The Weirdest Thing I Saw Today.

So I saw this on Twitter today:

One of the anti #LGBTQ folks gathering in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for a press conference calling for the Court to overturn its marriage equality decision pic.twitter.com/sA8ttWue3U

— Peter Montgomery (@petemont) June 26, 2019

And, holy Hell, where to begin?
First of all, that's not how the Supreme Court works.
Or it isn't how it's supposed to work, anyway.
The Supreme Court isn't supposed to respond to public pressure the way that elected officials are supposed to. They aren't supposed to look at a law and say "Hmm, this law clearly violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution, but on the other hand, some people really like it, so. . . "
Also, the Supreme Court can't just decide to reverse a prior decision. Someone has to bring a case before them. Someone would have to have standing. And no one is ever going to have standing to bring a case against Obergfell because how could anyone claim to have been harmed by that decision? (And having your little feelings hurt doesn't count.)


But then I saw the web address on his shirt. WWW -dot-ThirdGender666-dot-com. And my curiosity got the better of me.

So I went there.

Hoo boy!

Welcome to the house of weird!

First of all, there's the "In the News" section which contains precisely Two entries:

1:

In the news! Jan. 2007 - Elementary school kids being taught to embrace gay and lesbian lifestyles as a healthy alternative

2:
1959 - The Third Sex, a lesbian pulp novel from 1959 opened the minds of Americans to this secret society




Ah, yes. I remember how in 1969 everyone was reading this particular potboiler and how it opened up the minds of America to. . .how many people actually read this book? 
Also, what secret society? I've never heard of any secret societ. . . oh, right. Cuz it's a secret. Duh!
Anyway, I did a bit of online research about the genre and there were several more influential lesbian pulp novels published prior to The Third Sex, notably 1952's Spring Fire,





 1950's Women's Barracks

and 1953's The Price of Salt (which was made intro the 2015 movie Carol with Kate Blanchett and Rooney Mara)

So why place so mush import on this one particular pulp novel?

What are they, chopped liver?

Probably because whatever weirdo writes this website seems kind of obsessed with the term "third gender" (hence the site's name.)

To say "I was born the Third Gender" is to curse the name of the Lord, meaning evil speaking or slander attributing some evil to God. But God is holy and can do no evil. The concept of a Third Gender is an attempt to demean the plan, throne, sovereignty, and supreme power of the Creator. To dehumanize yourself and deprive yourself of human qualities, personality or spirit is inhuman and inhumane.

Wow, that's quite a leap! I don't know how one gets from "I was born 3rd gender" to "I curse thee, Jehovah, I curse thy holy name!" Also, I don't think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think most LGBT people refer to themselves as being "Third gender." Am I wrong, LGBT readers? The gay men I know refer to themselves as men. The lesbians I know refer to themselves as women. Also, I don't really get how it demeans the power of the creator to imply that he is capable of creating more than two genders. I mean, I make a pretty good chicken cacciatore and a decent pork lo mein, but if someone said "you also make chicken parm," I don't think I would feel demeaned by that. But, maybe that's why he's God and I'm not.

. . .Yet!

Then there is a section entitled "FACTS."

It begins like this:

Let's keep it simple. God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. 

Okay. I mean there are certainly a lot of people who would dispute that - Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, atheists, agnostics, Unitarians, Scientologists. . . but that is a statement that would be assumed to be a solid fact by most Christians who, I assume, are the intended audience. So nothing too crazy yet.

. . .Yet!

 Consider the Tree of life: oxygen, water, and food. Oxygen is a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas in the atmosphere that comes from plant life. The odorless gas mixes with the clouds to produce rain water. 

Yeahhhhh, that is NOT how rain works.
At all.
I mean, you got the "clouds are involved" part, but other than that. . .

The rain comes down from the sky to insert life into mother earth, from God the Father. This God created process reveals the nature of how God designs and implements extremely complex methods that accomplish His intentions. He performs the impossible, then steps back for creation to enjoy. God's handiwork, his fingerprint, is recognizable and can be seen over and over. The Tree of life is a reproductive process, a spiritual sex, if you will, which yields the fruit of the earth. It's the seed from our spiritual Father.

