why does a country that finally got it together to put an african-american in the oval office still hate gays?

the california precincts are still weighing in on prop 8 but the bigots are winning. it's embarrassing how conservative california is in the main once you get past the liberal/educated coastal counties.

supposed liberal hotbed l.a. county is 52.9% "yes" on the ban so far (with 10% of precincts reporting).

again, blame the church of hater day saints and their $20 million campaign ...it's not a done deal yet though. the last report i saw from a half hour ago said 21% of precincts reporting it's passing 54 o 46%, but which precincts are still counting is the question

very disheartening.

Also this is v interesting: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/democracy/106102/the_man_behind_proposition_8/

"The Man Behind Proposition 8" - >

While the Church of Latter Day Saints’ public role in Prop 8 has engendered a growing backlash from its more liberal members, and Broekhuizen’s involvement attracted some media attention, the extreme politics of Prop 8’s third largest private donor, Howard F. Ahmanson, reclusive heir to a banking fortune, have passed almost completely below the media’s radar. Ahmanson has donated $900,000 to the passage of Prop 8 so far.

i am assuming this is unrelated to the ahmanson center

ah, manson

Sucks if it passes, but it's just a momentary setback in the march to the inevitable.

Sadly, unsurprising. It's the big reason why I'm not all whoo-hoo! about today -- gains are often conditional and asynchronous.

^^^^ exactly how i feel, ned

^^^^^

i still don't understand how the marriages performed between May and now are going to be deemed illegitimate now...will someone just take this to court?

i KNOW actual people who've gotten married, and my heart really goes out to them... IF this passes. i still want to clutch onto a small glimmer of hope

cmon west hollywood

Don't get me wrong, a great day on many levels -- just not on all.

Also, as I argued on my blog a while back, I still think this -- fifty years ago if you had thought there'd be a political wrangle this widespread over gay marriage that was actually closeish in the polls, you would have been the member of an extreme minority. There is progress, there just isn't always a smooth, clear road, and it will always come too late for many.

prop 8 and the presidential election are not really analogous in any real way. It's not like this election was a grand referendum on tolerance and all outcomes would point in the same direction.

ya know, i get some people being a bit o_O about gays... i don't think it's right, but i can understand it... but to ACTIVELY vote for something like this... it just blows my mind that people can be so ignorant and selfish and hateful.

The more heartbreaking story here is Florida, where the lead was unfortunately clear. :(
I'm still holding out hope against Prop 8.

i have just spent so much time parsing this phrase "traditional marriage" and wondering if there's actually one unequivocal, categorical definition for what it is.

Much like desegregation of schools in the 1950s (bad analogy maybe), public opinion may trail legal proceedings by a generation. Gay marriage is going to happen, and people who oppose it will just have to get over their prejudices eventually.

hey! i just got a txt saying that LA County is yet to be counted...that's huge!

i'm holding out on a prayer (to Ganymedes, teh GAY god of gheys)

counted in full

Come on LA!!!!!

minor question, but have any of the bay area counties been counted yet?

They might go against this proposition I gather. just a hunch.

gay is the new black

"domestic gay" is the new "trendy bi"

Obama is the new president!

gay divorce is the new cockring

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-2008election-california-results,0,1293859.htmlstory?view=8&tab=0&fnum=0

hope that works

I thought it was a pretty big deal that he said "gay or straight" in his speech. Srsly has anyone ever said something like that in a presidential victory speech?

Nope.

president of the log cabin?

Not even 10% of Alameda County counted yet!!!
And that's including a whole lotta L.A. County that's not counted yet too.

Please please please please

he first included gays in his convention speech 4 years ago, and on the national stage that was unprecedented

l.a. is very meaningful here -- many of the winning counties are large geographically but small in population, so it only looks like they're collectively clobbering the "no" counties.

I wonder if he'll soften his gay marriage position now that the election is over.

