Dead Racists Society

I had forgotten about this. Well, I'd never actually seen this video clip, but I recall Alan Keyes claiming that allowing gays to marry and have children would lead to incest because said children wouldn't know who their siblings are. Which is a perfect example of the above mock-definition.

Anyways, hearing about this "argument" again just put me in mind of this:

It becomes necessary, at this point, to protect your daughter from your own history in the field of race relations. She must never learn that you have been a firm believer in segregation in the streets and integration between the sheets, because your arguments in favor of racial purity might become suspect. The late William E. B. Du Bois once expressed it thus:

The rape which you gentlemen have inflicted on helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two million mulattoes, and written in ineffable blood.

It would be interesting to know what your daughter would think if she realized that a few of the black boys toward whom she now throws flirtatious glances are actually her blood brothers. Here is where I join you in fearing interracial marriage. Such a marriage might be incestuous. Wouldn't you agree?

This was written mostly tongue-in-cheek, I think, as an open letter to all white people who fear that their daughters might marry a Negro, providing them with "tips" on how to avoid such a catastrophe. Published in Clotye Larsson, ed., Marriage Across the Color Line, p. 37.

I found this on a Google search the other night. It's hilarious--an attempt to show that the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were coded symbols of white supremacy:

Let us take each ranger, one at a time first.

Billy - the blue ranger:

Billy, the awkward and shyest of the teens plays perfectly into the "geek" stereotype. With his generic side-parted hair-do and his thick circular glasses, he just gives off the Slashdot vibe. He is quiet and shy, yet good with technology, making inventions for the rangers.

Kimberly - the pink ranger:

Young Kimberly Hart is the ditzy and materialistic ranger who undergoes a change of hart to become a compassionate and caring individual with a hart of gold. ok, enough lame hart jokes. The pink ranger is the more attractive of the two female rangers. She is also the most feminine. Notice her Ranger suit actually as a skirt (although why is a mystery) to emphesize the fact that she's a girl, as if the hot pink outfit wasn't enough. My main problem with her is this: She is the one ranger with a slight bit of sex appeal for young boys (the primary audience). The pink ranger basically teaches the youth of this country to associate pink with sex. Something that most guys have no trouble seeing the connection between.

Now, I know what you're thinking. We have class stereotypes and sexism, but where is this promised racism? Well, here it is.

Zack - the black ranger:

As black ranger, Zack gained enhanced strength, speed, and durablity. Meaning, of course, he bacame the perfect athlete. Figure this one out. The only black member of the team just happens to be the black ranger? It was pounded into kids' skulls that this guy was black. And just look at the typical 90's rapper-wannabe hair-do Zack sports. A quick note: the black ranger shares the name of our 12th president, Zachary Taylor, who was the first president to make an attempt to eliminate slavary... might as well have called him Abe Lincoln.

Trini - the yellow ranger:

Trini is described as the quiet and spiritual ranger. She also happens to be Asian. This goes back to the black ranger; black guy, black ranger; Asian girl, yellow ranger. Seems somewhat suspicious to me. Trini was never a major character, but everything from her name (Trini Kwan) to her look is stereotypical of an Asian-American.

Jason - the red ranger:

Jason is strong and brave. What could this possibly have to do with racism, you ask. Well, Jason is obviously Native American (at least in part). Once again, the color of the suit discloses information about the wearer. The proud heratige of the Native American is reduced to one word: "redskin"

Tommy - the green ranger:

When I was first exploring this theory, I saw no connection between the evil green Tommy and the rest of the racist rangers and I decided to write that he was the one shining ray of hope in this screwed up series... but I soon reconsidered.

Tommy - the white ranger:

When Tommy changes his evil ways, he becomes the white ranger. The strongest and purest of all the rangers, he is strong, fierce, and completely uncorruptable. I was having some trouble swallowing this one. What did this have to do with anything? Suddenly, it came to me: He is strongest, fastest, and overall most powerful of all the rangers; he is the perfect ranger. Hence the white.