Oh dear GOD! Are you saying that rain is. . . EWWWWWW!!!!
I mean, that seems like blasphemy to me. And also Ewwwwww!!!!
I will never look at rain the same way again.

Human sex from the womb is called holy by the Lord 

No. That is not where sex happens. It happens a bit South of the "womb." (Or sometimes South and around the corner, but that's none of my business.)

Also, when did God call sex "holy?" I went through 12 years of Lutheran schooling, I've read most of the Bible, and I don't remember anything positive in there about sex. You really need to cite a particular chapter and verse if you're going to make a claim like that!

A man inserts his penis into his wife's vagina, the genital canal, and a baby is born. 

I think there's a few steps in between. That's why the process generally takes several months.
Also, the term is "birth canal." Not "genital canal."

In the cycle of life, the man becomes the father, the wife becomes the mother and the cycle continues. The reproductive system to create a living being's sexual genitalia is clearly produced in the fruit of the womb. The baby is a boy or a girl.

A: that's gibberish.
B: you do know about hermaphroditism, right? (Is that a real word?) Somethimes babies are born with both male and female parts or sometimes with what is referred to as "ambiguous genitalia." Which is sort of a what you might call a "thied gender" sort of situation.

What is sexism or what is a sexist? Sex is only between the male and female. To convert good (God's design) to evil (your own perversion of sex) is satanistic. To speak or act as oral or anal intercourse is sex is blasphemous and profane.

Mp. That's not what sexism is. That's not what a sexist is. Also, sign me up for a little profane blasphemy this weekend, eh?

Why did God give them brimstone and fire in Sodom and Gomorrah? Because he knew that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sinners would degenerate God's original intent for sex.

Okay, now that is just patently false. There is no ambiguity on this point. It is stated quite clearly what the "sin of Sodom" was:

Ezekiel 16:49-50 New International Version (NIV)49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

Eh, I bet it was probably the gays!

Defend the planet or destroy the planet. Let's start with protecting defenseless children from satan. 

Honestly, I think we should concentrate on protecting defenseless children from I.C.E.

Let's start with protecting defenseless children from satan. Adam Adam, Eve and Eve. The power of love is to tell the truth. The power of hate is to stop the truth. Let us get high on love, not getting high on hate. 

So. . . is it Adam and Adam, then? I thought it was supposed to be Adam and Steve?  Or is it Eve and Eve? So many possibilities!

 

In conclusion, this question is posed, which you can answer by clicking on the provided link:

Do homosexuals strengthen the planet, or weaken the planet?

Write me so we can talk about it.

- Minister Leroy

Go ahead. I'm sure he'd love to know your thoughts on the subject.

There are monsters among us.

Evangelical group wants gays removed from anti-lynching bill

O my God.

You know, you come to expect a certain amount of fuckery from these anti-LGBT bigots.

You expect a lot of assholishness, a good bit of prickishness, more than their fair share of just general stupidity and shittiness, but this? Holy fuck, this is monstrous!

The Senate passed a bill to make it a federal crime to lynch people, and your reaction is not to say "about god damn time, shoulda done this 150 years ago," but to say "yeah, but it's okay to murder someone if they're gay, though, right?" And you're just going to put this out there in public as if saying this didn't qualify you for tar, feathers and a free rail-ride out of town.



What is even the rationalization for this grotesque and obscene stance?

The U.S. Senate last month unanimously passed a bill that would explicitly make lynching a federal crime. Not everyone, however, is pleased with passage of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act.
Liberty Counsel, an evangelical nonprofit that opposes gay rights, and its chairman, Mat Staver, are taking issue with the bill’s inclusion of LGBTQ people.
"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can't stop them from coming the rest of the way in," Staver said

Huh?

The camel's nose? I'm trying to figure out how this analogy even would work. I assume that in this analogy, the camel is the gay people.  The tent is. . . I don't know, NOT being murdered, I guess? So if the gay people get a little taste of not being murdered, they're just gonna want to not be murdered ALL the time? And they'll just push their way into the "it's not okay to murder this person" zone? And this is bad? Somehow? 

Maybe if I let him continue it will make more sense.

