Americablog, How I do Love Thee

[pameladean]

Somehow I have the feeling that posting this will clear out my friendslist a bit. I'd love to be wrong.

I'll put it behind a cut tag for possibly offensive language.  I do so reluctantly, however.  And I do not want anybody to try to talk to me about "civility."  The Marriage Protection Amendment IS NOT CIVIL.  It is a disgrace.  It is ten thousand times more offensive than anything you will find behind the cut tag, and yet the President of the United States got up on his hind legs and spoke in favor of it, and the Senate is debating it just as if it were a real live issue.  There is no rational basis to oppose civil same-sex marriage.  If people want to harangue their churches not to allow it, that makes me sick, but they aren't nuts to do so.  Onward.



Beginning with Antony Scalia's astonishing lament in his dissent in Lawrence vs. Texas --

"State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding..."

-- Americablog's John Aravosis suggested that people call the legislators who have gone on record as supporting the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment and ask if they are really protecting marriage, by refraining from the activities named by Scalia and also harped upon so often by the loonier portions oft the religious right -- to ask them if they were divorced, if they had had sex outside of marriage, if they masturbated or engaged in sodomy or oral sex.

I've been giggling myself silly over some of the transcripts.  Here's the original Action Alert:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/06/action-alert-call-congress-ask-if.html

And here's a collection of people reporting back:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/06/caller-asks-has-senator-burns-ever-had.html
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/06/theyre-getting-your-calls.html

I wonder if perhaps it will make one or two of them think.  It all serves them right, in any case.

Yes, all right, I felt a tiny bit sorry, for a morment, for some of the young staffers.  But they work for ignorant bigots, so I'm sure they get much worse.

This is not the worst thing that the Bush Administration has done or tried to do.  But it seems a perfect pattern of what it likes to do, from perverting the Constitution, through blatant lying that ignores science and experience, through the persistent injection of religion into government, through the demonization of various groups in order to frighten or distract people not in those groups, to a weird blind faith in -- or is it a cynical employment of; I hardly know any more -- posturing and empty gestures.  How I hate their rotten guts.

P.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

The Marriage Protection Amendment IS NOT CIVIL. It is a disgrace.

Indeed.

[pameladean]

You are so pithy. 8-)

P.

[aedifica]

I'm opposed to this so-called "Marriage Protection" act, but I admit I haven't done anything about it other than shake my fist at the radio. I know I should...

[pameladean]

I wrote to my senators a while ago. Mark Dayton won't vote for anything so stupid, and Norm Coleman will tell me that Paul Wellstone voted for DOMA. I don't know if he'll vote for this nasty amendment. He might not.

I did not, alas, call Coleman's office and ask those questions. I should have. He has a very dicey marriage situation -- which may be why he is "uncertain on the amendment."

P.

[ckd]

I won't say that it's worth having this political stunt happen to read some of those transcripts, because it isn't. However, given that we're going to have "look! a monkey the Winged Victory of Samothrace gay marriage!" being run out as a distraction, we may as well get some amusement out of it. (Gotta laugh, or you'll cry.)

PS: Cambridge City Hall? Still standing, 2+ years out. Hasn't even been hit by lightning, unlike people praying....

[pameladean]

Exactly. I'd rather that the occasion had not arisen, but at least we have something to laugh at.

As for the lightning strikes, hee.

I wish that Minnesota were not so horridly split between sense and nonsense.

P.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

why on earth would this clear out your friendslist?

[pameladean]

That was sloppy writing. I don't think it'll scare off anybody whom I have friended, but this journal, amazingly, is read by hundreds of people whom I haven't friended, though I try to look at their journals occasionally, and I was really thinking of them, the unknown quantities.

P.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

*seeeeething*

Found

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] state</a>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

*seeeeething*

Found <a href=one House member in my state</a>, "Doc Hastings." I think I'm going to have to write someone a letter.

"Dear 'Doc' Hastings, my first question to you is, are you an accredited doctor? If not, why are you granting legitimacy to such an immoral concept as lying?"

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Oops... too pissed off to write proper HTML, apparantly...

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

The Marriage Protection Amendment IS NOT CIVIL. It is a disgrace. It is ten thousand times more offensive than anything you will find behind the cut tag, and yet the President of the United States got up on his hind legs and spoke in favor of it, and the Senate is debating it just as if it were a real live issue. There is no rational basis to oppose civil same-sex marriage.

