Hypocrisy or Bigotry — Which Is Worse? Huckabee and Guiliani on Gay Rights

Via the HRC:

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“Unless Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain to tell us something different, we need to keep that understanding of marriage.”
Mike Huckabee

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“It’s the acts, it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful.”
Rudolph Giuliani on homosexuality

There are so many different ways I could go with this.

I could go with Huckabee’s snarky, smirky Brokeback Mountain reference. I could gas on about how “Brokeback Mountain” has become the new “Adam and Steve,” the default catch-phrase for when people want to make bigoted jokes about gays.

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I could also point out how wildly inappropriate the Brokeback Mountain reference is. I mean, did he see the movie? Did he think it was a ringing endorsement for gay people denying their sexuality and getting into heterosexual marriages? The whole point of that damn movie was that gay people staying in the closet ruins lives — not just their own lives, but the lives of their wives and their families and everyone around them. To make a “Brokeback Mountain” joke in support of a “traditional marriage” position is clueless to the point of delusion.

And of course, I could go the “laughably hypocritical” route on Guiliani’s comment. The twice-divorced, thrice-married, adulterous Giuliani, lecturing gay people on their sinful sex lives? Please.

But that’s not where I want to go with this. Instead I want to pose a question that kept me and Ingrid entertained for hours:

Which do you think is worse — craven hypocrisy, or close-minded bigotry?

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Here’s the thing. I don’t believe for a moment that Giuliani actually thinks homosexuality is a sin. He supported civil unions and domestic partnerships when was mayor of New York. Hell, when his second marriage was breaking up, he moved into the apartment of two gay friends. He did a Victor/Victoria drag show with Julie Andrews. He’s far from the most enlightened person on the planet when it comes to LGBT issues; but I doubt that he has anything against us personally.

I think his move to the right on LGBT issues is purely pragmatic. He wants to be President. He thinks he has to suck up to the far right to accomplish this goal. Gay-bashing is the quickest, easiest way to do that.

Huckabee, on the other hand:

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I am quite sure that Huckabee means every word of it. His entire record speaks of passionate homophobic bigotry, fueled by a particularly virulent form of close-minded religious fundamentalism. When he said that “homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle,” I have no doubt whatsoever that he meant every word.

So here’s my question:

Which is worse?

The close-minded, true-believing bigot — or the craven, self-serving hypocrite?

My thoughts:

From a purely ethical standpoint, I think the true believer has the stronger position. Their bigotry is evil, it’s harmful — but at least it’s sincere. It’s not held simply for selfish gain. It’s internally consistent.

But from a purely practical standpoint, I think I’d rather have the hypocrite in public office.

Because you can change a hypocrite’s mind.

Scales
If someone is taking a bigoted position purely to advance their self-interest, all you have to do to change their mind is shift the political scales. Mobilize your forces. Make alliances. Get better organized. Convince the hypocrite that their self-interest would be better served by sucking up to you instead of your opponents, and they’ll be your new best friend.

True_believer
It’s much, much harder to change the mind of a true-believing bigot. If their bigotry is a consistent, integral, fundamental part of their view of the world and themselves, changing their mind about their bigotry requires them to rewrite their entire life story. Very few people are up to that.

And while internal consistency can be an admirable trait, it’s not so admirable when it comes at the cost of shutting out the world around you. Prioritizing your own belief system over human reality is really just another way of being self-serving.

Then again, as Ingrid points out:

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If you do succeed in changing a true believer’s mind, chances are that you’ll have them for good. The ranks of LGBT supporters are filled with former bigots who changed their minds when their friends, their colleagues, their children or grandchildren, came out as gay. And their newfound tolerance is as strong — and as sincere — as their old bigotry.

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Whereas the craven hypocrite who makes nice with you today will toss you like last week’s leftovers the minute you become inconvenient.

Just ask Giuliani. And the gay friends who took him in when he needed help. The friends who he’s now calling “sinful” — because he wants to be President.

Hypocrisy or Bigotry — Which Is Worse? Huckabee and Guiliani on Gay Rights
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Carnivals: Humanist Symposium #12 and Carnival of the Liberals #53

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Blog carnival time!