"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can't stop them from coming the rest of the way in," Staver said in an interview with conservative Christian news outlet OneNewsNow. “This is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler [sic] at some time in the future."

Ah, for one brief, beautiful moment, I forgot that Louis CK is a huge asshole.

It might make even less sense now.

Let's start with the phrase "a so-called anti-lynching bill."  This is a bill that makes lynching a federal crime. It is pretty much the dictionary definition of an anti-lynching bill. It's like calling LeBron James a "so-called basketball player,"  or calling Donald Trump the "so-called disgrace to the nation."

Then there's "circle the wagon." First of all, you can not circle A wagon. You need several wagons. Circling the wagons means taking all your wagons and forming a circle out of them, which is, as anyone who has ever seen a western movie or a television show or has the sense God gave a mule knows, is a DEFENSIVE maneuver.

You don't circle your wagons in preparation for going for the "juggler."

Also, what is it that they're "slipping in" to this bill? The idea that, even if you don't approve of someone's love life you still don't get to murder them? Because it seems like they're being pretty up-front about that. Nothing really sneaky there.

Maybe the original source has more context. Let's see, where was this interview? Some site called "One News Now?" Let me just click on over and . . .

Oh, dear God.

Staver: LGBT 'rights' sneakily added to anti-lynching bill
A constitutional law expert is asking Congress to block the latest attempt to force the LGBT agenda on the country.

Hmm. I'm not all that familiar with Mat "One T" Staver. Is he a "constitutional law expert?" If I were a betting man, I'd say no. He is not. And I sure don't feel like doing the research to find out.

The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate but Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver says it passed without some senators realizing an amendment was added providing special rights for homosexuals and transgenders.

Oh, of course. "Special Rights." We've been hearing about "special rights" since the first day someone suggested that maybe the gay people should be treated as equal citizens and human beings. It's one more example of rule number one for conservatives. No conservative will ever argue anything honestly. No conservative will just say "I don't like those people, so I want them to not have rights." They will always come up with some sort of bullshit like "well why should they get 'special rights?'" or "if we let those people get married, it will damage our hetero marriages." or "look, I'd love to have equal rights for everyone, but I'm just worried that God might smite us."


So what "special rights" were snuck into the bill? Well, it may surprise you to learn that he doesn't say. I guess it's just so obvious that there's no need to waste time enumerating all the special rights that were secreted into this bill. Like um. . .  well there's. . .  uhhhh. . . hmm! You know what, I can't come up with anything. Weird!

"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can't stop them from coming the rest of the way in," he explains. "And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation as part of this anti-lynching bill."

Well, yeah. Good point. This bill would be the first time that gender identity and sexual orientation are mentioned as part of this bill. Can't argue with that.

No one can or should oppose a bill that bans lynching, says the Liberty Counsel attorney, and thus it's being used as back door approach 

Seriously, dude? A "back door" approach?

No one can or should oppose a bill that bans lynching, says the Liberty Counsel attorney, and thus it's being used as back door approach to pass legislation such as the controversial Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Okay, first of all, no it isn't. There is no parliamentary trick that would allow the Senate to pass one bill and then go "aha! You fools! You passed one bill that prohibits people from being total pigfuckers towards LGBT people, that means that ALL the bills about not being total pigfuckers to LGBTs also pass!"
Also, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is not controversial in the real world. Only in your stupid shitty evangelical hate-bubble. In the real world, if you ask someone "should your boss be able to fire you if he doesn't like who you date?" about 99% of people will respond "hell, no!"  It's controversial to you the same way that the RICO laws are controversial to La Costa Nostra.

"So far they've been unsuccessful over the many years in the past," Staver observes, "but this is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the jugular at some time in the future."

Okay, we've already been over this part, but fucking hell! Who doesn't understand the expression "circle the wagons?"

Staver tells OneNewsNow that Liberty Counsel is talking to lawmakers in the House in an effort to convince them to strip the bill of the amendment before taking a vote.

You know, I'd like to think "you're too late, Staver, the Democrats have retaken the House and Nacy Pelosi has the gavel!" but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that trusting the Democrats to do the right thing is a recipe for heartbreak.

