Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

Prop 8 donor map.

This is fantastic. I love GoogleMaps. Look up your address and see if your neighbors secretly hate you! What a fun and depressing tool!

Medical marijuana supporters fuming over Westside dispensary raids – Los Angeles Times.

Fuming? You’re damned right. Fuck them. Fuck them to FUCKING hell. This is the kind of fascist bullshit that should have STOPPED with the new administration. So President Obama, what are you going to do about the fact that people all over the country are suffering from addiction, dying, and being murdered over TRULY dangerous drugs, kids are popping their parents’ Vicodin and Xanax like Tic-Tacs, and the DEA’s henchmen are sticking to the cushy job of robbing legitimate tax-paying businesses and stealing medicine from the disabled?

I am truly disgusted, and you would be too if you knew how these raids are conducted. They are little more than armed robberies; a team of agents bust into the place with huge guns. Nobody is arrested, but all of the medication, money, and valuables are stolen while the employees and patients watch helplessly. The employees, who are patients themselves, are frequently placed in handcuffs so they can watch while everything is torn apart, and then are released once there’s nothing left for the agents to steal.

It’s nothing more than government-sanctioned piracy.

The DEA ought to be out there stopping criminals and breaking up drug cartels instead of playing the cowards and attacking innocent, LAWFUL tax-paying businesses that provide crucial services to people with disabilities and terminal illnesses.

This NEEDS to stop.

California Courts: Courts: Supreme Court: High Profile Case: Proposition 8 Supreme Court Filings.

Supporters of the institution of marriage had better hope that the court strikes down Prop 8. ‘Cause if it doesn’t? I don’t know about you, but my next big political cause will be civil unions for everybody – and I’m far from alone in that. After all, marriage is a *religious* institution, right?

As far as I’m concerned, the ultimate goal is equality, and I don’t care what form it comes in. So what are you willing to give up in order to protect marriage from me and my wife?

Commentary: Ridiculous items in stimulus plan – CNN.com.

Quote of the day:

There is nothing more private — that is, none of the government's business — than the personal decision that a family makes about how many children to have.

Whoa ho ho! That’s a hefty statement coming from a conservative… should I take this hissy fit about the sanctity of familial privacy to imply that Republicans are now going to back out of couples’ private childbearing decisions?

Eh?

Yeah. I didn’t think so.

School can expel lesbian students, court rules – Los Angeles Times.

Fuck letting them stay in the school – they should have a case for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

May this principal be blessed with gay children.

Hullabaloo is reporting on the Christian Coalition’s latest tirade. Sayeth the CC:

Our political leaders should do all within their power to protect, support and encourage America’s children, not crush and destroy them.

This policy would lay the foundation for racism and eugenics because it would seek to reduce the number of children to the nation’s poorest economic groups, which tend to be persons of color and other minorities.

WOW. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this sudden outpouring of support for our nation’s impoverished children. After all, everybody knows that social conservatives are ALL about supporting the nation’s poorest and most underprivileged little ones.

Until they’re, you know, BORN. After that, you’re on your own, kids! Have fun storming the castle!

Yeah. Slashing funding for public education, TANF, arts and music programs, and children’s healthcare, on the other hand, has NOTHING to do with crushing and destroying our nation’s children, right? Oh, wait.

I take it back. THIS is the best comment on that post…

I wish I knew about "provider conscience rules" when I was a teller.

"You want to withdraw how much? And what are you going to be buying? TruckNutz? Billy The Singing Bass? Sorry, pal. But I can't give you the three hundred you asked for, my conscience won't allow it. Here's twenty. That should cover your needs for today."

Pharyngula: They have a conscientious need to control your ovaries.

Great argument from the comments:

The most important reason to keep government out of the abortion business is that, if government has the power to ban abortions, it also has the power to compel them.

Oops, I accidentally pulled out your IUD! – Broadsheet – Salon.com.

Great. Next, wingnut pharmacists will start filling people’s birth control prescriptions with sugar pills… damn, people? Do you want to reduce the occurrence of abortions or not?!

That was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Thank god it finally did.

107-year-old: ‘Nothing but the greatest!’ – CNN.com.

😀

Congratulations, America!

Join the First Virtual March for LGBT Equality – Learn the 1138 Reasons Equality Matters.

YouTube – Anti-Gay Marriage Petition Fraud Caught on Camera.

Riots erupt in Oakland after slain father laid to rest – CNN.com.

The cops had the guy face down on the ground and one held him down while the other shot him in the back. Aren’t we glad the police are here to protect us?

Some are speculating that the cop might have mistaken his gun for a Taser. Yeah, right. Trained cops don’t know the difference between a gun and a Taser? Bullshit. In any case, does it make it any better if it was a Taser? I mean, yeah, it would be better because the guy would still be alive, but is it any less of an excuse? Don’t police know how to do anything without a Taser these days?!

