A Day Late

Been having massive computer problems -- it's been in the shop twice since Friday, and will probably be in again this afternoon.

At any rate, here's Marriage News Watch, yesterday edition:

Illinois has ten days.

Cute Video du Jour

A country song, no less:

Via Gay Marriage Watch.

Just for Fun

I haven't posted anything by Kazaky lately. Here's one I just discovered:

I'm not sure if I love it. No, wait -- let me restate that: I'm not sure how much I love it.

I Leave Home for a Couple of Hours

And another country mandates marriage equality.

Brazil makes fifteen.

Note to Brian Brown: Sorry, Brian -- it's a wave.

Benghazi!!1!eleventy!!

No, it's not Watergate and Iran-Contra rolled into one. Key point:

One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don't actually know where it is. 10% think it's in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.

This is the Republican base we're talking about. Cuba?

The fun part is, it hasn't affected Hillary Clinton's ratings at all. (I'm taking the whole "scandal" more as a pre-emptive attack on a possible Clinton presidential run than as an attempt to bring Obama down, which ain't gonna happen.)

PPP's newest national poll finds that Republicans aren't getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton's +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans remain very unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.

And in case you were confused by all the conflicting reports, this should clear it up:

In the day following the Benghazi attacks, Obama appeared at the White House Rose Garden alongside then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In his remarks, Obama referred to the incident as an “act of terror” and used the phrase again at a campaign rally the day after in Denver, CO. “I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished,” he said.

But [House Oversight Chairman Darrell] Issa (R-CA) claimed that Obama relied on the “act of terror” formulation to dissuade Americans from thinking it was a terror attack, thus improving his chances of re-election.

“The president sent a letter to the President of Libya where he didn’t call it a terrorist attack even when at the time the President of Libya was calling it pre-planned Sept. 11 terrorist attack,” Issa told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. “The words that are being used carefully — like you just said, ‘act of terror’ — an ‘act of terror’ is different than a ‘terrorist attack.’ The truth is, this was a terrorist attack, this had Al Qaeda at it.”

There -- all clear now?

I haven't been following the whole thing all that closely. I'll wait for it to hit Netflix.

Via Balloon Juice.

Repent!

Or should that be "The sky is falling!"? Brian Brown, working himself into a frenzy:

The National Organization for Marriage today condemned the Minnesota Legislature for redefining marriage and predicted that the vote will lead to the DFL losing their majority in the 2014 election.

"Just six months ago advocates of redefining marriage said that there was no need for the marriage amendment because Minnesota already had a traditional marriage law on the books. Now, they’ve changed that law and imposed genderless marriage,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “Make no mistake, this vote will bring the demise of the DFL majority and end the
careers of wayward Republicans in the Legislature once voters have their say."

[. . .]

"The people of Minnesota did not vote for gay marriage in 2012,” said Brown. “They voted to maintain traditional marriage by maintaining the status quo. Our opponents bought a victory by claiming that marriage was not under threat of redefinition, but in fact they always intended to redefine it at the soonest possible moment. Legislators who voted to redefine marriage were foolish to do so. They cast a terrible vote that damages society, tells children they don’t deserve a mother and a father, and brands supporters of traditional marriage as bigots. We predict that this vote will be career ending for many legislators in Minnesota."

Well, it's nice to see them admit that maintaining the status quo means voting for discrimination.

And actually, the people of Minnesota voted against restricting marriage to NOM-approved couples. Seems to me that same-sex marriage is a natural result of that.

The rest of it is the usual BS, but I really wish I were in a position to pin Brown down on one thing: how, exactly, does same-sex marriage destroy society? I mean, there has to be a way that happens, right? What is it?

And I think this probably has something to do with the rant:

NOM was the largest funder of the marriage amendment campaign in 2012.

Loser.

Via Joe.My.God.

And as an antidote to Brown, here's a speech by Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk:

Number Twelve

Minnesota.

Brian Brown must be shitting bricks.  I can hardly wait to see the spin on this one.

And here's todays "Marriage News Watch" with Matt Baume:

Quote du Jour

Today's Must Read

This post from Digby on Elizabeth Warren.