I'm not sure where he gets the idea that the Red Ranger was Native American. Actually, I think that the Green/White Ranger is Native American.

So apparently some (well-funded) crackpots are making a movie, Expelled, about how intelligent design is being shunned by scientists, some sort of conspiracy by Big Science to keep the edgy, new theory from getting its due hearing.

Okay, fine. Typical martyr-posturing by the I.D. / creationist / fundie crowd. And, to rub salt in the wound, they're releasing it on Darwin's birthday in 2008.

Except...

Unlike some other documentary films, Expelled doesn't just talk to people representing one side of the story. The film confronts scientists such as Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, influential biologist and atheist blogger PZ Myers and Eugenie Scott, head of the National Center for Science Education. The creators of Expelled crossed the globe over a two-year period, interviewing scores of scientists, doctors, philosophers and public leaders. The result is a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.

The thing is, they didn't do this as the makers of Expelled; they came up to PZ saying they were making a movie called Crossroads, about the intersection between science and religion.

So they lied about what they were doing to show what good Christians they are. Sounds about right.

Jonathan Schwarz drudges up a YouTube video of Dick Cheney from April '94, explaining why deposing Saddam Hussein would have been such a very bad idea in the first Gulf War. Here's part of it:

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?

You know, I used to just assume that the Bush administration didn't even bother thinking about these sorts of things before charging gung-ho to topple a country. If they were incompetent lackwits without an ounce of foresight, that was bad enough. But if they actually had thought of these objections, and still didn't do any post-war planning, and went and conquered Baghdad anyways... that's just fucking sadistic.

There's also this ironic quip from Cheney:

[T]he question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgement [sic] was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

So, 146+ dead Americans was too steep a price to pay for the removal of Saddam Hussein back in 1994. But in 2007, 3500+ dead Americans is well worth deposing that same man, after he got rid of anything that made him a possible danger.

Inflation's a bitch.

38 years ago today, man first walked on the moon.

"The Eagle has landed."

And yes, dammit, we landed on the moon. I think Buzz Aldrin has the right idea on how to deal with moon-deniers.

Denialism Blog has a post up, Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? This is a topic that's come up quite a bit in my house lately--specifically with regard to those who don't believe we landed on the moon--so I thought it might be of interest. One thing that they highlight that may be significant is this:

So what kind of thought processes contribute to belief in conspiracy theories? A study I carried out in 2002 explored a way of thinking sometimes called "major event - major cause" reasoning. Essentially, people often assume that an event with substantial, significant or wide-ranging consequences is likely to have been caused by something substantial, significant or wide-ranging.

I gave volunteers variations of a newspaper story describing an assassination attempt on a fictitious president. Those who were given the version where the president died were significantly more likely to attribute the event to a conspiracy than those who read the one where the president survived, even though all other aspects of the story were equivalent.

To appreciate why this form of reasoning is seductive, consider the alternative: major events having minor or mundane causes - for example, the assassination of a president by a single, possibly mentally unstable, gunman, or the death of a princess because of a drunk driver. This presents us with a rather chaotic and unpredictable relationship between cause and effect. Instability makes most of us uncomfortable; we prefer to imagine we live in a predictable, safe world, so in a strange way, some conspiracy theories offer us accounts of events that allow us to retain a sense of safety and predictability.

But I also found this very interesting:

Age is not the only demographic to influence conspiracy beliefs. Several US studies have found that ethnic minorities - particularly African and Hispanic Americans - are far more believing of conspiracy theories than white Americans. In our recent UK study, we found a similar race effect, coupled with an even stronger association between income and belief levels. People who describe themselves as "hard up" are more likely to believe in conspiracies than those with average income levels, while the least likely to believe are the well off.

How can we account for the link between race, income level and conspiracy theories? Theorists tend to show higher levels of anomie - a general disaffection or disempowerment from society. Perhaps this is the underlying factor that predisposes people more distant from centres of power - whether they be poorer people or those from ethnic minorities - to believe in conspiracies.