‘Safest’ seat remarks gets Muslim family kicked off plane – CNN.com.

Oh please. The airline can’t possibly believe it behaved appropriately, particularly since even the freakin’ FBI told them everything was fine. If a white family was discussing the safest place to sit on an airplane, people would just chuckle and think they were a bit paranoid and plane-phobic. A Muslim family discusses the safest place to sit on an airplane, and suddenly they’re terrorists? God forbid people should just be a little freaked out about hurtling hundreds of miles per hour through the sky in a giant hunk of metal?

Besides, not to be crude, but how often do terrorist hijackers worry about the safest place for them to sit on a plane they’re going to crash?

Who’s 2008’s Homo Hero of the Year? / Queerty.

As one of the protesters, I personally saw the changes in the way the LAPD treated the crowds. Following a march in Silver Lake through mostly empty corporate buildings, a group of 300 or so protesters, including your editor, felt that protesting was more about taking your message to everyday people than preaching to the choir and so left the area and marched on Hollywood. The police responded quickly and blocked the advancing path of protesters. For a few minutes, the police stood shoulder-to-shoulder, inches away from a crowd shouting to let them pass.

And then a call came. Everyone could tell something had changed as the police started to relax. An officer on a bullhorn shouted, “We’re going to let you march. We just need to set up the route. We thank you for your cooperation.” There was no doubt who ordered the go-ahead: It was LAPD Chief William Bratton.

In that moment, in the eyes of those marching, the LAPD became an ally of the gay community. When a mobile signboard appeared in front of protesters saying “Please move the right. We’ll be moving shortly,” they laughed at how quickly a tense stand-off had turn to mutual cooperation. When another group marched from downtown LA to Hollywood on the National Day of Impact, the exhausted group of protesters blocking the intersection of Hollywood & Highland thanked the LAPD for escorting them and broke into a sustained applause for LA’s finest.

Pam’s House Blend:: Echoes From A Birmingham Jail (Part One).

To me, a Black Gay man who has endured both racism and heterosexism, and who sees no difference in the kind of discrimination they generate, this debate has always sounded silly. That said, I find it outrageous that some anti-segregation veterans would argue that Black folk have an exclusive claim to the term Civil Rights, and that no other movement dare use it. Excuse me? Have these folks never heard of the Women’s Rights movement? The Farmworkers’ movement? The Disabled Rights movement? I don’t recall hearing any objections to those groups using the language. I find it even more outrageous that some idiotic Lesbian and Gay pundits lend this argument credence.

The Problem for Gays with Rick Warren — and Obama – TIME.

The Bilerico Project | Please Don’t Divorce….

Amazing pictorial project by the Courage Campaign…

Prop 8 proponents seek to nullify same-sex marriages – CNN.com.

BASTARDS! No surprise, though. They said they were not going to do this, so of course that meant that we should expect it any day.

Gay leaders furious with Obama – Ben Smith and Nia-Malika Henderson – Politico.com.

Hopefully not a sign of things to come!

Muslim’s scarf leads to arrest at courthouse | ajc.com.

I don’t know what freaks me out more – that this judge thinks he can get away with kicking Muslim women out of his courtroom for exercising their 1st Amendment rights, or that on the news article’s survey asking, “Should Muslim women be required to removed their head scarves before they can enter a courtroom?” 41.42% (roughly 3,000 right now) of people responding answered, “Yes, what the judge says, goes.”

Miller v. Jenkins: One Gay Couple’s Custody Battle | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com.

This is absolutely disgusting. This is no different from those old Lifetime movies where the father would kidnap the child and remove her to some foreign country where women (and therefore mothers) have no custodial (or any) rights. It’s absolute bullshit. When you and another person bring a child into this world, you are both parents to that child, and it is absolutely abhorrent to cut one parent out of the child’s life like that, and then try to brainwash her into hating her other mother, which you KNOW this lady is doing. Family values, my ASS. It makes me want to scream.

Gay Marriage: Our Mutual Joy | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com.

Miller makes a pretty strong case against the sort of anti-gay, exclusive rhetoric that’s been tossed around lately. While she’s pretty strong on the Jesus, New Testament, and biblical marriage issue, I think she could have gone even further with the story of David and Jonathan. There was no brotherly love there, if you know what I mean. It’s beyond obvious if you actually read the story.

Miller gets one detail wrong – it’s true that “not many” Jewish denominations (if you can call them that) sanctify same-gender marriage. But this is a misleading statement. There aren’t “many” Jewish “denominations” in the first place. The very largest one (Reform) does officially recognize same-gender marriage, with the second-largest one (Conservative) recognizing same-gender unions but stopping short at the word “marriage.” And I’m pretty sure the Reconstructionist and Humanist Jews recognize marriage as well. So while “not many” Jewish “denominations” (and that is so not the right word) officially recognize same-gender marriage or unions, most American Jews belong to one that does.

