Right now you’re probably calmly living your regular gay life, just being gay and making out with gay people and having lunch or supper or you’re riding a bike or going bra shopping while meanwhile you are also ruining the world.
1. In Which Pat Robertson Links Homosexuality to Abortion
Pat Robertson, this cranky old rich white man who says terrible things on the teevee, spoke recently on his program The 700 Club (which is named for the fact that its existence makes me 700 times crazier than normal) about Planned Parenthood funding and Obama’s “culture of death.” Apparently, pro-choice activists aren’t motivated by, you know, a belief that a woman should have the right to choose what she does to her own body but that “they want to put lesbians and straight women on a level playing field.”
Pat Robertson: “If a woman is a lesbian, what advantage does she have over a married woman? Or what deficiency does she have?”
No worries Pat — thanks to people like you, lesbians aren’t exactly the most advantaged population in the U.S.
Aside from the fact that his argument is clearly wrong, I don’t understand the argument he’s making here at all. Do you?
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2. In Which Prop 8 Activists Use Bigotry to Promote Bigotry Cause Gay Judges Can’t Judge
The Anti-Equality people have filed a motion to vacate Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling because when he goes home after work and gets into bed, there is a man lying there with all his man-parts and man-thoughts. Here’s how they phrased that:
Given that Chief Judge Walker was in a committed, long-term, same-sex relationship throughout this case (and for many years before the case commenced), it is clear that his “impartiality might reasonably [have been] questioned” from the outset. He therefore had, at a minimum, a waivable conflict and was obligated either to recuse himself or to provide “full disclosure on the record of the basis for disqualification,” so that the parties could consider and decide, before the case proceeded further, whether to request his recusal. His failure to do either was a clear violation of Section 455(a), whose “goal … is to avoid even the appearance of partiality.”
This is gross and non-sensical, as it “relies on the same faulty argument put forth originally in defense of Prop 8: The qualitative judgment that same-sex relationships are inferior,” says The Washington Post. Firstly, if you argue it’s his relationship status (which, again, is irrelevant) is the real problem here then would it be okay for a Judge to rule if he had just started dating someone? What if he sort of had a crush on his gay best friend but hadn’t told him yet? What if he had a sweet one night stand last night and felt like true love? What if he was dating two guys but just couldn’t make up his mind on who he liked better? That’s not for us to evaluate, obviously. It’s his private life.
Greg Sargent for The Washington Post:
The problem is that this same logic could be applied to a straight, married judge hearing the case. After all, supporters of the same-sex marriage ban are arguing that marriage equality is so damaging to the institution of marriage that the government has a vital interest in making sure gays and lesbians can’t get married. That means that a straight, married judge couldn’t be expected to be impartial, either — after all, according to supporters of Prop 8, “the further deinstitutionalization of marriage caused by the legalization of same-sex marriage,” would directly impact married heterosexuals. Therefore, a heterosexual, married judge could be seen as having just as much “skin in the game” as Judge Walker.
In a worth-reading Atlantic piece on Why the New Prop 8 Argument is Bogus– and Offensive, Andrew Cohen points out: “No reasonable person in America today would challenge a black judge by claiming he could not fairly judge a civil rights case. No reasonable person in America today would challenge a female judge claiming she could not fairly judge a case about women’s health. “
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3. In Which Pro-Equality Judges Can’t Judge
Iowa House Republicans filed four articles of impeachment for the members of the Iowa Supreme Court who were part of a legislative ban on same-sex marriage. This isn’t gonna work, but do these guys need a hobby or something? What is the point of this.
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4. In Which Nice People in Toledo Made Us This Nice Billboard From G-d and all hope is not lost:
