HRC Finally Does Something

The Human Rights Campaign, which by and large still seems to wish that the marriage struggle would just go away (yes, I know they've gotten involved, finally -- after being dragged kicking and screaming to the fight -- but they still haven't taken the lead) has published a list of companies that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign.

Read it -- and note down any that you might do business with. And hit 'em where it hurts. (Yes, I am an advocate of boycotts, as long as they are directed toward the right targets. Here's a list of the right targets.)

Sadly, that's about all HRC and the other national "gay advocacy" groups have managed. Here's Chris Crain with more.

Another FGB Entry

I doesn't look like I'll be doing a regular Friday Gay Blogging column this weekend. Expect more individual posts like this one. (The "Race and Marriage" post may happen eventually -- I'm too much under the gun right now to focus on it, and by the time I get to it, it's likely to be old news, except that I don't think it's an issue that is ever going to be old news, although one can hope. Maybe.)

Andrew Sullivan offers (without comment) this opinion from Dale Carpenter. Carpenter seems to me to be off base here, possibly from not really looking at things closely. This, for example:

Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable with pickets directed at specific places of worship like the Mormon church in Los Angeles. It's too easy for such protests to degenerate into the kinds of ugly religious intolerance this country has long endured. Mormons, in particular, have historically suffered rank prejudice and even violence. Epithets and taunts directed at individuals are especially abhorrent. Individual Mormons (and blacks and others) bravely and publicly opposed Prop 8. Even those who supported Prop 8 are not all anti-gay bigots, though I saw plenty of anti-gay bigotry when I was in California last week. As I've repeatedly argued, there are genuine concerns about making a change like this to an important social institution. Those concerns are misplaced and overwrought, but they are not necessarily bigoted.

Here's my advice to righteously furious gay-marriage supporters: Stop the focus on the Mormon Church. Stop it now. We just lost a ballot fight in which we were falsely but effectively portrayed as attacking religion. So now some of us attack a religion? People were warned that churches would lose their tax-exempt status, which was untrue. So now we have (frivolous) calls for the Mormon Church to lose its tax-exempt status? It's rather selective indignation, anyway, since lots of demographic groups gave us Prop 8 in different ways — some with money and others with votes. I understand the frustration, but this particular expression of it is wrong and counter-productive.

OK -- so Carpenter doesn't think we should direct protests at the people who falsely maligned us in order to further their political ends. I'm chalking that up to his personal discomfort. What I don't see is that we were portrayed as attacking religion, except maybe by implication -- he doesn't point to any specific instances, except the "churches losing their tax-exempt status" mantra, which has been going on for years in every conceivable context. There's some sketchy reasoning going on here that doesn't quite hang together. Are we attacking religion, as Carpenter claims? Well, the right will say so, no matter what we do, but according to him they've already said it, so what's the difference? I think anyone whose mind isn't made up on this -- whicih is the people we're trying to reach -- will see this as appropriate retaliation against a group that unfairly (and possibly illegally) targeted our civil rights, and on that score, the more information that comes to light, the less sympathy I think anyone will have for them. This is not a spur-of-the moment, horrified reaction -- this is part of a long-standing, ongoing campaign on the part of the Mormon Church to deny gay citizens their rightful place in the fabric of this country. The LDS Church's involvement is part of a deliberate attempt to write religious doctrine into the law.

I'm going to pull this video up again, because Dan Savage said it right:



No matter what Carpenter says, and I have no reason to think he's accurate about the possible repercussions here, you can't come out and instruct -- not "urge" as Carpenter said, but "instruct" -- your followers to work against a minority and then hide behind your church to get out of taking responsibility for it.

Carpenter's "alternative" is, sadly, almost too predictable:

If a more intense physical expression of anger and frustration is needed, why not have sit-ins at marriage-license bureaus in California? It could be modeled on the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the 1960s. The demonstrations would be targeted at government buildings — rather than at churches. And after all, it's government policy we're legitimately protesting, not religious doctrine. Let people get arrested as they sing "We Shall Overcome." The protesters themselves — gay and straight, single and married, black and white, Mormon and Catholic, Republicans and Democrats, moms and dads raising kids — would suffer and accept the legal consequences of their acts. Rather than instilling fear and resentment in others, rather than dividing people on religious and racial lines, they would literally be putting their own bodies on the line for the good of their relationships, their families, their friends, and for a just cause whose time has come. We've had enough of lawyers, courts, focus groups, and media handlers. Let peaceful protesters by the thousands be dragged away just because they want to marry. It would be good old-fashioned civil disobedience, an American protest tradition.