Essentially, societal disempowerment increases the probability of belief. One could read this two ways. First, that disempowerment leads to coping mechanisms to protect one's ego. You're not poor and powerless because you are unintelligent, or are lazy, or some other simple explanation. It's because the man is keeping you down. The system is against you. A perceived enemy at odds with you is easier to face than one's own defects.

A second explanation - that the wealthy and elite are no more rational than the disempowered, but because of their status, they have no desire to rock the boat.

In comments, someone offers a third possibility:

Third explanation: you are poor and disconnected, so you don't have access to education and trustworthy information, you cannot develop a rigorous, scientific way of thinking or a stock of general information for checking facts, and, ultimately, you believe the first load of BS you receive, because you cannot detect it.

And someone else touches on something that occurred to me in relation to the point in the main article:

It seems to me that most (if not all) of the wildest theories preface their particular version with stories about past government lies (or theories about lying). As if to say...'see, they've done it before'

For instance, when Spike Lee appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher in October, 2005, he (and Maher, to a degree) defended the wild theory that the government conspired to blow up the dams by pointing to other things that have gone wrong. A partial transcript:

Maher: And this past Saturday, Louis Farrakhan did a kind of reunion of the Million Man March--I don't think we got a million people this time. But, uh, he was saying, last Saturday in Washington, that he thinks that the federal government--there was a conspiracy to actually blow up those levees so that they would flood the poor, black districts in New Orleans. I have to tell you, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I don't believe it. But, when you see some of the things that have gone on in this country....

Lee: Exactly. It's not far-fetched.

...

Michel Martin: We can all understand, anybody with any knowledge of history can understand why a lot of people would feel this way. That that's a reasonable theory.

Martin also disagreed with the theory but prefaced her remarks with the above conciliatory message to Lee. And when she objected, Lee brought up the 2004 elections--"If they can rig an election, they can do anything!"

But furthermore, Lee went on to say that because blacks have traditionally suffered at the hands of whites, this theory was not beyond the pale, specifically bringing up the Tuskegee Experiment when another guest, Tucker Carlson, objected (and I never thought I'd be rooting for Tucker Carlson):

Lee: We're in L.A. And there's an emergency situation. We call from Beverly Hills, and we call from Compton, which one the cops coming to first? [Here the audience applauded]

...

Lee: [To Carlson, after he objected] With the history of this country... have you ever heard of the Tuskegee experiment?

...

Lee: I don't put anything past the American government when it comes to people of color in this country, I'm sorry.

To Lee, the fact that black people suffered--and continue to suffer--at the hands of larger society was proof enough that this conspiracy theory was feasible. So I might add that a fourth option is: those who are societally disempowered have learned to fear and distrust the power structure that shuns and rejects them and, because of their past experiences with the system, are willing to believe anything bad about it; that it has no limits.

It may also be that those who are disempowered tend to overestimate the power of the system, for any number of reasons (simply because they are not a part of it and can't objectively judge it; because it is larger than they are and therefore they project god-like size to it; etc.). This may help them to rationalize conspiracy theories which would require nigh-unfathomable resources, where "everyone is in on it." In fact, this conspiracy may simply reflect the power system that they are not a part of, which would again allow them to accept that "everyone is in on it."

Further, disenfranchised groups may be more likely to accept conspiracy theories like this, where there is not a shred of evidence and everything "logically" must be "covered up" because historically their voices have not been heard. So they don't find it so unreasonable that other voices have been silenced by "the Man" or whatever.

Well, that's a enough mindless speculation based on a single incident.... Besides, we all know that belief in conspiracy theories are caused by bumper stickers.