Yes, this. Exactly. I do think who people want to allow to get married in their churches is their business, but a civil same-sex marriage law, whether at the state or federal level, and especially a Constitutional amendment, is just grotesquely wrong.

[pameladean]

I keep hearing that it has no chance of passing, but the list of people supporting it is terribly long, especially in the Senate. I suppose some of the supporters won't actually vote for it, or do they expect it to die in the House?

P.

[redbird]

I'd be startled if it cleared out your friendslist; it's not as though you were a monogamous heterosexual who had never said a word about anything political.

[pameladean]

People have odd tipping points. Here I am, endorsing the asking of obscene questions of innocent staffers.

Not that I think the questions are obscene.

P.

[plaidkatia.livejournal.com]

See, I've always wondered about these supposedly happily married people who get all up in arms about other people wanting to get married. Mostly I've wondered what the hell is their damage.

My parents have been married for almost twenty-five years (out of a New York Catholic church, no less!), and while they might not be the most liberal folks on Earth (God love 'em anyway), I doubt at this point their marriage would be negatively affected by two people of the same gender getting married. My grandparents were married nearly sixty years, many of which occurred in the years in which LGBT people were agitating for legal marriage rights, and yet my grandparents miraculously stayed married without their marriage being affected negatively in any way. Go figure.

I'm a somewhat-hetero female who's been with my boyfriend for over two years, which is diddly-squat compared to many relationships, and even though we support ourselves independently, live separately a mile apart, work separately, pay our taxes and insurance seperately, have no intentions in the immediate future of being legally bound and THANK GOD don't have children, we are looked on more legitimately than gay couples who have been together twice or three times as long as we've been alive. And all we share legally are trips to the grocery store and babysitting each other's fish. I love Fred dearly but that is seriously fucked up.

Frankly, if your precious heterosexual marriage is that negatively affected by two total strangers getting married, you don't need a lawyer, you need a counselor.

Also, all that I can discern from Scalia's various decisions are that a) he is a sad, mean man and b) that he's never gotten a good blowjob in his life. In either case, sucks to be him.

[pameladean]

Scalia, whose first name I forgot to detypo, is a creepy bastard.

And no, it makes no sense. The only thing I have been able to figure out is that the version of Christian marriage promulgated by the rabid homophobes is so awful that if any other model of marriage exists, they fear everybody will flee to it. Even that is probably too logical.

P.

[beadslut.livejournal.com]

Bloody smokescreen generator.

[pameladean]

It's their one skill, I think; on the other hand, is the smoke just maybe a bit tattered?

P.

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

HOORAY FOR YOU.

preventing people who love each other from marrying instead of stopping the war or rebuilding NOLA...yeah, our government is on the ball.

/bitter sarcasm

[pameladean]

I hope it backfires on them, but I don't know.

P.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

So is Scalia saying that states ought to be able to have laws agains masturbation and sodomy and fornication? (Which , note, in some people's definitions include oral sex in the former and sex between two unmarried people in the latter.) If he eve gets to the point of talking to real normal Americans, boy, is he in for a surprise.

Sign me up as another married het who is totally baffled about how the private details of *anyone* else's committed relationship (number, gender, sexual practices carried on in private) could weaken my marriage.

[pameladean]

Yes, that seems to be what Scalia is saying.

He's nuts, and yhou aren't.

P.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/06/the_problem_of_1.html

B

[pameladean]

*snorts tea out of nose*

Oh, how lovely.

P.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

This is your Minnesota Nice coming out: your firm belief that you've gone over the top in outrage. My reaction: "Why do you think you're going to clear out your friends list? Well, of course the symbolic politics of same-sex marriage is absurd." I forget what conservative columnist argued that the greater danger to marriage is all those opposite-sex couples who get divorced or never marry, not those who want to get married.

[pameladean]

I don't feel nice, but I suppose it is all relative.

I am pleased by the occasional chink in the conservative wall.

P.

[fishbliss.livejournal.com]

Really, now, why get so upset about this?

Why not wait until the next step of their campaign, where Marriage(tm) is defined as being only between precisely one biological male and one or more biological female human being, both being verified practicing Christians(tm), of approved Protestant sects, both being of approved European American breeding stock, with no history of mental illness, democratic voting, or support for public television stations.

Note that they won't stipulate the parties must be legal adults, because as we all know, even if they are under age, they might still be adjudged to leglly be called hot!

