Santorum compares homosexuality to polygamy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Nothing new here. This is Rick "man-on-dog" Santorum, after all.

But it nonetheless deserves repeating, now that he's a big-time Republican gobbling up media attention after a surge that led him to a tie (if not a win) this past Tuesday in Iowa, that this strident theocrat is an unabashed bigot opposed not just to same-sex marriage but to homsexuality generally.

He recently compared romantic same-sex love to the love he has for his mother-in-law, brother, and friends. Since those relationships aren't marriage, gay couples shouldn't be allowed to marry. (Huh? Yes, this is what passes for logic, it seems, in Santorum's mind.)

Now he's comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy:

So if you're not happy unless you're married to five other people, is that OK?" Santorum asked one student [yesterday in Concord, New Hampshire]. "Reason says that if you think it's okay for two [individuals to marry], then you have to differentiate for me why it's not okay for three," he argued later.

Perhaps an argument can be made for the marriage (or civil unions) of three or more people, but that would be separate from the issue of same-sex marriage, which isn't some "gateway" relationship that, if sanctioned, would require the legalization of polygamy or, say, human-canine marriage. 

In any event, at ThinkProgress rightly points out:

To be clear, Santorum's offensive and circuitous responses are all meant to reject the natural desire of two same-sex individuals to join in a union and enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples.

He's not actually making an argument about human relationships broadly and about what should and should not be permitted, he's just tying same-sex relationships to illegal (and extreme) relationships so as to discredit them.

"What, you're gay? So you must like to fuck sheep." That's basically the, er, "argument" he's making.

Like I said, he's a bigot. That's abundantly clear.

**********

Oh, and he might just be taking a swipe at Romney, the Mormon with the family history of... yup, polygamy.

(photo)

Homophobe Rick Santorum admits to weird sexual relationship with mother-in-law, brother

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Via twitter: 

"I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?" -- Rick Santorum

-- ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress)

He may have done very well in Iowa yesterday, but make no mistake about it, Santorum's still a bigot and a moron.

The ugly truth about Ron Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

One of the good things about the craziness that has been, and remains, the race to be the Republican nominee for president is the fact that with each new surging anti-Romney, and with each new "frontrunner," the media have finally been required to do their jobs and look into what these leading Republicans, and indeed much of their party, are actually all about.

For example, while many of us knew full well (and had known for a long time) that Michele Bachmann was insane, her high-profile opposition to the HPV vaccine, wrapped up in her usual conspiracy-theorizing, pushed her insanity further into public view. Similarly, her (and her "cure 'em" husband's) anti-gay views revealed her to be an unabashed bigot. And because she was, for a time, the hottest Republican candidate going, the media could not help but do some probing.

The same has been true of the others, and we're seeing this now with Ron Paul, who has long been seen as a principled libertarian who speaks truth to power in the GOP (and who even has his admirers on the left) but who, while certainly a sort of libertarian, has throughout his long political career held and advanced despicable views and revealed himself to be an ugly racist. Put on the spot, Paul has responded with denials and general "no comment"s. But again, and to their credit, the media are doing what they ought to be doing and digging a little deeper than usual (in this case encouraged and cheered on by Republicans appalled with Paul and fearful of the damage he's doing to their party). And more and more ugliness is coming out:

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has distanced himself from a series of controversial newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s that bore his name and included inflammatory and racially charged language.

As the newsletters burst into view, first during his 2008 presidential bid and again in recent weeks after he climbed to the front of the Republican race in Iowa, Paul has blamed the writings on ghostwriters. He said he was not aware of the "bad stuff," as he described it.

But one of Paul's own books, published solely under his name, contains several passages that could be problematic as he attempts to push his libertarian message into the political mainstream.

In his 1987 manifesto "Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution after 200-Plus Years," Paul wrote that AIDS patients were victims of their own lifestyle, questioned the rights of minorities and argued that people who are sexually harassed at work should quit their jobs.

The slim, 157-page volume was published ahead of Paul's 1988 Libertarian Party presidential bid and touches on many of the themes he continues to hammer on the stump.

Returning again and again to the of concept of "liberty," he hails the virtues of the gold standard, attacks the Federal Reserve and defends the rights of gun-owners.

But the book, re-issued in 2007 during Paul's last presidential bid with a cover photograph of an ominous SWAT Team, has so far escaped scrutiny amid the latest furor over his newsletters.

