Today in Right-Wing Civility

Fromo "Pastor" Rick Wiles, one of the leading lights of the unhinged "Christian" right:

We’re in for the fight of our lives. If these people get power in this country again, you and I are toast, we’re done. Do you understand that? If they regain power, you and I are history. They’re coming after us. They will exterminate all opposition. Take my word for it. These people are ruthless. They’re murderers, they’re perverts, they’re pedophiles, they’re the worst scum that’s ever crawled on this planet and they’re dangerous. They will do anything to hold on to power, including exterminating their domestic opponents because they’re driven with madness, total madness. When you reject God, you’re opening your mind to madness. And these people have rejected God, they rejected God decades ago and madness has taken over.”

And of course, he has a TV show -- and, one assumes, an audience.

Via Joe.My.God.

Right Wing "Moderates"

Very interesting post by Fred Clark at Slacktivist on the role "moderate" evangelicals play in the culture wars:

It would be a positive thing if these moderate mainstream white evangelicals, these Very Nice People with their emphasis on civility, were able to provide a challenge to the vitriol, dishonesty and power games of the culture warriors.

But unfortunately, that’s not the role they play most of the time. Most of the time their smiling civility doesn’t provide a challenge to the culture warriors, it provides a cover for them.

He makes a good point.

And a thought: If a bigot is someone who demeans and discriminates against a group of people without any rational reason -- say because of religious belief -- how to these "civil" evangelicals rank? Is it possible to have a Very Nice Bigot?

And that just naturally leads to Maggie Gallagher, the queen of the self-styled "civil" participants in the culture wars. She's now slamming Gov. Chris Christie for signing a bill outlawing "ex-gay" counseling for minors, and she's either very sloppy about it, or deliberately lying. Her opening paragraph is . . . illuminating:

Due to staff error, a statement on Chris Christie’s signing a bill banning all professional counseling for minors unless it is gay-affirming was issued without my consent, or knowledge. I dislike using language that portrays gay people as “homosexuals” who are “tormented” by same-sex desires. For myself, and I speak only for myself, I consider this language condescending to both gay people and to men in general. Among other things, as far as I can see for most men, of whatever orientation or state in life, being tormented by sexual desire is pretty much the human condition for long stretches of life, rather than an unbearable cause for condescending pity.

First off, the "staff error," also known as "it's someone else's fault," which is a staple defense of so-called "conservatives," a/k/a, the party of personal responsibility.

And do I have to comment on her apparent attitude toward men?

This is where she goes totally off the cliff:

Governor Chris Christie has just put his name to a bill that uses the power of government to strip both parents and teenagers of the right to seek competent, professional help to live their life in accordance with their own values. The bill does not ban a specific kind of destructive therapy; it is a blanket ban on any licensed counseling professional helping any teenager who does not wish to act on gay (or transgender) desire. Not only efforts to change orientation but efforts to change behavior are forbidden, under penalty of law.

Governor Christie just endorsed a law that thus excludes many gay teens who wish to live in accordance with Bible-based values from the circle of care; he has outright banned chastity as a goal of counseling. His bill is not only anti-religious, anti-liberty, and anti-family, it is anti-science because it does not permit scientific knowledge to evolve in the hands of competent professionals.

None of that is true. None of it. The last part is hysterically funny: orientation-change therapy has been condemned by every major medical and psychological professional organization in the Western world because it is not scientific, its practitioners are not competent, and it has been shown to be damaging to those who undergo it. Besides, it doesn't work.

Gallagher either didn't read the bill, or she doesn't care what it really says.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin.

Through the Looking Glass Award

Remember that one? I thought I'd revive it. And we have two winners this morning.

First, from NOM's Jonathan Baker (via Zack Ford at The New Civil Rights Movement), this shining example of scary predictions:

The General Mills blog gives additional information that should give us pause: in addition to things like recipes, healthy eating, fitness and diet and nutrition—things you would expect a food company to cover—the site will cover mind and body issues and relationships. Look for these lifestyle, mind and body, and relationship articles to start off in a very benign manner (who thinks we don’t need a little more exercise?), but expect before long a transition into a renewed effort pushing for the redefinition of marriage and family in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Yep. In NOM land, everything that might benefit people is a dark plot to not only push for marriage equality, but to recognize that gay people exist and are just as human as you and I. What a dastardly, underhanded move by General Mills.

And tied for first place is this gem from the Media Research Center, Brent Bozell's "watchdog" group devoted to making sure that the media only give us pure thoughts. Again, via Zack Ford:

On Thursday morning, the networks continued their smear campaign against Cathy as an anti-gay bigot and Chick-fil-A’s Christian principals as hate speech. CBS This Morning’s anchor Charlie Rose vilified patrons as anti-gay, stating that “thousands went there to eat and to make a statement – a statement against same sex marriage.” On Friday morning, Good Morning America’s Steve Osunsami similarly slandered Chick-fil-A and its leadership, mischaracterizing Chick-fil-A’s pro-traditional marriage stance as a “fight against gay Americans and gay marriage.”

