At the turn of the 18th century, when the US colonies were just figuring out how to be states, it would be hard to imagine that all of these hundreds of thousands of slaves would be set free on humanitarian grounds. Those fighting the civil war would find that women would have an equal right to vote as men across the nation sixty years later as being pretty far fetched. And those women casting their first vote would be stunned to know that in another half century there would be national laws set in place to protect wild animals and to regulate what is put in our waterways. Likewise, those living under the Reagan Administration wouldn’t think that gays marrying each other or serving openly in the military or marijuana legalization would be very likely now, but it’s now just around the corner. Full story »

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis (italics mine) in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

Judge Vaughn R. Walker
August 4, 2010

And this, my fundamentalist Christian fellow citizens, is precisely why you are not the boss of me, or of gay couples, or of women, or of African-Americans or of anyone but your own selves (and your children, until they escape you). Irrationality. Beliefs based on, well, belief. Faith without reason. Useful for searching souls, perhaps, and it seems to fill the plates and build the megachurches, but it’s no way in hell to run a country. Full story »

Being born a woman (albeit a “natural” and therefore conservatively acceptable one), the prospect of joining a club in which my functions would be limited to possible figurehead, full-time cook and designated dicksucker* baby machine has consistently failed to seduce me. Short version: I’ve never been tempted to become a Republican. It’s difficult to imagine that any female could ignore the patriarchal worldview that is the GOP, no matter how terrifying crime and the shaky economy are… and yet self-identified Republican women exist and thrive here in the steamy crotch of the Bible Belt. I see the bumper stickers in the preschool parking lot. I hear the conversations everywhere from Neiman-Marcus to Target. Several of my friends and acquaintances have an elephant in their closets.  Hell, I love and trust one enough to leave my daughter (Her Majesty in the picture there) with her at least once a week, more often if her grandfather can wheedle hard enough. Full story »

by Ann Ivins

I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. Full story »

On Nov. 3, 299,483 citizens of the state of Maine were persuaded to tell women who love women and men who love men that they cannot marry. Those Downeasters who voted “Yes” on Question 1 — to repeal a same-sex marriage law — bashed gays, but with a referendum rather than a fist.

Those 267,574 people who voted “no” — which would approve the same-sex marriage law — were not dissuaded by an anti-gay coalition of conservatives and churches wielding more than $3 million, including more than $2 million from out-of-state donors, according to a report by the National Institute On Money In State Politics.

Much of the sparring over the referendum was funded on both sides by groups outside the state of Maine. Given that gay marriage has been a wedge issue for years, that’s hardly surprising. But in Maine?
Full story »

“I keep telling you guys my aim is to become a legend,” said Usain Bolt, after smashing the world 200 metres record and becoming the first man to hold the 100 and 200 metres sprints in both the Olympics and the Athletics World Championships.

Competition at international sporting events is fierce and the pursuit of an edge, sometimes measured in hundredths of a second, leads some to cheat.  Steroid abuse aims to increase the strength, speed and endurance of what is natural.  But the androgens created by the body are not set to any standard.  Some people do genuinely produce more than others.  Figuring out what is normal and what is not is difficult.

And, sometimes, something else is going on. Full story »

Let’s begin with a brief Q&A with America.

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket? Full story »

A modest proposal, perhaps.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full story »

Orson Scott Card is a barking fascist asshat. Let me illustrate.

I always marveled at how some of my friends worshiped the writing of Orson Scott Card. Maybe, I thought, it’s because we’re North Carolinians and he’s from Greensboro. From my perspective he was nothing special, at best, and has in the last couple of decades evolved into perhaps America’s most overrated science fiction author. Ender’s Game was prescient in its way – in a world where weaponry is so technologized that war is a video game, of course kids can be uber-warriors. But when the boy is made into some kind of equally uber moralist and philosopher (or whatever the hell Speaker for the Dead was about) I smelled the pungent aroma of self-indulgence that so often attends SF writers of a certain stripe.

The Alvin Maker series was even less bearable. We were doing fine in Seventh Son, clipping through an interesting enough little story (assuming you could get past the inexplicably patronizing treatment of Native American names) and then – the damnedest what the fuck passage in all of known literature. Full story »

Dr. Slammy was kind enough to put up a post earlier today that shows just how un-Christian people who call themselves Christians can actually be. And then I happened to be listening to my favorite Goth crooner, Voltaire, when one of my favorite songs came on: “God Thinks”, from Voltaire’s Almost Human album. Enjoy.

God thinks all blacks are obsolete farm eqipment
God thinks the Jews killed his son and must be punished
God thinks the white man is Satan
God, they know what God thinks

God thinks we should all convert to Judaism
God thinks we must all be Christians and
God thinks we should all embrace Islam
God thinks the only true religion is Hinduism

And I
I know what God thinks
God thinks you’re a waste of flesh
God prefers an Atheist Full story »

33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

- Matthew 25: 33-40

I was reminded of this little passage today as I reviewed these numbers: Full story »

Well, here’s a fine howdy-do: Rick Warren, pastor of the mother of all mega-churches, has been tapped to channel Jesus conduct a seance deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Because Warren is, you know, a “moderate.”

