The Round Mound of Sound FTW

I always liked Charles Barkley, even when he played for the Knicks. I like him a little bit more today.

Hall of Famer Charles Barkley is certain he played with gay teammates on two or three teams during his basketball career -- and says it didn't bother him a bit.
He said he never felt threatened or hit-on in the locker room and was never bothered by the presence of gay teammates.

"First of all, every player has played with gay guys," Barkley told 106.7 The Fan, adding that any player who says he hasn't is "a stone-freakin' idiot."

"First of all, society discriminates against gay people," Barkley said. "They always try to make it like jocks discriminate against gay people. I've been a big proponent of gay marriage for a long time, because as a black person, I can't be in for any form of discrimination at all."

As more and more of the wall gets chipped away, it's nice to see people like Sir Charles doing some of the chipping.

Arizona: It's a Dry Hate

This became inevitable the moment Janet Napolitano took off for Washington, leaving the entire state government apparatus in the hands of the GOP. But still.

Attorneys for the state will ask a federal appeals court today to let Arizona stop providing insurance benefits for the partners of gay workers.

State lawmakers voted to end the benefits to save money.

The domestic partner benefits directive went into effect in 2008 under Napolitano, who expanded the definition of "dependent" for state workers to include all unmarried partners, both gay and straight. One of Jan Brewer's first official acts upon flumping down behind the governor's desk in 2009 was to rescind those benefits. Then a US District judge issued an injunction forbidding the state from backing out of the benefits package, and that brings us to today in suddenly federal lawsuit-happy Arizona.

The comments on the online article are, as usual, a treat.

Helpful McCain-English Translat-o-matic

Oh, good. John McCain went on Meet the Press this morning and clarified the little kerfuffle involving his wife, a video camera, and a jaw-dropping twelve hours during which we thought there was a voice of reason in that marriage. In case it isn't clear, we're giving the senator a hand with what he's actually saying.

McCain: "I respect the First Amendment rights of every member of my family."

Actually means: But fuck if they get to exercise them. This isn't a fucking democracy here. So forget what the trollop thinks she thinks. There is one opinion here, and it is mine.

In the same vein, you may recall that Walnuts said he'd accept a DADT repeal if the military leadership wanted that, and then, after the military leadership said they wanted it, McCain said no, what he really wanted was a Pentagon study. Now that the Pentagon study has been leaked, well--quelle surprise--he doesn't want that either.

"A thorough and complete study of the effects, not how to implement a repeal, but the effects on morale and battle effectiveness, that's what I want," he added. "And once we get this study we need to have hearings, and we need to examine it, and we need to look at whether it is the kind of study that we wanted."

Actually means: We need to look at whether the study shows that the fags will destroy the United States military, because that is exactly the kind of study we wanted, where "we," of course, means John McCain.

And, apparently, if he gets the kind of study he wanted but the results aren't quite what he was banking on, he will call for hearings in his new now-with-38%-more-Republicans Senate. Because if there's one thing the GOP can do like pros, it's move the goalposts and spin and massage until the original facts become the truth they want.

McCain: I'm John McCain.

Actually means: I am the shameless asshole in charge here, and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

In Which I Take It Back

During the '08 campaign, I snarked on Cindy McCain for saying the only way to get around Arizona is by small private plane. Oh, that's still a dumbass thing to say, coming from a place of way underexamined privilege, but I'll give her a pass on the Cessna because she came out and did this:

What a fascinating dynamic they must have at home. I wonder at what point Walnuts realized he'd blundered by failing to realize that his knockout blonde millionaire heiress trophy replacement wife also came equipped with both a functioning brain and a conscience.

Another Day, Another Kerfuffle

Hey, brother.