Exceptions will be given for Republican, NeoConvict, and NeoNazi politicians, and registered Rebublican Million-Dollar campaign donors.

Convicted or suspected thought offenders need not apply.

[pameladean]

That would require blood rather than upset.

P.

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

*clings to your journal rather more tightly in fact*

[pameladean]

Aw.

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

The Marriage Protection Act is a cynical piece of political calculus. It's not going to pass. Everyone knows it's not going to pass. But a few officials can vote for it to satisfy their "conservative" constituencies, knowing it won't ass.

[pameladean]

I wonder when this part of their constituences is going to realize they're just being played. I agree with your scare quotes; I don't know how to describe these people, but lumping them in with conservatives generally is a bit insulting.

P.

[medievalist.livejournal.com]

It's evil. Its entire intent is malicious.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

They wouldn't have started the battle if it hadn't already been lost.

I can remember when it was Scientific Fact that homosexuality was a mental illness -- and that was also the liberal political position. They were to be pitied; including latent homosexuals like Casanova. (The reason he chased women so much was because he was trying to deny his homosexuality, you see. Offhand, I think that today it might be considered related to his gambling addiction.) Back then, the idea of courts in either the US or Canada saying same-sex marriages should be legal would have been ridiculous.

That was the time to get this kind of Amendment into the Constitution. Except, of course, nobody would have seen a need for it.

Tangent: Last year, a letter in the Southwest Journal said that marriage had been between one man and one woman in the Judeo-Christian tradition for 5,000 years. I think the letter writer missed a few things in the Old Testament.

[pameladean]

I saw that sign in some news story and was quite boggled. I mean, give me a break, I thought fundamentalists read the Bible.

P.

[faerie-music.livejournal.com]

http://www.idrewthis.org/2004/marriage.html

[pameladean]

*snrk*

P.

[raphaela.livejournal.com]

I know it is cliche at this point, but I really wish that people who are worried about the sanctity of marriage would pay attention to serial marriers (new word!) first. Like Liz Taylor. Come on. I hardly think that Elton John marrying his longtime partner is going to do more damage to the public perception of marriage than Liz and her forty-two thousand weddings.

This makes me cranky.

I am also cranky with churches that don't practice what they preach when it comes to the sanctity of marriage. It's okay to beat the hell out of your wife, then divorce her because she doesn't support your "work for God" because that is sanctified? Didn't Jesus say something about working out the log in your own eye before worrying about the splinter in the other guy's?

Gah!

Cranky, I tell you!

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Once you've accepted Jesus as your Savior, you don't need to pay any attention to what Jesus said.

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those people too, and a fan, and not at all frightened. Well, not by you, anyway.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I caught an absolutely devasting satirical analysis comparing this particular proposed amendment to the other 27 by satirist John Unger on NPR's Day to Day this afternoon. If you can get the thing to play (I can't seem to), listen to it. It will make you feel better, in a "Oh, someone else is willing to point out that the Emperor is bare-assed naked" sort of way.

[pameladean]

If you look at the link that minnehaha posted upthread a ways, it's a transcript or something of the same thing.

P.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

We laugh at Justice Scalia, but the day after that Supreme Court decision, millions of Americans masturbated.

[pameladean]

Some for the first time! The horror!

P.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

As a person monogamously heterosexuallly married for more than 25 years, I'm still waiting for these people to tell me just exactly how my marriage would be harmed by letting other people get married. Waiting...waiting...waiting...

[pameladean]

They can't, can they? They just can't.

P.

[vass]

Oh my goodness, I'm so shocked, I had no idea that you were... intelligent, reasonable and eloquent. Except that yes, yes I did, that's why I read your books and that's why I read your journal.

I hate their rotten guts too: my government's played the same nasty game today in our capital territory, where they were trying to get a civil union law through. The PM said, in a sudden spasm of Royal Plural, that "the legislation, by its own admission, is an attempt to equate civil unions with marriage and we don't find that acceptable."

[pameladean]

Obviously I dramatically underestimated you guys, but it wasn't my opinions of gay marriage that I thought would cause annoyance; rather my endorsement of the Americablog Action Alert. I've seen a huge amount of hectoring and lecturing of the left on how we are so angry, we are not civil, we will never win hearts and minds if we are not NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE, and I am sorry to say that although it makes me laugh hollowly, some of it must have sneaked in, through the little postern built by Minnesota Nice Inc.

As for you PM, ewwww.

Perhaps he has a tapeworm?

P.