Grey Goose Was Made for Drinking, Not Bashing

A disturbing story via Andrew Sullivan.

Oh, and ps, Maureen Dowd still sucks. Or, should I say, Maureen Dowd etiam combibo.

OH! and PPS, we are 100 days away from the end of the Bush Presidency. Can I get a "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah"?

Why Sarah Palin's Family is Fair Game

"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said on Tuesday. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."

Noble words, with which I'd happily be first to concur. But no...not until I hear the same principled stance from Republican activists who have made discrimination and fear-mongering a rallying cry and make people like me political props in their campaign of distraction.

The 2008 Republican Party Platform explicitly calls for writing discrimination into the Constitution, seeking both to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and to deprive the courts of their proper role in protecting the civil rights of all citizens from the tyranny of the (shrinking) majority.

Their defense of "traditional" marriage is lined with all the discredited tropes of the waning anti-gay movement. They insist that restricting marriage to heterosexual couples protects "our children's future," although the government neither requires nor recognizes procreative intent or capability as a characteristic of civil marriage. The platform paints a disparaging view of children who grow up "in homes without fathers," while failing to note that the research they cite exclusively refers to the children of heterosexual mothers whose fathers chose not to live up to their responsibilities, not the children of committed same-sex partners. We are meant to ignore that some children of single-parent households turn out just fine (see Obama, Barack) and others have two fathers.

You see, according to Republicans like Sarah Palin, a family like this one is a better place for children than this one. The belief that any pairing of married heterosexual parents provides a stabler, healthier home than any same-sex couple could possibly offer is just not born out by any sort of evidence, at all.

Never mind their foreign policy disasters or the tanking economy -- look out! Here come Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi! Give me a break.

This is not a trivial issue. Palin and her ilk have literally campaigned on the promise to protect America from gay bogeymen (and women). Sure, in an ideal world, Bristol Palin and her circumstances would be irrelevant. They should be. And so should the private lives of millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, taxpaying, hard-working citizens. But when the RNC uses us to scare up voters, I refuse to sit idly by and not point out the egregious hypocrisy of people like Sarah Palin.

So Bristol Palin is 17, pregnant, and scheduled to marry the teenage father. Now, who knows? Maybe these two are genuinely in love and will live a happy, committed life together. It's entirely possible. My grandmother was pregnant (turns out, with someone else's child, my father) when she married her husband, and they're still married 65 years later and raised three kids, two of whom are divorced. But the research shows that pregnant brides are 50% more likely to get divorced, and that's factoring in a heterosexual divorce rate that isn't anything to be proud of.

Here's why Sarah Palin's family matters. You won't find anyone to argue that Bristol was being responsible by getting pregnant while unmarried and still in high school, even if they now assert she's doing the right thing by marrying the charming father. Though McCain aides may protest that the "liberal media" is smearing Palin's family, it was the GOP that first trotted out the Palins as a model to be emulated.

If you agree with Barack Obama that this subject should be off-limits, then you're at odds with James Dobson, whose activist organization Focus on the Family -- note the name -- is at least as political as it is religious. Here's his statement on the Bristol Palin situation.

Now, let's reflect back on his comments regarding the daughter of a sitting vice president who got pregnant outside the bonds of civil marriage.

Seventeen year-old Bristol Palin is about to marry a fellow teenager; they will have full government recognition and protection for a relationship that is, let's face it, a last-ditch attempt to make right a stupid mistake made in a brief moment of passion. Sarah Palin thinks this is just great. Yet compare that to Mary Cheney, who had been in a committed relationship with her partner for 15 years when they made the conscious decision to raise a child. (They're now at 17 years together, 6 years past the average heterosexual marriage duration of 11 years.) Sarah Palin thinks that Mary and Heather deserve no recognition or protection; Mary is the biological mother, so in the unfortunate event of her death, Sarah insists that Heather has no claim to the child. Sarah thinks Heather should not have been allowed to be present in the hospital for the birth, nor should she be allowed to be with Mary in the hospital under any circumstances. The couple, according to Palin, is not entitled to any insurance, inheritance or social security benefits.

Sarah Palin is receiving heaps of praise for supporting her teenage daughter's decision to have a child before she even completes high school and to marry another student who openly boasted on his MySpace profile that he doesn't want kids while simultaneously insisting that Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, who had been in a committed relationship longer than Sarah has been alive, deserve no protection or recognition.

John McCain, Sarah Palin's running mate, cheated during his first marriage which ended in divorce.

Gay folk get scapegoated for the political gain and moral failures of uninformed ideologues like Sarah Palin, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and David Vitter. I will heed Barack Obama's call to leave her family alone just as soon as she stops blaming me for everything that is wrong with heterosexual marriage.

Republican, heal thyself.

A Bold Prediction

Sarah Palin will not be on the ballot in November. She may well withdraw from the ticket by the end of the week.

Because the Sanctity of Marriage Needs Defending From the Gays...

You can't make this stuff up. Well, I guess you could, but you'd have to be brilliant. From the Oregonian:

Clackamas rape report turns out to be consensual bondage

by The Oregonian

Thursday August 07, 2008, 11:00 AM

CLACKAMAS -- A man and woman arrested Wednesday night in a reported rape turned out to be engaging in consensual bondage sex after meeting through a Craigslist on-line bulletin board.