Michigan's assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell is in trouble for cyber-bullying the president of the University of Michigan's student government, with blog posts calling him, among other things, a radical homosexual activist--excuse me, let me make sure I quote Mr. Shirvell accurately--a RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST. I vaguely wondered if there was any chance that this might be yet another tired cliche of a self-loathing homo acting out by attacking a gay person, even though it's been done to death recently (really, Eddie Long, it's so derivative at this point--but the iPhone Under-Armour-in-the-bathroom pics were a nice touch!). So I figured I'd watch the video, and then Mr. Shirvell started talking at 0:24 and by 0:26 my gaydar was completely melted down into the same puddle with my irony meter and I spent the next seven minutes giggling uncontrollably.

Oh, Andrew, honey. You had me at "Well, Anderson..."

I have so many questions. How did this guy manage to get a job in the first place, much less manage to keep it more than a week? As assistant AG? Really? He's really an assistant attorney general? Like, for a state? And he really doesn't think any of his Perez Hilton stylings are the tiniest bit inappropriate for any, you know, actual adult who's decided to pick on a college kid? Oh, wait, that question answers itself.

“Did he think he was just going to get some kind of free pass just because he’s gay or whatever?,” Shirvell said earlier this month with Detroit TV station WXYZ. “I mean, we’re all adults here and so, you know, we’re treating him like an adult with adult level criticism.”

The University of Michigan must be so pleased. As a Notre Dame fan, I certainly am.

In Other Words

John McCain, referencing the Defense Department's OMG what if the Marine in the next bunk haz Teh Ghey survey, says we absolutely need to hear from people in uniform before we decide to stop axing Arabic translators for the sole reason that they are cunning linguists in more than one way.

The Air Force, in blessedly futile arguments that Major Margaret Witt should not be reinstated to her job as a flight nurse for a medevac team, says the opinions of people in uniform don't matter a rat's ass.

Her attorneys, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, insisted that Witt was well respected and liked by her colleagues, that her sexuality never caused problems in the unit, and that her firing actually hurt military goals such as morale, unit cohesion and troop readiness. Several members of the squadron testified to that effect and said they would welcome Witt back to the unit.

Lawyers for the Air Force said such evidence was irrelevant.

Military personnel decisions can't be run by unit referendum, they said.

They need to get on the same page here, because it at this point it looks like The Ghey is subject to referendum, but only when the overwhelming response comes back the way they were hoping. And given the wording of many of the DOD survey questions, the response they're fishing for is pretty clear. I am very curious about what the official reaction might be if even that survey ends up showing that most military people really don't care about team members' orientations as long as they do their jobs.

Well, That's a New One

1995 was the pivotal year in my faith journey. Srebenica came hard on the heels of Oklahoma City and--short version--Boltgirl decided the idea of a god that was unable to prevent one or both massacres failed to square with logic, and one that was able but unwilling, if extant, would be a sadistic bastard, and so both of the above could piss off. Permanently.

So it's fascinating to hear retired Marine General John Sheehan's explanation for the former atrocity. It wasn't so much Slobodan Milosevic's fault after all! It was The Ghey!

A retired Marine general told senators on Thursday that the Dutch Army failed to protect the city of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war partly because of the presence of gay soldiers in its armed forces.

[Following the collapse of the Soviet Union] the Dutch allowed troops to join unions and enlisted openly gay soldiers. Dutch forces were poorly led and unable to hold off Serb forces in 1995, leading to the execution of Bosnian Muslims and one of the largest European massacres since World War II, Sheehan said.

Who knew we needed to put "genocide" on our list of general failures, right after "objectively disordered," "intrinsic moral evil," "destroying society," and "making straight men feel squicky unless it's hot straight girls pretending to be lesbians we're talking about?" I sure didn't.

Admiral Mike Mullen. For. The. Win.

No additional comments from my end are necessary. Oh, except that John McCain is an awful, awful man.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BOTL: Now with More Tebow, More Abstinence, More Kerfuffle

A laundry list of items, and the sun isn't even up yet.

The Daily Star ran an editorial the New York Times flung out on Sunday, which I missed at the time.

A letter sent to CBS by the Women's Media Center and other groups argues that the commercial "uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk" - a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening.

The would-be censors are on the wrong track.

Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

The editorial notes that the Tebows' story is being brought to you by Focus on the Family, but conveniently omits the fact that FoF works tirelessly--with nearly bottomless funding from their adherents--to increasingly restrict women's rights to make choices about their pregnancies, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the choice of abortion altogether, as well as eliminating many forms of contraception as well. Pam Tebow ostensibly had a choice (although abortion for any reason has been illegal since 1930 in the Phillippines, where Tim was born, it's questionable whether she actually had the choice she claims to have made), and she's shilling the story of that choice on behalf of an organization that is committed to removing the same choice from other women. Nice job on nuance, NYT and Daily Star!

Next up, abstinence!

A new study shows for the first time that a sex-education class emphasizing abstinence only - ignoring moral implications of sexual activity - can reduce sexual activity by nearly a third in 12- and 13-year-olds compared with students who received no sex education.

"This study, in our view, is game-changing science," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C.

"It provides for the first time evidence that abstinence-only intervention helped young teens delay sexual activity."

The study reported here covered 600+ low-income African-American 12- and 13-year-olds in the Northeast, who were split into four groups who received different eight hour courses in 8th grade. The control group got generic healthy living, the first test group got abstinence-only, the second safe sex (excluding abstinence), and the third got a combination of safe sex and abstinence. Over the following two years, half the safe-sex kids reported sexual activity, while only a third of the abstinence-only kids did; the comprehensive group was in the middle.

Okay, so abstinence-only education was tops at keeping 12- and 13-year-olds from having sex before they turned 14 or 15. Fair enough. But is there a kicker?

None of the classes appeared to influence the use of condoms or other birth control when the students did have sex. The children thus remained at risk of pregnancy and venereal disease.

About 8.8 percent of participants in the comprehensive class reported activity with multiple partners, compared with 14.1 percent in the control group, indicating that the comprehensive class reduced the risk of disease. Neither diseases nor pregnancies were monitored, however.

Ding ding ding! Maybe abstinence should be hammered at the younger kids--this study certainly suggests it's an effective tactic--but I have to ask if 55 kids (33% of the control group) having sex at 14 with no understanding of contraception is really a preferable outcome to 86 kids having sex at 14 after at least having been taught about condoms. The difference is statistically significant, but in terms of actual lives, 55 and 86 are pretty much a wash. If anything, the study does make it horribly clear that a huge unresolved problem is how to convince kids to use the goddamn condoms and other contraception once they've learned about them. Too bad disease and pregnancy were not monitored; since those are the two conditions abstinence-only and comprehensive sex ed agree need to be minimized, those are the outcomes that would seem to be the most salient.

Oh, and on the teeny tiny kerfuffle of the NYT gays-aren't-monogamous story? A few commenters elsewhere have read my objections as being objections to open relationships and rational thinking about partnering, and possibly to gay men as well. No, no, no. Got no problem with people negotiating relationship parameters that work for them, and am not unaware of the high incidence of infidelity in hetero marriages and the problems that causes when couples don't write external affairs into their rules but go on to have them anyway. Nor do I think all gay partnerships must hew to the mythological Ozzie-and-Harriet model in order for us to have a chance at marriage equality; what works for me might not work for you, and that's fine. I just despair when I see glosses reported as science, particularly when I know exactly the kinds of bozos in my own state and possibly own family who will pounce on the pronouncement that half of all gay relationships incorporate non-monogamy and use it as the only justification they will ever need to keep voting against full civil rights for us and to keep throwing money at organizations that think we should all be executed, or jailed, or maybe just subjected to compulsory reparative therapy.

Frank Antenori Rides Again.

Commenter Melissa asked for my opinion on Arizona House Bill 2148, a proposed revision of the state's adoption regulations from this:

Any adult resident of this state, whether married, unmarried or legally separated, is eligible to qualify to adopt children. A husband and wife may jointly adopt children.

to this:

A. Any adult resident of this state, whether married, unmarried or legally separated, is eligible to qualify to adopt children. A husband and wife may jointly adopt children.

