Noah Sends Out 4th of July Wishes: "Dear People of FOX News . . ."

Plus: Is Pastor Rick Scarborough burning yet?


Uh-oh, Bill-O's mouth is open! Stand back, people! Who knows what might come out of that gaping maw?

by Noah

Here's a wish for today: I wish that I had the technology to jam FOX News. No, not to prevent the twisted, warped programming. We are supposed to be a nation of free speech, aren't we? And if people can believe that they have been abducted by the Saucermen on multiple occasions, I suppose they can believe the endless fear-mongering and dark drivel that FOX offers.

I would simply like to be able to jam FOX in such a way that anyone tuning in to their spew would have to watch it through one of those clear rainbow filters that Facebook offered its users after the Supreme Court's ratification of the right of same sex marriage.

Oh OK, failing that, I would wish that Bill O'Reilly did a whole show in front of a giant, screen-filling rainbow flag backdrop, not knowing it was there until he turned to leave the set at the show's end. Watching the old geezer lose it would be priceless.

Why shouldn't I wish for this? On Monday cranky old Bill-O donned his black heart homophobe colors. Does he ever take them off? He threw one of his patented curmudgeonly snit fits about the White House being lit up in rainbow colors and puked out his tired "traditional Americans" meme, letting the FOX freak flag fly, as he is paid so well to do, even calling it an Obama "in your face" move.

I guess Bill-O took it all personally, but isn't he a fine one to talk about what a traditional marriage might be? One man, one woman and a loofah in the shower with a producer, anyone?

I have another wish: How about a list of all of the politicians and pundits that bellow about a marriage consisting of one man and one woman while they themselves are secretly gay, perhaps even chasing teenage Congressional pages? Can we get that list? Calling Larry Flynt! Is the Senate majority leader at the top -- or, er, at the bottom?

Meanwhile, on the same show we were suddenly treated to the surreal, hard-to-make-this-stuff-up, un-introduced specter of some other republican loon named Huckabee talking about putting up a nativity scene on the White House lawn if he's elected president. Hell, if a republican gets the White House, we should be happy it's just a Christmastime nativity scene and not a nightly burning cross.

Just look how beat this living fossil O'Reilly looks as he quacks about "traditional Americans"! People of FOX, wake up! You have overslept by decades! You are as big of a freakshow as those "People of Walmart" photo collections that circulate on the internet.



Sez Bill:

I was a bit surprised to see the White House doing a victory lap using actual White House property on Friday. The people's house was illuminated in rainbow colors to celebrate the gay marriage decision. What about all the Americans who believe that a redefinition of marriage is not the job of the Supreme Court?

Well, you're right on one little point there, Bill-O. It isn't the job of the Supreme Court to redefine, per se. You see, courts are arbiters, and we have this thing called the Constitution. Their job is to take a look at that and see how the question put before them fits that Constitution. That's what they did. Got it? They acknowledged a right that was already there. Can you get your rapidly shriveling pea brain around that? The Supreme Court decision was as "traditional" as it gets. Traditional as in "American."

Imagine, People of FOX, how it is to be a republican and go around all day long categorizing everyone you see as "traditional" or "nontraditional." Sooner or later you will be so narrow-minded that you will be sitting alone in the park like the village idiots that you are.

Dear People of FOX, it is now the 21st century! "Traditional" Americans are all of us, not just people categorized by your ridiculously narrow bigoted view that sorts people by gender, gender preference, gender identification, skin tone and number of syllables or vowels in a surname. Not only that, but it has always been that way, at least in ideal if not in practice. I know conservatives have always struggled against that ideal, thinking that certain rights apply only to themselves and whatever clique they belong to. But how about, if you are so into conforming, you start conforming to the American Ideal instead of always fighting the spirit of America?

In ten years or less, your little irrationally panicking Pied Piper from FOXWorld will be sitting on that proverbial park bench mumbling about how much better things used to be when only white hetero males were in charge (or so he thought), instead of doing it on TV every night.

If he wasn't so sick and hateful, O'Reilly would almost be laughable. He is practically a walking parody of hate, almost playing it for comic effect. Except he's serious. Some say you need smarts to have a sense of humor.

Come to think of it, FOX is really just a bunch of old wackos sitting on a park bench anyway. Sure you can point to the good-looking cleavage babes and the handsome devils that play journalists on FOX, but if you rip off the masks of any of them, you will find a crotchety, senile 90-year-old example of dementia.


MEANWHILE IN RELATED NEWS:
IS PASTOR RICK BURNING?



Sez Pastor Rick: "If necessary, we will burn" (emphasis emphatically not added).

A Christian pastor, Rick Scarborough, made noises about playing the ultimate victim card, threatening to set himself on fire if the Supreme Court gave the thumbs-up to same sex marriage. Scarborough hails from Texas. Should we be surprised?

