Republican Washington State Representative Maureen Walsh’s explanation why she’s voting for gay marriage is worth a watch (via) if you’re sick of all the haters. Washington just passed a gay marriage bill that the governor has pledged to sign.
Up Close and Personal
Over at Salon, Mark Oppenheimer has a longish, interesting piece on Maggie Gallagher, NRO hack, NOM founder and arguably the most prominent opponent of marriage equality in the US. I read it because the thing that has always puzzled me most about the gay marriage controversy is why those who oppose it are so convinced it is a threat to straight marriage, and I wondered if Gallagher would offer any fresh rationales. Alas, no.
As Oppenheimer says, for fundamentalists, the answer is straightforward enough, if kooky. But I’ve never heard people who accessorize their opposition to gay marriage with supposedly secular arguments make a convincing case for why marriage equality is bad for society in general. The arguments always come down to someone’s personal conviction that it must be so, and that conviction is almost invariably derived from a personal experience projected planet-wide.
Gallagher is no exception: For her, it all boils down to her unshakable conviction that the ideal for every child is to be raised by its biological parents and that the institution of marriage must be exclusively about facilitating that arrangement or else, I dunno, cats and dogs, living together. She offers no convincing evidence for this conviction and baldly asserts that there is no evidence to the contrary that could convince her otherwise.
A Weird Definition of What is Offensive
Here’s the story- cops pull over a diabetic man in shock who they think is drunk driving. They go all cowboy with guns drawn, kicking the window of his car, screaming conflicting orders at him, and then a half-dozen cops pull him out of the car, and beat and kick him before discovering insulin in his pocket:
I’m not really sure what my favorite part of this video is- first, the warning for offensive language. Actually, the words “mother fucker” don’t bother me any where near as much as watching some douchebag cop run in and kick a man in the neck when he is clearly restrained and not resisting. Check out that real tough guy with a badge at 45 seconds in. Any chief that keeps that guy on the force is part of the damned problem.
My next favorite part is when these morons start asking each other if they are ok. What could they hurt? Their toes on the guy’s head?
And then, of course, the laughter afterwards, when instead they should be shaken up by how bad they screwed the pooch and how poorly they handled the situation.
If you’ll notice, the guy has done what you are supposed to do when you get pulled over, doing so even in a diabetic shock. He’s stopped the car, his hands are on the wheel, and he waits for instruction. Yet our Rockette Rambo has to go over guns drawn, kicking the window, acting like a maniac. I always thought the point of police was to defuse a situation, not escalate it.
At this point, though, with our politicians and courts bending over backwards to negate our rights and to look the other way when cops misbehave, I suppose we should all be happy they didn’t just execute the guy on the spot. Thank god there was no dog in the car.
And by the way, in my near ten years in the military, with all the exhaustive weapon training I received on a number of firearms, never once did an instructor inform me that the proper thing to do with a drawn and loaded weapon was to kick one foot up into the air. If you did that shit on any range in the world, they would kick you out and might possibly give you an article 15. What would happen if his foot slipped and he discharged? What if he shot the guy because of that? Or himself? Would the other cops think he had been shot when they heard the discharge and saw him on the ground and then unload into the driver? Just terrible fucking policework.
*** Update ***
From the comments:
Honestly, the first 30 seconds look like an episode of Reno 911, but without the guy in the really tight shorts.
No kidding, right?
A Weird Definition of What is OffensivePost + Comments (106)
Gay is the New Black
Here’s Ellen DeGeneres pushing back [warning: autoplay video] on the “Million Moms” (it’s actually 40,000) who want to have her removed as JC Penney’s new spokesperson. Penney’s must have known that they’d get flack from some haters when they adopted an openly gay person to sell their stuff, so I assume this was a calculated move to get rid of their image as the place where old ladies go to shop for granny panties. But, even if hiring Ellen is a bit “edgy”, Penny’s is still a solid, middle-class, suburban brand — they weren’t going to do something that would cause a real upset, so it’s worth taking a look at how Ellen handled this.
I’m sure Ellen’s response was gamed out in advance when she was hired, so it’s interesting to note that both she and Penney’s are comfortable issuing a pretty solid fuck you to the haters. In other words, they’re betting that the Republican caucus goers who voted for a bigot last night are such a powerless and financially irrelevant minority that they can be insulted on national television.