What he's recommending is that we let the religious forces that demolished our right to marriage get off scot free and victimize ourselvs some more. (There's also the fact that the protests that he recommends are already in process -- see my previous post on today's activities.) This is well within the parameters of the standard conservative response to the whole civil rights struggle: be patient, don't rock the boat, don't cause controversy, and let the ones who are out to get you have their way, because eventually some old white straight guy will reward you for being virtuous.

When he gets around to it.

(In Carpenter's defense, some of the information I'm pulling into this commentary came to light after he posted his comments, although I can't say that it would have changed his mind about anything: his position has been pretty consistent.)

Prop 8: Today's Protests

Check out protests in your city and/or state here

For more on this, see this post from yesterday.


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Maddow On Lieberman

I'm not quite sure why Joe Lieberman is such a prime target for me. I mean, he's not my senator, after all. (That makes me happy.) Maybe it's just that he is the archetype of the power-hungry politician who doesn't even know what the word "integrity" means.

Here's Rachel Maddow, who has rapidly made herself my hero among commentators:



And from two of Lieberman's colleagues in New England, these comments.

'Nuff said?

FGB Sidebar

I'm not making this "the" post for this week's FGB, but it's something I want to get out to those of you who do read this blog regularly -- or even sporadically. This was forwarded to me by a straight ally. I've cleaned up links and the like, but otherwise, this is it as it arrived in my inbox:

From: Wes Boyd & Joan Blades, MoveOn.org Political Action
To: XXXXXX
Sent: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 2:24 pm
Subject: Overturn Prop 8

Dear MoveOn member,

Along with our tremendous excitement over Barack Obama's victory, a lot of us are sad and angry about a different election result—the passage of California Proposition 8, which reversed marriage equality and wrote discrimination into the California Constitution.

Many people worked hard to defeat this meas ure—including MoveOn members, who contributed over $300,000 to defeat it. But agents of intolerance used fear-mongering to eke out a win.

After the election, people across California immediately took to the streets, vowing to put the state on the right side of history by overturning Prop 8.

Now folks everywhere are coming together to add their voices. Tomorrow (Saturday) there will be rallies in support of marriage equality in every single state. If you want to attend an event in your state, go to this page and click on your state name—you'll see the location of any rallies planned.

These rallies will send a strong signal that depriving people of rights is no longer acceptable in America—and it will also be a first step in ongoing activism across the nation.

There's one other thing you can do to support the fight for marriage equality. The Courage Campaign (which does MoveOn-style organizing in California) is working with other groups on a two-year grassroots plan to overturn Prop 8 in the 2010 election. The first step is for folks to speak out together with one voice right away by signing a pledge to help overturn Prop 8.

Over 100,000 people have already signed the pledge—and thousands more are signing every day. Even non-Californians are signing the pledge in solidarity. If you'd like to sign, click here.

Thanks for all you do.

–Wes, Joan, Carrie, Mari, and the rest of the team

Partisan

Note the "Bush Countdown" widget just below my profile. I'm sure there are those who will consider that overly, even rabidly partisan, hateful, and displaying a bad case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

My thinking is simply, doesn't it make sense to count the days until the worst president in history is -- well, history?

Friday Gay Blogging

will be delayed today. Another early appointment and wonky Web access (bad combination, that).

Later

Bullies and Thugs

This story from Box Turtle Bulletin deserves to be as widely known as possible. The meat:

Some years ago, this magazine sent two persons under cover to Evergreen, the Mormon ex-gay ministry. One had participated before and was thus vetted, the other was his friend.