Except for SF and Marin counties, several Bay Area counties are low in counts. You never know, guys.

gains are often conditional and asynchronous

iirc the day of the 06 dem sweep was a totally shitty day prop-wise, i just hate the proposition system as currently configured, i mean prop 13 is still sacrosanct ffs. we got a mailer last week saying obama was for prop 8 fwiw, got a robocall correcting it today, dunno how widely they spread that shit.

barney frank for treasury secretary?

that la times real-time update link...is making my heart beat fast. i've just gotten a hell of a more nervous just since clicking on it

t-t-trepidations

San Bernardino looks really badass compared to even some U.S. STATES! So, yeah, big car/little dick, etc. ok maybe not best analogy but buzzed again lol

wtf is up w/ mono county?

at least you guys have finally embraced not-disabled people on the national stage, be proud

PS in case you were interested in any other state ballot initiatives...

< 1 oz. of marijuana now decriminalized

mono

(sorry)

Mono county has like 300 people, I think, anyway. I've driven through it, and it made Inyo county seem like a metropolis.

i am assuming this is unrelated to the ahmanson center

I *think* the Ahmanson Center guy is Howard Ahmanson's father. (not 100% sure)

i am SO gonna rip some gay nuptial bonghits if i ever get hitched in MA

who lives in Kern County? 75% yes

wtf is up w/ mono county?

Mono County is one of the few remaining Republican majority counties left (which in itself is weird because of all the hippies who work for the Mono Lake committee).

It's still pretty much farmers angry at big cities and the Metropolitan Water District.

The LA times link gives me hope. And scares me silly. I may not sleep tonight...

but whatever man, you otm so let's move on.

dude, I apologize if it seems that way, but my point was that if I could find find those arguments frustrating, despite agreeing with them, then imagine how they'd sound to people who weren't sure

it certainly wasn't intended as a personal criticism, and I apologize to anyone who received it as one -- it was a comment, ironically enough, about how rhetoric can be received

^^ which kinda shows me, in terms of petard-hoisting

can't really fathom elmo's mother thing on this thread. Can't tell if you were joking, but did you insert your mother into this argument as a way of making it a personal attack on you if someone disagrees with you? I'm pretty glad this isn't a usual ilx tactic.

For what it's worth, like Elmo, I can think of countless older people I know who have no antipathy to homosexuality, are full-throatedly against negative discrimination against gay people, have no weird ideas about the gay people in their personal lives, and yet, when it comes to marriage, hit a point of major internal conflict, because it threatens one of their basic understandings of how society operates

this seems inherently paradoxical to me.

like, just because y'all are taking a "hay guyz there's shades of grey" line, doesn't mean that the waters aren't muddied with bad shit. Like basically why does this change "their basic understandings of how society operates". Its like you're not following the tail all the way.

Just quick: Elmo was responding to the claim that it was impossible for someone to be generally "okay" with homosexuality but still have reservations about gay marriage specifically. He wasn't inserting family members as a way of making it a personal attack -- he was mentioning a family member as a way of saying "these people exist, and I know because I know one of them very closely."

This is kind of just an argument about what we mean by "okay," but I really do strongly feel that Elmo's right here -- that there are any number of people whose basic impulse here is to try and be fair-minded, who aren't harboring any immense bigotry, but have a big cultural idea about the issue of marriage. If you want to argue that that's objectively anti-gay, then yes, there's a fair argument there; but I think Elmo's point here is that it's more productive to engage those people more directly, and not just say "well if you're against gay marriage then you are anti-gay, period."

first person to suggest that my mom doesn't REALLY support me gets the full force of my untethered rage, btw.

