As If to Prove My Point From My Previous Post

Earlier today I opined:

At what point does the law – not public opinion, but the law – have to recognize an irrebutable presumption that anyone who campaigns for public office on a ‘family values’ platform is either an adulterer, a pedophile, a crook, some other species of hypocrite or some combination thereof?

NOW???

Perhaps?? 

From the Nashville Scene:

According to authorities, one of our own social conservative Republicans has been caught cheating on his wife, and he was doing it with a young legislative intern. At this juncture, we’re going to resist the temptation to make a joke about family values. That’s getting so old it’s not funny anymore.

Suffice it to say that like John Ensign, Mark Sanford and all the rest on the national stage lately, this one is really rich–with a little homemade porn and a bumbling blackmailer tossed into the story to make it even spicier. Ensnared in Tennessee’s own sex scandal tonight is [Tennessee State] Sen. Paul Stanley, the wingnut from Germantown who has crusaded to ban gay adoption of children and who once made the really stupid mistake of saying: “When you’re married, there’s a commitment there.”

According to court documents, here’s what happened: Stanley, who is married with two children, was accused of having an affair with a 22-year-old legislative intern, McKensie Morrison, by the woman’s boyfriend. The boyfriend, Joel Palmer Watts. 28, discovered a computer memory disc with sexually explicit photographs of Morrison that appeared to have been taken in Stanley’s apartment. Watts then blackmailed Stanley, demanding $10,000 in return for keeping quiet.

The blackmailing by the boyfriend is immaterial here – unless, of course, one wants to apply the logic that has been used to exclude non-heterosexuals from the military. 

How about an ‘inherently blackmailable’ standard to establish a hardwire exclusion of christianists from government?

Eh?

Eh?

Eh?

The ‘C’ is for ‘Crook’

At what point does the law – not public opinion, but the law – have to recognize an irrebutable presumption that anyone who campaigns for public office on a ‘family values’ platform is either an adulterer, a pedophile, a crook, some other species of hypocrite or some combination thereof?  From C&L:

Another C-Street Shoe Drops: Ensign Gave Wamp $5000 Campaign Donation After News of Affair Broke

I have to wonder what’s in this clown’s closet:

A Republican [Ohio] state legislator John Adams of Sidney, has submitted a bill that would require a woman to obtain the permission of the man who impregnated her before she could receive abortion services. The language of the bill is beyond insane.

As written, the bill would ban women from seeking an abortion without written consent from the father of the fetus. In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort. Claiming to not know the father’s identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation. Simply put: no father means no abortion

Ever notice that the men who fight so hard for the right to stick their sperm in women’s wombs and keep it there against their will are the ones whose reproduction would least benefit the species?

Reality Check: The Other 40th Anniversary

No – not Stonewall.

I mean Chappaquiddick.

Right-wing christianists do tend to milk it a bit too much. 

However, it did happen. 

And, lets be honest.  The D and R are irrelevant to this; Teddy survived it the same way that another snot-nosed rich Yankee brat was able to cover up a DWI (and, if J.H. Hatfield was right, a cocaine bust): Undeserved inherited wealth and influence – everything that collectively is the antithesis of what this nation is supposed to stand for and be. 

Bringing Chappaquiddick back up may be viewed as bad form – particularly when it is invoked by the left.

But, as I mentioned above, it happened.

As has Teddy’s attitude toward trans-inclusion – which seems to amaze all who don’t see the pattern of the allegedly-liberal Massachusetts being home to perhaps the worst strains of transphobia.  I can’t envision that attidude changing in the days of his long black cloud coming down – but I repeat what I said in that previous piece about Chappaquiddick: My friend Dee had a theory – which I will share - but I don’t feel right about sharing it.

Yet.

It Makes As Much Sense As Fear of ‘Transsexual Women in the Women’s Restroom’

From Crooks and Liars:

What world do Republicans live in?

…

[An imaginary] world where 20 million young people make over $75,000 a year and choose not to get health insurance, frittering it all away with their fancy cars and electronic cell phone/camera/potato peelers, I’m sure.

WALLACE: Well, you say that you would like to see the 40-plus million — there are arguments about specifically how many there are, but the 40-plus million uninsured get coverage. Under your idea, how would they get it? How would the government help them get it? And how would you pay for it?

GREGG: Well, first, it’s not a monolithic group. About 20 million of those folks earn more than $75,000. They’re basically young people who opt to spend their money on something other than health care insurance.

The way we would cover those folks is we would require them to buy health care policies for catastrophic events. They would have to self-insure under that.

Say it with me now: WTF????

Why is this so shocking?  The overpaid, under(relevant)worked gay rights establishment has created an imagnary world where the greatest threat is something that has never existed: predatory transsexual women in women’s restrooms and showers.  And they’ve made sure that the possibility of a trans-inclusive ENDA suffocates in that world.