Humanist Symposium #12 is up at Evanescent! This is probably my favorite blog carnival of all, and I always look forward to it eagerly — it’s such a perfect refutation of the idea that atheism is a depressing, negative, self-centered philosophy. My pieces in this Symposium: “A Relationship Between Physical Things”: Yet Another Rant On What Consciousness And Selfhood Might Be, and If You Weren’t An Atheist, What Would You Be? My favorite other piece in this Symposium: On Patriotism at A Load of Bright.

And Carnival of the Liberals #53 is up at Neural Gourmet. This is their “Best of 2007” edition — and so I’m extra-special pleased and proud to be part of it, with my piece Good Cop, Bad Cop: Atheist Activism. My favorite other piece in this “best of the year” carnival: Was Martin Luther King, Jr. a terrorist? by Engage: Conversations in Philosophy.

If you’re a humanist or a liberal blogger and want to get in on the hot blog-carnival action, here are submission forms for Humanist Symposium and Carnival of the Liberals. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Carnivals: Humanist Symposium #12 and Carnival of the Liberals #53

Carnivals and Circles: Liberals, Feminists, and Skeptics

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I missed putting these up when I was away on vacation. Sorry!

Carnival of The Liberals #52 at Yikes!

Carnival of Feminists #48 at Feminist Fire

Skeptic’s Circle #74 at Med Journal Watch

If you’re a liberal, feminist, or skeptical blogger, and want to submit a blog post to one of these carnivals/ circles, here are the submission forms for the Carnival of The Liberals, Carnival of Feminists, and Skeptic’s Circle. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Carnivals and Circles: Liberals, Feminists, and Skeptics

Right Wing Hypocrisy Part Two: The Scary Black Men Made Me Do It!

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. Bob Allen was just convicted last week of soliciting a sex act in a park bathroom, so now seems like a good time to reprint this story.

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This is just getting ridiculous.

Do you remember in last week’s column, when we talked about Florida state representative/ McCain presidential campaign co-chair Bob Allen? The guy who sponsored a bill to tighten Florida’s public sex laws, and recently got busted for offering a male cop $20 to blow him in a public bathroom?

The story has taken an almost surreal turn. According to the Orlando Sentinel (and a big thank you to the Bilerico Project for the story and the link!), Allen is now claiming that the scary black men made him do it.

I’m not kidding. Quote:

“‘This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park,’ Allen, who is white, told police in a taped statement after his arrest. Allen said he feared he ‘was about to be a statistic’ and would have said anything just to get away.'”

My question is this:

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Just how stupid does he think we are?

Let’s back up for a moment, and take this one piece at a time.

First of all: Racist.

That’s just obvious, and I don’t have much that’s interesting or original to say about it. So I’ll simply say it once more and move on for now: Racist.

Second: Lie.

Allow me to quote from the police report:

“I was standing against the far wall of the stall. Allen closed the door behind him and stood against it. I said ‘what’s up’ and Allen said ‘Hi.’ Allen then said ‘this is kind of a public place isn’t it.’ I said ‘do you have somewhere else where we can go?’ Allen said ‘How about across the bridge it’s quite [sic] over there.’ Allen engaged me in a conversation in which he agreed to pay me $20.00 in order to perform a ‘blow job’ on me.”

Bathroom_2
Just to clarify: This conversation happened after Allen peered over the cop’s stall — twice — and then pushed his way into it. (Read the whole story for more details.)

And he’s telling us he was frightened of the big scary black men and trying to get away? Liar, liar, pants on fire. This guy was cruising.

Which brings me to my central point:

Just how stupid does he think we are?

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I’m reminded of something I wrote during the Ted Haggard kerfuffle. When Haggard’s “counselor” said that, after three weeks of therapy, Haggard discovered that he was “really” completely heterosexual and that “It was the acting-out situations where things took place,” I had this to say:

“Right. Because straight men “act out” by sucking cock all the time.

“No, really. It’s a natural stress response. Long hours, money problems, illness in the family, trouble at home? Every straight guy I know would be running to the nearest male prostitute to suck his cock. It’s a perfectly normal reaction. Very common.”

And that’s exactly my reaction to Bob Allen’s latest statement.