― elmo argonaut, Friday, March 6, 2009 9:35 PM (Yesterday)

Fine, but if the root of their position is bigotry, then isn't trying to appeal in a way that doesn't take this into consideration a bit daft. Like if its a spade, and you think it might be then let's call it that, you know, for the sake of argument.

also, you know when you call such a wide swath of the voting population "bigots" you are calling potential voters dead to you on ideological grounds? my argument this whole time is that we have to engage these people and maybe get votes out of it

what is so hard to understand here

why does everyone have this pissy need to be RIGHT about shit, and why doesn't anybody want to get it DONE

I suppose I don't really care, I don't live in your country so whatevs.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/03/06/rank_incompetence

I'm just going to quote the OTM WTF? part of Dan Savage's piece here, all emphasis and link by Dan:

While the "Yes on 8" campaign was telling African Americans that Barack Obama opposed same-sex marriage, the "No on 8" campaign was sitting on a letter by BARACK FUCKING OBAMA that said this:

As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law. That is why I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same sex couples under both state and federal law... And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states. ...

Finally, I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks.

One of the "No on 8" campaign's highly-paid consultants says now—now—that "maybe we should have" used the letter during the campaign, perhaps in an effort to reach out to African American voters, or black preachers.

YEAH, THAT MIGHT'VE BEEN A GOOD FUCKING IDEA, YOU STUPID ASSHOLE.

Haha see that's rank fucking incompetence though. The issue wasn't that they didn't think it was a good idea to reach out to people, it's that they had no fucking clue how to run a successful campaign in any fashion. I mean you don't think using a letter by a guy who got close to 60% of the vote in the state of CA in some positive fashion for your campaign was a GOOD IDEA!?!?!

yes, but that rank incompetence did not play in the media cycle very well, leading to things like, say, the title of this thread

Lance Ian Black's speech

^^no one has commented on this yet?

also, you know when you call such a wide swath of the voting population "bigots" you are calling potential voters dead to you on ideological grounds? my argument this whole time is that we have to engage these people and maybe get votes out of it

what is so hard to understand here

elmo, what's so hard to understand about the fact that shame and the seizing some measure of moral high ground was a component of like all the civil rights issues heretofore in this country, if not ever country ever??? Not that it needs to be in the mix in the same proportion or expressed in the same way but there's something wtf about fleeing from any hint of moral certitude. it's like, all politics are about when you get down to it. no you don't lead with calling persuadable voters bigots obv. or being obnoxious etc but part of the black civil rights movement was about grabbing the semi-soft-bigots and pointing to say "whoa, look at those bigots over there, buncha savages", puts people's own attidudes in stark relief in a way that doesn't necessarily involve direct castigation. there's no villain that offers that type of traction here (until/unless the state california decides to officially become one here shortly) and if you're just uncomfortable with 'march of history' narratives altogether we'll just have to disagree but there's not *nothing* to this approach

okay, but if that moral certitude is possible, wouldn't it be most productive to have that be positively defined rather than being striking an oppositional stance towards opposing viewpoints in such a way that totally obscures how varied they are -- both varied on the reasons WHY people oppose gay marriage, as well as the DEGREE OF STRENGTH of their opposition

i'm not going to retread my entire argument but there were people on this thread completely resistant to the very simple concept of plurality amongst the opposition

I would like to point out that most of the people on this thread who were so resistant also have little to no contact with the "opposition". We SFers lead pretty sheltered lives.

And the opposition we do see tends to be the lunatic sign waving variety outside of our public buildings. It's distorting, ya know.

Moral certitude is not only possible, but obligatory.

it's fucking madness, but hardly surprising. my sincere condolences. the courts rolled over the "will of the people" hardcore in the South during the 60s-70s - just as they should have. how this is any different, I haven't a fucking clue. can any of the legal minds of ILX shed any light?

If all that the southern states had to do to stop civil rights was amend their own state constitutions, they would have. The problem for the southern states was that their actions violated the U.S. Constitution, and that's why the "will of the people" did not matter. If you can convince the U.S. Supreme Court that denying equal marriage rights to gays violates the U.S. Constitution, then that would be analagous.