Jeez, all Rev. Franklin Graham did was move his money out of Wells Fargo, saying they "advocate for the gay lifestyle" that "contradicts God's … blah, blah, blah."

It was pretty funny when he then put his money into a bank that is even more supportive of Satan's dastardly plan to ruin America.

All Wells Fargo did was run a TV ad that showed two women adopting a child. How dare they give that child a better future! Now, these fake Christians are trying to top each other by … topping themselves! And I, for one, support their right to do so! In fact, I encourage these kooks to choose the suicide lifestyle. Do it now!

Last Friday was a great day for America as we joined much of the civilized world. It was an even greater day for some individual Americans and the people they have chosen to share their lives with. But the righties have a special talent for looking in the mirror and thinking it's all about themselves.

Dear Pastor Rick, to date you haven't followed through. We're waiting. We're waiting impatiently. Is that mean of us? Need me to send a match? Here's my generous suggestion to you. How about you, Graham, O'Reilly and Huckabee climb into an oil-soaked boat in the Gulf of Mexico and play the good old republican whining-victim card together, Viking-style.

Put some fireworks in the boat too. It's 4th of July, and this is America. Give us a gift! Show us your patriotism!

PASTOR RICK "EXPLAINS": WHEN HE SAID "WE
WILL BURN," HE DIDN'T MEAN "WE WILL BURN"

Yes, Pastor Rick has "explained," sort of, how it happens that he hasn't gone up in flames. It seems that when he said, "If necessary, we will burn," he, uh, didn't actually mean it. It was a song reference, he says. RawStory presented his "explanation":

I made that comment to paraphrase a spiritual song, "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," in which the three were given a choice -- to bow to the image of Nebucahdnezzar or burn in a furnace. "We will burn" means that we will accept any sanction from the government for resisting [Friday’s] Supreme Court decision. We do not support any violence or physical harm.

Well, you can hear for yourself what the good pastor said up above, and while it's possible that this is what he was thinking, it's not what he said, which is all we have to go by. Also, he seems awfully murky on the meaning off "we will burn," which means, you know, we will burn. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego expressed their willingness to burn, what they meant was that they were prepared to burn -- in, you know, that famously fiery furnace.

If they had meant that they would "accept any sanction from the government for resisting" the order to bow to the image of Nebucahdnezzar, they could have said that, just like Pastor Rick could have said that. Probably nobody would have written a song about it, but that's okay, because if what you mean is that you have the courage of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego except for the part about having the courage, there really isn't any need for a song, is there?

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How nice to have a straight person point out that "marriage is for procreation" isn't just legal but religious BS

Sorry, Frank, that's just some silly old myth about love having anything to do with marriage. Now, Peg and Al Bundy, they were a bona fide married couple, because they were, of course, Married -- With Children. Of course, once they stopped procreating, however grateful the world would have reason to be, Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Paul Niemeyer probably would have had to blow the whistle on them. Not that Al would have objected.

"In contrast to 'traditional marriage,' [Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Paul] Niemeyer said, same-sex marriage ignores 'the inextricable, biological link between marriage and procreation' and 'prioritizes the emotions and sexual attractions of the two partners without any necessary link to reproduction.'

"Why does this upset me so? Well, you see, I got married two years ago, a few days shy of my 60th birthday."

-- Amanda Bennett, in a Washington Post opinion
piece, "What's love got to do with it?"

by Ken

Amanda Bennett, former executive editor for projects and investigations at Bloomberg News and now a freelance editor and writer, explains in her Washington Post opinion piece "What's love got to do with it?" that until now she has merely understood same-sex marriage as "a civil rights matter," though even viewing it in that light, "I grew more committed as I saw how the happiness of friends and family members depended on it."

This sounds exactly right to me, and entirely in line with the proposition with which she has opened her piece: "No one is as passionate about a cause as someone touched personally by it."

Sympathy for strangers with dread diseases is nothing like the angst you feel when a member of your family is sickened. You may pity victims of hurricanes, but there’s nothing like wandering your own submerged neighborhood to bring the devastation home.

And now the argument about same-sex marriage has struck home.

[U]ntil I read the dissenting opinion in the marriage-equality case decided last week in Richmond, I didn’t realize just how personal the issue could be. Because if the arguments of gay-marriage opponents ever succeed, my marriage will be toast.

The two-judge majority, you'll recall, ruled that same-sex couples can't be denied the right to marriage simply because they're same-sex rather couples than some other kind. However --

In his argument for those who would ban gay marriage, Judge Paul Niemeyer asserted that the kind of marriage protected by the freedoms in our Constitution isn’t the same as the one between gay people. Why not? Because same-sex couples can’t reproduce biologically (with each other, that is). In contrast to “traditional marriage,” Niemeyer said, same-sex marriage ignores “the inextricable, biological link between marriage and procreation” and “prioritizes the emotions and sexual attractions of the two partners without any necessary link to reproduction.”

