nothing but a bunch of empty suits with talking points pinned to their jackets, like dressed-up kindergartners on their first day of school. (Reporter:Mr. Cain, do you think the Libya comments reinforce the idea that you don’t have a thorough understanding of foreign policy?Cain:Nine. Nine. Nine. And for the record, no, that’s not satire.)
This is just half a strategy, though. You ought to do more than show voters why they should vote against your opponent. Give them a reason to vote for you, especially when it comes to the biggest issue of the day. Don’t just point out that the other side has no solution. Don’t just ask us to trust that you’ve got something amazing to roll out after you beat them. If that really is the strategy? Then Republicans would be right when they accuse us of treating a politician like he’s a magic savior deserving blind faith.
Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I’m eager to be wrong. Lately I’ve been focused on work and on marriage equality issues. Perhaps I’m behind the curve, here. If you’ve can point me to an Obama fiscal strategy that goes beyond Krugman’s description, please, please let me know.
Grrr. Anti-gays do love their scare quotes, as in:
Them: There’s no such thing as same-sex “marriage.”
Us: Hello? Same-sex marriage is legal in 6 states!
Them is wrong, but the response from Us doesn’t get at what they really mean. And when you look at what they really mean, a surprising conclusion leaps out:
We have same-sex marriage in all fifty states.
This occurred to me as Will and I watched The Eagle. You might think Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell as a Roman Legionnaire and his extremely fit slave would hold my attention, but the picture’s moody and slow. On the up side, it allowed plenty of time for a wandering mind.
At one point, our boys are traveling in the far north of Britain, past the borders of Roman rule. Channing shouts at Jamie, “You’re still my slave!” And I wondered, Is he? Why?
I don’t know if I need to say this outright, but that last post was entirely satirical. The TempFlow salesman didn’t blink an eye when I mentioned my same-sex partner. He was great.
In that post, I was mocking our opponents who accuse us of flaunting our sexuality when we’re merely talking about our lives with conventional frankness. I was pointing out the absurd lengths to which we’d have to go in order to mollify them.
I forgot, however, that this isn’t genuinely absurd at all — in fact, in too many places and for too many people it’s a daily reality.
Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t take it as satire. The fault is mine. The fact is, some of our opponents — “respectable” ones, who are paid to write columns, who appear as experts on cable shows — have views so oppressive that my satire is no exaggeration of them at all.
I feel awful. I just flaunted my sexuality to a stranger.
It’s time for a new bed. Tempur-Pedics are pricey and apparently make some people feel overheated. I researched an alternative called TempFlow, which has a factory showroom near my work. They arranged to have a salesman waiting for me, so I warned them:
I won’t be buying today. I can’t buy anything until my partner checks it out. He’d kill me if I bought a bed without letting him test it.
The salesman laughed in commiseration. Our opponents, though, have taught me that deep inside he must have been suffering: I’d just shoved my sexuality down his throat! Since then I’ve pondered how I could have phrased that without violating his religious freedom to work in a place free of the homofascist harassment and bullying I’d just subjected him to.
Obviously, as a first step, I could choose not to refer to Will as “he.” That’s still leaves the problematic “partner,” though — who besides homosexuals refers to their partner as “partner”?
Finally I came up with this:
I won’t be buying today. I can’t buy anything until the person with whom I share my bed checks it out. The person with whom I share my bed kill me if I bought a bed without letting person with whom I share my bed test it.
There. That’s perfectly natural and not awkward at all. I feel like such an ogre for not plotting this out beforehand, perhaps typing it up so that I could read it from my computer screen, alongside inoffensive versions of a few hundred other comments I might have needed.
Now if I can just figure out an inoffensive way to test the showroom bed with Will…
A few months ago Will and I heard a woman screaming on the street. A neighbor’s unwalked, undisciplined, unsocialized pit bull had poked its snout through the bars of its fence and clamped its jaws on the head of her 10-pound Westie mix. Within moments, a small mob had crammed into that tiny sidewalk space, reaching through the bars, pounding at the big dog and prying at his jaws. Finally someone jammed the pit’s mouth with the sharp end of a sign post and the big dog let go.
Both dogs recovered (and I blame the pit not at all — just his owners). One of us ended up with a small, bloody cut on the thumb where it scraped against the dog’s tooth. After our nerves settled, we felt a baffled wonder: What kind of idiot grabs a pit bull’s jaw? Especially when it’s doing no good at all? And we were grateful to the man who thought better in the moment, who grabbed that sign, who saved the little mutt.
Later it struck me what a good street we live on. Most of us don’t know each other well. But a dozen people ran to the street late at night when a woman screamed. I wish more of us had taken a moment to think about how best to jump in, but no one had to think at all about whether to jump in.
I got my undergraduate degree at Penn State. Even so, I haven’t written about the abuse scandal there. It’s hard to think about. It’s hard to think about the abuse. It’s hard to think about the cover-up. And it rips at the soul to think about a tall, strong, fit man who sees someone having sex with a child and doesn’t instantly launch himself at the rapist and pound his head against the floor.
But now some damn fool has chimed in with commentary that demands a reply. Jerry Cox, of the Arkansas Family Council, has used this tragedy to wonder whether society should let gays be parents.
Forget Jerry Cox. Really. But be ready to counter the bigots and homophobes — and the good, well-intentioned, ill-informed people — who echo his views. Remember that the perpetrator, Jerry Sandusky, was not gay, but a man married to a woman, a man whose sexuality may not be straight or gay, may not be directed to adults in any major way. Jerry Sandusky is a pedophile.
And to drive that point home, I’m reposting this video I made a while back. If anyone tells you something stupid like, “”Who cares if a guy is married? If he’s into molesting boys, that’s homosexual behavior,” you’ll know what to say.
