Holy Fucking ShitBalls: 75 Big Republicans Back Gay Marriage

holygoddamnshitballs:

75 Major GOPers Back Gay Marriage

What is going on in the Republican Party? In a major departure from the national party’s stance—and even from past statements by the candidates—at least 75 Republicans signed a legal brief on Monday that says gay people have the constitutional right to marry. The brief will be submitted to a California court this week as part of a suit against the state’s controversial Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that outlawed gay marriage. Among the signatures were 2012 Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman…

From Huntsman’s recent Marriage Equality is a Conservative Cause

[W]e must demand equality under the law for all Americans.

…

There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge [a marriage] with the person they love.

…

[T]he American people will not hear us out if we stand against their friends, family, and individual liberty.

Yasmin Nair: Gay Marriage IS a Conservative Cause

All of this has led gays and their straight allies to exult in having the support of conservatives. Apparently, there is nothing that confirms that a cause is right and progressive and just dandy more than the fact that a bunch of fat cat capitalists who have supported the looting of the world and generally have appalling politics around race, gender, and neo-colonialism also support it. 

Out of all this emerges an implicit statement, that even conservatives support gay marriage, that even conservatives admit that gay marriage is a good thing.  It means that there is somehow a left argument to be made for gay marriage. 

But there has never been a left case for gay marriage.  Nothing that the left, progressives, or liberals have stated in support of gay marriage has ever been anything but a profoundly conservative argument.

Gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry for healthcare?  That simply shores up the power of the neoliberal state, compelling people to marry and take on the burden for their own care, instead of creating, for instance, a system that grants life-saving benefits to everyone, regardless of marital status.

This is a matter of “simple equality?”  How is a system that systematically denies those same benefits to single people ever anything but fundamentally unequal?

That denying marriage to some is denying them their ability to love or to have their love affirmed?  If your love depends upon the recognition of the state, your relationship is in greater trouble than you think.

That poor people will somehow benefit from marriage by accessing healthcare through their partners?  Poor people’s problems don’t arise from their inability to get married and in a country without universal healthcare, marriage only compounds your poverty.  And, really, if you’re poor, neither you nor your partner is likely to have healthcare anyway; the last thing you want is to increase the burden on your household by increasing the number of people in it.

…

There is no separate conservative case for gay marriage.  There has never been a left/progressive case for gay marriage. The surprise is not that gay marriage is now being embraced by conservatives and neoliberals.  The surprise is that it took them so long to do so.

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

“This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.”

thedailywhat:

This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: A Texas-based “pro-family” group is calling for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies [pdf] in response to the organization’s decision to allow a Colorado boy who identifies as a girl to join a local troop.

In a video uploaded to YouTube last week, Honest Girl Scouts member Taylor, a 14-year-old Girl Scout from Ventura County, California, reads a statement excoriating GSUSA for “not being honest with us girls, its troops, its leaders, its parents or the American public.”

“Girl Scouts describes itself as an all-girl experience,” Taylor continues. “With that label, families trust that the girls will be in an environment that is not only nurturing and sensitive to girls’ needs, but also safe for girls.”

This isn’t the first backlash GSUSA has seen from its decision in Colorado: Three troops in Louisiana disbanded in December, citing the inclusion of trans girls as the reason. 

A boycott of Girl Scout cookies would undoubtedly harm the august organization, as it receives a generous amount of its funding from their sale.

Reached for comment, Girl Scouts spokeswoman Michelle Tompkins told the Washington Post that GSUSA “prided itself on being an inclusive organization serving girls from all walks of life,” and will continue to review “cases involving transgender children on a case by case basis with a focus on ensuring the welfare and best interests of the child in question and the other girls in the troop as our highest priority.” 

[blogpost.]

You know they know they’re being assholes because they disabled ratings and comments for their video.

Come on, if you’re trying to present a strong, coherent, intelligent argument, the least you could do is memorize your talking points instead of reading the whole damn thing.

Oregon GOP Removes Anti-Gay Language from Party Platform

It’s weird because you read the title and think this is a good thing, but the reality is that the motions to scrap that rhetoric barely passed, homophobia/anti-gay legislation is still every bit an issue in that party as it ever was, and the purpose of the removal wasn’t to show a genuine embracing or even acceptance of the “other” so much as to conceal the party’s long-standing contempt & disregard for it in an effort to gain more support. It’s deceitful. Strategically so. But that’s politics for ya.

I did like this quote though:

“a lot of younger Republicans don’t feel as though this kind of rhetoric has any place in a small government agenda. If we want to do small government, shouldn’t we get government out of the bedroom as well?”

Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable; — and so at last it will be ranged in the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made.

Anthony Trollope | Phineas Finn

As quoted by David Frum in his CNN.com op-ed “I Was Wrong About Same-Sex Marriage”

Source: CNN