Well, now that he's doing so well in Iowa, with a strong showing expected, that scrutiny is happening. Now. And not a moment too soon.

**********

What's interesting is that Romney has, for the most part, escaped such scrutiny. Sure, his opponents have brought up his various inconsistencies and tried to focus (the media's and Republican voters') attention on Romneycare, but no one has been able to stay on top long enough to keep up a sustained attack -- in part because the pro-Romney Republican elites have been knocking them off one by one. And so we've basically spent most of our time tracking the dramatic rises and falls of these anti-Romneys while Romney himself has been able to skate by largely untarnished.

That will change if and when Romney really does solidify himself as the frontrunner and likely winner. Then, one hopes, the media will do to him what they've done to his Republican competitors (helped along by those Republican elites, of course) and what they always do to Democrats (with Republicans driving the dominant media narratives, as always).

So is Ron Paul a racist, or what?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If his long history of bigotry doesn't sway you, including those racist newsletters, how about the fact that white supremacists thought he was "one of us":

Ron Paul was a hot topic this week on the talk radio show hosted by prominent white supremacist Don Black and his son Derek. Mr. Black said he received Mr. Paul's controversial newsletters when they were first published about two decades ago and described how the publications were perceived by members of the white supremacist movement. Former KKK Grand Wizard and Louisiana Congressman David Duke also phoned in to explain why he’s voting for Mr. Paul.

"Everybody, all of us back in the 80's and 90's, felt Ron Paul was, you know, unusual in that he had actually been a Congressman, that he was one of us and now, of course, that he has this broad demographic -- broad base of support," Mr. Black said on his broadcast yesterday.

Mr. Black is a former Klansman and member of the American Nazi Party who founded the "white nationalist" website Stormfront in 1995. He donated to Mr. Paul in 2007 and has been photographed with the candidate. Mr. Paul has vocal supporters in Stormfront's online forum. Mr. Black has repeatedly said he doesn't currently think Mr. Paul is a "white nationalist."

Mr. Paul's newsletters contained threats of a "coming race war," worries about America's "disappearing white majority" and warning [sic] against "the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS." He has since denied writing the newsletters, which appeared under his own name.

"I didn't write them, I disavow them, that's it," Mr. Paul said in a tense CNN interview.

On Monday, Mr. Black said he originally believed the newsletters were written by Mr. Paul.

"They went out under his name in the first person and most people receiving these newsletters, including me, thought he really did write them," Mr. Black said.

Ba-zoom. (Or, as they say in the tennis world: game... set... match.)

**********

Lesson for today:

Not all bigots come dancing around a burning cross wearing silly white hoods or marching down the Champs-Elysees waving swastika flags. Some of them are leading figures in the Republican Party, enjoying long and successful political careers, poised to do extremely well in Iowa (whether the GOP "mainstream" likes it or not).

**********

For more on Paul's bigotry and conspiracy-theorizing craziness, see this piece by James Kirchick (who wrote the first piece linked above) at the Times.

Newt Gingrich loves monogamy, hates gays

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The headline at Think Progress says it all: "Gingrich Pledges Not To Commit Infidelity A Third Time, Reaffirms Opposition To Marriage Equality."

He may be faking his anti-gay bigotry to win right-wing votes, but it's his fidelity pledge that's particularly amusing:

I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.

It's not so much his past infidelity that matters, it's his massive hypocrisy. As Melissa McEwan puts it, also responding to the TP headline:

Which just underlines what bullshit the unholy marriage between political conservatives (small government! no taxes!) and social conservatives (big Jesus! no homo!) really is. There's nothing politically conservative about forcing people to sign pledges about private consensual sex acts, or about arguing that the government should be in the business of telling people they can't marry a consenting partner of legal age.

Gingrich doesn't give a flying flunderton about this horseshit, except insomuch as it will help him win the GOP nomination. (Or impeach a president.) He's got the sexual ethics of a Republican with no sexual ethics.

It's embarrassing to watch these sad, socially stunted failosaurs bray about getting Gingrich to sign their morality yearbooks as if it matters, as if he cares. What fools. 

Newt is playing them, to be sure. While he'll say he's found "God," or some such nonsense, what he's really found is how to sucker morons to give him money... and, he's hoping, their vote.