As you already know if you read the portion of this quite I extracted for the top of this post, you already know that Amanda "got married two years ago, a few days shy of my 60th birthday." (Maazel tov, Amanda!) And she's here to tell us that, while she and her husband have "six lovely children" between them, procreation is emphatically not on the table this time around.

Which means, if Judge Niemeyer and the legions of other religious pea brains who argue from "the inextricable, biological link between marriage and procreation" are right, that Amanda and her husband are in trouble.

If, as Niemeyer says, the whole point of marriage is not the mere parenting of kids but actual biological reproduction, it is clear to me that he believes that my marriage is invalid. To opponents of gay marriage, marriage is all about breeding. Since my breeding days are over, it looks like, marriage-wise, I should be, too.

And it isn’t just Virginia. Kentucky used the same argument. So did Georgia. And Texas. This argument is surely going all the way to the Supreme Court.

Amanda is, of course, absolutely right to be worried if any legal jurisdiction accepts any legal relevance to the proposition that marriage is about procreation. If this is the case, then people who are not at the very least trying to procreate have no reason and indeed no right to be married. In fact, surely it can be said that they really aren't married. Could anything be more straightforwardly apparent?

[W]hat if Virginia’s argument eventually prevails and the pro-procreation forces manage to enshrine in law what I would call the Donald Trump effect. You know: serial 28-year-olds. Since, near as I can tell from searching the Web, the oldest man to father children did so — twice — after his 94th birthday, where will this all end?

Men, you, too, should beware. What if anyone who can’t procreate was barred from marrying? Some researchers have suggested that George Washington was infertile (owing to a bout of tuberculosis). What if The Father of Our Country himself had been forced to live in sin with Martha because he couldn’t be the father of anything else?

THE "DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE" HAS BEEN TAKEN
UP BY PEOPLE COLOSSALLY UNFIT FOR THE JOB

As far as I know, no church has taken action against religionists who marry without the intention to procreate or who then live as "married" while failing to try to procreate. Until they do so, it seems to me unforgivably unallowable for any judge to pretend that there is the slightest religious, let alone legal, significance to the "marriage is about procreation" crock. Any judge who does so should be obliged to preface his/her opinion by saying something like: "Call me a lying ignoramus scumbag, but I think that marriage --"

Once again, we have people "defending" marriage who are singularly and utterly unfit to do so. They may well be correct that the institution is in need of rehabilitation, but the place they should be looking is in the mirror. Unless you're either a total buttwipe or a feel-no-pain liar, it should occur to you that the place to look at what's wrong with marriage is goddamned married people. The first person who tried to lay it off on the homos should have been promptly snagged off by the men in white coats in their butterfy nets and strapped into the nearest loony bin.

The only question, as far as I can see, is what should be done about married people who claim to be trying to procreate but somehow aren't succeeding. When I've written about this previously, I've tended to thinking "soft" -- suggesting that they should be indulged, for a certain amount of time, at least. Now I'm not so sure.

First off, can such non-procreators prove that they're trying? I'm sorry to have to point that it isn't enough to say you are. Just consider a plotline on the TVLand sitcom Jennifer Falls, where Jennifer's loopy brother Wayne and his goofily tight-assed wife Stephanie are officially trying to get pregnant, except that Stephanie is still taking her birth-control pills. Is there any question that, under the "marriage is about procreation" doctrine, if the truth were known these two should be immediately declared unmarried -- and probably judged to have been living in sin the whole time they pretended to be married before they were trying to procreate.

Now you may argue that a TVLand sitcom shouldn't have any more standing in a U.S. court of law than, say, international law. But then, where does religious-cult crackpottery come off claiming standing in a U.S. court of law?

Which just leaves the case of couples who are honest-to-gosh trying to get pregnant and just aren't succeeding. Well, now I'm inclined to say, screw 'em! If marriage is about procreation, can we really give a free pass to people who are merely trying?

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Dab away those tears of joy for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her love-muffin with a lovely check to her PAC

by Ken

Actually, those measly fives and singles going into the hat pictured above won't do it if you want to properly celebrate the 30th wedding anniversary of Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her love-muffin Dexter. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any art that depicts $1000 and $5000 checks dropping into a political hat.

Those are the designated numbers for either a seat or a table at the happy couple's upcoming shindig at Miami's Coconut Grove Ritz Carlton. "Because," as Washington Post "In the Loop" reporter Colby Itkowitz puts it, "nothing says true love like political fundraising."

Besides, at the three-decades-of-marriage mark, does anyone think Ileana and Dexter need, say, a toaster-oven?

In the Loop
To celebrate 30th wedding anniversary, congresswoman asks for PAC money

BY COLBY ITKOWITZ June 25 at 6:00 AM



Considering the U.S. divorce rate, staying married for 30 years is cause for great celebration. Some women would want a nice dinner, a romantic getaway, a sentimental note. Others? Contributions to their political action committee.

Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and her husband, Dexter, are throwing a party next month at the Coconut Grove Ritz Carlton in Miami to celebrate three decades of matrimony.

In lieu of gifts, their guests can send $1,000 to the IRL PAC (Ros-Lehtinen’s leadership PAC) or purchase a table for $5,000.

Because nothing says true love like political fundraising.

Of course, politicians often use special occasions — birthdays, holidays — as an excuse to solicit campaign contributions. And sometimes it’s not even their own celebrations. Remember the Obama campaign asking supporters to create gift registries for their wedding, birthday or anniversary to donate to Obama’s reelection?

(h/t Sunlight Foundation)

I know it's hard to keep from being overwhelmed by the emotion of the occasion, but hey, $1000 isn't all that much to mark such a joyous event, is it? Come on, how much were you going to spend for that toaster-oven? And the $5000 table rate is a positive bargain if you have friends (or cronies) who also want to wish Ileana and Dexter well.

Of course it's the thought that counts, and if we know our Ileana -- and dipping into the DWT archives we're inclined to think we do -- this is the very kind of thought she's likely to appreciate. Many happy returns, Ileana and Dexter!

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Out of the damn pool, kid! It's only for children who have a live-in, legally married mom 'n' dad

With a happy update -- see below

It's about time someone blew the whistle! OK, kids, alla youse outta da pool, and any a youse who who ain't living wit' yer legally married fodder and mudder, well, may God have mercy on yer soul.

by Ken

This story has been gnawing at me in the week or so since I first heard about it: a two-year-old boy who was barred from "family" membership, the only way he would have been allowed to used the club's pool, at an athletic club in southwestern Virginia because his family doesn't fit the club's definition of "husband, wife and their children ages 21 and younger living at home."

By this standard, which requires children to have parents who are husband and wife, little Oliver Trinkle Granados's family is obviously grossly defective. He has two fathers, Will Trinkle and Juan Granados, who are automatically ineligible to be married in Virginia.

It's not as if dads Trinkle and Granados were trying to get away with anything. They registered for the family membership in good faith on May 15, making no attempt to misrepresent who they are. Trinkle pointed out to reporters, "Our family membership at the Y has been no problem for the last two years." So they were taken by surprise when they were informed by a club employee nine days after they registered that their membership shouldn't have been accepted and had been invalidated.

As Neil Harvey reported for the Roanoke News on the suit that the Trinkle-Granados family has filed against the club:

Trinkle said that were he and Granados to apply for individual Roanoke Athletic Club memberships, their son would not be able to use many of the gym facilities, including the swimming pool.

"The Children's Rules provide that only children on a family membership may use the youth services room, the track, group exercise, cardiovascular, Nautilus, LifeFitness, Keiser and gymnasium," the complaint states. It also said Trinkle's membership and initiation fees had not been repaid.

If you want to think not-so-badly of Roanoke Athletic Club and its owner, Carilion Clinic, a major regional health-care provider, you could speculate that the rule was originally conceived to protect the club from being scammed by unrelated persons trying to pass themselves off as a "family" for the purpose of taking advantage of family-plan rates. After all, if you're going to have family memberships, it's reasonable that you have guidelines as to what constitutes a family.

But the way the RAC's rules ares written, and especially the way they're enforced, it does seem clear who the real-world target is. Will Trinkle has said in a statement that he was told by someone speaking for Carilion that "they were 'tightening policies' so no families like us would ever 'get as far' as we had." (Neil Harvey reported, "Carilion spokesman Eric Earnhart declined to comment on the pending litigation Wednesday.")

I read somewhere that some bozo cited DOMA as a reason why RAC couldn't recognize Oliver's unmarried parents as a "family," which is idiotic; DOMA has nothing whatsoever to do with athletic-club memberships. And while it's true that Virginia doesn't recognize even civil unions, let alone marriage, for same-sex couples, as reporter Harvey points out, "private institutions are not necessarily bound to follow the same definitions as those that are public." And the state has nothing, as far as I know, that remotely resembles a definition of "family."

Still, none of this is what's been gnawing at me about the case. (Yes, it has become literally a "case.") I mean, another case more or less of blatant homophobia? That's just a big yawn.

No, I've been thinking about that definition of "family." Look at it again:

"husband, wife and their children
ages 21 and younger living at home"

While this obviously rules out kids who have two parents of the same sex, it isn't exactly a walk in the park for kids whose family unit is untainted by "teh gay" or "teh lez." One assumes that RAC does periodic sweeps of the pool demanding that every kid produce: (a) a parental marriage certificate showing that he or she has two parents who are legally married, (b) a birth certificate or adoption papers showing that the husband and wife are the child's actual parents (remember, it says "their" children" [emphasis added]), and (c) some sort of additional documentation -- I'm hard-pressed to think what exactly -- to prove that the aforementioned parents are both alive and "living at home." And presumably any of the small fry who can't comply are yanked out of the pool and paraded under a banner reading "Filthy Little Bastards."