Well, Dan Cathy is an anti-gay bigot -- he's quite proud of it, in fact. And Chick-fil-A's charitable arm, the WinShape Foundation, donates quite heavily to anti-gay groups, including recognized hate groups. No bigotry there, no sirree!

Apparently Bozell is taking a leaf from Newt Gingrich's book -- the page that says "If you quote me, that's hate speech." And as for the patrons, as Ford points out:

In almost every media interview with participants in “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” they expressed that they opposed the freedom to marry, and that that was exactly why they felt the need to support Chick-fil-A.

Here's a brief bit on customer statements:

Gay and lesbian employees of Chick-fil-A had perhaps the most disheartening reaction to the day. An Alabama gay staffer named Andrew described the day as “hater appreciation day,” calling it “very, very depressing.” A gay employee at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta heard a customer say, “I’m so glad you don’t support the queers, I can eat in peace.” Another in Colorado had customers telling him, “I support your company, because your company hates the gays.” Many report experiencing homophobia not just from customers, but from fellow employees as well.

Bozell must be getting dizzy from his own spin.

Limbaugh (Update, Update II, Update III)

I'm sure you've read more than enough about Rush Limbaugh's latest outrage. There are reports and updates all over the place. In fact, the shitstorm is bad enough that Limbaugh actually "apologized" -- after losing half a dozen advertisers. (I've seen no indication that he actually called Sandra Fluke and apologized to her personally -- he just issued a "statement.")

Karoli over at C&L has a good update on the whole thing, including the full text of his apology, which I am not going to reproduce here. She, like I, did zero in on what I consider the key part of this text. Limbaugh:

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities.

Limbaugh is trying desperately to reframe the whole discussion as the Democrats bending over backward to accommodate a loose, hedonistic lifestyle. It's a variation on Daryl Issa's attempt to reframe it as an assault on religious freedom by holding a congressional hearing with seven witnesses -- all male, all religious.

Oh, and might be expected, Limbaugh is lying -- no one is asking "American citizens" to pay for "these activities" -- except the citizens who are making use of the benefit. This is preventive care included in insurance paid for by the insured (ultimately; even if the companies they work for are paying the actual premiums, the participants are taking lower wages in return for the benefit).

Karoli:

On to the second paragraph, which is where he shows plainly that he did not intend a real, true apology. By framing contraception as something for a "social activity," he endeavors to minimize and trivialize women's health needs. Yes, contraception is used to prevent pregnancy, for married and single women. But Sandra Fluke's testimony very specifically pointed to other uses for it, including treatment of PCOS (an incredibly debilitating condition), endometriosis, pelvic inflammation, ovarian cysts, and other conditions specific to women. Further, some women use it to actually regulate their cycles so they can become pregnant. Some young women use it to treat acne!

These are not social. These are not recreational. These are serious health issues. They matter, and they should be covered as part of health insurance that provides basic benefits. Rush Limbaugh intentionally tried to frame this as a debate about sex when it was never a debate about sex. He did it, and Fox News picked up the banner and marched forward with it to the point where now the "slut" meme has been echoed all over the Internet by the far-right wing.

It's the conservative mindset, and Limbaugh played right into it with no discernible effort -- probably because he's one of the people who created it. Listen to Rick Santorum, the darling of the social conservative set: it's all about sex, especially when it's about women.

That's the whole focus of "conservative" morality. Morality has nothing to do with ethics, integrity, social responsibility, standards of behavior, the social contract. Morality is purely and simply about sex, specifically about engaging in sex outside the bounds of whatever these "guardians of decency" deem appropriate. In its essentials, its about making babies -- humanity as glorified breeding stock. And it's all derived from a warped focus on Leviticus, or any other book of the Bible that forbids something. (If you're unsure of my reaction to something like that, read the quotes at the top of this blog.)

And in point of fact, Ms. Fluke never mentioned sex. Here's her testimony:

The mantra's all over the place at this point -- see this post by John Cole on Ed Morrisey's comments. Mission accomplished.

Update: Maha has an on-the-nose (and scathing) post on the contraception/sex mantra.

Update II: David Atkins does a point by point dissection of Limbaugh's "apology."

Update III: One last update: Adam Serwer seems to be under the impression that Rush Limbaugh doesn't know how the Pill works, as evidenced by the header in his post: Dear Rush Limbaugh: Birth Control Doesn't Work Like Viagra. Clue: Limbaugh doesn't care how birth control works. It's irrelevant. He's relying, not necessarily on the ignorance of his listeners (well-attested by the fact that they are his listeners), but on their willingness to believe whatever he says. It's part of the social conservative hymnal: women who have sex without paying the consequences, i.e., getting pregnant, are dirty whores. That's the message. It's not about contraception -- for him, it never was.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin, this story from AP on Capt. Steven Hill, the soldier who asked Rick Santorum about reinstating DADT and got boos from some of the audience for his audacity.