Us20front1
Right. Every guy I know, when he’s in a public place in a situation where he feels threatened, tries to get out of it by offering the purported threatener $20 to suck his cock. I mean, that’s just self-preservation. It’s not like he actually wanted to suck the guy’s cock. He was simply trying to defuse a potentially dangerous situation.

Really. You’ve done that, guys… right? You’re in an alley or a deserted park at night, you see a guy you think might be a mugger… you offer him $20 to give him a blowjob. It’s in all the police brochures on urban safety. It’s just plain common sense.

I said it about Ted Haggard, and I’ll say it again now:

Just how stupid does he think we are?

So here’s what I think is really going on.

Blackwhite_2
I think it’s a bad enough PR problem for Allen’s Republican constituents that he was in a public bathroom offering $20 to suck another man’s cock. But I think it makes the PR problem worse, by several orders of magnitude, that he was offering $20 to suck the cock of a black man.

That’s not just faggotry. That’s race treachery. Not something you want to screw around with in the Republican South.

And I think that’s why he’s offering the “scary black men” defense.

Mandingo
I don’t think the “scary black men” defense is racist by coincidence. I think it’s very deliberate. He’s trying to play on his constituents’ racism — and in particular their racist fears of black men’s sexuality — by shifting the perception of the incident, away from “middle-aged man offering $20 to suck a black guy’s cock in a public bathroom,” and towards “panicked victim of potential mugging or rape by big scary black men, handling it as best he could.”

That’s an image his constituents can probably identify with. And he’s hoping they will. He’s trying to create a smokescreen of racist sex panic that his constituents can sympathize with… in hopes that the racist sex panic will be more emotionally compelling, and more what people want to believe, than the image of the right-wing crusader for sexual morality secretly cruising the public toilets for men to suck off.

I just hope that his constituents aren’t as stupid as he thinks they are.

Right Wing Hypocrisy Part Two: The Scary Black Men Made Me Do It!

Carnivals: Godless, Feminists, and Pozitivities

Blog carnivals!

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Carnival of the Godless #79 is up at Aardvarchaeology. My pieces this time: How Can You Have Meaning Without… ? and The Meaning of Death: Part One of Many. My favorite other posts in this Carnival: Why I Am an Optimist by Franklin, on why he finds atheism to be a more optimistic philosophy than theism; Religious Privilege: How Religion, Religious Groups, and Beliefs are Privileged from Austin Cline at About.com; and The Night I Stopped Believing by Susie Bright. This is, I believe, Susie’s first entry into the Carnival, so go say hi and make her feel welcome.

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Carnival of Feminists #47 is up at Ornamenting Away. I don’t have any pieces in this carnival, but it still manages to be a good carnival nevertheless. My favorite piece: The Rule, by Natasha at Homo Academicus, on Alison Bechdel’s Movie Rule (“1. There must be two or more women in it; 2. Who talk to each other; 3. About something other than a man”) and how it applies to Pixar films.

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And the International Carnival of Pozitivities is up at Slimconomy. This is the first time I’ve been in this carnival, a carnival devoted to HIV and AIDS, and I’m pleased and honored to be part of it with my piece Short Memories: AIDS Denialism and Vaccine Resistance. My favorite other piece in this carnival: HIV/AIDS: The Brazilian Response at The AIDS Pandemic. Happy reading, everybody!

Carnivals: Godless, Feminists, and Pozitivities

Carnival Of the Liberals #51, and Skeptic’s Circle #73

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Blog carnival time!

Carnival of the Liberals #51 is up at Pollyticks. My piece this time: Free Speech for Evil, Hateful, Repulsive Nutjobs? You Betcha! My favorite other piece in the carnival: Ancient African Math/Science Shatters Stereotypes, at thinkbridge.

And Skeptic’s Circle #73 is up at Holford Watch. My piece this time: Short Memories: AIDS Denialism and Vaccine Resistance. My favorite other pieces in the Circle: What’s the evidence cancers are our own fault? at Junkfood Science (long, but totally worth it), and Reasons to Believe at Action Skeptics, on the differences between skepticism and woo. Enjoy!