B. Pursuant to rules adopted by the division, the division or an agency shall place a child who is in the custody of the state and who has a case plan goal of adoption with any person who is certified by the court as acceptable to adopt children. The division or agency must give primary consideration to placement with a married couple and may consider placement with a single person only if a qualified married couple is not available, unless any of the following applies:
1. The single person is a legal relative of the child.
2. The alternative for the child is extended foster care.
3. A meaningful and healthy relationship between the single person and the child has already been established.
4. The child's best interests require the adoption by the single person.
5. The adoption is the result of a direct placement adoption.

Among the sponsors are our old friend Frank Antenori (R-Not Tucson), who favors protecting women's delicate constitutions from difficult things like decision-making and thinking and stuff, and yesterday's rockstar of the day, Judy Burges (R-an intersection west of Prescott), who thinks Obama is a secret muslin foreigner. I have not been able to locate any comments by these two or any of the several other all-Republican sponsors, and I am very interested in what they will have to say.

Exceptions 2 and 4 listed above (alternative is extended foster care/adoption by the single person is in the best interest of the child) would seem to leave a sufficient amount of leeway for single people or unmarried couples (read: gay) to argue that they shouldn't be sent to the back of the line for a specific child, although if that's the case I wonder why Antenori and company inserted them in the first place. Well, unless the main point of this exercise is to jab a pointy stick in teh gays' eyes just because they can, and I suppose that should never be ruled out where the Arizona statehouse is concerned.

However, if you're an unmarried single or partnered person who knows you want to adopt, but aren't personally acquainted with a child who needs adopting and who you can leverage the exceptions for, it sounds like you're screwed until all the prospective straight married people who suddenly line-jumped you have been eliminated for one reason or another. In that case, your best bet appears to be requesting a special-needs child, since this will bump you up to official second-class status from what will be bottom-of-the-barrel status.

B. The division is not required to accept every application for certification. In determining which applications to accept the division may give priority to applications filed jointly by a husband and wife who are adult residents of this state and who wish to adopt a child who has any special needs as defined in section 8-141 and secondary priority to single adult residents of this state who wish to adopt a child who has any special needs as defined in section 8‑141.

The evaluation process remains unchanged from its current structure, which oddly--to me, anyway--specifically spells out that the moral and religious characters of the prospective parents are to be evaluated by the state before stamping an application as a go or a no go. More on how this plays out when once it starts playing.

Just in Case You Were at all Unclear on Where This is Going

This citizen's initiative is going to be on the ballot in Maine next November (via a commenter at Pam's House Blend):

An Act to Remove Protections Based on Sexual Orientation from the Maine Human Rights Act, Eliminate Funding of Civil Rights Teams in Public Schools, Prohibit Adoptions by Unmarried Couples, Add a Definition of Marriage, and Declare Civil Unions Unlawful

Michael S.Heath
70 Sewall Street
Augusta, ME 04330

To be sure, it was filed in May of 2008, so it's not exactly new news. And it was filed by Mike Heath, of the Maine Christian Civic League, so it's not exactly a surprise. But it's a pertinent reminder that no matter how they swear up and down that it's only about the super secret special word marriage, it's never just about marriage. It's about taking every opportunity to strip away hard-won protections and basic affirmations of our humanity, to legitimize those who would shove us back into the closet and possibly leave a few lumps on our heads, or worse, in the process.

No marriage for you! And no adopted children for you. And no protection from bullying in school for you. How else will you learn your place in society? Because, really, that place also involves no job or housing protections, and if you try to simulate marriage by spending thousands of dollars on lawyers and notarized documents and wills and powers of attorney the way we always tell you to do, well, that's going to be against the law too. We probably can't throw you in jail, but maybe we can fine you.

Did we say it was only about marriage? Yes? Did you not understand at the time that all this other stuff was implicit in that? No? Well, you do now.

Because...

...because I couldn't write my way out of a wet paper bag right now even with a really sharp pencil, and because whatever word-whacking ability still left in my brain needs to be directed at work projects, and because I don't have any video-making talent to speak of, here's something delightful via Joe.My.God. to fill some time.

On Second Thought, Schadenfreude Pretty Well Sucks Too

Seriously?