For the first time in our history, a Hindu chaplain gave the daily prayer that opened the Senate proceedings yesterday. According to Reuters Hajan Zed had been invited by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And it didn't sit well with people who don't seem to get that the Constitution nowhere says "for Christians only". Ed Brayton has several reactions already, along with a YouTube video of the prayer and concomitant disruption. I am endlessly amused by the bed-wetting fears that now that we have had a single prayer by a Hindu man in the Senate, after centuries of Christian prayers, this one event will incur God's wrath and is proof that the government is hostile to the Christian majority while coddling minority religions.

But my favorite response is that by David Barton, the man responsible for spreading numerous fraudulent quotes from the Founding Fathers trying to show that the United States was created a "Christian" country:

WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto "One Nation Under God."

Which, aside from being wrong, is exactly the reason that this sort of thing is unconstitutional. Because it does favor--rather unabashedly so--a monotheistic religion over a polytheistic, or even henotheistic, religion.

Not everyone's happy covering Paris Hilton:

An American newsreader has refused to talk about Paris Hilton's release from jail - instead shredding, ripping up and attempting to set on fire copies of the story.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe program, anchor Mika Brzezinski lashed out at producers for continually choosing the Paris Hilton release story as the news bulletin's lead.

"No, I hate this story and I don't think it should be our lead ... My producer Andy Jones is not listening to me. He's put it as the lead," she said as she took a fellow anchor's cigarette lighter and tried to burn the script.

[Edit] The article provides a video of that segment, but here's a YouTube version for those so inclined.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Season 1, Volume 2, to be released October 9!

Alabama State Senator Charles Bishop hit Senator Lowell Baron in the middle of the Senate floor. Quoting from the Birmingham News blog post:

Bishop in an interview later said Barron called him a s...o...b, so he hit Barron in the face.

"If he calls me that again, it'll happen again," Bishop said.

I happen to like one of the commenter's endings for the tale:

And, then they looked into eachother's eyes, realized their passion for eachother and started open-mouth kissing.

Years later, their spouses and children learned about it in secret memoirs

But the best part is, it was caught on tape!

At least Fox News seems to think so.

Silly Lou Dobbs. Everyone knows you don't get leprosy from "unscreened illegal immigrants coming into this country primarily from South Asia", but from Negroes.

Although if this is what counts as "far better reporting", then I suspect that such unabashed, blatant racism might very well cause leprosy in more sensitive viewers.

Have you ever wanted to see a bear kill a moose and eat its heart? Well, apparently now you can!

Gary got up, expecting to see a bear in the trash or a similar scene. He saw the bear all right, but the rest of the scene was beyond imagination.

Gary and Terri wound up with front-row seats as brown bear killed a full-grown moose less than 20 feet away from their home.

"I saw this wildlife spectacle of a full-grown brown bear on a moose and the moose fighting for its life," Gary recalled Monday, admitting he was still rattled by the incident.

The couple ran downstairs and got the dog (who was remarkably quiet) inside. Then they got their cameras out.

The bear worked the moose down the driveway and finally killed it.

"She tore apart the chest cavity, ripped out the heart and ate it," Gary said. "It was like she knew that's what kept it alive."

Meanwhile, the digital cameras clicked – and rolled – as the entire incident was documented in both still and video footage. The video footage is now viewable on YouTube (type in "moose kill driveway" into the YouTube search bar.)

The video is in three parts:
Part the first
Part the second
Part the third
Enjoy!

At last, America has its revenge!

Watching the Hollywood film "Babel" could make viewers feel ill, its Japanese distributor said in national newspaper advertisements published on Wednesday.

At least 15 people have complained of feeling sick while watching the film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett since it was released in Japan on April 28, a spokeswoman for distributors Gaga Communications said.

...

[A] scene in ... a night-club where strobe lights flash for about a minute has made some Japanese movie-goers queasy.

That's punishment for your Battling Seizure Robots Pocket Monsters!