RE: "marriage is a religious construct"

That's true, but for thousands of years and only up until the last couple of centuries, governments derived their authorities from religion. We've been trying to untangle the two since the enlightenment. But it's not really surprising that there are still knots to be untangled, and that some people are mentally unable to reconcile the notion of how a secular society might construct marriage with their sense of their own religious tradition AND how things have always been.

here's a hint: they mean gays should still be second class citizens who are excluded from the society's explicit approval

In my experience this goes the other way. It seems to me that for a lot of the most ardent gay marriage supporters that I know, the issue serves as a proxy for society's explicit acceptance of gays. But for the opponents that I know, it doesn't seem to be about using government in an expressive way about gays; it seems to be about a kind of Burkean discomfort with changing institutions + laziness and a lack of empathy. There's probably an ickiness factor involved too, but that seems to operate at a subconscious level for some.

there were people on this thread completely resistant to the very simple concept of plurality amongst the opposition

the plurarity amongst the opposition absolutely needs to be acknowledged and interrogated to a point but the message on the ground just isn't going to end up as granular as all this (except on a personal level, which is not what i've been talking about personally) is all i'm saying, and there's a way to wear self-righteousness well. it's jsut the challenge of any progressive movement.
i'm just getting visions of you and nabisco bankrolling 4-foot bumper stickers, i mean i'll buy one cuz youre the homies but dude :)

mister jim otm

shame and the seizing some measure of moral high ground was a component of like all the civil rights issues heretofore in this country, if not ever country ever???

In the terms that we've been having this conversation, this comparison is just absolutely untrue, I think! At NO point did the Civil Rights movement of the 60s have much ground to stand up and say that, e.g., segregation was wrong and anyone who thought otherwise was a rank bigot who wasn't worth talking to. Have you ever heard MLK talking that way about anyone? The mainstream of rhetoric in that movement was exactly the kind of rhetoric I was talking about way upthread, which involved (a) explaining the very simple human things you want, and why, (b) physically demonstrating exactly the ways those simple things were denied to you (lunch-counter sit-ins, marches, "I AM A MAN") and (c) calling on people positively to support that -- this is a moral high ground that invites people up onto it, not one that shames and shuns anyone who's even slightly down the slope. (Certainly not one that tells people they're either 100% on the high ground or else a bigot.) If black people in the 1960s south had taken the position that most everyone who opposed them was a bigot not worth bothering with, there would have been no Civil Rights movement on the streets.

One important reason for that, that's maybe relevant here: the mere fact of getting courts or the federal government to acknowledge the rights of African-Americans wouldn't be a complete victory if the actual white majority around them weren't on some level brought along; people needed to be won over as much as the state, for reasons that should be kind of obvious and empirical here. This isn't as much of an issue with gay marriage, it's true, because a lot of the rights involved are sort of privately exercised. But still, even if the Supreme Court magically conferred the right, and the possibility of a Constitutional amendment getting through was zero, the very next challenge would still be a social one, of working to get the people around you to respect those marriages. And this brings things right back to the level of engaging with people, a bit, doesn't it? I mean, maybe this doesn't matter, given the age factor, the way older people who are resistant to this stuff are constantly replaced by younger people who aren't -- but it seems to me that while it'd be a victory to win rights over the backs of people who oppose them, by beating them and going nyah-nyah-nyah bigots, it'd be a much bigger victory to win rights by engaging people, recognizing their stumbling blocks on the issue, and bringing them along with you.

(Alex, as far as places where you might find the non-lunatic opposition, I feel like if you went to any number of more-educated medium-sized Midwestern towns -- say, if you went to a middle-class neighborhood in Bloomington, Illinois and talked to some families -- you'd find plenty of the type we were talking about: people who want to be fair and non-discriminatory, but aren't sure about marriage, and aren't convinced that defining marriage the way they're used to defining it is really "discriminatory" so long as people can have civil unions or something. The best argument I can imagine making to them is "well, here are some specific things gay couples are deprived of by being excluded from the word 'marriage,' and do you really think they should be deprived of those things?")