At the conclusion of their efforts, the news magazine wrote up their experiences. And that’s when the Mormon legal team became engaged. My tablemate told me that there were two New York law firms that swung into action. They made it perfectly clear that the merits of the story were irrelevant; the church would bankrupt the magazine with legal fees.

Add them to the amoral line-up, along with the Catholic hierarchy and the Dobson Gang.

Oh, and speaking of the Catholic hierarchy, get this:

The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance.

You have to credit the tradition of the medieval theologians: the Church is home to the masters of trashing the spirit of the law while leaving the letter intact. I found this pertinent:

Stephen Gajdosik, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Charleston, told The News that calling parishioners who voted for a candidate who supports legalized abortions to penance is a question of how best to deepen a flock's relationship to God and a move left up to local priests. He said such a move is appropriate and in line with church teaching.

In an e-mail interview, Newman cited a survey earlier this year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that showed fewer than 25 percent of the 65 million Americans who call themselves Catholic attend Mass each Sunday, a "disturbing fact of life" that he said shows the vast majority of those baptized into the church "do not live as disciples of Jesus Christ in any observable way."

Maybe the Church should look to its own moral failings -- including just exactly what it's teaching -- as a clue.

These organizations should be picketed just on general principles.

Dan Savage at NYT

An OpEd that just touches the tip of the iceberg:

Social conservatives are threatening to roll out Arkansas-style adoption bans in other states. And the timing couldn’t be worse: in tough economic times, the numbers of abused and neglected children in need of foster care rises. But good times or bad, no movement that would turn away qualified parents and condemn children to a broken foster care system should be considered “pro-family.”

Most ominous, once “pro-family” groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we’re unfit to raise those we’ve already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?

You'd better believe it's next on the Christianist agenda.

Update:

Here's Savage with Anderson Cooper:

The Inside-the-Beltway Mind

From Glenn Greenwald, thanks to a heads up from Andrew Sullivan:

Yesterday's vague and poorly-sourced Wall St. Journal article reporting that "Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies" is not, in my view, evidence of what Obama will do, but it is definitely compelling evidence that people close to him -- those whom he has chosen to be influential -- are pushing him in that direction. Notably, the article actually describes minor modifications to (as opposed to wholesale overhaul of) Bush's torture policies as the "centrist" and "pragmatic" approach.

It's just a fact that there are all sorts of people close to Obama who have enabled those Bush policies and who are mobilizing now and attempting to ensure that nothing meaningful occurs in these areas. It simply is noteworthy of comment and cause for concern -- though far from conclusive about what Obama will do -- that Obama's transition chief for intelligence policy, John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity. It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore that and to just adopt the attitude that we should all wait quietly with our hands politely folded for the new President to unveil his decisions before deciding that we should speak up or do anything.

Anything less than total revocation of Bush's policies on interrogation and spying is unacceptable. I'm fully with Sullivan on this one.

Oh, and about the "concern troll" noises coming from the right: Digby has a post that nails it.

Bush's Court

They did it again.. I especially like this part:

Courts must be wary of second-guessing the military’s considered judgments, the Supreme Court said Wednesday in lifting judicial restrictions on submarine training exercises off the coast of Southern California that may harm marine mammals.

In balancing military preparedness against environmental concerns, the majority came down solidly on the side of national security.

“The lower courts failed properly to defer to senior Navy officers’ specific, predictive judgments,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined by four other justices, wrote for the court in the first decision of the term.

The Court doesn't seem to have addressed whether the Navy was being properly deferential to the specific, predictive judgments of the Department of the Interior or the Congress.

Oh, wait -- the is the Bush Navy, in a case being heard by the Bush Court.

Never mind.

More Good News

I commented on this item a couple of days ago, but here's some amplification:

Last May, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten instructed federal agency heads to make sure any new regulations were finalized by Nov. 1. The memo didn’t spell it out, but the thinking behind the directive was obvious. As Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute put it: “We’re not going to make the same mistakes the Clinton administration did.”

President Bill Clinton finalized regulations within 60 days of the 2001 inauguration, meaning Bush could come in and easily reverse them.

It could take Obama years to undo climate rules finalized more than 60 days before he takes office — the advantage the White House sought by getting them done by Nov. 1. But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.

