…although, God-man knows, there’s likely to be one sooner rather than later:
Thanks to Tom the Dancing Bug and GoComics.com.
OK, let’s make gay rights an issue in the presidential election—why not?!
May 8, 2012 By 2 Comments
I mean, it’s not like there’s already a bunch of issues in this year’s election on which the candidates (and presumptive candidates) have staked out well-reasoned and philosophically-consistent positions as they make a rational case to the people of America asking for the responsibility of managing one of the major branches of our national government, right? So I’d like to see if anybody is ready to really show some leadership, and gay rights and gay marriage are perfect issues: all that’s required is the courage to publicly do the right thing.
The latest engagement was in North Carolina where the voters took to the polls Tuesday to say no to gay marriage, in great big, red letters. In Slate William Saletan summarized the vote-no-’cause-God-says-so arguments, and other scare tactics, those people heard in the campaign: Gay marriage will destroy religious freedom, and weaken the economy, and be treason against God, and we’ll lose God’s protection from racial disasters, and it will lead to man-on-dog marriage. (Seriously.)
(Interesting perspective, though, from the speaker of the North Carolina state house, who is convinced that any ban on gay marriage in his state will only be temporary. “State House Speaker Thom Tillis, a Republican from a Charlotte suburb, said even if the amendment is passed, it will be reversed as today’s young adults age. ‘It’s a generational issue,’ Mr. Tillis told a student group at North Carolina State University in March about the amendment he supports. ‘If it passes, I think it will be repealed within 20 years.’”)
This comes just a week after a Mitt Romney campaign foreign policy spokesman resigned after anti-gay conservatives “made an issue” out of his support for gay marriage. Yes, it was Richard Grenell’s “unhinged” support for gay marriage that upset these folks, surely; the religious extremists wouldn’t have used that to cover their opposition to Grenell because the man himself is gay…no no, surely not. Romney didn’t cover himself in glory, caving to the intolerance from the religious rightand sacrificing Grenell on the altar of getting elected.
Joe Biden’s got something to say here—what a surprise! But I’m inclined to agree with those who think that putting the loose-lipped vice president on “Meet the Press” and having him say he is comfortable with gay marriage as a civil right is part of a political plan by the Obama campaign, which wants to reassure gay and lesbian voters, and other voters who support gay rights, that the president really is on their side but doesn’t want to take the chance of reigniting this culture wars issue and inflaming anti-gay voters into supporting Romney. Adding the secretary of education to the mix was a nice touch. From the standpoint of election politics, I understand that reasoning. (There are Democratic spin doctors who insist there’s no subterfuge involved, that the campaign wishes this issue had stayed down in the weeds.)
But I also agree with J. Bryan Lowder in Slate, and probably many others in other places, when they argue that there has to come a time when the political calculations take a back seat to doing the right thing.
However, at some point this kind of political prevarication is going to have to give way to principle. Though the cultural mood in this country regarding homosexuality has been morphing in the right direction for a number of years now, waiting for the zeitgeist or generational turn-over to solve everything isn’t going to help those citizens affected in the meantime by dangerously reactionary legislation.
(They’re talking about you, Mr. President, if you’re up to it.)
Lowder goes on to explain, and links to a FiveThirtyEight blog post in the New York Times that further explains, that the North Carolina constitutional amendment doesn’t just prohibit same sex marriage, it outlaws all civil unions and domestic partnerships in the state regardless of gender. Now, God’s position on heterosexual civil unions is not entirely clear, but there is a new Gallup poll showing half of Americans today believe same-sex marriages should be recognized as valid by lawwith the same rights as heterosexual marriages. That’s a dramatic change from 15 years ago when it was only 27% favoring and 68% opposing.
The tide is turning: last week Funky Winkerbean started a new series, and I have a feeling the good people of Westview, Ohio will end up on the side of the angels.
A little good news: scientists stand up to politicians
April 18, 2012 By 1 Comment
And by politicians, I mean the knuckleheaded, blindered-by-the-right-wing nitwits who refuse to believe anything that doesn’t support their political beliefs…or, the beliefs they profess to believe, in order to maintain their political support (there, I believe that’s clear now). You know, the ones who don’t get Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s epigram that people are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts, and who don’t get the irony that they don’t get it.
Today I ran across this NPR story about scientists in Tennessee fighting a state law that was promoted as an open-minded effort to allow “teachers to question accepted theories on evolution and climate change,” but which the scientists argued was just another attempt to get creationism taught as a theory on a scientific par with evolution. The story refers to similar efforts in other states where scientists are fighting other efforts to distort science fact into political fiction.
Allow it? Questioning theories and explaining how hypotheses are proved and become accepted scientific fact is the basis of science. Teachers don’t need state lawmakers’ permission to break down and explain the parts of any scientific theory, or they shouldn’t. Not knowing that, while trying to sneak a little religion into the secular science, the grandstanding pols peel back another layer of their own ignorance…or is it another layer of toadiness?
Slamming your eyes shut and screaming “no no no no no no no I can’t hear you” in the face of inconvenient facts is not the reassuring response I want out of my elected representatives. I agree with Rice University professor Ken Whitney, who thinks that a candidate’s refusal to acknowledge scientific fact as fact ought to be a deal-killer when we go to the ballot box:
I would have an extremely hard time voting for someone who actively argued that evolution should not be taught, or alternately that intelligent design is a valid concept that we should be teaching our kids in public school science classes.
Note, he said we shouldn’t be teaching it in science classes, and that’s because it’s not scientifically valid. We have to be open-minded enough not to confuse science with religion if we want to get the most value out of each of them.
Just one question to answer today
March 14, 2012 By 6 Comments
Please, no pushing, you will all get a turn. This dropped out of the electronic wind earlier this week; I can’t make out what conclusion this rigorous experiment returned, but I thought you’d like a chance to answer the lad’s question—click the comments balloon at the top right.
OK, I’ll start:
“Yes, and you will be one of them.”