Is Newt Gingrich really an anti-gay bigot?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

His sister thinks he may be faking it:

Newt Gingrich's openly lesbian half-sister, Candace Gingrich-Jones, says her brother is stuck in a '90s time warp. And she's not sure if he even believes all the anti-gay rhetoric or not.

*****

Gingrich-Jones, an activist with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation who has clashed with her brother since the '90s and is backing President Obama for re-election, slammed the caustic remarks Gingrich has made about gays, including his comments earlier in the year that gay marriage is a "temporary aberration."

"An interesting choice of words -- 'temporary aberration' -- I don't think I consider my own marriage an aberration, or that anyone who is in a relationship considers their families to be an aberration," she said. "It might be wishful thinking on his part. Certainly he's seen how the country has moved on the issue. Maybe what really is an aberration is people's opposition to marriage equality."

She's also not sure if Gingrich is faking it all, pandering to the evangelical base in the Republican Party, or if he really believes the claims he makes on homosexuality and LGBT rights.

Because apparently he treats her and her wife well. How nice of him.

Look, it would hardly be surprising to learn that Newt is just pandering to the right, particularly at a time when pandering to the right is the only way to get ahead in the GOP. (Just ask Mitt.) What is abundantly clear, after all, to anyone who has paid Newt even the slightest attention over the years, is that he doesn't really seem to believe in anything other than himself, and more specifically "Newt," the Gingrich brand, which pulls in millions for him. He is a man with extreme ambition, and with the ability to self-promote and self-aggrandize, but also a man largely without principle, a conservative, to be sure, but a conservative willing to do and say whatever it takes to enhance "Newt" and maximize profits.

And so it hardly matters that he may not be a bigot in private, with his family, and may not actually be one. In public, where he promotes a political agenda, however opportunistic, and seeks election, he has proven himself to be a bigot, and that's all that really counts in his case. Not really being a bigot is no excuse, and neither is having to say certain things to get ahead in the GOP. No one is forcing him to present himself as a bigot, and if he's willing to present himself as one just to win some votes, well, that shows just how pathetic, and just how truly unprincipled, he really is.

Iowa high school students debate Michele Bachmann over same-sex marriage

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Two Iowa high school students, Jane Schmidt and Ella Newell, admirably challenged Michele Bachmann on same-sex marriage (and her opposition to it) at a campaign event yesterday:

BACHMANN: Well, No. 1, all of us as Americans have the same rights. The same civil rights. And so that's really what government's role is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn't be any special rights or special set of criteria based upon people's preferences. We all have the same civil rights.

JANE SCHMIDT: Then, why can't same-sex couples get married?

BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they're a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they're a man.

JANE SCHMIDT: Why can't a man marry a man?

BACHMANN: Because that's not the law of the land.

Bachmann's legalistic opposition to same-sex marriage is silly. Is the law always right? What if the law says, for example, that Jews are not allowed to own property. Would Jews not being allowed to own property be right just because that's what the law is? Of course not. Law is convention. It is made by human beings and is therefore imperfect, and often wrong.

Now, same-sex marriage is actually legal in some states now, including Iowa. Does this mean that Bachmann is fine with it in Iowa but not in a state that forbids it? Of course not. She was being either ignorant, dishonest, or some combination of the two. In truth, she opposes it everywhere. Because she's a bigot. And all her talk of "tolerance," by which of course she means tolerance for "religious-based values" (i.e., bigotry), is bullshit.

Yes, the Boy Scouts are a detestable organization

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ThinkProgress:

Andy Towle reminds us of the homophobia still prevalent among the Boy Scouts of America, pointing to this report
about how the organization removed a lesbian mother, Denise Steele, as
a scout master of her son's troop after becoming aware of her sexual
orientation.



*****



The Boy Scouts prohibit atheists, agnostics, and "avowed" homosexual
people from leadership roles, and its right to discriminate has been
repeatedly upheld by state and federal courts. In 2004, the organization
adopted the following policy statement: "Boy Scouts of America believes
that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the
Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought,
word, and deed. The conduct of youth members must be in compliance with
the Scout Oath and Law, and membership in Boy Scouts of America is
contingent upon the willingness to accept Scouting's values and beliefs.
Most boys join Scouting when they are 10 or 11 years old. As they
continue in the program, all Scouts are expected to take leadership
positions. In the unlikely event that an older boy were to hold himself
out as homosexual, he would not be able to continue in a youth
leadership position."