^^^i really do like the points you've made here, nabisco...

my main concern with: the mere fact of getting courts or the federal government to acknowledge the rights of African-Americans wouldn't be a complete victory if the actual white majority around them weren't on some level brought along -- is that i would imagine there were probably 3-4 states in the deep south where it took until the 90s for a nominal majority of whites to truly appreciate the importance of equality for all. i say that because it likely took that long for enough people born after desegregation to reach adulthood, or enough of the old guard to simply pass away. Trent Lott's wistfulness for an alternate reality where Strom Thurmond had been president wasn't just good 'ol boy ball-fondling: he meant that stuff. Being from here, I can guarantee literally millions of others - even "normal", pleasant, white power group-disdaining, neighborly folk - feel similarly, even if they do so privately. Thank heavens for the Constitution and those willing to uphold it.

If you can convince the U.S. Supreme Court that denying equal marriage rights to gays violates the U.S. Constitution, then that would be analagous.

i'm certainly no master of Con Law, but my understanding leads me to the conclusion that it does violate the Constitution. Here's hoping for enough Justices to eventually agree.

my understanding

**in fairness - my brittle, child-like understanding

The mainstream of rhetoric in that movement was exactly the kind of rhetoric I was talking about way upthread, which involved (a) explaining the very simple human things you want, and why, (b) physically demonstrating exactly the ways those simple things were denied to you (lunch-counter sit-ins, marches, "I AM A MAN") and (c) calling on people positively to support that

dude ^ this is the message, not the takeaway, and if the movement started out thinking this and this alone was going to bring us home (if only), the movement was also smart enough as conditions changed to make stark the contrasts between itself v. the ugliness of the opposition and persuadable america themselves and the ugliness of their neighbors.
not that anyone welcomed that level of oppressive reaction but mlk, gandhi obv. understood the value of moral positioning in the midst of just those conditions and how it would play, i mean that seems like a great deal of the (tactical) purpose of nonviolent resistance, it's not rocket science. the movement was smart enough to drive the point home by not driving the point home as such but if you think the above affirmatives were all white onlookers were meant (or even likely) to take away from all those situations, and that that alone was enough to shift public support as planned i don't know what to say. i don't get the nyah nyah/not talking to bigots part, this may be a silly argument that deserves that type of extrapolation but that's not what i've heard here? btw at this point i'm reallly not looking to plow any of this into what this thread is about i just think your analysis is weird on this point

If you can convince the U.S. Supreme Court that denying equal marriage rights to gays violates the U.S. Constitution, then that would be analagous.

i'm certainly no master of Con Law, but my understanding leads me to the conclusion that it does violate the Constitution. Here's hoping for enough Justices to eventually agree.

Expect pro-gay marriage lawyers to base their case on the Fourteenth Amendment when it eventually goes before SCOTUS.

BUT HOW DOES IT AFFECT THEM PERSONALLY IF ONLY ONE EVEN ONE GAY COUPLE IS MARRIED?

This is how we will convince them. We will show them how it doesn't even fucking impact their life.

I personally have little patience with these idiots. I'd rather shit on them in bed at night.

But I know there are people out there who are not me who have the patience and a certain state of mind that could effectively persuade these fools, and I salute these people, I really do. I just don't have it. Me, personnally, I don't feel I have much to contribute. But there will be others who will, I feel sure of that. People who can persuade.