Santorum's response is typical of the man, and shows starkly why he's not fit to be commander in chief or anything that remotely resembles president of the United States:

Santorum replied that he would reinstitute the ban on open service by gay troops because "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."

"What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. That's tragic," he continued. "Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual."

The "social experimentation" line is laughable. The military has always been a social experiment -- it's not like civilian life at all.

And of course, Santorum's obsessed with sex. But we knew that.

What's heartening is the response from Hill's commander:

At breakfast later that morning, the segment was playing on the chow hall television. Hill immediately tracked down his commander, who told him she had no problem with what he'd done but that she would need to run it up the chain of command. She later relayed the response.

"She said, 'What the military's most concerned with is that you are OK, because it's a lot of pressure on you and we want to make sure if there is anything we can do to help,'" he recalled.

There's hope.

Not so much for the members of the audience and all the presidential wannabes who just sat there and said nothing as a member of our armed forces was booed.

Yeah, I Know

I've been slacking off again. I'm tired,and it's really becoming spring, so I have no attention span whatsoever, and the news is not new.

I do have some thoughts on the King & Spaulding/DOMA mess, but I think there are a couple of posts that summarize my thoughts pretty effectively, without me having to do the work of actually thinking about it. Try this one from David Link at Independent Gay Forum. I don't often agree with Link, but in this case I think he's hit it right on the nose. Link's post is a response to this bit of handwringing from Jonathan Rauch, which typifies the response of the "acceptable" left and the Very Serious People in the corporate media.

This post from Scott Wooledge at The New Civil Rights Movement takes, I think, exactly the right tone: unmitigated snark.

My own reaction to most of the tut-tutting has been to the effect that no matter what small victories we achieve, we can count on finding those both inside and outside the community who will take it as an opportunity to proclaim once again what bullies we are (always prefaced, in this case, with "I personally believe DOMA is abhorrent. But. . . .")

It's also gratifying to learn that most of my surmises in this post turned out to be pretty accurate.

The real lesson from all of this, which is the one the right doesn't want you to hear, is that anti-gay bigotry is bad for business.

Vile

I've sat on this one for a couple of days on purpose, until my blood pressure came back somewhere close to normal. Even for Dan Riehl, this is appalling. (I've encountered Riehl's comments on gays before -- he's an empty gasbag.) It's one of the most disgusting pieces of slander I've ever read, from anyone. Riehl, who admits he has absolutely no basis for anything he writes here, has decided that the census worker murdered in Kentucky, Bill Sparkman, was a child molester. Oh, he doesn't actually claim that, he's just "speculating" on the basis of -- well, nothing:

Before any more people start going bonkers that I'm accusing Sparkman of anything, take a breath. I've done a fair amount of crime blogging mixed in with politics over time. One doesn't rule anything in or out without some firm answers. People feel free to speculate about Meth labs and pot fields but none have been reported in the area, yet. All I'm doing is looking at any and all possibilities. You'd think a moonshiner, or Meth head would have just buried the guy. Why hang him and invite the Feds into it by writing Fed on his chest? Why strip him naked and bind and gag him, which has serious sexual overtones?

I have no idea what happened, but from the reporting I've seen, neither does anyone else. If he adopted a boy as a single man, or was married and split with the wife and kids, who knows. But I never assume I know a story or motive until I know it. Right now we don't. I'm simply speculating on one possible alternative, however impolite.

Let me be equally impolite: Right off the bat, Riehl as good as says that he has no background and no qualifications (other than his standing as a professional homophobe) to be speculating on this. ("Crime blogger"? WTF is a "crime blogger"?) Riehl is bringing up this "possible motive" because it's somewhat more than impolite, and that's the only reason. It's safe, if you happen to be a right-wing professional homophobe -- Sparkman isn't in a position to defend himself, the circumstances point in an entirely different direction -- directly at the crazed wingnut Beckbots that Riehl seems to be attempting to cultivate -- and it's a golden opportunity to smear gays as a group, because after all, everyone knows that gay men only adopt boys to molest them. (Although I must also point out that Riehl offers absolutely no evidence that Sparkman was gay, either.) (Another note -- further reading on this revealed the fact that Sparkman's son is in his twenties.)

Sullivan, I think, treats this too lightly:

But the far right is obviously concerned that its violent anti-government rhetoric might at some point be implicated. So what do these people do? Notorious homophobe Dan Riehl pre-emptively asks if Sparkman was a gay child predator, because he had an adopted son. He has no other evidence at all.