May I be blunt? Fuck the Boy Scouts.

No lesbians allowed at New Jersey bridal boutique

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here comes the boycott -- and rightly so:

Last weekend, Alix Genter found the perfect wedding dress. But on Tuesday,
the store's owner called and refused to sell it to her.



"She said she wouldn't work with me because I'm gay," Genter told The Philadelphia Daily News. "She also said that I
came from a nice Jewish family, and that it was a shame I was gay. She said,
'There's right, and there's wrong. And this is wrong.'"



Apparently, after Genter left Here Comes the Bride, a Somers Point, New Jersey, wedding
boutique, the store's owner, Donna Saber, took a moment to look over Genter's
customer-information sheet. That's when she noticed that Genter had crossed out
"groom" and written in "partner" and her fiancee's name -- and decided that she
wasn't going to do business with her.

In related news, Ms. Saber has splurged on a huge neon sign for the front of her store. It reads:

We're bigots. Please boycott us.

Michele Bachmann hates the gays so much she wants them to pray not to be gay

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Michele Bachmann, now a strong #2 in the Republican presidential field behind Romney (and actually in the lead in Iowa), may be trying to walk back some of her more extreme right-wing positions, but she's still a right-wing extremist. She signed that anti-gay, anti-porn pledge the other day, and now we learn this:

A former patient who sought help from the Christian counseling clinic owned by GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, told ABC News he was advised that prayer could rid him of his homosexual urges and he could eventually be "re-oriented."

"[One counselor's] path for my therapy would be to read the Bible, pray to God that I would no longer be gay," said Andrew Ramirez, who was 17-years-old at the time he sought help from Bachmann & Associates in suburban Minneapolis in 2004. "And God would forgive me if I were straight."

That just the sort of Christian fundamentalist bigotry you find everywhere on the right and throughout much of the Republican Party, including at the very core of Bachmann's theocratic conservative views.

Basically, she thinks that homosexuality is an illness that needs to be cured, an abomination that needs to be destroyed -- by prayer.

And this, as despicable as it is on so many levels, is her family business! Here, watch the ABC News report:

In Colorado, two gay soldiers brutally beaten by anti-gay bigots

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, hate remains rampant despite the great strides American has made. And the victims can even be those in uniform courageously serving America:

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Police are investigating a suspected hate crime after a group of men beat two gay Fort Carson soldiers and others while shouting anti-homosexual and racial slurs.

The victims told KRDO-TV they believe they were targeted at a fast food restaurant early Saturday because they're gay.

The victims have asked to remain anonymous. (Despite the repeal of DADT, homosexuality "is definitely frowned upon," said one of them.)

And they weren't just pushed around:

"I ended up getting kicked in the head and in the ribs several times," John said. "I have six bruised ribs. And my right eye was completely swollen shut for about nine or 10 hours."

According to police, another victim was treated for a facial fracture. His jaw had to be wired shut. 

Yes, it certainly appears to be a hate crime. Hopefully the bigots will be found and confronted with the full force of the law.

The appalling bigotry of Sally Kern II

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In March of 2008, I wrote about Sally Kern's ridiculous, bigoted claims that that homosexuality is "the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, "that proponents of "the homosexual lifestyle" "want to get [children] into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them," and that "no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than, you know, a few decades."

Well, the Oklahoma Republican was back at it on Wednesday, this time directing her bigotry at people of color:

The Republican-controlled Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a proposed constitutional amendment [on Wednesday] that would eliminate Affirmative Action in state government. The offical GOP reasoning for the change is that while "discrimination exists," "I don't think Affirmative Action has been as successful as we like to believe," the bill's sponsor, state Rep. T.W. Shannon (R), explained. But perpetual extremist state Rep. Sally Kern (R) offered her argument for ending the system that helps minorities advance: "blacks" simply don't work as hard as whites:

Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, said minorities earn less than white people because they don't work as hard and have less initiative.

"We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that's tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don't want to study as hard in school? I've taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn't study hard because they said the government would take care of them."

There isn't really much that needs to be said about this. Such bigotry, I think, speaks for itself. It's an appalling example of an all-too-common form of somewhat indirect racism. Racists like Kern don't necessarily say that blacks and other "minorities" are sub-human and don't deserve equal rights, just that they're all or mostly (note the broad generalization) lazy, uneducated, and undeserving of government support -- and, worse, "lazy" can be understood as a euphemism for un-American and worse. It's a way of explaining, justifying, and ultimately perpetuating racial inequality.

