Dr. Spitzer’s opinion of the study he conducted is ultimately irrelevant — the value of a study is independent of the author’s opinion. (This is why the whole fundie “Darwin recanted on his deathbed” schtick is pointless — even if Darwin had changed his opinion, the evidence still supports the evolutionary model, so Darwin would simply have become less right in changing his opinion.) On the other hand, when even the author of a study is willing to go into detail about how the methodology was flawed and how the results don’t say what people like the FRC want to pretend — yeah, it looks pretty bad for the heterosexual-supremacists.

Even if every element that you and your right-wing race-warrior cronies cooked up were true — it wouldn’t help your insistence that Trayvon Martin deserved to be executed. If someone is being stalked by an armed person out for blood, the only way to stay alive is to strike first and attempt to neutralize the threat. Your whole “case” is based on the presumption that unlike Zimmerman, Martin was required to place his life and safety in the hands of someone who followed him with a gun — only Zimmerman had a right to “stand his ground”, Martin had no self-defense rights at all.

Of course, laws don’t work that way (nor do ethics), so your crap is quite visible to those who aren’t swimming in it.

Actually, according to the Bible, the Sodomites hoarded wealth and luxury, were lazy and arrogant, and refused to help the poor or observe the appropriate treatment of guests and strangers.

Sure, LGBT people will come in “all political configurations”. To put it another way — some people who have been shit on by the social, economic, and political elite will think nothing of shitting on anyone they can place below themselves in social, economic, and political terms. It’s just that most of us who follow PHB don’t think that’ that’s an approach that should be honored and praised.

You support Perkins being chosen as an “expert” on subjects he mostly just lies about? Or you support a right of right-wing self-proclaimed “experts” to be called up by other people’s TV shows?

I’m not sure Zizek is the best example to follow if you’re claiming to want an anti-authoritarian approach. Except maybe (ironically) in the sense of how people who argue like you (i.e. only fluffy liberalism can ever count as non-fascist) are described by Zizek at every turn as the consummate defenders of neoliberal consumer-capitalist authoritarianism.

It’s Magical Hypercapitalist Economics: the solution to every problem is always to deregulate and shovel more money at rich people. Also: government protection of private property and enforcement of contracts, union-busting, suppression of dissent, etc. doesn’t count as “statism”, but trying to get the government to do anything to benefit the public does (and thus is evil).

I’m actually mildly surprised about the Libertarian Party’s position here. The attitude I’ve heard most often from Libertarians, especially those in more conservative states, is that “the government shouldn’t get involved with relationships,” so expanding the range of relationships recognized by the government is “anti-freedom” even when it’s a move towards equality.

Christians don’t generally embrace evolution

This is only remotely true in the U.S. and other places where reactionary totalitarians claim to speak for all Christians.

Then again, it’s not like you’ve shown much concern for little things like “history” or “facts” in your comments…

I can only speak for myself — but if/when I decide to get married, I’ll describe it as a marriage regardless of the legal status. It will be, in religious and (much more importantly) social terms, a marriage — so that’s what I’ll call it. If it comes up in conversation, I’ll of course note that it’s a marriage that the law in the U.S. (regardless of state law) treats as a separate and unequal form (if it’s recognized at all), but regardless of what the law calls it, it will be a marriage.

(This has been one of my biggest disappointments with the Unitarian Universalist church. Too many congregations have been willing to insist that law controls language, controls social practice, even controls religious practice. I refuse to associate with any religious group, no matter how generally progressive, that uses the excuse of state sanction to label my relationship second-class. Of course, there are plenty of congregations, in the UU and elsewhere, where I don’t have to compromise, which is certainly nice.)

Most of my freinds in our community are fine, upstanding Christians.

Not in right-wing-speak. “Christian”, for them, has a mutable definition: when they want to claim huge numbers, it’s everyone who has ever called themselves “Christian”. When they want to specify what those hugely inflated numbers believe in as “basic Christian doctrine” (and demand from politicians), “Christian” suddenly means a very specific set of doctrinal and political attitudes which only began to emerge in the 19th century. But true to the right wing’s commitment to weasel-word logic, anyone who can be described as “Christian” under one definition of the word must still fit in the category of “Christian” even when they change the definition mid-sentence.

I don’t really know how the law goes on this (IANAL), but if this stands (SCOTUS upholds or refuses to hear it), does this imply that *all* states in the jurisdiction will have marriage equality, or just CA? It sounds like it’s equal protection *plus* the earlier SCCA ruling that makes this happen, so it might only apply where a state SC has ruled for equality on the grounds of the *state* constitution.

Interesting response. I’d particularly like to understand more about how consciousness apparently develops before the nervous system is really functional.

I think the attitude towards “law” we can expect from Mr. McKenna is about what we can expect from authoritarians generally: “Laws are what we use against them — it would be contrary to the spirit of The Law to apply it to us.”

Newters was in an open marriage with Wife #2, even though Marianne Gingrich wasn’t asked, didn’t know and didn’t agree.

If she wasn’t asked, didn’t know and didn’t agree, they weren’t in an open marriage — Newt was just cheating.

Interestingly, at most 40% could be described as supporting anything resembling equality of opportunity, according to that last chart.

So while there’s certainly good news for LGB people here, we’re at under two-thirds support for women’s basic bodily self-determination and maybe a third who think that inherited socioeconomic caste is a bad idea.

I would have had a problem with fining Rosanne Barr. Then again, I’m one of those weird left-wing types who doesn’t think that the First Amendment only applies to speech I approve of (or that it has a few dozen unwritten exceptions).

Once again we seem to be the easy target for people who want to institute mob rule. The “let the people vote” majoritarian-fundamentalist “all rights are subject to the whims of a 50%+1 majority” crowd seems focused on LGB people at the moment (and T people when they even remember that y’all exist), there’s nothing in their rhetoric to suggest that they’ll stop there.

Ron Paul’s position on marriage is a pose at best. He knows that the federal government will never abandon straight marriage in his political career; so he can “support” a formally “equal” position while continuing to insist that same-sex marriages be denied any recognition at the federal level.

I’m not sure what else we’d expect though from someone who opposes almost all anti-discrimination law.

Ron Paul is a right-wing social reactionary, opponent of the 14th Amendment, anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-worker, anti-job-safety, anti-woman (uterus-nationalizer), pro-theocracy, anti-environment, market-fundamentalist racist-enabler. The few decent positions he’s taken were mostly for entirely the wrong reasons.