On kids, moms, and dads

I saw a couple of articles about some horrible "March for Marriage, well marriage for us, not for them" rally they just had in DC, and I noticed a common theme that kept popping up:

Yes, every child deserves/needs a mom and a dad.
Well, let's pretend for a minute that that's true. Let's pretend there aren't lots of kids raised by single parents that are doing quite well.

Let's assume that the adorable daughter of my friends Mark and David is somehow being given a less-than-optimal childhood. Let's pretend that's all true. You know what causes a lot of kids to have to grow up without a daddy? War. Why aren't these pricks up in arms, so to speak, about the constant wars this country has to keep involving itself in? 5,000 American men and women and countless thousands of Iraqis have been killed in that 10-year hell-journey, do these people not realize that a lot of these late, lamented heroes had children? That's a lot of dead daddies and mommies just to pad the bank accounts of Halliburton and Blackwater , etc.

And what about those troops coming home with PTSD? I heard an interview with an Iraq War veteran who, shortly after returning home, left his wife and daughter because he was so afraid that he might hurt or kill the child. He had recurring nightmares about smashing the child against a wall and he couldn't trust himself to be around her. Now this little girl has no daddy because Dick Cheney just really really wanted a war. Not a peep out of the "kids need a mom and dad" crowd.

You know what else causes some children to grow up without a mom or a dad? Our steadfast refusal to do anything at all about our nation's gun problem.

Father found shot to death outside Clear Lake Home

Published On: Jun 20 2014 06:14:46 AM CDT

New father shot, killed during infant's homecoming

PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- Officials in Panama City say a new father is dead after a neighbor accidently fired a gun into the family's home during a gathering to celebrate the infant's homecoming.

Family mourns dad shot and killed one day before Father's Day

Posted: Jun 16, 2014 8:04 AM EST
HORRY COUNTY, SC (WMBF) – The search for a suspect in a deadly shooting continued Sunday after a father died from multiple gunshot wounds Saturday. Now, the family of Antonio Dexter Smith is searching for answers, and his two young children are spending Father's Day without him.

 These are just from the last few days.
Why aren't these assholes out protesting about this?
 Every day in this country, kids lose a father or a mother to senseless gun violence, yo'u'd think these people who care so much about the welfare of children would be demanding stricter gun laws.

Unless. . . .

Maybe they're just using the kids as an excuse? Maybe they just want to keep gay people being treated as second-class citizens? Maybe it's not about the kids at all? 

Nah, it couldn't be that! No one's that cynical, except maybe. . .




Oh, yep. It's just about the homophobia. Not about the kids at all. Now I get it!

Most Laughable Homophobic Comment Ever?

And I know that there is nothing funny about homophobia, but sometimes its practitioners are just soooooo ridiculous that I can't help but laugh.

Case in point,  Florida (of course) State Representative Charles Van Zant
(Presumablyno relation to Townes. Or to Little Steven) who offered up this gem:

These people, that will now receive $220 million from the state of Florida unless this is stopped, will promote double-mindedness in state education and attract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can. I’m sorry to report that to you.

The part that makes me laugh is the "as homosexual as they can possibly be" line. Because I picture some sort of gayness coach saying things like "Okay, so you're attracted to members of your own gender, that's great. But I know you can be more homosexual than that. Come on, kid you can do it!"

Better!

Keep working. . ..

 

Getting there. . .

C'mon kid, I need you to be as homosexual as you possibly can! 

Yeah! I knew you could do it!

Oh, by the way, the thing that's going to make Florida's children all turn as gay as they possibly can be? Common Core.

No, really.

Or, more specifically, the company that will be administering the tests.
Seriously.

Rep. Charles Van Zant says testing company promotes homosexuality

Lawmaker stands by comments in interview with Channel 4

I don't know how creating testing materials is supposed to turn kids gay. I could see how a paranoid troglodyte might think that a teacher could slip enough pro-gay propaganda into class materials to somehow influence little hetero kids into thinking "girls sure are purty, but have I ever really given dick a chance?" But how the testing company is supposed to do that is beyond me.

ORLANDO, Fla. -
A state lawmaker from Clay County claims the company charged with creating new state standardized tests in Florida promotes homosexuality.