Carnival Of the Liberals #51, and Skeptic’s Circle #73

Right Wing Hypocrisy, or Why Sex Guilt Fucks Things Up For Everyone

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog. It was published about three months ago, so of course the “right-wing politician/religious leader caught in sex scandal” du jour has changed. But the gist of the article remains very much the same. FTI, this piece talks about sex, but it doesn’t talk about my personal sex life, so it should be safe for family members.

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The story is pretty much boilerplate at this point. “Right-wing Republican politician/ prominent Christian Right leader, famous for advocating a rigid sexual morality, caught in sex scandal.” It’s hardly even newsworthy.

The latest, of course, is David Vitter, Republican senator from Louisiana, who built a career supporting abstinence-only sex education, opposing same-sex marriage, and generally trying to legislate sexual morality… and was recently identified as (and has admitted to being) a client of the D.C. Madam.

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There’s also right-wing evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, preaching about the evils of homosexuality and supporting a ban on same-sex marriage… having regular sex with a gay male prostitute. There’s Republican Congressman Mark Foley, pushing for laws to protect minors from sex predators on the Internet… sending sexually explicit and seductive emails and instant messages to underage pages. There’s Bob Allen, Republican representative in the Florida House and co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign, sponsoring a bill to tighten Florida’s public sex laws… getting arrested for offering a male cop $20 to blow him in a public bathroom.

And that’s just in the last year.

Swaggart
I’m not even talking about Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Bob Livingston, the widespread pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood, and similar scandals from years past. It seems like cartoonist Tom Tomorrow is asking the right question: “Should we assume that every sanctimonious, moralizing Republican is a closeted sexual libertine — or just most of them?”

So here’s what I’m finding fascinating.

It’s not just that these right-wing figures are generally preaching a rigid sexual morality that they don’t practice. The pattern I find so compelling is that, for so many of them, the specific taboo sex acts they engage in are the exact ones they publicly campaign against.

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Ted Haggard — preached against the evils of homosexuality; had sex with a male prostitute. Mark Foley — campaigned against Internet predators endangering minors; sent sexual and seductive emails and instant messages to teenagers. Bob Allen — tried to tighten bans on public sex; solicited a guy in a public bathroom. And now Vitter — opposed same-sex marriage to protect marriage’s sanctity; cheated on his wife with prostitutes. (In what were reportedly some fairly unusual variations.)

It’s almost eerie, how precisely the hypocrisy matches up.

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Admittedly, a big part of this pattern comes from the media focus. Hypocrisy in powerful public figures is big news, and I’m sure there’s some cherry-picking in the coverage. After all, “Married Congressman caught with hookers — and he campaigned on the sanctity of marriage!” makes great headlines. “Married Congressman caught with hookers — and he voted to renew the Farm Bill!” isn’t going to make headlines anywhere but the Surrealist Times.

But even given that, there’s a precision to the match-ups between the public condemnation and the private behavior that seems like more than coincidence and media focus.

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Maybe it’s all just smokescreens. You rant enough about the evils of homosexuality and pedophilia, and you figure nobody will suspect the truth about those teenage boys. But if all this sexual hypocrisy is a smokescreen, it’s a singularly stupid one. It may protect you from suspicion for a while — but when the hammer comes down, it’s going to come down that much harder. So even from a purely pragmatic angle, you’d think that if you were offering $20 to blow strangers in public bathrooms, you’d pick an issue to campaign on other than the evils of public sex.

Justice
Or maybe it’s the natural human tendency each of us has, to believe that we personally can be trusted to know which laws and rules should be obeyed, but that other people can’t be and everybody else should just obey the law. But while that explains the right wingers’ overall willingness to break sex laws and flout sexual taboos, it doesn’t explain the eerie specificity with which their law/ taboo breaking matches their public condemnation.

What’s that about, anyway?

I’m no expert. I’m not a psychologist or therapist. But based on my years of experience in the sex world, what this smells like to me is sexual guilt — and overcompensation for it.

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I don’t think Ted Haggard was happy about having sex with men. I doubt seriously that David Vitter or Jimmy Swaggart felt great about seeing prostitutes. Ditto Mark Foley about being hot for teenage boys, or Bob Allen about picking up guys in public bathrooms. Maybe some of these right-wing hypocrites are laughing up their sleeves about how they’ve pulled one over on everyone. But for the most part, I think they feel tremendous guilt about wanting, and having, the exact kinds of sex that they believe are destroying society and making baby Jesus cry.