As Steve Benen asks, "where does the Republican Party even find people like this? Is there a website where a party can order cartoonish racists to serve in state government?"

It apparently doesn't have to look too hard. Cartoonish racists are right at home in the GOP.

Quote of the Day: Alan Simpson on homophobes and hypocrites in the GOP

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And, oh, is this quotable. Here's the former Republican senator from Wyoming on Hardball yesterday:

Who the hell is for abortion? I don't know anybody running around with a sign that says, "Have an abortion! They're wonderful!" They're hideous, but they're a deeply intimate and personal decision, and I don't think men legislators should even vote on the issue.

Then you've got homosexuality, you've got Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We have homophobes on our party. That's disgusting to me. We're all human beings. We're all God’s children. Now if they're going to get off on that stuff -- Santorum has said some cruel things -- cruel, cruel things -- about homosexuals. Ask him about it; see if he attributes the cruelness of his remarks years ago. Foul.

Now if that's the kind of guys that are going to be on my ticket, you know, it makes you sort out hard what Reagan said, you know, "Stick with your folks." But, I'm not sticking with people who are homophobic, anti-women, moral values -- while you're diddling your secretary while you're giving a speech on moral values? Come on, get off of it.

No one ever accused Simpson of being verbally delicate, and while he doesn't really have anything to lose, he deserves a lot of credit for telling it like it is. It's just a wonder he still calls himself a Republican. Because, let's face it, there's an awful lot more he could have said.

Here's the clip:

So you think the Tea Party GOP isn't a cesspool of bigotry?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Add this to all the evidence that's accumulated so far:

As the Republican presidential nomination process begins, one GOP candidate is making a name for himself as the Islamophobia candidate: Herman Cain.

Earlier this week, Cain gave an interview to Christianity Today in which he declared that, "based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them."

ThinkProgress caught up with the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza [on Saturday] at the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss his comments further. We asked him, in light of his statements on Islam, would he be comfortable appointing any Muslims in his administration. Rather than skirting the question or hedging his answer, as most presidential aspirants are wont to do, Cain was definitive: "No, I would not."

You'll note that Cain won a fairly significant Tea Party straw poll last month, is a major figure in the Tea Party, and is one of those on the right for whom the Tea Party and the Republican Party should be one and the same.

And now he's on record exposing himself as a bigot -- and as someone who apparently has no regard for the Constitution, which states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Much of the anti-Muslim bigotry within high-profile Republican circles -- say, among the likes of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich -- is carefully constructed so as to appear not to be bigotry. (Consider, for example, the flap over the Park51 community center near Ground Zero.)

At least Cain is being honest with us.

Tim Pawlenty really hates gay people (and really loves DADT)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Minnesota Gov. Pawlenty, looking ahead to 2012, is making sure to present himself to his fellow Republicans, and specifically to the party's right-wing base, not so much as the sort of midwestern technocrat he appears to be but as a good ol' social conservative extremist. He's adamantly pro-life, he says, and he's also, as one must be these days in the GOP, anti-gay, opposing both same-sex marriage and DADT repeal.

Regarding the latter, he says he'd reinstate it, even though a huge majority not just of the American people but of men and women in uniform oppose it, including not just Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but perhaps America's most revered current military commander (and conservative wunderkind), Gen. David Petraeus.

But apparently that's not quite extremist enough. Yesterday he told Think Progress he'd go even further, trying to block the military from being able to implement repeal:

PAWLENTY: We have to pay great deference, I think to those combat units, their sentiments and their leaders. That's one of the reasons why I said we shouldn’t have repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I would support reinstatement.

TP: And rescinding the funds for implementation, implementation of repeal?

PAWLENTY: That would be a reasonable step as well.

Yes, that's right, he actually wants to try to hinder the military's effort, as commanded by its civilian leadership and supported by the top brass as well as the rank and file, to do what it must to do away with DADT. That's almost treasonous. At the very least, it's Pawlenty giving the finger to the Constitution, Congress, and Obama, that is, to the very pillars of American constitutional government and civilian control of the military. It's just the sort of anti-Americanism that is so prevalent on the right these days.

Now, I don't know if Pawlenty actually believes this or if he's just pandering to the conservative base, playing his right-wing bona fides as any good Republican must.