“Please, go on their website. Click the link to what they’re doing with youth and you will see what their agenda really is," said Van Zant. "They are promoting as hard as they can any youth that is interested in the LGBT agenda and even name it 2-S, as they define as having two spirits. The Bible says a lot about being double-minded."

It does? double-mindedness? That's something that comes up a lot, does it? Because in all my Bible-studyin' years, I don't remember that term ever coming up. But okay, I'll click the link, why not?
American Institutes for Research

• Home
• Our Topics
• Social Development

LGBT Youth

Adolescence marks a time of tremendous opportunity for positive growth and development as young people transition into adulthood. Exclusion, rejection or bias can make this journey perilous. A disproportionate number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth experience physical and emotional abuse at home, in school and in their communities simply because of their identity.

 Ooh! What a controversial stance! Many LGBT youth get treated shitty by people? That translates into "soon you will all join us on the dark side, by which I mean the gay side, bwah hah hah hah!!" ?

A Guide for Understanding, Supporting, and Affirming LGBTQI2-S Children, Youth, and Families

A new guide provides information for educators, human service providers and allies about supporting the health and well-being of children and youth who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and/or two-spirit (LGBTQI2-S) and their families. 

Or, in other words. . .

 

Join me, and together we will rule the Castro!

 Also, it may be worth noting that they pretty specifically do not call homosexuality "S-2" or "two spririts. That is mentioned as a seperate category of being "intersex." Which is pretty different, I think. I mean, I'm not the biggest expert in what the scary non-breeder people are up to to try and destroy America, but I'm pretty sure that intersex and gay are two separate things.

Anyway, it may shock you to learn that while the AIR website says many positive things about treating LGBT youth like decent human beings, nowhere on the page does it mention anything about how to turn straight kids gay, let alone how to get them to be as homosexual as they can possibly be.

 

D'oh! Why did I provide a link to a page that shows how full of shit I am?

 Oh, right. Florida!

Van Zant confirmed he made the comments at an event two months ago, although he did not know he was being recorded on video. He said Common Core could introduce homosexuality to children, something he said should be left to parents to discuss with their kids.
“I don't think that has any place being introduced in Florida schools,” Van Zant said.

And neither does science! Or History. Or  Geography. The only textbooks we need are the Bible and everything by David Barton!

  

Who, perhaps not coincidentally, looks like the guy who kidnapped Helena on Orphan Black.

Anyway, here's the video, via Think Progress, in case you don't think that anyone could be this fucking weird and stupid.



a

Things that make sense in the Conservative Fantasy World

Oliver Willis tweeted a link to this offensive Op-ed in the Washington Moonie Times:

EDITORIAL: The Gay Scouts of America

Pledge to keep ‘morally straight’ threatened

And of course, it's pretty much what you would expect: Oh no, the mean old secularists are letting gay guys into our Boys-only neckerchief campout club!

 

 

Real Men Only Need Apply

 

 

But where it gets really crazy is in the comments section. That's where you can really see what a nightmarish fantasy world these righties have constructed for themselves.

Here is the first comment, which means this guy probably has one of those news alerts set up for the words "Boy Scouts" and "gay," for whatever reason:

Eagle in NYC • 5 hours ago

 

We’ve all seen this movie before.

 

No, most of us haven't rented this one.

 

Sweet Boy Scouts

 

 

NAMBLA forces a venerable institution to violate its principles, with predictable results. NAMBLA forced the Roman Catholic Church to permit gay priests, and who could have foreseen the results when a gay man is let loose on a young, naïve boy with all its attendant disparity of power and persuasion in such a relationship?

 

Wow! So, in your weird little fantasy world, a) NAMBLA is an organization with power and influence, and b)The Catholic Church allows gay priests?

 

 

And when the inevitable scandals occur, is it NAMBLA that gets blamed, or its enablers in the culture and press? No. The institution itself gets forever slimed by the scandal and pays millions out of its treasury to cover the cases precipitated by the NAMBLA lobby years prior.

Yes, why would they blame the institution that has enabled and covered up this sexual abuse for decades?