We all now know that President Obama this evening will give some federal agencies the right to give some federal employees some benefits at some time in the future. The problem, as one reader writes, is that federal agencies already have that right, and in fact, are already providing the benefits.

Yeah. That presidential memorandum that fiercely extends some (taxable as income) benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, so bravely signed with such fanfare at 5:45 pm last night? It turns out we had those benefits already.

I would really like a good reason to not make this my fucking masthead. Next: Obama signs memorandum guaranteeing gays the right to breathe a heady nitrogen-oxygen mix. But only for the duration of his adminstration. Also, the right to celebrate Christmas or Chanukah and maybe Eid if we mind ourselves.

Because Schadenfreude is Better than no Freude at All.

Huh. Hot on the heels of this comes the news that President Obama tomorrow will sign an executive order a memorandum that gives all same-sex partners of federal employees the same suite of benefits as straight spouses moving costs as long as he's in office. Moving costs, people! It's the lesbian dream second-date U-Haul reservation fantasy come true!

"Our analysis has been that it will take an act of Congress for the full suite of benefits such as health benefits and retirement benefits to be provided for same-sex couples and families," said Leonard Hirsch, president of Federal Globe: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Employees of the Federal Government. Hirsch said the executive branch has the authority to extend certain other benefits through departments and agencies, such as providing relocation costs for partners of federal employees.

Hirsch welcomed the announcement and said his organization would gladly help with implementing the new policy. "We look forward to working closely with the administration to put this in place as quickly as possible," he said.

Well, get a good night's sleep, Leonard. Lord knows you have lots of boxes to pack there.

The only good part of this whole deal is watching Aravosis melt down ripping Obama after he spent the entire campaign ripping Hillary Clinton up, down, and sideways, and banning people from his blog who were overly critical of Obama.

Oh, Distress

I keep reminding myself that Obama cannot be all things to all of his supporters, but over the past few weeks it's been difficult. On the one hand, Sonia Sotomayor. On the other, Guantanamo staying open. On the one hand, a promise by the press secretary that Obama has a strategic intent in play of planning to eventually someday probably ask Congress to think about repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell if they get a chance, on the other, yesterday's reduction of the whole shebang to a lame-ass punchline at a fundraiser. Oh, wait. Maybe those are actually both fingers on that other hand, and maybe they're both being jabbed in our direction a la a newly crabby Susan Boyle.

A gaggle of sign-waving protestors milled around outside The Beverly Hilton, the sprawling hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. They must have caught the president’s eye when he arrived at the hotel from an earlier stop in Las Vegas because he relayed one of their messages to the crowd.

“One of them said, “Obama keep your promise,’ ” the president said. “I thought that’s fair. I don’t know which promise he was talking about.”

The people in the audience – who paid $30,400 per couple to attend – laughed as they ate a dinner of roasted tenderloin, grilled organic chicken and sun choke rosemary mashed potatoes.

The gaggle of protestors were pretty clearly displaying their dismay at the failure of the campaign-promised repeal of DADT to materialize, but maybe Cadillac One was zipping past them too quickly for Hopey to read the signs, or maybe the forcefield distorted them. Maybe it's all a carefully calculated setup for the complete package of homo-friendly initiatives rumored to be launched on Stonewall day, because gosh, doesn't elation feel extra good after several weeks of blind rage?

Meanwhile, the defenders of marriage are driving me to distraction. On my Facebook news feed? Really? Get bent. Luckily, Rob Tisinai's wonderfully modulated voice and measured delivery gave me a bresh of fresh, rational air. From Joe.My.God.:

Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, on Obama's "intent" to "repeal" DADT:

The president has made his strategic intent very clear. That it's his intent at some point in time to ask Congress to change this law.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "Strategic" is spot-on, however, as the strategy appears to be sloughing off responsibility until it gets down to the White House dog shit picker-upper just in time for him to be let go during the change of administration. Yeah, at some point I'll get around asking Congress to, uh, think about doing something. Jesus, you queens are so demanding.