If the latter, he's sure trying really hard.

********** 

Update: It may be that Pawlenty doesn't want gays in the military at all. What disgusting bigotry.

Tim Pawlenty, a social conservative extremist, just like the rest

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Think Minnesota Gov. and likely GOP presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is a sensible Midwestern moderate, an old-school sort of Republican, an antithesis to the Sarah Palins of the party?

Think again.

As Pawlenty told right-wing hatemonger Bryan Fischer on Wednesday, he's not just a fiscal conservative but a social one as well. He's "a strong supporter of the family, pro-life positions, traditional marriage positions" -- in other words, he's anti-abortion and anti-gay, the proponent in Minnesota of an amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, the proponent of conservative judicial activism ("strict constructionists") and the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

And, he said, he would reinstate Don't Ask, Don't Tell, misleadingly claiming that "the combat commanders and the combat units" are against gays being allowed to serve, even though a huge majority not just of the American people but of the men and women in uniform supported DADT repeal, including not just Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but perhaps America's most revered current military commander (and conservative wunderkind), Gen. David Petraeus.

Sure, Pawlenty may just have been pandering to the right-wing GOP base, and appearing on right-wing shows and playing up (or exaggerating) one's conservative bona fides is de rigueur for Republicans, but there's really nothing to suggest that he isn't the sort of social conservative he claimed he is. Really, it's just that most of the media's attention has been on his similarly conservative economic views, and that he doesn't come across as an unhinged extremist on social issues the way other leading Republicans do -- the way, say, Palin and Huckabee do. And in presenting himself as a credible social conservative, he's clearly distinguishing himself from another moderate-seeming fiscal conservative, Mitt Romney, who has tried so desperately to flip-flop himself into conservatives' hearts while failing miserably to overcome his decidedly un-conservative past (health-care reform, anyone?).

However sincere he may be, it's just so transparent what Pawlenty is doing, and it's telling that he'll even pander directly to a bigot like Fischer. In today's GOP, that's just what you have to do to get anywhere, particularly at the national level, with presidential aspirations driving you ever further to the extreme right.

Elephant Dung #8: Right-wing groups pull out of CPAC over inclusion of gays

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

Alright, this has more to do with the conservative "movement" broadly than with the GOP, but still -- these days, you can't have the GOP without the right-wing insanitarium known as CPAC, and the target here is a Republican group. As the right-wing WND is reporting:

Two of the nation's premier moral issues organizations, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are refusing to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in February because a homosexual activist group, GOProud, has been invited.

"We've been very involved in CPAC for over a decade and have managed a couple of popular sessions. However, we will no longer be involved with CPAC because of the organization's financial mismanagement and movement away from conservative principles," said Tom McClusky, senior vice president for FRC Action.

"CWA has decided not to participate in part because of GOProud," CWA President Penny Nance told WND.

FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud. 

Forget financial mismanagement. This is all about the gays. Conservatives don't want them in the military and they certainly don't want them in their own political ranks.

Maybe they're worried about what might be going on in the washroom stalls at CPAC events.

Or what might happen if they ever found themselves in a shower with a GOProuder.

Or maybe they're just a bunch of bigots.

And the bigotry runs so deep that it's threatening to fracture one of the essential cornerstones of conservative politics, CPAC, and with it any attempt to broaden conservatism, and with it the Republican Party.

It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out.

Progress in America: DADT goes down

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

The Senate voted to repeal DADT on Saturday. We've written about DADT a lot here, and I won't repeat myself here, but I must say that while I am neither gay nor in the military, nor even American, I am incredibly happy about this. It was a hard-fought victory for the opponents of this bigoted policy, a victory not just for President Obama and the Democrats in a partisan political sense but more broadly for liberty, for the noble principles for which America purports to stand.

I may not be American, but I have roots in America, and I genuinely love America, and yesterday, I believe, America took a significant step forward in its progress towards justice.

Here's the Times:

The Senate on Saturday voted to strike down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.

By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as "don't ask, don't tell," a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay, lesbian and bisexual troops as second-class citizens.

Mr. Obama hailed the action, which fulfills his pledge to reverse the ban, and said it was "time to close this chapter in our history."

Of course, there is still a lot more to be done. While gays and lesbians will be able to serve openly, to fight and die for their country, we must remember that they do not enjoy equal rights as American citizens. They are still subjected to widespread bigotry, in particular with respect to marriage.