Other than that detail, it’s actually a truly fabulous article, although you might not know it from reading the comments, which all seem to be suspiciously similar and overwhelmingly in opposition.

Gee… I wonder why?

Well, in case you hadn’t already guessed, the conservative wingnut groups have been BLASTING this article to all of their members, insisting that they take action while at the same time not-so-subtly suggesting that they don’t actually read the article before doing so (why take the chance that somebody might actually listen to reason?). I’ve gotten a few emails to this effect. One of them was from the American Foundation for Self-Righteous and Holier-than-thou Consumption of Pornographic Material, more commonly known as the American Family Association (AFA). Here’s the email they sent out (God, I love it when the AFA sends out emails):

Newsweek magazine has published a lengthy article stating that the Bible supports homosexual marriage. The article was written Lisa Miller, Newsweek religion editor.

Miller’s article is one of the most biased and distorted pieces concerning homosexual marriage ever published by any major news organization. The article is much too long for this e-mail.

Dr. Albert Mohler has offered a response to the Newsweek article. I suggest you read Mohler’s article and then read Miller’s Newsweek article.

And in keeping with my tradition of translating the AFA’s fabulous and not-so-opaque communications, here’s what they really mean:

Newsweek magazine has published a very, very, very, very, very long article stating that the Bible supports homosexual marriage. The article was written Lisa Miller, Newsweek religion editor – for now.

Miller’s article is one of the most biased (and long) and distorted (and long) pieces in favor of homosexual marriage ever published by any liberal news organization. The article is much, much, much too long for this e-mail. It’s fewer kilobytes than some of the pornographic images that we’ve sent you in the past, but I promise – it’s much, much more boring, and will take much, much too much time to read.

Dr. Albert Mohler has offered a response to the Newsweek article. It’s a lot shorter. I suggest you read Mohler’s article instead, just to get the basic points. Then you can click on the Newsweek article link and leave impassioned comments about how very WRONG the author is. Don’t worry about not reading the article. Just quote some Bible verses and nobody will know! In fact, since most of you haven’t read the entire Bible either, Dr. Mohler has even been kind enough to tell you exactly which passages to cite in your comments, and how to interpret them. God bless him!

OMG. So… I did read the article, AND some of the raving comments, on one of my study breaks. Best quote ever, in the comments section. This woman rails on the author, making personal attacks against her, questioning her journalism credentials, suggesting that she might be better suited to write for the National Enquirer, saying her editor is crazy and greedy for allowing the article to be printed, and just generally insulting her for daring to suggest that the Bible might actually condone inclusivity.

Then, she innocently laments:

“As an American, I am beginning to feel persecuted for my religious beliefs…and becoming a minority. Will Christian Americans be given the same level of tolerance we have given to others???”

Oh, precious, I hope so.

Missing atheist sign found in Washington state – CNN.com.

The scene in Washington state is not unfamiliar. Barker has had signs in Madison, Wisconsin, for 13 years. The placard is often turned around so the message can't be seen, and one year, someone threw acid on it, forcing the group to encase it in Plexiglas.

Boy, I guess acid is a popular tool of violent suppression, isn’t it?

What the fuck, man?

Anaheim officer mistakenly kills man on his front lawn.

But on the bright side, he was innocent. Wait – what?!?!

I’m sure it came as SUUUUUCH a relief to Julian Alexander’s family that the police have proclaimed that he was “was innocent of anything that the officer suspected was going on in the neighborhood.”

No, really – it’s precious:

“Anaheim Police Chief John Welter met with about 30 members of Alexander’s family Tuesday afternoon at a news conference. While not coming out and saying it was the department’s fault, Chief Welter wanted Alexander’s family to know that the 20-year-old, in the department’s eyes, was an innocent bystander in this incident.”

Fantastic. I’m sure that line went over great at the FUNERAL. “Well, we’ve lost our beloved son, grandson, husband, soon-to-be father because he looked like the suspects (in that he was black, and that’s pretty much it)… but on the bright side, the police say he didn’t do anything to deserve this! What a relief!”

To be somewhat fair to the police, I think the family had asked them to specify in their news release that he was an innocent bystander – but still! This reminds me of the way they used to test women for witchcraft by weighting them down with stones and putting them in the water. If the women survived, they were guilty and sent to be hanged. If they drowned, well, at least their families could take consolation in the fact that they were innocent…

So sad – the kid was only 20 years old – and his wife was 7 months pregnant at the time. She’s due this month.