Proof That ‘Texas’ Equals ‘Insanity’

From the comments section to a Houston Chronk piece wherein Apollo XI astronaut Buzz Aldrin – the second man on the moon – says that NASA needs to shoot for Mars:

Wish we could go to Mars. Unfortunately, Obama has blown through, and will no doubt blow through more, the money we’d need to fund such a program.

Oh yeh – and the junta which preceded his administration was just sooooooooooooooooooooooooo fuckin’ frugal, so much so that we’d have all the money we need now to go to Mars and fix our earthbound infrastructure if simply that evil non-white guy hadn’t spent so much.

Sadly, I’m thinking Bill Maher’s take on Apollo XI + 40 America from Friday’s Real Time…

is dead on target.

Tom Wolfe Makes a Good Point

From the NYTimes:

The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.

Painful – but I think necessary – to read.

Gee – How Could This Happen in a State With a Barney Frank-Style Civil Rights Law?

Oh…

Silly me.

Vanessa Edwards Foster shines well-needed light on all of the insane glee over the conviction in the Lateisha Green murder – because, you see, in a state where trans = unworthy, murder = manslaughter.

Lateisha Green’s murderer, Dwight DeLee, received his verdict in a Syracuse Courthouse. He was found innocent of second degree murder. He was convicted of first degree manslaughter. The jury determined that after DeLee had lobbed invective and epithets at Lateisha Green sitting in her brother’s car, after he’d gone into the house to retrieve his rifle, and after lobbing a few more epithets and leveling the gun at point blank range into the car and shooting Teish, that he’d intended to only “seriously injure” her but had no intentions of killing her. Manslaughter, not a murder.

Any other victim killed in such a manner would expect their killer to receive a murder sentence. Ah, but Teish was murdered while Trans! And further, as my homegirl Monica Roberts would say, she was murdered while Black and Trans! As we read between the lines of this logic, it helps validate the killer’s motivations. Why, having a trans person outside near his house practically requires one to go in their house and retrieve their rifle … pop off a warning shot in their direction from a few feet away, just to make sure you don’t have to fear for your life from the transsexual menace!

Certainly any average citizen in Syracuse would understand that threat, that fear! It’s palpable!

Reality time: essentially this verdict actually foists some of the blame on the victim. That’s right! The good people of Syracuse decided that being Trans, Lateisha Green should’ve known she’s partially to blame for being attacked! It’s kinda like women being partially to blame for being raped, Asian store owners being partially at fault for getting robbed in their stores, unarmed black men being partially understood to have been shot by police because of their potential threat – or even white men being partially culpable for getting shot while driving through a minority neighborhood!

But Vanessa asks some hard questions – you know, the type that Those Who Know What’s Best For Us Because They Say They Know What’s Best For Us don’t like to deal with – particularly after they, by and large, praise things that insult trans existence.

One has to wonder how the Gay & Lesbian community would react to this? If Matthew Shepard’s murder drew a manslaughter conviction with a maximum 25 year sentence, would Judy Shepard feel this was justice served? If it were the Trans community declaring before press that such as sentence was justice, would the Gay & Lesbian community agree with our statements and consider it closed?

As Vanessa notes, Jarrett Barrios of GLAAD said the verdict “brings justice for Lateisha Green,” and Rea Carey of NGLTF opined that the verdict “sends a strong message that hate violence will not be condoned.”

But was absolute justice served? Is Manslaughter a strong message? It must be noted that neither Carey nor Barrios are Trans. Point of fact, only one of the statements put out yesterday on the DeLee verdict by the organizations was from a trans organization (TLDEF – the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund), but the statement was from their non-trans executive director.

Oddly, the lone trans person responding from any major org was from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) who tacked on a trans voice to Exec. Dir. Joe Solmonese’s statement. “I am relieved to see Lateisha’s killer brought to justice,” said Allyson Robinson, HRC Associate Director of Diversity.

I’d be relieved to see HRC brought to justice for all of the fraud that it has committed against not only trans people but the entirety of the non-Aravosisistic, non-Crainiac, non-Frankenphobe elements of the American LGBT populace – but I digress.

Actually, I don’t digress.

Because its all the same disease, just infective flare-ups in different limbs of the LGBT body.  HRC refuses to hire non-token trans women; NGLTF refuses to hire trans-anything to be its trans expert; non-trans people at all gay organizations say they know what’s best because they have appropriated jobs for themselves that give them paychecks while saying they know what’s best; gay organizations lie about having any real intention to ‘go back and add’ trans protections to civil rights laws.

You know…

like the one that the cabal of greedy, transphobic gays allowed to be written into law in New York in 2002.

You know…

back when Lateisha Green was alive.

So Why Not Do It?