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So they overcompensate. They hate themselves for wanting what they want and doing what they do… so they preach against it, and propose legislation against it, and do everything in their power to relocate their guilt out in the world instead of inside their own treacherous minds and bodies. They may even feel that, in fighting the scourge of homosexuality or whatever, they’re somehow making up for their own misdeeds. I even have some compassion for them, although I’d have a whole lot more if they weren’t screwing things up for the rest of us.

And this is just one more reason we need to work for a new sexual morality — to shift it away from a guilty freakout over which tab goes in what slot, and towards a morality based on honesty and consent.

Brotherhood
Because if people in power weren’t so wracked with guilt about their own sexuality, I think they’d be a lot less obsessively controlling about everyone else’s. If Ted Haggard hadn’t felt so guilty about fucking men, maybe he’d have become a minister in the gay-positive MCC… instead of battling gay rights at every turn. If Mark Foley hadn’t felt so guilty about emailing and IMing teenage pages, maybe he’d have felt comfortable going for guys who were young but legal… instead of trying to turn the Internet into a Norman Rockwell painting. And if David Vitter hadn’t felt so guilty about wanting unusual fetishistic sex, maybe he and his wife could have come to an agreement about it… instead of trying to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the depraved ravages of gay people in love.

Just a thought.

Right Wing Hypocrisy, or Why Sex Guilt Fucks Things Up For Everyone

Free Speech for Evil, Hateful, Repulsive Nutjobs? You Betcha!

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Never, in the worst of my worst nightmares, did I think I would ever have to write anything at all defending Fred Phelps.

But it looks like I do.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

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Quick precis, for those who don’t know the story: You know Fred Phelps? The evil, hateful, repulsive nutjob who pickets the funerals of prominent gay people, with signs saying things like “God Hates Fags”? Who lately has been picketing the funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq war, on the grounds that their deaths are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality? (I told you — evil, hateful, repulsive nutjob.)

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He — or more accurately, his church — was recently ordered to pay nearly $11 million in damages, in a civil suit filed by the father of a soldier whose funeral Phelps picketed. The suit was won on the grounds that the picket constituted “invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.”

And I’m finding myself very disturbed by this.

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Don’t get me wrong. I am feeling a certain amount of visceral Schadenfreude about the decision. I won’t deny that. As Molly Ivins once said, “Mama may have raised a mean child, but she didn’t raise no hypocrites.” But as much as I personally enjoy seeing the bastard suffer, I am far more disturbed by the extremely chilling effect that this decision could have for freedom of political speech and expression.

For all of us.

And that’s a whole lot more important to me than my personal Schadenfreude.

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According to the reports I’ve read, this was not an Operation Rescue type of deal. There was no disruption of the service, no getting three inches from the mourners’ faces to scream at them. The plaintiff himself said at the trial that he didn’t even see the protesters or their signs at the funeral. They kept their hateful, repugnant protest a reasonable distance away. So the invasion of privacy thing seems to be pretty much bullshit. It’s the “intent to inflict emotional distress” that’s the real core here.

And when it comes to political and religious speech, I think the infliction of emotional distress is — and should be — a guaranteed, First Amendment-protected right.

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Take a look at my Atheists and Anger piece. And take a look at the deluge of comments. 749 comments as of this writing, and still climbing. Almost half from people who were very emotionally distressed indeed by the piece. I knew when I wrote it that the piece would inflict emotional distress on a lot of people (although I didn’t quite expect the deluge)… and I wrote it anyway.

I want to be able to write like that again without being sued.

Not a perfect example, I’ll admit. People come to my blog voluntarily (although some of them seem to have forgotten that fact), so it could be argued that I didn’t inflict anything.

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So let’s use a different example. I want the right to picket church services with a sign saying, “How’s Your Invisible Friend Today?” To picket the opening of a new steak restaurant with signs that vividly describe slaughterhouse conditions. To picket George W. Bush’s eventual funeral singing, “Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead.” I probably wouldn’t do any of those things, since I’d consider them in bad taste; but I think I should have the right to do them.