 

  

Enabler-in-chief

 

 

And when a NAMBLA predator serially abuses boys at the Penn State football facility, is it the predator, or NAMBLA that everyone remembers as the villain?

 

Yes. Yes it is.

 

 

 No. It’s the institution itself – Penn State football – and its venerable, iconic pillar of morality in a sport awash in cheating and cutting corners, Joe Paterno. No one remembers the predator himself. Instead, everyone blames the coach and the institution, who had nothing to do with the predation itself.

 

 

Unless you count knowingly allowing the abuse to continue, but hey it's not like he paid the players or something really scandalous!

 

 

Good. I was so sick of people putting him on a pederastal!

Now, NAMBLA and its enablers of press, culture, and charity powerhouses,

 

 

Oh my God. Name one. Name one charity that has anything whatsoever to do with NAMBLA. Go ahead, I'll wait. . .

Yeah that's what I thought. Now maybe you can name anyone in the press that has ever given NAMBLA favorable coverage. . .

 

Now, NAMBLA and its enablers of press, culture, and charity powerhouses  force the Boy Scouts Association to violate its principles by forcing gay, adult leaders into the pup tents of twelve and thirteen-year old boys for overnight camping. What could possibly go wrong there?

 

Um, is there some way it could get worse? Have you not seen the news? Do a Google News search for "Boy Scouts" + "abuse." You'll see lots of stories like this:

 

California man sues Boy Scouts, alleging sex abuse occurred decades ago 

Military Veteran Files Suit against Boy Scouts for Sex Abuse by Scout Master 

Judge: Release More Boy Scout Sex Abuse Files

NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth - ‎Jan 30, 2013‎

A Minnesota judge on Tuesday ordered the handover of confidential national Boy Scout records on sexual abuse from 1999 to 2008 in a move attorneys said could add to the body of evidence showing that the organization failed to take adequate steps to protect young people from molesters in its ranks.

 

 

And when the inevitable scandals arise, will anyone blame NAMBLA or its enablers? Of course not.

 

Because the abuse has been going on for years before the imaginary "NAMBLA lobby" got the Scouts to accept its first gay member?

 

They’ll blame and scandalize the venerable Boy Scout institution, which will be forced to pay millions of dollars it doesn’t have to handle the court cases and the settlements to the boys who are abused by the NAMBLA scout leaders.

This is pure evil.

 Yes, ending decades of discrimination, that's what is pure evil, obviously.

 

But I guess that makes sense to a right-winger, because they live in a fantasy world. Now I don't know why they would make their fantasy world so scary. In my fantasy world, I'm currently being coronated King of America and World Series MVP. But this is the world in which they have chosen, for some reason, to live. And in this weird parallel universe, things make sense to them that don't add up here in the reality-based world. In order to live in the right-wing fantasy world, you have to believe things like:

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pinko commie subversive, and if he were alive today, he'd be an NRA-supporting Republican.

 

Mexican immigrants sneak into this country to get a free ride from the welfare state. And they're stealing our jobs!

 

 

 

America is the strongest, greatest, most powerful country in the history of the world, and we're in constant danger of being completely destroyed by a handful of cave-dwellers with box-cutters!

 

And every human life is sacred and must be protected. Now let's bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!

 

Can we just go ahead and arrest Bryan Fischer now?

Because he's trying to encourage people to kidnap children.

Bryan Fischer ‏@BryanJFischer

Why we need an Underground Railroad to deliver innocent children from same-sex households: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/08/6065 

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The article he references is a confessional from a young man who claims to have grown up in a household with a loving mother and her mother's lover. And oh, the horror:

To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.
Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.

So, because this teenage boy felt "weird" growing up, we should go around kidnapping children? I felt weird growing up, I'm glad no one kidnapped me. I think if you were going to kidnap every kid who grows up feeling "weird," you'd have to kidnap almost every adolescent in America.

Quick, get the van!

Oh, but there's more:

My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms.

Can you imagine? Growing up without learning the unwritten rules of decorum? And of body language? These children must be saved! Damn the laws against kidnapping!

Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models. They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures.  

