Let's start with this one, about the ongoing war against Kevin Jennings, who has done more good in his life than all 53 representatives involved in this letter put together. Via TPM:
Today, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and 52 other House Republicans have taken their criticism of Jennings a step farther, writing a letter to the White House asking that President Obama fire Jennings. King has made that request before -- but never with the formal backing of so many other GOPers.
The letter claims that Jennings has "played an integral role in promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America's schools."
"The totality of Mr. Jennings' career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality," the letter continues.
King hauls out the lies that have been circulating about Jennings (which even Fox News has admitted are not true), but I think the gist of his discomfort with Jennings is summed up in the quote above, if you dig just barely beneath the surface: it's not that Jennings "promotes" homosexuality (at least, not in any way that any normal person would recognize), it's just that he's admitting that it exists, he is one, and he wants to make schools safe for the baby fags and dykes. When you look at the statistics on the suicide rates for gay youth, that strikes me as a good goal. Not for King. King is just as happy that they're dead, apparently. This is a key element:
You should replace him with someone who has a record of educating children in a safe and moral environment.
I have to take it that King is referring to "moral" as meaning his own shallow, mechanistic, Christianist idea of "morality" of the sort espoused by every right-wing loon in the country. I'm not impressed -- their understanding of morality, by my standards, is primitive, at best. For instance, "immoral behavior" does not, apparently, include lying about people you disapprove of.
TPM has the full text of the letter, which is pretty disgusting. My congresswoman, I think, is getting a letter from me on this one, with the request that she publicly denounce King, his co-signers, and the lies they are telling about Kevin Jennings.
(Update:: Timothy Kincaid dissects the letter very effectively and quite accurately, finishing with this:
And lest you think that either of these two additional “concerns” are central to their objection, they close with the following:
You should replace him with someone who has a record of educating children in a safe and moral environment. [emphasis added]
In other words, someone who isn’t gay.
As I recall, the courts call it "animus."
Alvin McEwen has assembled some of the backlash.)
And via Sullivan, this commentary by Julian Sanchez on this really wacko editorial from the Moony Times. Says Sanchez:
But what’s really baffling is that it’s never quite made clear what the authors find problematic about the rather anodyne goal of promoting tolerance and civility between students. Given that actual kids in actual schools do bully and harass kids who don’t fit gender stereotypes, or who come from nontraditional families, what does the Times regard as an acceptable approach by the schools? They’re supposed to stand by in silence, for fear that they might “indoctrinate” someone with the radical communist view that it’s unacceptable to use “gay” and “faggot” as terms of abuse? Or perhaps they should just ban the word “gay” without explanation, as though it’s some kind of profanity, or an especially heinous thing to accuse someone of? It seems to me you’ve got to be awfully dense not to get that there’s also an implicit lesson when schools casually and routinely reference hetero relationships, while gay and lesbian couples—who, like, go to supermarkets and have kids in little league and stuff; students are going to notice they exist—are under some kind of omerta, never to be mentioned. Is the conservative position now that schools are supposed to remain indifferent to harassment in their halls, or to treat the families of certain students as a shameful secret? Because that appears to be the alternative.
It's formless, but it's of a piece with King's letter: there are people who, because of the way they were born, are so awful you can't even admit they exist. Particularly if you live in the fantasy world of such as Rep. John Boehner. This piece by Steve Benen jogged me a little, about something I hadn't really registered when I first discussed Boehner's statement on hate-crimes legislation:
"All violent crimes should be prosecuted vigorously, no matter what the circumstance," Boehner argued. "The Democrats' 'thought crimes' legislation, however, places a higher value on some lives than others. Republicans believe that all lives are created equal, and should be defended with equal vigilance."
First off, he's lying. Republicans don't believe any such thing. Just take a look at their positions on gay civil rights, women's right to govern their own bodies, and, when you get down to the Limbaugh/Beck hybrids (ewww!) in the base, minorities in general. In Boehner's Republican party, all lives are created equal as long as they're white, Christian men.
Benen's summation:
The Minority Leader could just acknowledge he doesn't like gay people. It'd be easier than coming up with bizarre rationales like this one.
I think Rep. King and the editors of the Washington Times should do the same thing. Save themselves a lot of anguish. But then, that course involves a certain amount of honesty.
The core I discovered in this story from Pink News concerning, believe it or not, the death of Stephen Gately (about which I was first informed, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, by a correspondent in Singapore, who was devastated).
[Daily Mail columnist Jan] Moir wrote today: "Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.
"And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy."
She also drew comparisons between Gately and Kevin McGee, the former civil partner of Matt Lucas, despite Gately dying of natural causes and McGee committing suicide after months of depression and addiction.
She wrote: "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.
"Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened. It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death."
(The quote is from a prior post on Moir's column. For some reason, no one wants to link directly. Go figure. It may be because, as Stephen Frye noted: "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane." Ya think?
Now Moir is playing the victim card (no shit!), and as part of her self-justification, she wrote:
The point of my column – which I wonder how many of the people complaining have fully read – was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions. That was all. Yes, anyone can die at anytime of anything. However, it seems unlikely to me that what took place in the hours immediately preceding Gately’s death – out all evening at a nightclub, taking illegal substances, bringing a stranger back to the flat, getting intimate with that stranger – did not have a bearing on his death. At the very least, it could have exacerbated an underlying medical condition.
Can you say "judgmental"? And there's the core, both to Moir's unseemly rant and Boehner's willful ignorance (unless it's immutable supidity), King's propagation of disproved lies, and the Moony Times' formless discomfort with gay people: there's an assumption of superiority resting in the fact that heterosexuality is "normal." That in itself is an indication of ignorance, if not outright denial.
A side comment here -- or maybe not: there is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying intimacy with "a stranger," as Moir calls it. Sleaze is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, and she's playing a very convenient card here: it's not that it's something that "nice" people don't engage in, it's just that they're not very honest about the fact that they do it. I've done it myself, although to be honest, they didn't stay strangers for very long. I'm still alive. Thus, her attempt to construct a cause-and-effect argument falls flat. (And I start to wonder how much of it is constructed from bits and pieces of fantasies and stereotypes.) Once again, it's simply a matter of "her way is the only way," even giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she's never slept around. (And just to make it very clear, I don't care whether she has or not. I'm not the one making the "sleazy" comment.) It's that "morality" thing, the kind espoused by those who don't really understand what morality is. Repeat after me: it's not about who you sleep with, it's about how you treat them.
So, back to that whole "normal" thing. Y'know what? I'm gay, and I'm one of the most normal people you're ever going to meet. (Not average, by any means, but normal to the point of being so normal that sometimes I bore myself.) And it's this idea of "normality," resting on ingrained heterosexism, unquestioned patriarchy, and implict (although more and more overt since last November) racism that is being threatened by the possibility of equal civil rights for gays. I mean, they can't attack women or racial minorities (at least not openly) without strong backlash, and they know it. (Just take a look at the GOP's standing in the Latino community.) And as more and more people come to realize that they know someone gay who is pretty much just like them, the rabid right is getting more and more scared and more and more angry because it's becoming more and more obvious, even to them, that they're not superior to everyone else. Not even close. Which means in turn that holding on to their somewhat delusional idea of being in charge is getting harder and harder. It's about power and authority, and they're beginning to realize that they don't have it any more.
Let them stew. I've got to write a letter to my congresscritter.
(PS -- I did write the letter, about Steve King's letter about Kevin Jennings. I insisted that she get up on the floor of the House and call him on it.)
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