"Morally Straight"

For some reason, that phrase jumped out at me while reading this post at Towleroad. It is, of course, one of the catch phrases and guiding principles of the Boy Scouts of America. It's taken to automatically exclude gay scouts and leaders, as though morality is somehow intimately tied to who you have relationships with rather than how you treat people.

That strikes me as pretty shallow. To my mind, morality is much more complex. But then, I was taught actual values (another word that's been sadly warped in our public discourse) rather than just rules. Perhaps that's why I found Paganism such a good fit -- every day, one is confronted with a series of moral decisions that don't lend themselves to cut-and-dried solutions, and if you follow Paganism's one rule -- "Do no harm" -- it can get pretty knotty.

As for the video (which I'm not going to post), the sentiments expressed are repellent, as much for their ignorance as for their bigotry. And have you noticed that these people are obsessed with sex?

The Republican Philosophy of Governing

First, refuse to govern.  Block every attempt by the president to govern.  Then, impeach! Even if you can't come up with a legitimate reason.  Here's Rachel Maddow dissecting "Benghazi-gate" as the latest move to impeach Obama. For something. Or nothing.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is not a new thing for the Republicans. At this point, it's a time-honored strategy. Remember the last Democratic president?  (I'm also taking it as a pre-emptive strike against Hillary Clinton, since the Republicans know they stand no chance against her in 2016 and they're scared shitless she'll run.)

 Maha has a nice summary of the Republicans' refusal to govern -- or to allow anyone else to govern.

Speaking of the Affordable Care Act (and we were, if you clicked through on the last link), the Republicans don't want anyone helping to implement it -- even the health-care industry, which loves the law.  If this all seems odd, given the extent to which Republican candidates have relied on money from the insurance industry and PhrMA, remember that the ACA is the signature achievement of that Kenyan islamofascist socialist usurper, who has done the unforgivable -- he won the presidential election.  Twice.  Instead of the white guys.

If the Republicans' behavior during the Obama administration appears to be somewhat childish, well -- that's because it is.

Double Whammy

We have a winner today -- two awards: the Through the Looking Glass Award and the Tony Perkins Award, to none other than Tony Perkins himself. Via e-mail, as reported at Joe.My.God. I'm going to do a little parsing -- you can get the full-dress rant at the link.

If you look at the dozen states with same-sex 'marriage,' homosexual activists are picking off the easiest targets: progressive pockets of the country that have rejected traditional morality.

Yeah -- like New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Iowa.

If conservatives can confine same-sex 'marriage' to these liberal jurisdictions, the evidence of why this policy won't work will begin to show.

The "evidence" is more likely to be FRC's donations drying up than anything else. That works for me. (They did have a rather significant shortfall last year, as I recall.) (Looking back at Perkins' statement, I am struck by the fact that it's nothing but empty posturing -- almost of Brian Brown caliber, but without the threats.)

It's time to look at the marriage scoreboard -- 30 states to 12 -- and recognize that same-sex 'marriage' isn't a wave that's sweeping the nation.

The timeline is what Perkins would rather ignore. Most of those 30 states banned SSM in 2004, on the coattails of the Bush campaign. Here's a nice graphic from the LA Times that gives you a good picture through last month. Since then, Delaware and Rhode Island have passed marriage equality bills, Minnesota may do so as early as next week, and Illinois is hoping to do so before the end of the month. The legislature in New Jersey is working to override the governor's veto of their SSM bill within the next year. Both Oregon and Nevada are in the process of repealing their constitutional amendments. And there is a challenge to Michigan's ban waiting on the decision by the Supreme Court in Perry (the Prop 8 case), which in itself could decide the issue, but I don't think the justices have the balls. Consider the progress in the past two years -- New York, Maine, Maryland, Washington State, Rhode Island, and Delaware have all instituted recognition of same-sex marriage in the past 18 months, all by either legislative action by the people's elected representatives or by popular vote. Note also that this is not occurring in a vacuum: in that same period, Denmark, Uruguay, New Zealand, France, and the tiny Dutch possession of Saba have joined the list of countries recognizing same-sex marriages, which now numbers 14. Scotland, England and Wales are still arguing about it, but the government is determined to go ahead, and Ireland is poised to put it to a vote, where it will probably win. Sorry, Tony -- it's a wave.

OK, I admit it -- I relish Schadenfreude, especially when it's from something like Tony Perkins' fantasy world crashing down around his ears.