Detective Jim Strovink, Clackamas County sheriff's spokesman, said a homeless woman spotted the couple and called police, believing the bound woman was being raped. When deputies arrived, the couple ran.

Deputies then called a K-9 unit and used tracking dogs to catch the couple -- fully clothed. The couple, a Milwaukie man and a Portland woman, were booked into the Clackamas County Jail on accusations of public indecency, disorderly conduct and criminal trespass.

The man told deputies he ran because he didn't want his wife to find out.

Not One of the Gifts of the Spirit

I kid you not: "An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend." [Emphasis added.]

UPDATED JULY 15: They've changed their minds; the gun-giveaway is back on again. Money quote: "Windsor Hills Baptist apparently has a history of worshipping God through firepower, and last year ran a shooting competition as part of its annual shindig." Now, that is some snarky reportage! Bravo.

Things that Make You Go "Hmmm"

This morning I was out of milk, both at home (so, no cereal) and at work (so, no coffee) so I decided I'd go ahead and stop at Starbucks and get coffee and a treat to take with me.

Behind me in line was a very handsome, very well-dressed guy about my age who pulled up in a BMW. He ordered a "non-fat, one-pump peppermint latte."

I could not decide whether that was the gayest drink in the history of the world or something so disgusting that only a straight man could love it. Thoughts?

If Only James Dobson Were Right

My new upstairs neighbor is gorgeous. I mean...wow. He is hot sex in a bottle. (Now, where on earth did I pick up that phrase?)

Alas, his girlfriend isn't bad, either.

I hate them so much.

I wish I could work my secret evil gay powers; in tandem with the combined force of Oregon and Washington's Domestic Partnership laws and California's legalization of same-sex marriage, according to the wing-nuts that should be more than sufficient to wreck this relationship and make him go gay. I mean, the government has clearly sent the message that it's okay; why is he still hanging out with this chick?

I mean, I know that this would mean the collapse of civilization as we know it (or at least, that's what I'm told), but honestly, for him I'd risk it.

The Inevitability of Gay Marriage

It's official: Oregon's statewide domestic partnership law goes into effect on Monday.

Last year, both houses of the Oregon legislature passed a bill establishing domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, granting them all the rights, responsibilities and protections of civil marriage. The governor signed the bill. Opponents began a petition drive to remand the bill to the voters, but failed to gather enough signatures. They then sued the state, claiming that some signatures were improperly invalidated and on December 28, just five days before the law was scheduled to go into effect, US District Judge Michael Mosman suspended the law pending a hearing on the alleged irregularities.

At the hearing on Friday, Judge Mosman ruled that the petition had failed and that same-sex couples could begin registering on February 4.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a right-wing activist organization based in Arizona, is considering an appeal. “In America, every citizen’s voice counts. Government bureaucrats cannot decide what is best for the people of Oregon. We are considering all options for appeal of today’s decision on behalf of disenfranchised Oregonians,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks in a press release.

This is why gay marriage in the United States is inevitable: the opponents have no case.

Let's deconstruct ADF's statement a bit. Government bureaucrats? You mean, the legislature? Let's review our gay marriage battle history: first there were the court victories, when the bigots argued that "unelected, unaccountable activist judges" had no business meddling in marriage, which was rightfully regulated by the legislature. Now that the legislature -- elected by and accountable to the people -- has enacted a new law, they're no longer representatives, they're "government bureaucrats"? Then you guys utilized your right to challenge the law by putting it up for popular vote. Every citizen's voice counts? Dude, you couldn't find anyone to sign your petition.

This law has been reviewed and approved by the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the state government, and now the voters (by means of a petition) have rejected an attempt to overturn the law. Yet you respond, "Our country is founded on the basic principle of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It should stay that way in Oregon," as blathered by Nimocks.

Yes. And you lost, every step of the way. I think the people have spoken, honey.

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Post-script for legal nerds: Judge Mosman, a Mormon, Republican Bush-appointee, cited Bush v. Gore as part of the basis of his ruling.

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I would have blogged on this yesterday, except this anti-war, pro-universal-healthcare, gay, Barack-Obama-endorsing liberal got himself elected to the parish vestry and was on a church retreat until late this afternoon. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, you silly conservatives.

Good Thing All Those States Banned Gay Marriage

First thing to say: I can't even believe that this is "news," let alone currently CNN.com's top story.

Second thing to say: "It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected," said Jamie Lynn Spears of her pregnancy. "I was in complete and total shock and so was he." Well, when you have sex and don't use birth control, this tends to happen. (See Spears, Britney.) For real? A shock?!?!? Please.

Third thing to say: Jamie Lynn Spears Pregnancy Raises Legal Questions. Here's a legal question: what is the point of these laws? It takes (at least) two to tango. If you prosecute the gander, you should prosecute the goose.

Fourth thing to say: Thank God we keep banning gay marriage all over the country, in order to steer procreation into marriage. It's working swell.

Fifth thing to say: If you Google "steer procreation into marriage," The Last Debate is the top result. Cool.