@boltgirl: OMG grassleys on teh twitter

Seriously, Chuck?

Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to call on Congress to enact legislation to reform the health-care system.

Grassley responded by texting, "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND."

A short time later, Grassley sent, "Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL."

Mr. President, Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of the great state of Iowa, wishes to inform you of his displeasure at your directive that he speed up the legislative process whilst you look at the Louvre with your lovely wife and daughters, for this order is forcing him to desist from his own salubrious rest and refreshment, instead resulting in him workinWKEND, so WTF, bitchez?

In other news, Sen. Grassley's response to the pending Chrysler-Fiat merger was HELLA NOES, and he also notified Sen. Specter that he now PWNS ur ass and no UR MOMZ a NAIL LOLOLOLOLOL.

Interlude

The Aztecs knew the deal with the end of the year. Their calendar couldn't handle 365 days, so at the end of day 360 they hunkered down for a workweek's worth of days and laid low to keep the world from ending. Coinciding as nicely as it does with our own cultural dead time between Christmas and New Year's, I fully advocate doing the same, with my own personal hunkering involving a comfy chair, a blanket, many hot drinks, the 2009 NY Times crossword calendar, and random bowl games.

Probably not going to happen to the standards set by my rich fantasy life, but so far so good.

In other news, we're busy bribing Afghan tribal leaders to cooperate with us and rat out the Taliban. With something better than guns!

In their efforts to win over notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains, the officials say, the agency's operatives have used a variety of personal services. These include pocket knives and tools, medicine or surgeries for ailing family members, toys and school equipment, tooth extractions, travel visas and, occasionally, pharmaceutical enhancements for aging patriarchs with slumping libidos, the officials said.

Ew. Sorry, women/child brides of Kandahar province! Just when you thought the old geezer's willy had finally shriveled up and flopped over for the last time, here come the Special Forces and the magic blue pills! And a happy Eid al Adha to you too!

A Question for the Guy Next Door

Dear Guy Next Door,

I am deathly curious to learn the exact nature of your yard improvement project, specifically, the attributes it possesses that are so crucial to the continuation of the species that you needed to be out pounding rebar into the ground for it at 5:30 this morning. I suspect you were simply moving your horseshoe pit, since the daily round of clank-thud commenced shortly thereafter. Actually, I guess I have a second question now: precisely how careful do you want me to be when I cut down the salt cedars on our shared property line? Mull that over before you haul out the sledgehammer tomorrow morning.

love,
Boltgirl

Back to Massachusetts

Tom Shields, right, and Kris Mineau, left, of the Family Institute celebrate with Massachusetts state Rep. Philip Travis, D-Rehoboth, center, an anti-gay-marriage amendment supporter, and unidentified woman. photo by Elise Amendola / The Associated Press

This picture from Massachusetts says it all. The sad thing, though, is that if you hadn't read the caption, you might think the photo had captured an older gay couple finally celebrating their long-delayed nuptials.

But no. No, no, no. These men, at least one of whom wears a wedding ring, are celebrating coming one step closer to denying gay people a civil right they themselves personally exercise. They got theirs, so screw everybody else.

The quiet resignation of the unnamed woman getting a kiss and a grope from the codger on the left might be the most illuminating part of the photo. Keeping marriage straight with clearly defined power divisions--it's a good day for these old men, indeed.

Requisite Mark Foley Post

In other news, Mark Foley is going for the fundie right-wing gay stereotype trifecta: (1) molested as a kid, (2) substance abuser; (3) sexual predator. Thanks a ton for jumping on that bandwagon, asshole. I'm not even going to address your contorted attempts at justifying or rationalizing or explaining his behavior. You are not the victim here. The kids are.

I will, however, repost a comment I wrote over at Daily Kos earlier in the week, now that more and more rightish commentators are coming out from under their rocks to discuss the technicalities of the boys' ages and, even worse, to suggest that the pages themselves were somehow at fault for Foley's actions. Forthwith:

Attention from an older guy in a position of relative power is a heady, heady thing for a 16-year-old (or, as in my case, 17). It's flattering, it's exciting--wow, he actually wants to talk to me! He wants to take me to dinner! He wants to talk to me about my future career interests! It's exhilarating.