But of course it's not just little bastards who are yanked out of the pool. I suppose you can understand why it's necessary to eliminate kids who may be living with two parents who may be their actual parents but who aren't husband and wife. That's a sin, and God just hates it. You can even maybe sort of understand the thinking in eliminating kids whose parents are divorced. After all, at least according to some people, God hates that too. But jeez, kids who've had one or more parent taken away by, you know, God? Now that's really a tough standard.

Anything for the family, I guess. And think about it, would you want your kids swimming with kids who may have had a parent die? Isn't that disgusting? I mean, we have to draw the line somewhere.

Which brings us back to the same problem I talk about every time the subject of "family values" or its hypervigilant subset "defenders of marriage" comes up: the people who have stepped forward to draw those lines. By and large these are people who are psychologically deeply disturbed, and might way more usefully be on the receiving end of a crusade for mental health, people whose marriages and families are essentially breeding grounds for sociopathology, people who -- from the depths of their disturbance -- are mostly interested in punishing people who don't share their mental and moral incapacities.

Today they've taken charge of the swimming pools and athletic facilities. Tomorrow . . . ?

CHANGE.ORG HAS BEEN KEEPING WATCH
ON THE CASE OF OLIVER AND HIS DADS

And they've gotten up a petition, which you can check out and, if you like, sign here.


HAPPY UPDATE: "THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE
CHANGE" -- THE CLUB GETS THE MESSAGE

Michael K. Lavers reports in the Washington Blade:

A Virginia health club that rescinded a gay couple's family membership announced on Thursday that it will now offer "household" memberships to unmarried couples with children under 22.

"Since opening our doors over three decades ago, we have always strived to provide the very best in service, programs, and staffing," said Bud Grey, vice president of Carilion Clinic, which oversees the Roanoke and Botetourt Athletic Clubs, in a post to its Facebook page. "Our goal has been, and always will be to encourage and inspire health and wellness among all members of the communities we serve. In keeping with this goal, and in recognition of the many contemporary households that can benefit from our facilities through discounted membership fees, we are pleased to announce that we have expanded our Family Membership into a new Household Membership." . . .

"A household consists of a primary member and up to one additional household member that permanently lives in the household, and any of their dependent children under the age of 22 who also reside in the household on a permanent basis," he wrote. "Club dues will not change; dues for the Household Membership will be the same as the Family Membership it is replacing. There is no requirement to amend your membership." . . .

Will Trinkle told the Blade: "We're very happy that famlies prevailed in the end -- all families." The lawyer who filed the suit on the Trinkle-Granados family's behalf, John Fishwick, commented: "It took a lot of courage to bring a lawsuit like this. This is how you make change."

By the way, reporter Michael Lavers notes that Roanoke Health Club's parent company, Carilion Clinic (which "operates seven hospitals and more than 150 other health care facilities" in southwestern Virginia), is "the largest employer in Roanoke."

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Says a "former PTA president" ("a faithful Christian and a fiscal conservative"): "It's time to open our eyes and our hearts"

Why are so many of the people who mouth off about "family values" the last people any sane person should want to listen to? As "faithful Christian" and "fiscal conservative" Candy Olson demonstrates, making basic sense on the issue really isn't a liberal-vs.-conservative matter.

"I don't know how we could consider ourselves Christians if we deny children a loving home because of a parent's sexual orientation. I don't know how we could talk about being fiscally responsible if we prefer to have taxpayers pay to care for these children rather than allow them to be adopted into a loving home, when foster care is far more costly. I don't know how we could say we want less government if we send government snooping into people's private lives."

-- Candy Olson, in "A Christian Applauds the End
of Florida's Anti-Gay Adoption Law," on HuffPost Religion

by Ken

The other day some news outlet was reporting breathlessly on Texas Gov. Rick Perry's view on something-or-other. I think it was Israel, or something to do with foreign affairs, about which he clearly knows even less than the absolutely nothing he knows about the things the governor of a state might be expected to know about. It doesn't really matter what exactly the subject was, because on any subject of importance to actual human beings, his ignorance is total, and his interest probably even lower. And without thinking, my first response was: Why on earth would anyone possibly care what Rick Perry thinks about [fill in the blank]. It makes as much sense as going to the zoo and asking, say, a panda for his/her thoughts on the mess in the Middle East.

What now passes for the national discourse is now so wholly dominated by lies, delusions, and malignant fantasies -- driven apparently by an insatiable appetite on the part of the public for even more lies, delusions, and malignant fantasies -- that an expression of good basic sense on a real-world issue comes to sound like a millennial revelation. Which is why I can't resist passing on this HuffPost Religion post by "former PTA president" Candy Olson.

