You cannot convince me that this woman is pro-life. Not because she eats turkey, but because she, and the people she hires for PR, obviously have an irreverent attitude towards killing.

She just cackles with that shit-eating grin all the while…

Rich Ford makes the following argument:

…[T]raditional marriage isn’t just analogous to sex discrimination—it is sex discrimination: Only men may marry women, and only women may marry men. Same-sex marriage would transform an institution that currently defines two distinctive sex roles—husband and wife—by replacing those different halves with one sex-neutral role—spouse. Sure, we could call two married men “husbands” and two married women “wives,” but the specific role for each sex that now defines marriage would be lost. Widespread opposition to same-sex marriage might reflect a desire to hang on to these distinctive sex roles rather than vicious anti-gay bigotry.

I doubt that people reach this level of complexity and analysis in their primary reaction to gay marriage. Sure, it is a quandry they are presented with, but this is a feeble attempt at a kind of Freudian explanation that assumes too much subconscious sophistication.

But I can only speak from my experience, and as someone who used to oppose same-sex marriage in favor of civil unions, I can say with certainty that my objection arose from a feeling of being challenged. Not a challenge of having to reformulate my own sexuality as a result of the dissolution of clearly-delineated sex-roles, but a challenge to my morality.

People hate being wrong, and if someone is entitled to rights that I have previously been content to deny them, then I have done wrong.

On the whole, though, I do agree with the majority of Rich’s article, in which he says it’s tempting but erroneous to analogize same-sex marriage to racism. I reason that the process by which the majority came to grant civil rights to blacks is fundamentally different from that by which they will come to grant civil rights to gays.

In the case of blacks, the the driving force for equality was by nature empathetic. However, sex roles are much more entrenched than race roles, and so forging empathy may be more difficult. I think we should make an appeal to respect and the golden rule, while highlighting parellels to which heterosexuals will relate, namely that gays love too.

In so doing, we can assuage their fears of being forced to understand homosexuality, which they will probably never be able to do anyway.

As always, we should sidestep the issue of the bedroom, and we should find some common ground in love and commitment, by which we can reframe the issue.

h/t Ta-Nehisi

Andrew Sullivan comments on the “hole in our collective memory” that was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After we defeated the Japanese, we imposed strict censorship laws on them, and did away with most of the evidence of the horrific act we had perpetrated against them. Resultingly, images of the destruction are hard to come by. However, recently, photographs of the destruction surfaced.

The images are silently terrific, like this one, which depicts the famous “nuclear shadow” of a man standing on a bridge.

His footprints are outlined in chalk, and I am assuming he was vaporized instantly.

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Noam Chomsky said that these bombings were likely the greatest acts of terrorism in history (by the definition of terrorism we apply to our current adversaries), but concedes that they were probably necessary. I am inclined to agree with him.

h/t Andrew

I will begin by disclosing the fact that I do not believe that the bible is worth consultation as a source of moral authority, but as some atheists are wont to do, I am going suspend disbelief just long enough to use it to make an argument to the faithful from their own canon.

We all remember the story of the woman who was to be stoned to death for adultery, and whom Jesus spared from that fate with the famous “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” speech. Most people also know that this story is that it was an attempt by the pharisees to discredit the teachings of Jesus.

Jesus claimed to believe in the old testament, which, barbaric as it often was, called for the woman to be put to death. However, by his own teachings, she should be spared. The pharisees wanted to catch him in this contradiction, and knew that if he agreed she should be executed in concordance with the bible, his teachings would be invalidated, and he could be discredited. But if he said she should be spared, he could be called a heretic for disagreeing with the holy books.

In the end, it is made very clear that Jesus opposes enforcement of any biblical injunction against unholy sexual practice if the accusers are sinful themselves.

It should therefore be apparent to followers of Jesus that we as men shall not deny rights, be they to life or marriage, to those who flaunt the carnal prohibitions of the bible.

