Republicans are making a lot of noise right now, accusing the Supreme Court of “changing the definition of marriage.” (They’ve done focus groups and market research and found out that this meme is the one that has the most positive response from potential donors.) But in fact, the Supreme Court has not changed the definition of marriage at all, and here’s how you can prove it.
Congratulations to everyone whose years of struggle and suffering finally led to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision upholding marriage equality. Your hard work and dedication have made America a better place for everyone here. Thanks.
And by the way, I just checked with my wife, and it seems our marriage is still alive and well, despite being “redefined” by the Court. Maybe that’s because our definition of marriage wasn’t based on oppressing others, but only on mutual love, commitment, and support. To anyone who finds that their marriage has been changed by yesterday’s ruling, may I suggest that perhaps you’ve been working under a defective definition all along.
The term “free market” is misleading. It sounds like good old American liberty, but what it really means is a market without any rules, regulations, or consumer protections. It’s like a highway system with no speed limits, no lane markings, and no laws against running over pedestrians and bicyclists. Hey, it’s a free highway: if you got run over, it’s your own fault for being in the wrong place.
“Free,” in this context, means the biggest, most heavily-armored vehicles can drive however they like without regard for how much damage they do to everyone else. Kind of like how the too-big-to-fail banks caused a catastrophic economic crisis under George W. Bush, and were “punished” by having to haul away billions of taxpayer dollars in bailout money. But it’s not a perfect analogy. For the free highway to be more like the free market, the really big road monsters would have to get free armor and fuel at taxpayer expense, so they could continue to dominate the highways (and any territory in between the highways, if it happened to be a convenient shortcut).
A lot of people are calling for South Carolina and other southern states to quit flying the Confederate flag outside of government buildings. I’m not. I say make ’em fly it.
Make ’em fly it until they redraw their voting districts so that black votes have as much weight as white votes.
Make ’em fly it until black applicants are as likely to be hired as white, for jobs that white applicants want.
Make ’em fly it until the police are no more likely to stop and frisk a person of color than to do the same to a white person.
Make ’em fly it until schools with mostly black students are as well-funded as schools with mostly white students.
Make ’em fly it until they end the practice of railroading young black men into prisons under the pretext of a so-called “war on drugs,” release everyone unjustly imprisoned by this sham, and expunge their records so they can vote and hold decent jobs and live normal lives.
Make ’em fly it until they quit pretending not to be racists, and actually produce substantial, substantive improvements in civil rights and racial equality.
It’s a shameful, ugly, disgusting symbol for a host of shameful, ugly injustices. Fix the injustices, and then we can talk about removing the shameful symbols.
By now you’ve heard the story of Nick and Sarah Jensen, who claim that they will seek a civil divorce if same-sex marriage is allowed, even though they fully intend to continue living together as a legally-unmarried cohabiting pair. Their goal is to try and claim that gay marriage really is a tangible threat to traditional marriage. And since no such threat really exists anywhere in the real world, they’re trying to create one out of nothing.
They are failing. The law is doing nothing to force them apart. If they choose to spitefully end their own marriage, it will not be because of any act of the government’s, but solely due to their inexorable hatred towards gays.
She: What do you think about Caitlyn Jenner?
He: I think that’s wrong. God made each of us to be what we’re supposed to be, and we should stay the way God made us.
She: God made each of us naked. Do you think we should all stay that way?
He: …….
The “soldiers are brave” meme, as an attack on Caitlyn Jenner, pretty much flopped, so conservative evangelicals have come up with a new meme to spread the word about what a poor, persecuted majority they are.
The people applauding Bruce [sic] Jenner for “being himself” [sic] are the same people who condemned Tim Tebow and told him to “keep his beliefs to himself”. That’s what is wrong with America.
I was going to write a post about Sarah Palin calling a 7-year-old girl a “pedophile,” but then I realized I had more important things to do. Like, for example, it’s been a long, tiring day, and I feel like yawning. Yeah, that’s how I’ll spend my time. I need a good yawn.
Here’s a quick guide to bullying and harassment, as practiced by LGBT/allies versus anti-LGBT. (Possible trigger warning if you’re sensitive to lists of the ways people abuse other people.)
If you want a cautionary tale of why it’s important to maintain a separation of church and state, look no farther than the Republican party today. Once they were liberal (no, really, they started out as liberals), and for a very long time they were secular. But then they decided, as a political move, to abandon separation of church and state, and embrace its opposite. I’m not entirely sure what the opposite of “separation” is—the phrase “incest of church and state” comes to mind—but they embraced it. And now look at them: paralyzed by internal divisions and bickering by leaders whose vision ranges from the intransigent to the hallucinatory, always sliding deeper and deeper into an agenda that none dare call fascist, promising “security” in exchange for liberty, and delivering neither.
And they want to make America Republican. Think about that.