As we all know all too well, for decades now we've been under siege from the crappiest of the Crap Christians regarding "family values" and more specifically the need for a "defense of marriage." And what I've always found so screamingly hateful about this is that the family-values and defense-of-marriage hawkers seems so consistently such deeply damaged human beings, psychologically and emotionally -- alarmingly often to the point of sociopathy. They are about the least qualified people one can imagine to be talking to anyone about values of any kind, unless it's the "value" of megalomania, authoritarianism, brutelike social orthodoxy, and stifling social repression.

And so while the immediate subject that Candy Olson is addressing, on the anniversary of a Florida appeals court's overturning of the ban on adoptions by same-sex couples, is the welcome dent that has made in Florida children's need for stable homes, which goodness knows is a matter of great importance, still, the case she argues has much wider applicability. (I'm not even going to go into the circumstance that the response of the governor at the time, Republican Charlie Crist, was to announce an immediate end to enforcement of the overturned ban, whereas one would dread to imagine the response of his also-Republican successor, an unabashed and unapologetic sociopath and criminal from the party's "There's No Such Thing as Too Much Greed and Selfishness" Right.)

"For the past 12 months," Olson writes, the end of the same-sex adoption ban "has meant that more children have gone to live with caring people or have had their family formally recognized and legally protected.

To me, a faithful Christian and a fiscal conservative, it made no sense whatsoever to deny any of these children a loving family because some people might not be comfortable with what the family looks like. Nor does it make sense to me to spend tax dollars on temporary homes when there are caring adults who want to adopt and some of them happen to be gay.

"Research," she says, "confirms that gay people can be good parents" (links onsite). And, she says, "I already know this."

I raised two children with a gay man. He fathered them, loved them and helped them learn right from wrong and 2+2. And then he came out. It didn't change his love for them, or theirs for him.

Our children both graduated from good colleges in four years -- not every child does that. Both have held good jobs -- not every young person does that. They are building lives of fulfillment and giving back. They are compassionate, joyful, loving human beings, in part because of their father's influence. He loved them, set limits, laughed and cried with them, just as I did. He took them -- and made them go -- to church and soccer practice and dance class and did the things that help children grow up into whole human beings.

I don't know how we could consider ourselves Christians if we deny children a loving home because of a parent's sexual orientation. I don't know how we could talk about being fiscally responsible if we prefer to have taxpayers pay to care for these children rather than allow them to be adopted into a loving home, when foster care is far more costly. I don't know how we could say we want less government if we send government snooping into people's private lives.

I hope for a world where people like my former husband could be themselves and where good parenting is the only standard in deciding who can adopt.

Or, as one of my children put it, "if gay people could marry each other and have families, they wouldn't feel pressured into a conventional marriage because they want children. How the heck is more love a bad thing?"

It's time to open our eyes and our hearts.

I love this, and especially I love that idea that the children's father "helped them learn right from wrong and 2+2." At the moment, if we go by, say, Fox Noise, one could be forgiven for concluding that there's no one who has even the dimmest clue about right from wrong or what 2+2 equals. And I have to assume that anyone who would even care about Rick Perry's opinion has any interest in the answers.


MEANWHILE, IT LOOKS LIKE ARCHKOOK MAGGIE
GALLAGHER WASN'T KOOKY ENOUGH FOR NOM


And the National Organization for Marriage confirms that Crazy Maggie has been succeeded as chairman by John Eastman, a raging nutjob the NOM press release describes as "a distinguished Constitutional law scholar" (he's a onetime clerk of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas). What I'm hearing is that, in contrast to Dame Maggie's quieter, respectable-looking ideological insanity, is a louder-mouthed, more bullying extreme right-wing loon.

Although I didn't mention Maggie in what I wrote above, I assumed that alert readers would take it for granted that she was one of the foremost people I was thinking of in terms of insanely inappropriate people to be peddling family and especially martial values As a colleague points out, perhaps because she wasn't as visibly loony as most of the ultra-right-wing icons, she was alarmingly effective in her Stalinist social crusade. It appears, though, that she wasn't visibly or aggressively enough whacked-out for the deep-pocketed right-wing funders who underwrite NOM.

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Why should NYers know that our departed deputy mayor was arrested?

Plus: What to watch for in the Teabaggers' Delight presidential debate (see below)

Former Deputy Steve (the urban wonderman) and Mayor Mike in happier times -- which is to say with no snow falling and nothing of note being reported from the D.C. police blotter

"I thought the immediacy of my resignation mooted the need for further explanation. I was wrong. The lack of a fuller disclosure I now regret as I regret the loss of my public service career and the intrusion my children have experienced."

-- former NYC Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith

by Ken

This expression of regret from former Deputy Steve is farther than the deputy's former boss, Mayor Mike, is willing to go. However, if you read deep into the story, you'll find that Mike and Steve are in agreement that any disclosure should have come only from the deputy.