So, not only must there be both a male and a female parent, they must both be total stereotypes? By the way, if you want to learn how to be "bold and unflinching," you should start by studying the lesbians!

  

Pretty Bad-Ass!

These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.

Stereotypes come in handy? In what world? What, if you have a problem with your computer, do you just ask the nearest Asian?  You need investment advice, you head to the nearest synagogue? What does your embrace of stereotypes have to do with your mother and her girlfriend?

I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers.

Um, since these were the only parent you ever knew, how would you know that they were "unlike traditional fathers or mothers?" To whom could you compare them?

 

As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. 

So, you're an insecure jerk? How was that caused by your moms? I mean, they must have had "social cues to offer," since they attracted each other. And before that, each had attracted a husband. So it seems that maybe you just didn't learn from them what you should have.

I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily. Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home. Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.

Seriously? You had no idea how to act, how to speak, how to behave?You weren't raised by wolves! You act like a fucking human being, like your mom, like your brothers, like your friends, like your mom's partner! It's really no different, whether you were raised by two women, two men, or one of each.

My home life was not traditional nor conventional. I suffered because of it, in ways that are difficult for sociologists to index. 

Because there's nothing wrong with you, you're just  a jerk. If you had suffered any harm, someone would be able to "index" it.

Both nervous and yet blunt, I would later seem strange even in the eyes of gay and bisexual adults who had little patience for someone like me. 

Because you're a jerk! You just demonstrated what a jerk you are by saying  " strange even in the eyes of gay and bisexual adults." You think that those folks are so weird that they're bound to be okay with your weirdness, or something, and you wonder why they have no patience for you?

 Life is hard when you are strange. Even now, I have very few friends and often feel as though I do not understand people because of the unspoken gender cues that everyone around me, even gays raised in traditional homes, takes for granted.

Life is hard when you're a jerk that blames your late mother for your inability to connect with other humans.  There are no secret "gender cues" that those of us from traditional families are keeping from you. You're just a jerk.

When I got to college, I set off everyone’s “gaydar” and the campus LGBT group quickly descended upon me to tell me it was 100-percent certain I must be a homosexual. When I came out as bisexual, they told everyone I was lying and just wasn’t ready to come out of the closet as gay yet.

So you're bi? And you're still this contemptuous of other LGBT people? You know you're the "B" in that acronym, right? Also, that story never happened. There is not some LGBT coven that cones swooping down on unsuspecting bisexuals to declare them gay. You made that up.

Anyway, this article goes on and on in this whiny, blame-throwing way. But apparently, for the horrible horrible Bryan Fischer, it's all the justification needed to start kidnapping children, tearing them away from the only families they've ever known and, presumably, depositing them with crazy right-wing religious fanatics to be raised as paranoid little assholes. Can we just go ahead and arrest this insufferable little prick now?

We Need to Stop Having These Arguments

GOP Rep. Lankford Explains Why It Should Be Legal To Fire Someone For Being Gay: ‘It’s A Choice Issue’

LANKFORD: Well, you’re now dealing with behavior and I’m trying to figure out exactly what you’re trying to mean by that. Because you’re dealing with — race and sexual preferences are two different things. One is a behavior-related and preference-related and one is something inherently — skin color, something obvious, that kind of stuff. You don’t walk up to someone on the street and look at them and say, “Gay or straight?”

Well, no. Not now. But when I was single, of course I did.

Okay, but seriously folks. . .

We need to stop having this "is it a choice to be gay" argument. First of all, the people making this claim can't possibly actually believe it. They couldn't function as human beings if they were that stunningly stupid. Because I don't know about you, but in my life there was never a time when I was offered a choice. And if anyone actually does believe anything this asinine, there's no point in trying to reason with him.





But the most important reason to stop having this argument is what if it was a choice? What if someone actually did get to choose and they made a conscious decision to avoid cooties by sticking with their own gender? It would still be no one else's business. It's none of anyone's business what you do with your naughty bits as long as you're not putting them in someone who doesn't want them. Even if sexuality was a choice, what consenting adults do with their bodies is nobody else's business.