America has come a long way, but the fight must continue. Those noble principles often seem like little more than aspirational and unachieveable goals, but now, after this historic vote, and with Obama's signature soon to come, they are more within reach.

The forces of darkness, mostly within the Republican Party, will continue to do all they can to block progress from their perches on the wrong side of history, but they must be overcome if America is ever truly to achieve her potential.

Westboro Baptist Church members protest at Elizabeth Edwards funeral

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Would it be rude of me to write that the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, including those few who showed up to protest at Elizabeth Edwards's funeral on Saturday, can go fuck themselves?

No? Alright then.

They have every right to speak their minds, however small and bigoted, but they can still go fuck themselves.

I'm sorry, or not, but I just don't think there's a more appropriate way to put it.

What do Bulgaria, Jordan, Poland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States have in common?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to the recently-released Pentagon report on Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), they're the only countries in the world that ban gays in the military.

Nothing against the good people from these other five countries, but that's not exactly good company to be in.

Now, I suspect that countries like, say, Saudi Arabia don't allow gays in the military either, but such countries do not generally allow gays in society either.

These six countries have explicit policies in place banning gays in the military.

**********

I got this from Fred Kaplan's excellent piece at Slate on the Pentagon report. (I highly recommend it.) And, in case you missed it, the report's findings are definitive:

Much of the study reports and analyzes the results of a survey sent to 400,000 active-duty members of the armed services (115,052 of whom responded), as well as surveys of more than 40,000 military spouses and several workshop forums and face-to-face interviews.

The top line is that 70 percent of those surveyed say that repealing DADT -- and thus working, eating, sleeping, showering, and fighting in the same room or on the same ship, plane, or battlefield with service members who say they're gay -- will have a positive, a mixed, or no effect (in other words, won't have a bad effect) on accomplishing the mission.

Yes, there is obviously still a good deal of opposition in the military to gays being allowed to serve openly -- and John McCain and others are emphasizing that opposition to the exclusion of all else. But the numbers are actually even more definitive:

Among members of the armed forces who have actually worked with someone they believe to be gay, 92 percent say that the unit's effectiveness is very good, good, or "neither good nor poor" (in other words, at very least, not bad)...

As the report puts it, the apparent "misperception that a gay man does not 'fit' the image of a good warfighter... is almost completely erased when a gay service member is allowed to prove himself alongside fellow warfighters."

The results are overwhelming. The military is ready for gays to be allowed to serve openly. And it will be much easier for them to serve openly than it was, say, to integrate the military racially in Truman's day, when, as the report notes, there was overwhelming opposition to blacks being allowed to serve alongside whites.

The country has come a long way, the military has come a long way, and there's no good reason to keep gays out.

Though, of course, McCain and his ilk keep trying. Kaplan concludes:

The evidence, the polling data of service men and women, the testimony of senior officers, the everyday experiences of living and fighting, the imperatives of national security, as well as the obvious moral standards of contemporary life -- all point to, at the very least, a shift in the burden of proof on whether DADT should be repealed. It's no longer valid, and it's clearly a pretense, to call for further studies, further surveys, closer questioning. If McCain and the others oppose repeal, they have to come up with some new reason -- or fall back on the oldest, most unpalatable reason -- why.

But there is no "new reason" that has any validity. And so let's just spell it out. The real reason they keep up their opposition is indeed "unpalatable." It's called bigotry.

And so, for all his supposed pro-military cred, McCain finds himself in opposition not just to the military's civilian and chief military leadership (including not just Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but perhaps America's most revered current military commander, including by McCain, Gen. David Petraeus) but to the rank-and-file as well.

And, as Kaplan notes, the issue isn't just about rights but about national security (something McCain claims to care deeply about), as DADT has resulted 13,000 "involuntary discharges," including of key language experts who are essential to the military's efforts around the world. In opposing the repeal of DADT, then, McCain is not just promoting bigotry but undermining the military and weakening national security.

To be fair, President Obama and Senate Democrats have been dragging their heels, but, while Republicans will undoubtedly keep trying to put new roadblocks in the way, there's no excuse anymore. The military has spoken. It's time to repeal DADT.

(For more on McCain's opposition to repeal and the deeply flawed arguments against repeal, see LindaBeth's excellent post from yesterday.)