Bloomberg Says Disclosing Deputy Mayor's Arrest Not His 'Responsibility'

September 5, 2011 12:13pm | By Tom Liddy, DNAinfo News Editor

MANHATTAN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to apologize Sunday for failing to disclose that former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith had been arrested in Washington D.C. just days before he stepped down.

Breaking his silence after a church service at the Christian Cultural Center in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Bloomberg said that it was not his "responsibility" to tell the public about the July 30 arrest, according to the New York Times.

"I did not believe it was right for our administration to put out a story about an incident that had the potential to [bring] even more suffering to the Goldsmith family," he said, WCBS/Channel 2 reported.

The mayor, who canceled an appearance on his weekly radio show with WOR's John Gambling Friday in the wake of the revelations, said that while he had an obligation to his constituency, he also had a duty to treat his employees fairly.

"I also believe as an employer, employers have a responsibility to treat employees with some consideration and that is how I built my business, that’s how we run this government and that’s how we will continue to do so," he said, according to CBS.

However, Bloomberg added that if Goldsmith, once touted as a superstar but widely blamed for the administration's disastrous response to the Christmas 2010 blizzard, had not resigned, he would have been fired.

"Given the high standards we set for government service and the serious circumstances surrounding his arrest, Mr. Goldsmith could no longer continue work at City Hall," Bloomberg said, according to WCBS.

Bloomberg's comments drew quick fire from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

"Unfortunately the Mayor has this backwards: His first obligation is to protect the public, not to protect a staff member," he said in a statement. "The City Council should hold hearings, so we can get a full accounting of the facts in this matter."

The revelation last Thursday that Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis, had been arrested for allegedly shoving his wife during a heated argument at their D.C. home sparked a flurry of criticism from local politicians, including Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Bloomberg, who reportedly accepted Goldsmith's resignation at a meeting the day after his arrest, merely said that his deputy was leaving office to pursue work in the private sector.

"Your claim that Deputy Mayor Goldsmith was 'leaving to pursue private-sector opportunities in infrastructure finance' was a misrepresentation of the facts," de Blasio wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to Bloomberg.

"I cannot accept the leader of the City of New York lying to its citizens."

In a statement, Stephen Goldsmith said that he did not reveal the reason behind his resignation because he did not want to embarrass his family, nor did he want to become "a distraction to the important work of City Hall."

"I thought the immediacy of my resignation mooted the need for further explanation. I was wrong," Goldsmith said. "The lack of a fuller disclosure I now regret as I regret the loss of my public service career and the intrusion my children have experienced."

Goldsmith also said that it was his responsibility to disclose the reasons for his resignation, not the mayor's.

"I regret the criticism of the Mayor for his support of my family," Goldsmith added.

If city officials are arrested within the five boroughs, their arrest is reported to the Department of Investigation. However, those arrested outside the city's boundaries are not subject to the same rule.

The public advocate plans to introduce legislation to close this loophole.

According to a Washington, D.C. police report obtained by DNAinfo.com, Goldsmith, 64, allegedly shoved his wife, Margaret, into a counter.

"I should have put a bullet through you years ago!" Margaret Goldsmith yelled, according to the document.

Goldsmith then broke a phone and grabbed his wife and would not let go, the report said.

The Goldsmiths have disputed the account in the police report.

Several observations:

(1) I'm sorry to say I don't pay close enough attention to municipal affairs to have any meaningful insight into how good a job Deputy Steve, the reputed (if only by himself and Mayor Mike) urban wonderman, did. Sure, he f**ked the blizzard up royally, but maybe that was the solitary blemish on an otherwise splendid record of job performance. It's merely my unsupported impression that the guy's a highfalutin stiff.

I do recall Mayor Mike insinuating repeatedly that we should be on our knees celebrating our good fortune in having such an august one as Deputy Steve, an authentic urban wonderman (a former mayor of Indianapolis, after all), as our deputy mayor for administration. And Mayor Mike would know. I guess.

(2) Pursuant to the above, I spent some time perusing the reader comments posted on some website or other when the story of Deputy Steve's, er, embarrassment first broke. There was one category of comments which annoyed, maybe even scared, the heck out of me; we'll come back to that. But I recall one solitary soul raising the first question I had when I was trying to digest the original report, which as I recall made reference to the incident in question taking place in the Goldsmiths' home in D.C..

So I was immensely relieved that that one commenter thought to pose the question: What was a deputy mayor of New York City doing with a home in D.C.? In some account or other I did find the explanation that Deputy Steve split his time between NYC and D.C. Not quite good enough, I think. The question simply changes to: What was a deputy mayor of New York City, authentic urban wonderman or not, doing splitting his time between NYC and D.C.?

Perhaps we should be grateful, not just that the urban wonderman deigned to take this job but that he spent some of his precious time in our city, and the rest of his "home" time however-many-miles away in D.C., as opposed to setting up his urban-wonderman laptop in -- oh, I don't know -- Cabo San Lucas.