The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 legislative days of congressional adjournment is considered to have been legally finalized on the 15th legislative day of the new Congress, likely sometime in February. Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.

In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.

I guess the Bush crowd has gotten so used to ignoring the law that they never even thought to check.

Don't Be Drinking Anything When You Read This

I know, this has been all over the place for two days now, but I had to post it myself. Every time I see this quote, I crack up. This is the unbelievable John Hinderaker at Powerline:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

Can you stand it?

Today's the Day

In Connecticut at least: same-sex marriage begins happening:

Connecticut state Rep. Beth Bye and Tracey Wilson hope to become the first gay couple to marry legally in their town of West Hartford on Wednesday.

For Wilson, it's both a personal and professional milestone. She's the town's historian.

"She'd love to be the first one in town," joked Bye, who as a lawmaker helped to shepherd Connecticut's 2005 civil union law through the General Assembly.

Bye and Wilson had a church ceremony with more than 150 guests to celebrate their civil union that year. On Wednesday, they plan to show up at town hall in street clothes, with their kids and a friend who is a justice of the peace to make it official.

"I think for us, we really were married three years ago in our church," Bye said. "But it feels different that our state is saying, 'now you're married. You have the same rights as everyone else.'"

Get that last sentence: the same as everyone else. That's really what it's been all about, that that's what the Dobson Gang doesn't like. They don't think that everyone should be treated the same. They don't believe in the American system.

The Family Institute of Connecticut, a political action group that opposes gay marriage, condemned the court decision as undemocratic. Peter Wolfgang, the group's executive director, acknowledged banning gay marriage in Connecticut would be difficult but vowed not to give up.

Look at that -- the courts are "undemocratic." In close terms, of course they are. They were meant to be. The Founders were no dummies, and they had as little faith in the majority as they did in kings. That's why federal judges are appointed for life, and that's why they have the power and authority to review laws. The "Christian" right will fight to the death to take away people's rights. That's one reason we have the courts as we do: to stop that sort of thing.

When you stop to think about it, the right's assault on the courts over the past generation has one purpose: the undermine the American system of government. That's all it is. (Given that Connecticut voters defeated a measure to call a constitutional convention, is it any surprise there's nothing from that creep about "the will of the people"?)

And in California and Points West

From Sacramento Bee:

Supporters of Proposition 8 won the election but now are frustrated because they are still fighting for their cause.

A week after a majority of voters passed the controversial measure to ban same-sex marriage, the conflict continues – in the courts, at protests and in personal attacks.

"I'm frustrated by what's going on," said Dave Leatherby, owner of the Leatherby Family Creamery in Sacramento, commenting on the protests and court battles.

"Let's move on. I always told my children that once a rule was made, you have to abide by it. I think it should be the same in this circumstance."

You have to wonder sometimes if people like this actually hear what they're saying.

More of the same:

"Protesting is a time-honored American tradition," said Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference. Catholic leaders were active in the Yes on 8 campaign. "But it's unfortunate when it steps over into religious bigotry or harassment."

Cognitive dissonance is alive and well in California.

And about the Mormons:

I believe you and the reader you quote are missing what is fundamentally different about the Mormon attacks. This was not typical church activism. The Mormon Prophet commanded that every California member give time and money to pass Prop 8. Each member was then contacted by a church authority to make sure the orders from Salt Lake City were obeyed. Mormons were organized into groups to canvas neighborhoods, knock on doors, distribute yards signs, and otherwise organize against gay marriage rights.

Sounds like standard civic participation, right? But remember, Mormons are not allowed to dissent.

So the BS from the Mormon leadership about citizens exercising their rights is exactly that.

Here's a post from Jim Burroway: Someone's calling the Mormon leadership's bluff.

One Wonders

At the construction site across the street from my workplace, the porta-potties are leased from an outfit called "Oui Oui Enterprises."

I Feel Like This Sometimes

more animals

Pragmatics 101

A couple of interesting posts from Hullabaloo this morning, The first from Dday, about the first days of the Obama administration. I posted about the advisors who are looking at Bush's executive orders to see what needs to be reversed, and Rahm Emanuel has identified some of the legislative priorities -- mostly stuff that Dubyah vetoed after they managed bipartisan support in Congress.