Sorry, Andrew, but the fact of a single man adopting a son is not evidence of anything. It's not that Riehl is offering "no other evidence" -- it's that he's offering no evidence at all.

I do think, however, that Sullivan points to a plausible motivation: gods forbid that the Limbaugh-Beck-O'Reilly complex (which Riehl apparently wants to join) should actually suffer consequences for their hate speech, so best to deflect as soon as possible when something really happens.

You know, the anti-gay right doesn't really have to continue to prove itself morally bankrupt -- we've already gotten the message loud and clear. And has anyone spoken to Riehl about the psychological process of projection, and how easy it is to spot? Like, maybe he should be a little more circumspect about voicing his fantasies?

Riehl may have achieved one of his goals -- he got lots of attention in the blogosphere. Robert Farley, John Cole, and Jesse Taylor all come to the same conclusion, in almost identical terms:

1.) What if he was?

2.) Wouldn’t it be irresponsible not to theorize?

Ed Brayton goes into slightly more detail, but comes to the same conclusion.

Jeff Fecke alerted us to a piece by Dave Weigel, who managed to get a statement on this from Dan Riehl's godmother, Michelle Bachman (R-Our Lady of Bethlehem), who hates census workers:

After the speech, Bachmann had only a few minutes to sign autographs and collect a stack of CDs and books from fans who’d followed her into the lobby. I caught up to her as she headed outside and asked if she had any response to the murder of a Kentucky census worker, having noticed that the Census, a constant target for Bachmann, did not figure into her speech. Bachmann recoiled a little at the question and turned to enter her limo.

“Thank you so much!” she said.

But then, it would appear that Bachmann is exactly the sort of loon that Riehl is trying to protect here.

Let's summarize: A notorious right-wing homophobe, commenting on the murder of a census worker, pulls out of his ass the idea that the man was killed for being a child molester. There is no basis for that supposition whatsoever, and the investigation to date has, in fact, pointed toward the obvious conclusion -- the man was murdered for being a "federal agent." But that's not going to stop Dan Riehl, who has managed to kill two birds with one stone: he's deflecting criticism from his own cronies on the right, and smearing a whole group of people, all in one completely irresponsible commentary.

A pre-publication update: Here's Barbara O'Brien on Riehl. It's brilliant.

Before any more people start going bonkers that I’m accusing Dan Riehl of anything, take a breath. I’m just saying one doesn’t rule anything in or out without some firm answers. After all, Riehl is a man, and most serial rapists are men. All I’m doing is looking at any and all possibilities.

And the first commenter at O'Brien's post brings this up, which I also ran across in relation to this piece:

Apparently now he’s twittered that it was meant as Lib bait, as in, “gee, can’t you Libs take a joke?”

You have to ask yourself, which kind of person (to use the term in its broadest sense) would smear the reputation of a murder victim as a joke?

There Doesn't Seem To Be A Bottom Limit

This, from esteemed "conservative" Dan Riehl, about Obama's grandmother:

Man. I hope his numbers don't start to drop. He might have to hold a pillow against her face and maybe later break into tears the way Hillary did. Only I suspect hers were genuine.

No wonder they're losing all over the place -- who'd want to be associated with a scumbag like Riehl?

Thanks to publius at Obsidian Wings.

Racing

I'm sitting here snarfing down some breakfast while I post this and then charge out the door. (Why do my vacations always get so busy?)

I haven't had time this morning to look at the news, but this tidbit from Jamie Kirchik is really priceless: it's just a typical bad-tempered, snotty slam at the left, but the fun part is Kirchick's commenters.

Ouch. I wouldn't want to be him. He seems to be almost as smart as Ramesh Ponnuru. Almost.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan.

Honor Among Thieves

I love stuff like this.

Follow-Up on Nugent

For those who are muttering about my cherrypicking random wing-nuts to typify the American right, read this post by Hilzoy at Andrew Sullivan. I think the WSJ probably qualifies as a fairly potent and "mainstream" Republican voice.

Civil Discourse

Tell me more about the hatefulness of the left: Ted Nugent, via Crooks and Liars:

Nugent: I was in Chicago last week I said—Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these you punk? Obama, he’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns…Let’s hear it for them. I was in NY and I said hey Hillary—you might want to ride one of these into the sunset you worthless bitch…Since I’m in California, I’m gonna find– she might wanna suck on my machine gun! Hey, Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions? Freeeeedom!

Too Stupid to Live

Speaking of the bundle of hatreds on the right, read this piece by Dinesh D'Souza, who has come up here before, and not in a good way. Then read this really lame "apology", written after the flak started flying. He calls it "an attempt at humor." Sound familiar? As "macaca," "faggot," and the like?

Sick senses of humor these people have. (The comments after D'Souza's essay are priceless.)