This is how we will convince them. We will show them how it doesn't even fucking impact their life.

i don't think this is true - people can be as insular as imaginable and still object to what they perceive to be society's ills: it's 'the breakdown of family' not the breakdown of my family, and i think family fits with marriage as being something that touches an awkward spot with nay-sayers (or yay-sayers, as it's prop 8). people aren't going to opt out and just deal with their own thing, as there's a general concern with what's happening to the society, and a tangential effect of thinking about how they'd interact with that society (which i know i know wouldn't affect them, but it might seem to in bogey-man terms). people object like they object to a thousand other things that won't affect them - rap music video game knife violence and underage pregnancy &c.

will, you're absolutely right about the civil rights movement not exactly bringing everybody magically along -- still, I think the (mainstream) tactics were up framed in a way that tried to get the job done while minimizing the inevitable resentments; I mean, take the rhetoric of the mainstream movement, which was really low on recriminations and really high on hopeful talk about a better future

tremendoid I don't know what distinction you're making between my saying "rhetoric" and your saying "message!" -- I agree completely with what you're saying about "making stark the contrasts between itself v. the ugliness of the opposition," which is actually what I feel like I've been urging on this thread, really. If supporters of gay marriage were to take the extreme position that their opponents were uniformly lunatics and bigots, surely that decreases the moral contrast between them and the opposite extreme, who'd claim (just as aggressively) that they were immoral and marriage-corrupting. (And it decreases it in a way that makes it easier for mainstream trying-to-be-fair hesitant-about-marriage people to fence-sit, because both sides' arguments start to look like they're about aggressive condemnation rather than friendly persuasion. Which is weird to me in part because I think the merits of the substantive arguments for gay marriage are in fact the more persuasive ones!)

Part of what we've argued about by proxy on this thread might be a minor difference of opinion here about the issue itself: I'm willing to say that I don't think everyone who has issues with gay marriage is a fool or a lunatic or motivated primarily by bigotry. (And before anyone asks I think I might actually say the same thing about integration.) I think bigotry and discomfort are in there for sure, but there's a number of people who struggle with this stuff earnestly and based on stuff that's important to them that I can't entirely gainsay, and while I disagree with their conclusions I don't think they're crazy or not worth talking to.

Maggie Gallagher, fuck you and your self-pity.

Gay marriage is the point where we as a society decide collectively and publicly that many, many other things are more important to us than connecting mothers and fathers to their children. We discard marriage as an idea prior to and bigger than government. Marriage becomes something that was dreamed up by legislators on a good day, rather than rooted in creation itself.

To be sure, it works in both directions: The only reason gay marriage is plausible is because we were already losing the idea that marriage is bigger than government, that its "sanctity" comes from the intrinsic sacredness of bringing together male and female in the service of making the future happen. But officially endorsing gay unions as marriages is a very big marker of cultural change: It visibly discards as false this once honored and honorable ideal, now considered stigmatized, backwards, and discriminatory.

Not to mention, thanks solely to gay marriage, we've now reached the point where getting government out of the marriage business is being advanced by conservative intellectuals. Just a few short years ago, that idea was solely the province of the radical Left. (The conservatives who do this do so as part of a futile attempt to reduce the law's power to redefine marriage's intrinsic meaning). And I'm supposed to believe this whole gay marriage thing doesn't matter?

I understand why gay marriage advocates like Deroy attempt to make people feel ashamed or embarrassed about caring so much about the meaning of marriage. This is, to my mind, one of the most corrupting things about the way the gay marriage debate is being conducted: Not only do so many now try to make people afraid to speak up for the good, they seek to make people ashamed of the good itself.

If marriage is "the good", why doesn't she want everyone to make use of it? You'd think the more people that got married/cared about marriage, the better it wd be for the institution. Otherwise it's goin the way of the allosaurus, lady.

Why don't these people actively campaign to abolish divorce, is my question. (or do they and I'm just missing it)

divorce is a sacred institution between a man and a woman

we've now reached the point where getting government out of the marriage business is being advanced by conservative intellectuals. Just a few short years ago, that idea was solely the province of the radical Left. (The conservatives who do this do so as part of a futile attempt to reduce the law's power to redefine marriage's intrinsic meaning). And I'm supposed to believe this whole gay marriage thing doesn't matter?

what's the problem? you guys at NRO are always going on about how the govt ruins everything. here's your chance to put up or shut up. i forget 'liberty' and 'freedom' are just vague platitudes to you. assholes.