And if this ruling stands, I might not.

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Free speech is a human right, one of the central foundations that this country was built on. And that’s not just true when the speech in question goes the way we want it. The First Amendment does not exist to protect popular speech. It exists to protect unpopular speech. That’s the whole point. We don’t need Constitutional protection for our right to publish apple pie recipes or pictures of cute puppies. We need Constitutional protection for our right to say things that make people flee in horror… from “God Hates Fags” to “Gay Is Beautiful,” from “Stop the War” to “Bomb Them Into The Stone Age,” from “God Wants Our Soldiers To Die” to “God Does Not Exist.”

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And the more I think about this case, the more I think it’s bad strategically as well as ethically. And for much the same reason. I think this case can and will be used by the Right to argue that queers are demanding “special rights.” “Sure, they want First Amendment protections for themselves,” they’ll say. “But they sure are quick to get off their First Amendment high horse when it’s someone they don’t like!”

And they’ll be right to do so.

I mean, I think that. I’m saying that right now. And I’m queer.

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If you want to make an argument that this ruling doesn’t violate the First Amendment, then I’d be very open to hearing it. I’m the first to admit that I’m not a legal or Constitutional scholar, and it’s possible that a reasonable case could be made that the Phelps protests are not protected speech under the First Amendment.

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But I’ve seen too many arguments on this topic that say, “Free speech isn’t an absolute right, there are limits, look at libel laws, fraud laws, etc.”… without making any argument for why this particular case should be one of those limitations. Other than just, “The speech is hateful.” So far, nothing I have read on this particular case suggests any interpretation other than, “the plaintiffs are getting $11 million because they were upset by the content of Phelps’s speech.”

Deeply upset, and rightfully so. I get that. But again, that is exactly the sort of situation that the First Amendment is meant to protect.

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And I’ve seen too many arguments on this case that essentially say, “First Amendment, Shmirst Amendment — I wanna see this bastard go down.” I would respectfully like to suggest that that is one lousy argument. The First Amendment is not to be casually tossed aside when it happens to protect a repulsive creep who we want to see fry.

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A lot of progressives, people who are normally all over the First Amendment/free speech thing, are unusually willing, even eager, to drop their love of the Amendment in this particular case. And I understand the impulse. This particular case — this particular person, this particular group — makes people profoundly angry and upset. It makes me profoundly angry and upset. There’s a part of me that would love for some Constitutional scholar to come up with some legal loophole in the First Amendment, just so I can feel good about watching this bastard go down in flames.

But once again — that’s the whole point. The First Amendment to protect speech that makes people profoundly angry and upset.

Statueofliberty
See, this case is not just about a delicate legal nitpick. It’s not just about practical political strategy. It’s not even just about the pragmatic, enlightened self-interest desire to protect other people’s First Amendment rights so our own will be protected. This case is about the basic ethical principle of free speech. And it’s about whether we care enough about that principle to defend it, even when it hurts. It’s about whether people have the legal right to say what they want, no matter how vile or upsetting we find it… simply because they do.

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So do we really have to defend this guy? Do we really have to stand up and say, “Yes, Fred Phelps has the right to go to funerals and carry signs saying ‘God hates fags’ and “Thank God for dead soldiers’?”

Yes. We do.

We have to stand up and defend anyone who’s trying to communicate an unpopular message that profoundly upsets people. That includes a lot of horrible, evil people with repulsive ideas. But that’s the whole point of the First Amendment. It doesn’t exist to protect popular speech. It doesn’t exist to protect Cute Overload. It exists to protect speech that makes us want to vomit.

Sorry.

Free Speech for Evil, Hateful, Repulsive Nutjobs? You Betcha!

Blog Carnivals: Liberals, Feminists, and Skeptics

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Carnival time! Carnival of the Liberals #50 is up at That Is So Queer. Faith has done a lovely Edgar Allen Poe theme for this Carnival. And I’m extra excited this time: Carnival of the Liberals is a selective carnival, they only pick the ten best submissions for each roundup… and this time I have not one but two pieces in it! Short Memories: AIDS Denialism and Vaccine Resistance, and Atheists and Anger! They like me, they really like me! My favorite other piece in this carnival: I Write Letters by Melissa McEwan at Shakespeare’s Sister, on how slamming Ann Coulter for her looks makes you no better than she is.