…in 2004 Warren declared that marriage, reproductive choice, and stem cell research were “non-negotiable” issues for Christian voters and has admitted that the main difference between himself and James Dobson is a matter of tone.  He criticized Obama’s answers at the Faith Forum he hosted before the election and vowed to continue to pressure him to change his views on the issue of reproductive choice.  He came out strongly in support of Prop 8, saying “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … Full story »

By Jeff Huber

William S. Lind, co-creator of the Fourth Generation Warfare concept and director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism, says a lot of smart things about national security, but he doesn’t say any of them about the issue of gays and women in the military. My admittedly limited experience of the gay lifestyle hasn’t endeared me to it: my older male dog humps my younger male dog, my younger male dog humps my leg, and I pay all the bills; an arrangement, come to think of it, not so different from my experience of marriage. So I don’t, so to speak, have a dog in the fight over whether gays or women should be “allowed” to serve in the military, but Lind makes such a cock and bull argument against it I feel obliged to apologize on behalf of the entire heterosexual male community.

In a pair of recent opinion pieces, Lind asserts that we shouldn’t let women and gays in the armed services because if we do, “men who want to prove they are real men will not join.”

Lind’s relative manliness doesn’t necessarily add to or subtract from his opinion’s validity, but unnamed sources who knew him when assure me that the closest he ever came to wearing a uniform was Full story »

A person consists both of their being and of the works that their being produces. Whether those works are physical or as intangible as the time spent on a particular task.

A traditional Westminster approach to politics, with a typical Left / Right political duopoly, has become the gold standard of democratic representation. It is also conflicted and inherently incapable of resolving its core contradiction. Full story »

2 Timothy 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

James Dobson and the Christian Right activists at Focus on the Family seem to have forgotten that scriptural promise.  Then again, there is a great deal of the Bible they seem to have forgotten, or chosen to blatantly ignore.  Their real “focus” is on scare tactics to frighten conservative evangelicals away from any flirtation with voting for Barack Obama, who may as well be the devil incarnate masquerading beneath a veneer of seductive charisma.

The latest instrument in this campaign of emotional intimidation is a “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” [download PDF at website] produced by Focus on the Family Action, the PAC arm of Dobson’s organization.  Full story »

DNC08, day one observation: there’s just way the hell more going on that we can cover. There are 11 of us, and I’m not sure we could do what we feel like we ought to be doing if we had 111.

It’s especially tough because S&R isn’t and never has been about being the firstest and the fastest. We rarely scoop anybody. Instead, we like to digest, to ponder, to reflect, to think as thoroughly as we can and finally produce something that takes the reader deeper. But today – there’s so much that the team has covered, so many people we’ve talked to, so many pictures we’ve taken… When it comes to information coming in, it’s been like drinking from a firehose. Full story »

“Can I take a picture of your sign?”

“Whose side are you on?”

“God’s side.”

I believe I am.

“Bless you, sister. Here.”

He maneuvered the sign according to my directions, forgave my lamentable awkwardness with a camera and asked me where I was from. Then he hugged me. I think I felt something wet on my cheek. I’m praying it’s not what I thought it was.

Mr. Donohue:

The Catholic League’s request to Leah Daughtry to ban the blogs BitchPhD and Towleroad from the Democratic National Convention came as something of a shock to those of us here at Scholars and Rogues. Frankly, Mr. Donohue, we are hurt. Our offices contain no balloon figures of Jesus, with or without genitalia (you say “apparently albino penis,” I say “loincloth” – oh wait! There’s the penis! Or should it be Penis?). Our site features no links to intensely homoerotic coverage of the hottest Olympic athletes, despite insistent lobbying from at least two of our staff members. Our humble blog, unlike Daily Kos, may never become the Internet apotheosis of evil radicalism. We know our place. We are what we are.

What we are, Mr. Donohue, is a blog at least ten times as offensive to the Catholic League as the so-called “patently obscene” publications to which you so vehemently object.

Full story »

Scrogues and scrogue sympathizers:

As the National Stonewall Democrats are expecting a record number of LGBT delegates at the upcoming shindig, and there will surely be no shortage of bloggers and journalists of all stripes looking to dance, drink and otherwise “something else” the madness away, the following installment for the rainbow-striped comes to you courtesy of Denverite Daniel Gonzales, whom you may know from the gayzette blog, Box Turtle Bulletin, Beyond Ex-Gay and Ex-Gay Watch.

Full story »

Jesus’ General is rolling this morning.

His shot at David Vitter is pretty funny, too. Full story »