(3) As to the comments that distressed me, it was the strain of "why's everybody bustin' the guys balls?" and "what marriage doesn't include disagreements?" comments. To which I can only say: Ferchrissakes!

While it may well be that the Goldsmiths, as the above report notes, "have disputed the account in the police report." It's clearly true that whoever might have pressed charges declined to do so. That said, I'm not aware of any dispute that:

(a) Mrs. Deputy Steve called the cops on her husband.

(b) Deputy Steve was arrested. (As in "arrest report.")

It should go without saying that neither of these considerations, separately or together, establishes guilt, and I'm making no such presumption. I do, though, wonder at the sanity of anyone who suggests that a wife calling the cops on her husband is a "what's the big deal?"-type occurrence in a marriage, and I wonder at the suggestion that when a deputy mayor is arrested, the people he serves don't have a right to know about it.

With, of course, appropriate explanation from the parties of the first and second part. Deputy Steve, you notice, takes a sort of in-between position: that if he hadn't stepped down as deputy mayor (forgetting for the moment Mayor Mike's revelation that if he hadn't, he would have been fired), then sure the public would have had a right to know, but since he did quit, it's nobody's business and his family is entitled to its privacy. Um no.

One extra observation: Since the Goldsmiths are disputing the account in the police report, it's apparently not definitively certain that Mrs. Deputy Steve indeed said, ""I should have put a bullet through you years ago!" However, could we have a show of hands here? How many people believe the cop who wrote the report made this up?

In the original public accounts, it should be noted, the line was attributed to Deputy Steve rather than the missus, which creates a certain "oh, the brute!" frisson. It is apparently a fact, however, that the police report attributes the line to Mrs. Deputy Steve. One might point out that the erroneous information would almost certainly not have circulated if the actual report hadn't been still under wraps, but never mind. Again stipulating that we're entering here the realm of speculation, not to be confused with either judicial process or full investigative inquiry: If Mrs. Deputy Steve indeed said it, at whatever level of frustration, anger, or whatever, is there anyone to whom the thought doesn't occur that who after all knows the guy better?


MY INSIDER'S TIP: WHAT TO WATCH FOR IN THE
"TEABAGGERS' DELIGHT" PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Okay, I got carried away here, with everybody else offering their personal "what to watch for" tips. But seriously now, what are you, nuts? You would actually consider watching these specimens "debate" in front of a horde of militant, "f**k the facts" doodybrains?

Which bring us finally to today's --

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Good news for Texas Gov. Rick Perry

"In a positive piece of news for the Texas Governor, a new poll shows him leading the pack among voters who describe themselves as delusional."

-- from today's Borowitz Report, "Perry Outlines
Bold Proposal to Repeal Twentieth Century"

#

4 Out Of 5 Evangelical Divorcees Believe Marriage Is Sacred

The Innocent Smith Journal derives it's name from the Don Quixote-like character in the G.K. Chesterton novel, Manalive, soon to be released as a film. It's my favorite newly discovered blog and Monday's post on an essential, even existential, difference between Blue America and Red America is something Obama ought to take into consideration. If not him, his political team. Innocent Smith gives us an intriguing look into the recent book by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Red Families v. Blue Families in which they link Blue America’s permissive sexual mores to its economic success.

Well-paying jobs today typically require a high level of education; in turn, obtaining that graduate degree in law or social work often means delaying fertility. While Red America’s abstinence-only mindset has done little to curtail teen pregnancy and unwed parenting, Blue America has taken a different, more successful approach: accepting premarital sex, but limiting its effects through contraception and abortion.

The paradoxical upshot of Blue America’s economic success is that it ends up realizing the traditional marriage ideal (career-marriage-childrearing, in that order) far better than does Red America. But how can it be that Blue America achieves an ideal that it isn’t even aiming for, while Red America misses the mark? Consider, for a moment, the even more paradoxical relationship between capitalism and traditional religious and moral values. (I have Catholic values in mind, but the statement holds true for other traditions as well.) On the one hand, there is a strong tension between the two, a tension that tends to work against Red America. Traditional values take into account the interests and preferences of families and communities and not merely those of the individual; capitalism views society as a collection of self-interested individuals. Traditional values acknowledge the importance of economics, but subordinate it to other goods, such as the environment, religion, the arts, and the community; capitalism can conceive of no higher good than profits. Social conservatism tends to overlap with economic liberalism insofar as it favors traditional values in these respects. At the same time-- contrary to the dogma of fiscal conservatives-- the abstinence-only schemes of Red America are far more antithetical to capitalism than the wealth redistribution schemes of Blue America. (Note that tax rates on the upper income bracket exceeded 70% throughout the economic boom years of 1948-1973.)

...Ultimately, what capitalism has produced is two Americas: a Blue America whose prosperity depends upon the values it professes to have outgrown, and a Red America that preaches traditional values but wholeheartedly embraces the economic Darwinism that preys upon them.