Jim Crow, Gay Marriage, Thieves and Vandals

I've reached the point where -- no joke -- I almost have more respect for outright racists than I do for the anti-gay bigots. And I know exactly why: when white supremacist Southerners were bitching about the impending end of Jim Crow ... yes, JC was utterly immoral but white Southerners did actually benefit from it (especially if they didn't waste brainpower or conscience worrying about things like "The rights and needs of other human beings whose appearance differs from my own") -- guaranteed seats on the bus, easier to land a good job if you're only competing against "other qualified white people" rather than "ALL other qualified people" -- point is, ask a 1950s white Southerner "How will it affect your life, if non-whites are granted the same rights as you?" and he can list actual, tangible material or legal benefits he stands to lose. These anti-gay jackholes can't even do that.

Jim Crow supporters were like thieves, whereas anti-gay bigots are more like vandals. Theft and vandalism are both immoral, both cause harm to their victims -- but at least thieves stand to gain something by it. Vandals can't even claim that -- you made someone else unhappy without enriching yourself. I can understand a guy who tries stealing my TV set, or glass and crystal decorative items -- but not someone who seeks only to destroy these.

Giving Petty Thanks To The Lord

Last summer I got married for health-insurance-acquisition purposes, and last weekend--joy of joys!--I got to use some of that insurance for the first time. So I was all set to post a reasonably funny snark-fest about my visit to the urgent-care center, but then a tornado destroyed Moore, Oklahoma and killed many people therein and .... yeah, suddenly complaints about hurting my bare foot via dropping a can of potatoes on it sound pretty damned petty.

But at least I'm not petty (or stupid) enough to run around telling tornado victims who've just lost everything "You've got to thank the Lord," as CNN's Wolf Blitzer did to an Oklahoma woman who turned out to be a fellow atheist. That said: although I am less petty than Wolf Blitzer I am much pettier than that Oklahoma tornado survivor, because she was very polite and good-natured about Blitzer's asinine question whereas I, most likely, would have snapped, "Hey, Lord, thanks for trashing my house and everything I own and my whole neighborhood, and especially thanks for letting those little kids drown in the basement of their wrecked school. Hope you at least had the decency to strike the poor children unconscious before drowning them, although I doubt it. But at least you spared me, so you can't be ALL bad, right? Thanks for valuing my life so much more than the lives of the dead, even though you did let that can of potatoes make my foot swell up so badly I literally couldn't wear shoes for several days."

Rand Paul In Middle School

For reasons I cannot understand, likely because the drugs required for understanding remain very much illegal, Rand Paul is still trying to appeal to the "libertarian" contingent, while at the same time arguing that the war on drug users (unless they use alcohol or prescription pharmaceuticals, of course) is a vital and necessary government function.

I begin to suspect that a certain breed of Republican who cultivates (or at least doesn't disavow too explicitly) the libertarian label is like that kid we all knew in middle school, the one who never touched alcohol in his life yet goes to the school dance and insists he is sooooo wasted and soooo totally drunk: wanting a touch of "badass maverick" street cred despite being thoroughly obedient to authority.

The Feral Genius: Proudly Fighting Stereotypes And Other Social Evils

(Note to self: write, practice and commit to memory a brilliantly eloquent on-the-spot speech to give the media, just in case I happen to find and save several long-lost kidnapping victims over the course of an otherwise ordinary day.)

In honor of Charles Ramsey and the countless thoughtful, concerned citizens who worry how the attention Ramsey's getting might be contributing to the perpetuation of hatefully racist stereotypes, I'm spending this Mother's Day picketing every mom I can find, for her role in perpetuating the hatefully misogynistic stereotype "Women are nothing but baby-making machines."

Why I Chose To Be Heterosexual

I'm still seeing the "sexual orientation is a choice" argument being tossed around gay-marriage opposition sites, so it must be true because if it were a lie we surely wouldn't hear it from so many of our trusted politicians and respected family-values proponents, right?

I don't know why gay people choose gayness, but I chose to be straight the day I realized "Although I never ever ever want children, I just adore the added fillip and excitement that 'risk of pregnancy' adds to my sex life. And when I was single and dating--which is to say, spending time alone with people I didn't necessarily know very well--I also loved that added risk of violent death vis-a-vis sexual dimorphism: if I'm with a woman who turns out to be a violent psycho hoping to kill me with her bare hands, there's a pretty decent chance I could successfully defend myself against her. Which is booooriiiiiing. Gimme a psycho attacker who outweighs me by at least a hundred testosterone-enriched pounds! And my chances of getting AIDS and other STDs were always a lot higher from straight sex, too. With all the kickass advantages heterohood has to offer childfree women like me, it's obvious that only a self-hating, risk-taking, masochistic fool of a woman would choose to be a lesbian instead."

That's all I have time to write today; remind me sometime to share with you my modest proposal to end world hunger via treating gay Irish babies as a food source.

A Word Of Encouragement To My Gay Friends

A friend of mine who lives in Minnesota has parked herself in front of her computer, eagerly awaiting news of the state legislature's vote on making Minnesota the eleventh US state to legalize gay marriage. I haven't been following Minnesota state politics so I have no idea what chance of success the bill has, but I reminded her: even if this bill fails it is, at most, a temporary setback. All the "we hate Teh Gayz" bills of recent months are the equivalent of George Wallace bellowing "Segregation forever"--no, jackass, 'twas only "Segregation for a tiny bit longer before history unanimously consigns you to the losing side." Full and equal gay-marriage rights ARE coming to the United States, probably before today's infants become adults, and those infants' kids will one day look at photos of anti-gay rallies with the same disbeliving horror today's kids use to look at pictures of old Klan gatherings.

Also: this Saturday marks the ten-month anniversary of my traditional heterosexual "foundation of all that is good and decent in America, plus Jen needs health insurance" marriage. If The Gays want to threaten the sanctity of said marriage, y'all better get off your lazy degenerate asses and DO IT already. That gay couple we saw in the grocery store a couple weekends ago--all they did to us was nod and smile. Nod and smile! How the hell is THAT supposed to destroy a healthy marriage, huh? How is that supposed to destroy anything?

The Glory of Nature and Why Children Mustn't Know About It

Yesterday I visited a nearby botanical garden (not because I'm any sort of flower buff, merely because it's a nice place for walking), and in a large man-made pond could see many fish and lots of water turtles swimming about. I noticed one pair of turtles in particular: a large one swimming straight ahead, and a smaller one swimming backwards in front of it. It looked like the big turtle was trying to avoid the smaller one, but no matter which direction the big one turned, the little one would swim faster, catch up and resume swimming backward in front of the big turtle. From time to time, the little turtle held its front flippers out and apparently slapped the big turtle several times in a row, or spat water in its face.

So Jeff and I stood by a railing commenting on this, and other people also came by the rail to watch and make exclamations, and suddenly the light dawned: "I know!" I said. "It's springtime -- that must be a mating ritual! The smaller turtle is the male."

A couple feet next to me stood a woman holding her toddler kid on the rail so he could watch the turtles too, and she gave me a look which I'm quite certain was meant to be disapproving, and said, "I told him it was a mommy with her baby."

A Straw To Cling To

The fourth amendment grows weaker every day but the fifth still has life left in it. Over at the Daily Dot I discuss a federal judge's refusal to compel a child-porn suspect to decrypt his files, and remind everyone: the government needs actual evidence of wrongdoing before it can interfere with your life. Nowhere in the text of the U.S. Constitution does it say “All rights listed herein may be suspended, if cops suspect you did something really really bad.”