I am filled with overwhelming pride tonight, as United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama is named as the winner of the 2008 presidential election. I feel tears well as I marvel at our willingness as a nation, as people, and as humans, to right the wrongs of the past, and to look forward to the future with hope and optimism; willingly taking the steps necessary to attain our dreams, and to challenge the status quo to secure a safe and better future for our children.

I love you America.

Electoral Map, 8:10 PM Pacific, November 4, 2008

Can anybody really take this seriously?
I love the recurring image of the San Francisco skyline, as if it’s the Sodom and Gomorrah of gay.

This is a third-hand quote, but it is amazing:

“I think there is a prudential reason for maintaining a progressive tax system (and we certainly can argue about “how” progressive it should be): namely, that if you believe, as I do, that the U.S. is best served by maintaining a capitalist system and a free market, we have to accept that one of the natural consequences of such a system is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

Regardless of whether these fewer and fewer deserve the money they accumulate or are unfairly being punished by progressive taxation, the political consequence of such an accumulation of wealth is radicalism - a majority that uses its political power to destroy the system rather than simply to modify it.

In other words, progressive taxation is required to maintain the political viability of a free market.”

Original post and commentary here.

Sarah Palin won’t stop ranting about how Obama is going to turn the country into a communist state:

“See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else.”

In classic Palin style, she singlehandedly accuses liberals of advocating abolition of private property, while at the same time blurting out a completely unintegrated noun phrase “more tax agenda” that sounds like some kind of Buzzword-Tourette’s tic.

This single sentence is a scintillating example of the Republican strategy: make people fear your opponent with utterly inarticulate, nonsensical, baseless accusations, delivered with a contrived appeal to down-home sensibility. And tragically, this seems to be working.

To me, the discourse plays out as follows:

Liberals: “The rich are getting richer at expense of the poor.”
Republicans: “You are a redistributionist.”
Liberals: “No, it’s just alarming that in 1980, the top 7% owned 20% of the wealth, and today the top 1% owns the same amount. We need to rebuild the middle class.”
Republicans: “You are a socialist.”

Republicans are just calling names, they aren’t offering any real solutions to the problem that our country is becoming a plutocracy.

Well let me make a radical claim: redistribution is exactly what we need right now. At times, that word has been (rightly) treated as a profanity, but today it shouldn’t be. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of plutocracy, and it’s time that it swing back towards fairness. You may call that change in direction “socialism”, but we have to pull to get back to center.

After reading this story this morning, in which a woman was allegedly mugged, and had a “B” carved into her face by a crazed Obama supporter, I considered writing a blog about how she was probably making it up. It seemed unlikely to me that she would be mugged, beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, an mutilated with a “B” in her face, all in one go, as some sources claimed. I mean, come on, what kind of fish story is that?

First off, I wouldn’t credit a criminal with being that well organized to make such a coordinated multi-prong monetary/political/sexual attack.

Second off, the so-called “B” was FREAKING BACKWARDS!

This just screams “I’m too dumb to realize things are reverse when I am looking in a mirror.”

Anyway, I felt pretty bad after making these judgments against someone who was probably genuinely hurt, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. Come to find out later, she made it up.

What an idiot.

“And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”

     Genesis 4:8-10

“And he answered me saying: ‘This is the spirit which went forth from Abel, whom his brother Cain slew, and he makes his suit against him till his seed is destroyed from the face of the earth, and his seed is annihilated from amongst the seed of men.”

     Book of Enoch 22:7 (Non-canonical book of the old testament removed by the Jews ^[1])

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In Gaelic tradition, surnames are derived by adding Mac (meaning “son of”) to the name of one’s father, or Ó (meaning “grandson of”) to the name of one’s grandfather. However, Mac is often shortened to Mc. ^[2]

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Given that John Sidney is, by his own name, a “son of Cain”, and that since Abel’s murder it has been his charge to eradicate the progeny of Cain, I think it is a little risky to vote in a president whom God might smite at any time.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch
2. http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/surname/index.htm