Carnival of Feminists #46 is up at Cubically Challenged. My piece this time: Male Dom Female Sub, from the Blowfish Blog. My favorite other piece in this carnival: In Search of My Rhetorical Penis by Grrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life (a blog I clearly need to check out more), on why female science bloggers get overlooked.

And Skeptic’s Circle #72 is up at Quackometer. I’m not in the circle this time around, but it’s a good blog carnival nonetheless. My favorite piece: Holford Watch, on why newspapers only print “miracle cure” stories and not “negative findings.”

If you’re a liberal, feminist, or skeptic blogger and want to be in an upcoming Carnival, here are submission guidelines and info for the Carnival of the Liberals, Carnival of Feminists, and Skeptic’s Circle. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Blog Carnivals: Liberals, Feminists, and Skeptics

Dumbledore Is Gay: Good Guys and Literary Closets

Every single person I have ever met in my life has sent me this piece of news.

I wonder why. 🙂

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The news: J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books (yes, I’m a fan, suck it up), announced recently that the headmaster character, Dumbledore, is gay. It came up at a recent reading at Carnegie Hall; a fan asked about Dumbledore’s love life, and Rowling answered, “My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” She went on to explain that Dumbledore had been in love with the wizard Grindelwald in his youth, and that Grindelwald turning out to be evil was the great tragedy of Dumbledore’s life.

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(As it turns out, the subject of Dumbledore’s sexual orientation had come up previously during the making of one of the movies; the director had some reference in the script to a girl in Dumbledore’s past, and Rowling had to pass him a note to gently point him off that track.)

I pretty much have just three things to say about this:

One: Neat.

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I think it’s cool that Dumbledore is the moral center of the book, the apotheosis of goodness, the one character that all the good guys look to for both political and ethical leadership.

And he’s gay.

That’s just nifty.

Two: I think it’s too bad she couldn’t have said so in the books themselves.

Heather_has_two_mommies
Don’t get me wrong. I totally understand why she didn’t. If she’d made Dumbledore overtly gay in the books, then in the general public eye, that’s what the books would have been about. Everything else that the books are about — moral complexity, the realities of a resistance movement, what it’s like to be a child growing up and figuring out that the adult world is seriously messed-up, all the lovely and ridiculous magic stuff — would have become suddenly and dramatically secondary. It would have become the children’s book series about the wizarding school with the gay headmaster. It would have become the seven-volume fantasy version of “Heather Has Two Mommies.” I think it was the right decision, and if I’d been Rowling, I would have done exactly the same thing.

I just think that’s too bad.

I think it’s too bad that we live in a world where the mere presence of a major gay character in a children’s book automatically makes it a Kids’ Book About Gay.

Draco
I think it’s too bad that I now have to wonder: How many other characters did Rowling envision as gay, but wasn’t able to say so? (My money’s on Draco…)

I think it’s too bad that the single most popular author in the known universe, the one author who could write her own ticket more than any author living today, still had to keep the gayness of one of her central characters a secret until the series was completed.

Awrinkleintime
It is better now than it used to be, forty years ago or even twenty. Imagine if L. Frank Baum had announced that Glinda the Good Witch was gay. Or Tolkein with Gandalf. Or Madeleine L’Engle with Mrs. Whatsit. There would have been a shitstorm. But it’s a different time now, and the people who are mostly going to be upset about Dumbledore are the fundies who aren’t buying the books anyway because they promote witchcraft.

Harry_potter_sorcerers_stone
But I still think we have a long way to go. I still think it’s still too bad that a major children’s book can’t have a major gay character in it without that becoming the central defining feature of the book.

Maybe in twenty years.

Harry_potter_deathly_hallows
Three: Now I have to read the whole series again. Or the last book, anyway.

Damn. What a shame.

Snape
Oh, and P.S.: Snape.

No, I’m not saying he’s gay. I’m just saying: Snape. Because I am constitutionally incapable of writing an entire Harry Potter post without mentioning Snape.

Dumbledore Is Gay: Good Guys and Literary Closets