To the people who say this isn't the time to be worrying about this, I reply that the midst of two fucking wars that are stretching the military perilously thin is exactly the right time to be worrying about otherwise competent, qualified personnel being jettisoned for reasons not related to their job performance. Let's go, Hopey.

Ana Marie Cox FTW!

"So when can we expect a durable policy on racial desegregation in the military, since that's never gone through Congress?"

Serious. Heart.

Maybe It Was the Gay Teabagging He Didn't Like?

Updated twice now, with all brilliant references to potential tea terrorists left intact because, frankly, without them this posting fizzles to little more than "oops." Lord knows I'm all about historical context, anyway. Anyway! Debbie informs me in the comments that this was indeed a separate protest not connected or adjacent to any idiotic Fox-ophile teabagging. I feel much better about the whole deal now, and will try to find time over the weekend to take a friendly look at CARE, the group behind the large-flag protest. Hat tip to Debbie, half of the "old straight couple" that turned out to support their LGBT friends.

Updated: It was indeed a protest against taxation without equal rights, according to azcentral.com, and the confrontation was spurred by a 911 call complaining that the gay protesters' flag was blocking the view of traffic at an intersection. The cop told the protesters they had to ditch the flag, they asked where they could move without the flag size being an issue, and the cop replied that they could not fly their flag anywhere within Casa Grande without being arrested; ergo, the kerfuffle and entry of the ACLU. The CGPD is investigating whether their officer acted inappropriately, and the chief will meet with the group staging the protest. The comments on azcentral, as always, are an entertaining ride.

And now, the original and now most irrelevant post:

Have you ever been to Casa Grande? The town, not the excellent ruins in nearby Coolidge? I have not, except to stop at the Wendy's at the outlet mall that one time coming home from Phoenix, so I don't know anything about the place. In any event, four gay people got busted for waving a rainbow flag in Casa Grande yesterday.

The incident happened Wednesday when four members of a gay rights group began waving the large flag as part of a tax protest.

Organizer Christopher Hall says he checked first with a city official who said as long as they stayed at least five feet from the sidewalk they would be fine.

But a police officer soon approached and told Hall his group would be arrested if they didn’t stop waving the flag.

This fails to compute on so many levels. Gay teabaggers? I mean, like Fox News-variety teabaggers? Waving their flag as part of the tax protest, or in protest of the protest, or adjacent to the protest? The fact that the group had an organizer who checked beforehand on city regs makes it sound like more of a counter-protest, considering the failure of genuine tea baggers in Washington to realize that dumping tea in a public park requires a permit they didn't have and throwing teabags over the fence onto the White House lawn gets you roughed up by the Secret Service and possibly charged with terrorism. Were they protesting taxation without equal civil rights? Does Casa Grande has a no-rainbows ordinance? I hope more details are forthcoming, because I am fascinated. Casa Grande suddenly became interesting!

Oh, This is Nice

Just a reminder, if we needed one, that no matter what happens in Hawaii or how loud the post-election anti-Prop 8 protests were or how many lesbians finagle marriage licenses in Tucson, the crap is still out there, and it's thick. The following is merely a short excerpt from a full-page ad run in the Salt Lake Tribune.

For example, by holding hands and kissing in the public area of: an apartment complex playground, in a family neighborhood, at a party, or to present one's self as a homosexual person in the workplace, is stating and displaying that he or she practices sodomy, and if backed by law, will force the acceptance of homosexuality as a relationship equal to a man and woman relationship.

Quelle horreur. By holding hands in "the public area of a party"--do you need a press pass to get in there? I am confused--you send a message about a specific sexual practice. Kinda throws our annual Christmas party into a whole new light; O Holy Night indeed! I'm not sure what message is sent by a straight couple holding hands, although the way this is written, apparently all hand-holding couples are broadcasting their affinity for non-P/V sex, since orientation isn't exactly specified there in the present active participle. Utah, you can has it. I was there once, or at least my right hand was, for maybe ten seconds while playing at the Four Corners Monument. That will be plenty for one lifetime.