The refreshing thing is Emanuel's lack of ideology in his remarks -- in fact, his repudiation of it.

As for the inevitable center-left/center-right question, this isn't a horrible way of putting it:

So I asked Mr. Emanuel if the election of an unabashed liberal like Mr. Obama has made the New Democrat strategy obsolete. Perhaps what we witnessed on Tuesday means that liberalism is ascendant and the U.S. is no longer a center-right nation. "I think the country is incredibly pragmatic," he responded. "Pragmatic and progressive. But you still have to mix and match different approaches to reach your objectives. You have to be flexible."

He said the similarities between Barack Obama and the last Democratic president matter more than the differences. "Both Barack and Bill Clinton have an incredible connection to the public," he said. "Both ran on a message of hope. Both ran against failed policies that let the country down prior to them being elected. I don't think the country is yearning for an ideological answer. If anything it's the opposite. They want real solutions to real problems. And if we do an ideological test, we will fail. Our challenge is to work to solve the actual problems that the country is facing, not work to satisfy any constituency or ideological wing of the party."

I know a lot of people want to hear "progressive mandate" in there, but there is some work to be done with the public in proving that what is pragmatic is progressive, so I'm actually fairly OK with it. It's pretty close to the Wellstonian "politics is about improving people's lives."

I've been saying all along, it's the ideology that's screwed us up. (You may have gotten the idea that I think ideology is for dummies. You'd be right.) What the punditocracy doesn't seem to get yet is that people voted for Obama because he promised to actually fix problems, rather than just letting them breed.

Speaking of the punditocracy, Digby has a good take on where their heads are -- still up their butts, repeating a new version of the old mantra: "Obama is the Messiah!" -- as long as he governs with their vision of bipartisanship: cater to the right.

All over television this morning the gasbags seemed convinced that Obama had been elected to stop the left from ruining the country. And when it turns out to actually be his supposedly cooperative new partners in governance --- the right --- that stands in his way, they will blame him for being too far left. It's a trap.

What these people really want is a wizard who can solve all problems without a fight, a leader who gives them tingles down their legs and an historic figure who makes them feel really, really good about themselves for being the agents of America's transformation from country to Nirvana. It's not the left who sees him as an apostle. It's the Village.

I have what may seem a snarky question, but I'm serious: who listens to these people? I mean, besides each other?

Some Good News

I'm tired of the Prop 8 post-mortems. I tend to see things in very simple terms, because they usually are basically very simple. We were out-lied and out-spent. Our weakness here is that we tell the truth, and most people will believe whatever the last person they spoke to told them, especially if it's bad, so the rush of money at the last minute from the right did us in. Remember, they're playing Republican politics. We're being civilized. Of course they won.

However, from hilzoy, a note about this article from WaPo:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

There is hope. Now, if Obama will override the torture memos and the "legal opinions" from Bush's Regent University Law School graduates granting the president unlimited power to do whatever he wants, I might even be able to begin to believe in him.

Lieberman

I can't believe there's a debate about this. Well, OK -- yes I can. The Republicans, after all, never had such a good friend, at least not recently. Evan Bayh seems to be an idiot. I'm glad he's not my senator. From Hullabaloo:

BAYH: And I think if Joe came before the caucus and said look, if I said some things that came as offensive, I’m sorry, but they were, you know heartfelt in my support of John McCain. I think we had to just let bygones be bygones. We’re going to need him on healthcare and energy independence and education and a whole lot of other things.

Lieberman supported McCain, to the extent of echoing McCain's charges that Obama is a traitor and a terrorist, and Bayh thinks he should be welcomed with open arms because it was "heartfelt." WTF? If was that heartfelt, kick him over to the Republicans -- let him poison their wells.

All this crap about Lieberman being a man of principle is so much poodle-dip. He proved that in the last election: he likes power and doesn't want to give it up. That's the nut.

Frankly, I'm glad that neither Lieberman nor Bayh is my senator.

Update: Lindsay Beyerstein's reaction is similar to mine, but somewhat more forceful. Well, sort of.