David Neiwert at Crooks & Liars on the attachment of the hate crime bill to the defense authorization bill – and subsequent passage:

[P]erhaps the best thing about its passage is that it makes the wingnuts very, very unhappy. Even John McCain was spouting off about its inclusion as David Doody at HuffPo noted:

“While we have young Americans fighting and dying in two wars we’re going to take up the hate-crimes bill,” McCain said, “because the majority leader thinks that’s more important, more important than legislation concerning the defense of this nation.” And later: “The Senate will pass a highly controversial, highly explosive piece of legislation to be attached to the authorization for the defense and the security of this nation. That’s wrong.”

Better yet, it makes people like Glenn Beck even more insane than they already are.

Yesterday on his Fox News show, Beck tried to make the case that there’s a logical reason to include veterans in hate-crime statistics, and cited the example of the military recruiters shot in Arkansas by an angry Muslim man was proof of this problem. His guest had a couple more incidents.

Well, it’s been our position all along that recruiters aren’t included in the legislation for a number of reasons (including the fact that veteran status is a problem in terms of equal-protection issues), the main one being that there isn’t an identifiable problem that needs addressing under this legislation.

All that Beck and his guest have to do is go visit the FBI’s Website and look up, say, the 2007 hate crime statistics. You’ll see that there are about 8,000 of them reported to the FBI in about any given year. The largest single motivation is anti-black bias crimes (2,658 of them in 2007). Even in the category that people like Beck like to pretend doesn’t exist — anti-white bias crimes — there were 749 reported offenses.

Can Beck and his guest demonstrate anything even close to those kinds of numbers — and thus a demonstrable need for inclusion?

Well, so what if veteran status is an equal protection issue?  Make that clause severable, but go ahead and tack it on anyway to force the christianist bastards in both houses to vote on it.  Can’t you see the next round of attack commercials issue ads?

Jeff Sessions, John Thune, Richard Shelby, Jon Kyl and Tom Coburn all voted against giving our troops the funding they need to fight the war on terror.  Call and ask them why.

I’d like to see that ad.

I’d really like to see that ad.

Cronkite

My parents had yet to get a TV, but my grandparents had one – and I got to see this live.

I hadn’t planned on getting moody on its upcoming 40th anniversary, but I don’t think I’ll be able to avoid doing so now.

If its Queer Channel Media, ‘Success’ Means ‘Gay Marriage’ and Only ‘Gay Marriage’

Oh yes, there’s a ‘letter‘ that questions Marriage Derangement Syndrome, but Peter Rosenstein in Queer Channel Media:

AS WE ADVANCE the rights of the LGBT community, we need to remember that the definition of success is often a state-by-state affair.

In D.C., we are celebrating recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states. In Iowa, they are celebrating the ability to perform same-sex marriages. In Maine, while they celebrate the ability to perform same-sex marriages, the opposition has already collected enough signatures to put that up to a vote of the people. In D.C., a court agreed that under our laws the rights of a protected minority (which the LGBT community is) couldn’t be put up to a vote of the majority. In California, the court upheld Prop 8.

D.C., Iowa, Maine and California?  They all do indeed see trans people as being equal to those in the three privilege-addled hegemony letters.  

But that aspect of those states is not what he’s talking about there.

He’s talking about gay marriage.

The inclusion of ‘T’ in a discussion of gay marriage is backdoor bigotry that serves no purpose than ammunition to use to suck transsexuals down whenever gay marriage law implodes – like it did in California and likely will in Maine and even D.C.

In every state we are at different stages in fighting for our rights. I was reminded of that recently in Rehoboth Beach, Del. I now have a home there but have been vacationing there for more than 25 years. When I first went, it was perfectly legal to shout obscenities at gays and lesbians walking down the street and it was a regular occurrence. Then an organization called CAMP was formed to fight for our rights.

CAMP Rehoboth now conducts diversity training each year for the Rehoboth police department. Two weeks ago, after an 11-year struggle, CAMP and a team of advocates celebrated the passage of a bill adding sexual orientation to those classes that can’t be discriminated against in Delaware. I was brought to tears when Gov. Jack Markell came to Rehoboth Beach and signed this legislation. Markell, who I am fortunate to know, is a champion of equal rights for all people. He clearly understood what it would mean to sign this bill in Rehoboth Beach in front of 200 people whose rights are now being protected in some small measure in Delaware. Everyone there knew this was only a first step, but after an 11-year struggle it was time to take a moment to celebrate.

When is “our” not as collective as it seems? 

When it is pecked with privilege.

If Markell is indeed a “champion of equal rights for all people,” then he would have vetoed that unadulterated piece of bigoted Delaware garbage, consecrating in the state’s statutory law the greed, privilege and transphobia that is the lifeblood of the ‘A-gays.’  That statute doesn’t use the following words:

We gays and lesbians know that the tranny freaks aren’t as good as us and now we’ve got the law to prove it.  Boo yah!

but it might as well.

Ditto for Rosenstein’s Queer Channel Media op-ed.