The power of regular action…
I think it is safe to assume that Balloon Juice has adequately covered the SGK for the Cure’s epic parade of FAIL over the last week and that another post to pile on is not that necessary. Still, in light of the outrage and the desire that many have shown to fight back, I wanted to say a few words about the power of regular action–and especially the regular action of donating funds.
I work at a nonprofit. One-time donations are great and so are annual gifts, but what is really helpful are those folks who support your work with regular monthly giving. This helps your bottom line, other fundraising and your ability to plan for actions, programs and campaigns that support your mission.
Last year when the GOP took control of Congress and many State Governments, they began an organized War on Women. Planned Parenthood became the object of their fantasies and the target of their bile. It was then, that I started making a regular monthly donation to Planned Parenthood. It was not a lot–somewhere between the cost of a nice six-pack of a fine microbrew beer and a Martini–but it was a monthly donation that they could count on as they fought the wingnuts and worked to help women take charge of their health.
In the wake of the recent SGK for the Cure flap I called and doubled my gift. Now it may be that many of you have given a donation to Planned Parenthood in the last week and if you have that’s great, but I want to encourage you to consider giving them a regular monthly gift. It does not have to be a lot. Monthly giving programs start with $5 a month and go up from there. If you think you could give a monthly donation go to the Planned Parenthood web site. Click on the “Donate” link on the upper right side of the page and then select the “Monthly” tab. After that all you need to do is fill in your details and select your level of giving.
If 150,000 people gave Planned Parenthood $5 a month they would give them–every month–as much as they got–each year–from SGK for the Cure before their epic FAIL. And with that Planned Parenthood could help many, many more women take control of their health. Yes, 150,000 people is a lot of folks, but not when you look at the number of folks posting comments on Blogs, Facebook and Twitter about the latest wingnut inspired dust-up.
So, go and donate if you can. Your monthly gift of any size will give Planned Parenthood the resources they need to fight back against this latest iteration of the endless wingnut war on women.
Cheers
ps: By the way you can also make monthly gifts to President Obama, the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, your favorite candidate and/or nonprofit organization. This kind of sustained giving makes a real difference.
Liars
The gang that couldn’t talk straight:
Karen Handel, the politically embattled former vice president of public affairs for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, has broken her silence about her role in the breast cancer charity’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood and her decision to step down from her post.
“First of all, I clearly acknowledge that I was involved in the process,” she said. “But to suggest that I had the sole authority is just absurd. The process was vetted. The policies were vetted at all the appropriate levels in the organization.”
Handel’s statement directly contradicts what Komen executives have been telling the public since the decision was announced last week.
“Karen did not have anything to do with this decision,” Komen founder Nancy Brinker told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Thursday. “This was decided at the board level and also by our mission.”
So Handel resigns, and in doing so, calls the CEO a liar on the way out the door. Awesome. And while DougJ is still basking in the glow of his Moore Award nomination (the Daily Dish folks are really working overtime to become pathetic concern trolls), let me remind you how correct he was:
Handel told Fox News that she blamed the public backlash against Komen on “vicious attacks” from Planned Parenthood.
“The last time I checked, private non-profit organizations have a right and a responsibility to be able to set the highest standards and criteria on their own without interference, let alone the level of vicious attacks and coercion that has occurred by Planned Parenthood,” she said.
But the backlash did not only come from Planned Parenthood. More than 50 members of Congress signed letters asking Komen to reverse course, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg publicly rebuked Komen and pledged $250,000 to Planned Parenthood, and approximately 37,000 people from all over the country signed a petition demanding that Handel resign.
You see, when you tell the truth about them, they call it a vicious attack. They’re simply used to doing what they want and to hell with everyone else, so when someone pushes back, it shocks them.
Prop 8 Struck Down
Found to be unconstitutional:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California’s same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedents when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.
The court said gay marriages cannot resume in the state until the deadline passes for Proposition 8 sponsors to appeal to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit. If such an appeal is filed, gay marriages will remain on hold until it’s resolved.
Lawyers for Proposition 8 sponsors have repeatedly said they would consider appealing to a larger panel of the court and then the U.S. Supreme Court if they did not receive a favorable ruling from the 9th Circuit.
“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted,” the ruling states.
Supremes next.