I understand why gay marriage divorce advocates like Dan Perry attempt to make people feel ashamed or embarrassed about caring so much about the meaning of marriage.

If marriage is "the good", why doesn't she want everyone to make use of it? You'd think the more people that got married/cared about marriage, the better it wd be for the institution. Otherwise it's goin the way of the allosaurus, lady.

― How can there be male ladybugs? (Laurel), Tuesday, March 10, 2009 10:50 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is part of an argument that has always appealed to me even if it doesn't make all that much sense. i.e. if marriage is the only place sex can happen and it's the best way to make straight people behave sexually, why not let gays do it because that way they're not out fucking everyone in sight or on the news or whatever, they're at home fixing dinner.

i think i'm attracted to this faulty reasoning bcz i really really hate the 'omg gays have so much more/more casual sex than straight people, think about it, two horny guys, where's the girl to feel like she's loved?" bullshit that is accepted for truth among pretty much everyone. if there was a society-dictated thing, accepted by everyone, that you could just do like marriage and follow along, play the part, have someone to keep you from being lonely even if you hate them sometimes and want to split up but you don't, you work on it because you're supposed to make it work, even if you fuck around on the side and keep it a secret like every other straight hypocrite, i bet it would be easier to 'settle down' and maybe make life easier in general, idk.

should have been 'if marriage is the only place sex can happen for religious pro-fam people' in the first graf

alfred you skipped the best para!

Is it mere coincidence that this resurgence in illegitimacy happened during the five years in which gay marriage has become (not thanks to me or my choice) the most prominent marriage issue in America — and the one marriage idea endorsed by the tastemakers to the young in particular? I don't think we can ever know for sure because the cultural changes that affect sexual behavior consist of myriad inputs that social science will seldom be able to tease out. Marriage was already in crisis.

trans: "can we blame fags for this? no, but i'm going to!"

Since no scientific evidence conclusively proves that gays have so poisoned my marriage that my husband ogles Kathryn-Jean Lopez on the Bill Buckley Alaska Cruise, can I make gays into scapegoats? Sure!"

To be fair he's staring at the spectacle, not out of any sort of attraction.

http://www.tourcart.net/tourmate/img/tours/10264-1.jpg

I think seeing Kathryn Jean Lopez would probably make my husband gay.

snap. but guys, you gotta figure gay marriage could potentially fuck with one's shot of at least being a beard.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/images/law/july-dec03/0731gaygallagher1.jpg

^gallagher

(i'm sorry that was over the line)

http://www.firstshowing.net/img/clashofthetitans-medusa.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/26/schmidt-gay-marriage/

Former McCain campaign chief strategist Steve Schmidt told the Washington Blade in an interview last week that he is “personally supportive” of same-sex marriage rights. Schmidt, who spoke to the Log Cabin Republicans at the Republican National Convention last year, added that he thinks Americans are “troubled” when they see Republicans “trying to stigmatize” the gay community:

“I’m personally supportive of [marriage] equality for gay couples and I believe that it will happen over time,” he said. “I think that more and more Americans are insistent that, at a minimum, gay couples should be treated with respect and when they see a political party trying to stigmatize a group of people who are hardworking, who play by the rules, who raise decent families, they’re troubled by it.” […]

“I think the Republican Party should not be seen by a broad majority of the electorate as focused with singularity on issues like gay marriage,” he said. “The attitudes of voters about gay marriage and about domestic partnership benefits for gay couples are changing very rapidly and for voters under the age of 30, they are completely disconnected from what has been Republican orthodoxy on these issues.”

Schmidt, who is a California resident, also told the Blade that he voted against Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage ballot initiative that McCain supported as a candidate.

good on him.