Last week there was a hearing concerning the Bush administration's use of extraordinary rendition. You know, where people were kidnapped, flown to foreign countries and tortured based on mere suspicion of terrorist activities. Well, apparently if you have a problem with that, Representative Dana Rohrabacher thinks that you're un-American and hopes your family dies in terrorist attacks.

With eyes narrowed and mouth in a contorted grimace, Congressman Rohrabacker [sic] attacked the two British and one Italian members of the European Parliament who testified before the committee. Reminding one of Joe McCarty [sic] in tone and substance, Rohrabacker [sic] demeaned and degraded the report and chastised, belittled and berated the Parliamentarians. Remarkably, Rohrabacker [sic] said the most of the CIA private flights that landed in Europe were to transport CIA agents all over the world, not to move prisoners. Yet the logs of the 1245 flights have been tied by date and location to the movement of specific individual prisoners from one location to another.

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American.

Citing historic examples of other countries kidnapping persons, Rohrabacker said Israel had every right to kidnap Nazi official Adolph Eichmann from Argentina, bring him to Israel and execute him. Rohrabacher conveniently forgot to mention that the Israeli government did put Eichmann on trial, a trial which none of those who have been extraordinarily rendered have had. Rohrabacher then attacked and belittled the European Community for outlawing the death penalty saying that "You in the European community won't stand up to evil people, you won't execute them. Eichmann deserved to be executed, just like these terrorists must be executed."

Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were "rendered" and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.

...

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher's statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: "I hope it's your family members that die when terrorists strike."

Col. Wright is mistaken; his actual words were "Well, I hope it's your families, I hope it's your families that suffer the consequences." But the tone is the same. Video and transcript of part of the hearing via Think Progress.

Let's just file this together with Giuliani's infamous "vote for a Republican OR DIE!" statement. How much more blatant can they get?

Some more of Rohrabacher's ghastly tirade:

One person — if we let, if in order to protect the rights of one or two people, or five people or ten people, who are mistakenly abducted because their names were the same or because they went to a mosque that they didn't know this thing was going on in the back room, if 10 of those people suffer those consequences, but in order for us to take 90 other people off the street who are intent and involved in plans that would slaughter tens of thousands of our citizens, I'm afraid that's the price we pay in a real world.

Stephen Colbert explains what Rohrabacher meant:

That's a good point. We pay the price of having to torture innocent people. It feels terrible. So why are they complaining? Congressman Rohrabacher's real point is tonight's Word: "Better Safe Than Sorry."

...

And I'm sure, as a patriot, he'd have no problem if he were accidentally scooped up by masked men and taken to a secret facility to be tortured. He'd put his money where his mouth is. ["Inside Burlap Sack"] And folks, the CIA doesn't need to do that with the congressman because 'Rohrabacher' doesn't sound like a terrorist. ["Except The Part About Kidnapping Innocent People"]

The Bush administration apparently cannot stand the possibility that gays might get any sort of protections.

Just hours after the White House issued a veto threat Thursday, the House voted to add gender and sexual orientation to the categories covered by federal hate crimes law.

The House legislation, passed 237-180, also makes it easier for federal law enforcement to take part in or assist local prosecutions involving bias-motivated attacks. Similar legislation is also moving through the Senate, setting the stage for another veto showdown with President Bush.

...

The White House, in a statement warning of a veto, said state and local criminal laws already cover the new crimes defined under the bill, and there was "no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement."

Well, let's see. According to this table from the Anti-Defamation League (warning: PDF), in 2006 there were 17 states without laws criminalizing hate crimes based on sexual orientation, 23 for gender, and 19 for disabilities.

Republicans, in a parliamentary move that would have effectively killed the bill, tried to add seniors and the military to those qualifying for hate crimes protection. It was defeated on a mainly party-line vote.

Yeah, we see all sorts of hate crimes against geriatrics and servicemen. Much more than the 1,171 offenses based on sexual orientation (including, mind, 23 heterosexuals) in 2005. This out of a total 8,380 incidents--so nearly one in seven hate crimes are based on sexual orientation. That's not even mentioning attacks based on gender or disability. But no, it's not something that the Bush administration needs bother with.