Then he pulls you down on top of him on the couch in his office and jams his tongue down your throat and, wham, it's not fun any more. It's terrifying. Even if you manage to stop things in their tracks, the creepiness and guilt take a long damn time to subside. You don't tell your parents because you don't want them to be angry--whether with you or with your attacker, you're not quite sure--and you don't want them to think (know?) you're stupid enough to have gotten into this situation in the first place. You don't even tell your friends because you don't want them to look at you differently. You look back at everything that led to that awful moment and kick yourself for not putting the brakes on sooner, for not recognizing what was happening until it was too late.

I feel for the kid or kids who are sure to be identified sooner or later as the other parties in the IMs and e-mails. I'm certain my own experience shaded the way I read them, but I sensed the discomfort coming through the kid's side of the messaging. You don't want to go along with where you're being led, but at the same time you don't want to not go along because you think maybe you're misinterpreting and don't want him to cut you off. You don't want him to think you're the one reacting inappropriately.

All the debate about whether Foley is technically really a pedophile or an ephebophile or pederast or just garden-variety sleazebag misses the reality that teenagers are not equipped to deal with sexual situations involving older, more experienced, much more powerful adults. Arguments about terminology and semantics obscure the point: I don't give a rat's ass what the age of consent is in DC, or what that means for the 18-year-old boyfriends of 16-year-old girls. Foley exploited kids who were not experienced enough to know how to handle him. And that's a crime.

Given the developments out of the Foley camp over the past couple of days, I'll add that it's also reprehensible that he's now playing to the fears and stereotypes held by homophobes in an attempt to abnegate his personal responsibility for his actions. That's the funny thing about the anti-homo camp's view of gay people: they think we have the power to choose our orientation, but simultaneously are somehow unable to choose appropriate people to express it with. The reality is that we're just like straight people: you either do the right thing or you don't, and individual orientation has exactly zero to do with that.

Promotion of Vice and Prevention of Virtue, Part Next

So, having written about the new parameters of the abstinence curriculum, I came across Digby's post on the Purity Ball--quite possibly the most unnerving manifestation of the movement I've yet seen. This event, recently held in South Dakota (courtesy of the Abstinence Clearinghouse), can pretty much be summed up as Ritualistic Surrender of My Sexuality to Daddy. Girls don prom dresses to be escorted by their fathers to a Dominionist's wet dream of a formal dance where dad and daughter pose for prom-style pictures under a heart-shaped arch of balloons.

The highlight is the exchange of vows part of the program where girls and fathers read pledges to each other. Here's the girl's part:

I pledge to remain sexually pure...until the day I give myself as a wedding gift to my husband. ... I know that God requires this of me.. that he loves me. and that he will reward me for my faithfulness.

And here's Dad's scripted reply:

I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

(Let's review. This event is pushed by an organization that is deeply involved in providing sex ed abstinence curricula to schools. The highlight of the event has both parties involved invoking God. Please, if anyone tries to argue to you that abstinence is based on sound science and pursued in service of public health rather than proselytizing, please please please knock them upside the head. But I digress.)

With this creepy little ritual, the girl surrenders her sexuality to the protection and control of, first, her father, and second, to her future husband. She frames herself as an object to be given as a "gift" to a presumably unknown man in the future, a gift that will only be of worth if she has eschewed all sexual activity (apparently at any level of stimulation; see my previous post) beforehand. The father's place as not only the temporal head of the household, and not just the spiritual head, but the freakin' "high priest," is cemented. Trip-trap over to the Clearinghouse's website and look at the pictures. Many of the girls making these vows to father and God look to be barely out of the single digits, with likely only the faintest glimmer of recognition of what the script they're reading is really talking about.

The people who poo-poo the notion that abortion restrictions and abstinence movements are, at their cores, solely about controlling women's sexuality need to take a very close look at the laws and bizarre rituals growing out of those movements and try to come up with compelling arguments supporting their positions. They need to explain why there are no parallel rituals prescribing male purity prior to marriage, why females are being targeted not only as the commodity to be protected from sexual sullying but also, contradictorily, the very source of sexual pollution if left uncontrolled and unchecked by paternal intervention (thus the mindset manifested in the MO legislature's refusal to fund birth control for low-income women, on the grounds that it would lead to promiscuity).

What does the Purity Ball imply about the mother's role in her daughter's growth and development? How, exactly, is the father to "cover" his daughter in authority when it comes to matters of sex? If a purity pledge girl does engage in pre-marital sexual stimulation, what punishments befall her due to her violation of this added layer of accountability, not simply the God of Leviticus and St. Paul but now Daddy the High Priest as well?