In the same vein, the other argument we should stop having is whether or not gay marriage represents some sort of threat to "traditional" marriage. Not just because it obviously doesn't, and anyone who says it does is either lying or a complete imbecile, but because what if it did? What if two dudes getting married did somehow cause some sort of damage to boy-girl marriage? Why would you assume that the hetero marriage is more valuable, more important than the gay marriage?

If someone had said to me before my wedding "hey, you can't marry her. American-Canadian marriage is a threat to traditional American-American marriage," I would have said "tough shit. My marriage is every bit as important as yours." That's how I feel about gay marriage. Obviously it has no effect on hetero marriage, but if it somehow did, tough shit. My friends Mark and David's marriage isn't any less valuable than my friends Jeff and Mary's.



 

Teabagger rally is too disgusting even for other teabaggers

How disgusting would a Teabagger rally have to be before other teabaggers steer clear of it?

Mass Coalition’s April 15th Patriots Day Rally on the Common
April 16, 2012
 Last week in a statement, the Greater Boston Tea Party appealed to members not to attend the event on the Common. The statement said the Mass Tea Party Coalition appears to focus mainly on social issues, including opposition to gay marriage and abortion.

Well, that's putting it mildly, seeing as how these hate-mongers were invited to speak:
(source)

Rev. Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries, one of the two Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) anti-gay hate groups that were invited to speak. The other certified anti-gay hate group invited to speak was Mass Resistance.

Lively is widely credited for sowing the seeds that created the “Kill The Gays” bill in Uganda, and amplifying anti-gay hate on the African continent. Lively is a “professional worldwide hunter of homosexuals and top proponent of ‘gay cure‘,” as Scott Wooledge at Daily Kos today described him.

Mass Resistance is perhaps among the most radical and fringe of the 18 groups featured on Southern Poverty Law Center’s anti-gay hate groups list, which is saying a lot. In 2006 and 2007 they pushed a repeal of Massachusetts’s marriage equality:

The group proposed language that lumped sexual orientation (which includes heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality) in with criminal behaviors like bestiality and polygamy. During legislative testimony supporting the amendment, Camenker falsely claimed that no homosexuals died in the Holocaust and that the pink triangle the Nazis forced imprisoned gays to wear actually signified Catholic priests.

So it seems that these speakers were so objectionable as to even scare away Boston's main teabagger group, who at long last does seem to have at least a shred of human decency. You know who doesn't, though?
This guy:

 

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Massengill, seen here lionizing Andrew Breitbart

 No, seriously, check it out (link)

Louie Gohmert apparently has no compunction about appearing on the same bill as the person who said:

"Even though probably the majority of homosexuals are not oriented towards young people, there is a significant number that are, especially the men…male homosexuality has historically been not adult to adult it has been adult to teenager"

And the guy who says:

The Big Lie technique (like other remnants of Nazism and the Nazi movement) has been a focus of the homosexual movement since it coalesced in the late 1980s

Because Louie Gohmert knows no shame, has no sense of decency, is absolutely morally bankrupt in the depths of his rancid, repugnant soul. Much like his hero, Andrew Breitbart.
Seriously, what the fuck is a United States Congressman doing on a dais with venomous, lying hatemongers like Scott Lively and Brian Camenker? I know Gohmert has no dignity personally, but what of the reputation of the US Congress? Oh, right. Never mind.

Speaking of the Boston Teabagger Rally:

At yesterday’s Tea Party rally in Boston, protesters from Occupy Wall Street and Join the Impact MA shouted down Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” architect, Scott Lively’s, address to the crowd about the dangers of “faggots.” During the non-violent culture clash Boston’s police stepped in to rough up the young queers and their supporters. Photographer Paul Weiskel captured this young man getting choked for holding a dangerous object - a pink wig. Here’s his account of the incident:

    Hi, This is a picture of me. The “pale violet material” I’m holding was a wig I was wearing that a Tea Partier had just knocked off my head. I was asking the tea partier to explain to me why he thought it was okay to knock my wig off (“My hand slipped”, he replied sarcastically) when the officer came up and said something along the lines of “okay, take your shit and get out of here” and shoved me a few feet. I turned to him and said “Don’t push me”. he replied “Don’t push you?!” then did this. You can decide yourself if this was deserved or not.

(source)