Typically, religious people started whining that hate crimes legislation would prevent them from being the bigoted assholes that they are.

Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, warned that the true intent of the bill was "to muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality." If you read the Bible in a certain way, he told his broadcast listeners, "you may be guilty of committing a 'thought crime.'"

I guess "Dr." Dobson never heard of the 1st amendment. You know, that little thing that guarantees the right of free speech?

Similarly, House Minority Leader John Boehner doesn't quite comprehend what all the hubbub is about.

I really don't understand it. We're going to put into place a federal law that says, not only will we punish you for the crime that you actually commit — the physical crime that you commit — but we're also going to charge you with a crime that if we think that you were thinking bad things about this person before you committed a crime.

I wonder if Boehner is also against the existing hate crimes laws, then, or if his opposition to them only comes up when it might punish people who beat fags to death.

But hey, why should religious people like Dobson care about hate crimes legislation for gays? After all, they've already got theirs!

Hate crimes under current federal law apply to acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion, color, or national origin. Federal prosecutors have jurisdiction only if the victim is engaged in a specific federally protected activity such as voting.

Which makes statements such as this just laughable:

"Our criminal justice system has been built on the ideal of equal justice for all," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "Under this bill justice will no longer be equal, but depend on the race, sex, sexual orientation, disability or status of the victim."

No no no, you flaming imbecile. For one, race is already protected. Further, 'justice' isn't dependent on the nature of the victim, but on the nature of the crime committed. You know, like how we deem some crimes to be worthy of more jail time than others?

But hey, maybe I'm being too harsh on the Bush administration; maybe it's not homophobia that's motivating them. After all, it's not like they care about other hate crimes, either.

Via onegoodmove, I stumbled across a blog entry that has some videos available of the Connecticut Judiciary Committee hearing regarding the Marriage Equality Bill (and links to other sites with more items).

And watching some of this could go a long way to explaining why the committee voted as it did. The testimony against the bill is ludicrous. You have people ranting--well, actually, I'm not sure "ranting" is the right word. They're not good enough public speakers to "rant"; instead they're kinda droning on. But they're complaining about: contraception; immorality; how the word "gay" no longer means the same thing it used to; people marrying animals; polygamy; the fact that there are no "heterosexual-only" drinking fountains or bus seats; the bizarre claim that there's no federal legislation discriminating against gays (a legislator brought up Don't Ask, Don't Tell); Canada; and how people feel discriminated against because they're Christian and they're not allowed to tell other people what to do. None of it made the least bit compelling arguments, and it just made them all look like idiots.

Yeah, these are only partial clips taken out of context specifically to make these testimonials look ridiculous. But geez, the people who did it had their work cut out for them.

Connecticut's Judiciary Committee voted 27-15 to legalize gay marriage yesterday. I think this story demonstrates two basic facets of this whole debate: 1) those opposed are opposed because they think there is something fundamentally different between an opposite-sex couple and a same-sex couple:

[Bruce] Morris, a minister at Bethel AME Church in Norwalk, said critics of his opposition to gay marriage believe it is only on religious grounds.

"What I'm arguing is this really is not a right, based on the inherent differences between a same-sex (and a) heterosexual couple," said Morris, who supports civil unions. "I believe 'gender-neutral' has its value, but not within a marriage. (There are) psychological and emotional differences between a husband and wife, and they don't nurture in the same way."

Of course, from here you have to leap the logical chasm to conclude that therefore same-sex couples don't have the same rights as opposite-sex ones. And just what this "difference" is, is never explicitly stated. I recall a debate I got into in the comments of another blog on the eve of the New Jersey decision saying that same-sex couples have to be given all the rights of opposite-sex ones. One commenter declared:

Opposite-sex couples effect society differently than do same-sex couples, and this effect that is the birth of children compels the state to make these classifications as the means that are rationally related to the legitimate governmental purpose that is to control or ameliorate the consequences of their relationships.