Top!Secret G-woman knows how to keep me cheery! By sending along stuff from Andrew Sullivan she knows I didn't get around to reading!

More Fun In Ex-Catholicdom

Another day, another couple of flights of stairs further down into irrelevance for the Holy Church.

These things do not upset me any more, nor do they surprise me. With each successive outburst, be it a Vatican flunky blaming birth control-spiked female urine for male impotence or the pope haughtily calling global gag rule-rescinding President Obama arrogant, the layers are peeled back just a little bit more on true nature and the lie is given to protestations about the dignity of individuals.

The most recent dust-up came courtesy of an excommunicated British priest reinstated over the weekend by Papa Ratzi; the Brit and three others had been booted for being ordained by some crazy-ass ultraconservative archbishop who broke away from the church in '69 because he didn't like the changes brought about by Vatican II. One of these changes was presented in an encyclical that said Catholics had to be nice to Jews and stop calling them Christ-killers and stuff. The Brit, one Bishop Richard Williamson, apparently has troubles with this one, given his propensity for Holocaust denial (eh, only a couple thousand Jews were killed, and none of them gassed, and if any stray ones did happen to be gassed it totally wasn't Hitler's idea) and Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theories (they started the first two world wars and are trying to start the third one right now, which by the way they kicked off by blowing up the World Trade Center in a controlled demolition).

The Vatican officially cleared its throat yesterday after that little awk-ward! moment and reminded the world that the former Hitlerjugend pope does not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body and expects the rest of the church, including Bishop Williamson, to follow suit. Williamson's still back on the roster, though, without having to sit out any games for conduct violating team rules.

But is there more? Oh, of course there's more. The Vatican only got its Prada panties in a wad over Williamson's reams of anti-Semitic comments. His anti-gay comments? They're giggling right along. Way back in '97, Williamson wrote a piece for the Saint Pius X Society newsletter--we've talked about this little group of nutters before--about homosexuality. Apparently feeling no compunction to parrot the usual lines about respecting the dignity of all God's children, he found that line between dignity and deprecation which is usually demarcated by gay=pedophile and vaulted right over it with miles to spare.

However, God did not wait for the founding of the Catholic Church to instill in men the horror of this sin, but he implanted in the human nature of all of us, unless or until we corrupt it, an instinct of violent repugnance for this particular sin, comparable to our instinctive repugnance for other misuses of our human frame, such as coprophagy.

Therefore what is "innate", or in-born, in human nature concerning homosexuality is a violent repugnance.

He could have stopped there, really, with his poo argument wrapped up in at least the veneer of polite society with the standard detached scholarly language and ecclesiastical syntax of all pastoral documents, whether they come from the pope or the parish priest or a schismatic bishop. But instead, he bizarrely veered off into what I can only describe as the contra argument presented in gayface.

"Oh, but Our Lord had chawity,(unlike thumwun we know who wath tho nathty to Pwintheth Di!). Our Lord loved thinnerth, and faggotth, and tho thould we!!"

Awesome. At first I thought he was doing Princess Bride for some unfathomable reason, but no, he's lisping. Right there in the middle of his very grave and dignified statement. Faggotth? Really? Did the Vatican repudiate any of these statements? Even the bit about coprophagy (seriously?), for fuck's sake? Um, no. No, the Vatican did not.

And for that I say thank you. Really, thank you. Thanks for showing your true colors. Don't even try to brush this guy under the rug or yammer about him not really representing the church's teaching about the very subtle difference between calling a person's innate nature repugnantly ticket-to-hell stamping and calling the person himself repugnant and hellbound. And don't say he was only mincing and lisping for effect while he was still in his state of schism and therefore not really Catholic. You own this bastard part and parcel for as long as you keep him, and the lack of an official wrist-slap rebuke that the church loves and respects all human beings, even the faggotth, speaks volumes. It's nothing we didn't already know, but it never hurts to be reminded.

So keep it up, Rich and Ratzi. Keep showing yourselves to the sun.

More, of course, at the Blend and Box Turtle Bulletin.