Nearly everything he had to say was related to children: either child-rearing or childbirth. But this isn't a real difference--as I tried pointing out to him, there are hundreds of thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples right now (warning: PDF).

Of course, after having tried to deny gay couples rights because of spurious arguments about children, when I pointed out that these couples do have children, he suddenly had no clue why children mattered to the argument.

Anyways. The second important facet is that when people realize that gay people aren't any different, and that this is merely invidious and arbitrary discrimination, they tend to become more sympathetic:

The most emotional plea came from a Judiciary Committee member who several colleagues apparently did not know was homosexual.

State Rep. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, spoke candidly through tears about her Catholic family's gradual acceptance of her relationship with another woman and what the term marriage means to them.

Bye, who is in a civil union, said she is often listed as "other," "husband," or "a party" to their relationship on medical and other official forms.

"The broader world doesn't see me as married," Bye told the Judiciary Committee. "I'm the only one sitting here who's living it every day, and I tell you, it's not trivial . . . I don't want to be 'other' anymore. I want to be married."

Opponents such as Kissel admit it was difficult to cast a "no" vote in light of their colleagues' comments.

"I would like to think I'm a compassionate individual," Kissel told the Judiciary Committee.

As Jon Stewart noted to Bill Bennett (starting around 2:15),

Stewart: Dick Cheney would be a perfect candidate for someone who wants to ban gay marriage. Is that--would that be correct? The ultra-conservative, draconian... drinks the blood of puppies. He's a guy... he's the guy... wouldn't he be a guy that is... he's the, he's the perfect candidate for a guy who wants to ban gay marriage, no? But he's against it. If you look at his voting pattern, social conservative, he's a social conservative.

Bennett: He's a social conservative.

Stewart: But he's not against gay marriage. Why is that?

Bennett: Because of his experience with his daughter.

And again, from the above-mentioned testimony of Ms. Bye:

But the most powerful moment came when state Rep. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, spoke publicly for the first time at the legislature about her own gay lifestyle. As tears rolled down her cheeks, Bye told members of the committee how her deeply religious father has come to accept and support her gay lifestyle and her partner.

"My father, a devout Catholic, ... has moved on this issue because he loves his daughter.

When people come to realize that gays are real people, instead of "the homosexual" which homophobic people talk about--the one who has 1000+ partners in their lifetime, who has STDs unknown to hetero man, who preys on young children, who flaunts their sexuality by having sex in public, who die 20 years before everyone else, who walk naked down the street in their wild bacchanalia known better as "Gay Pride Parades"--when people realize all that is complete crap and gays are no different than they are... then they become more accepting of gay rights.

And finally... I am amused how people against gay marriage always bitch about gays suing for their rights, declaring that such change should come from the legislative branch and not the judicial branch. And yet in the cases where the legislative branch does try to effect such change, the executive branch decides that's not good enough, either, and has to veto it.

A while ago, my brother asked me to find a clip of an exchange he saw briefly during Al Gore's testimony to Congress. Through a bit of serendipity, I stumbled across it today--now you too can watch Barbara Boxer tell James Inhofe that Republicans don't run things now because "elections have consequences."

Poor Senator Inhofe. Not only because Senator Boxer pointed out that he can't unilaterally make decisions anymore, but because he has to suffer through Gore's testimony about global warming in the first place. Because, as he knows, global warming is like Hitler's "Big Lie", and "An Inconvenient Truth" is tantamount to Mein Kampf.

But don't bother to call Inhofe names. He's heard 'em all, and he's proud of them.

Wayne Besen, of Truth Wins Out, an organization devoted to countering disinformation spread by ex-gays and anti-gays, appeared on The Daily Show the other day. YouTube video here.

All I can say is--that kiss at the end? Hot.

...well, I could probably say more. But maybe after a cold shower or something.