Former Sen. Simpson rips GOP over “moral values” hypocrisy

I don’t know much about former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson, though his Wikipedia page has some heartening things to say regarding his views in favor of LGBT and abortion rights. But if he was always as outspoken in Congress as he is in this interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthew, then I suppose that only makes it clearer why he’s no longer a part of that particular caucus:

Transcript (from ThinkProgress, sans original emphasis, with some edits from me):

SIMPSON: Who the hell is for abortion? I don’t know anybody running around with a sign that says, “Have an abortion! They’re wonderful!” They’re hideous, but they’re a deeply intimate and personal decision, and I don’t think men legislators should even vote on the issue.

Then you’ve got homosexuality; you’ve got “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. We have homophobes on our party. That’s disgusting to me. We’re all human beings. We’re all God’s children. Now, if they’re going to get off on that stuff – Santorum has said some cruel things – cruel, cruel things – about homosexuals. Ask him about it; see if he attributes the cruelness of his remarks years ago. Foul.

Peter LaBarbera’s childish transphobic Twitter attack

It’s often made evident that bigots are often just as silly and petty as they are hate-filled, and here’s one more incidence. First, Autumn Sandeen, a transgender activist who blogs at Pam’s House Blend, posted this tweet following an eye exam that left her pupils dilated, rendering her quasi-blinded:

To which noted <anything-other-than-heteronormative>-phobe Peter LaBarbera from the Orwellianly named Americans For Truth About Homosexuality saw fit to respond:

To which Autumn replied:

Daily Blend: Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ)

• Could be worse: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoes two insane bills, one allowing guns on campuses and one Birther piece requiring presidential candidates to prove their US citizenship.

• … but still bad: Gov. Brewer approves bill giving explicit preference to (heterosexually) married couples in adoptions, potentially ending gay adoptions in Arizona.
  (via Joe. My. God.)

• Rush Limbaugh: Obama supporters are “walking human debris” who get “orgasm” from “savag[ing]” conservatives because “they can’t find willing mates”. My, he sounds upset.
  (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

• It’s like Rightists at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism are just digging for new depths in incompetence.

• OkTrends does sex. Let it be known that #6 is unsurprising (in a number of ways).
  (via @jennifurret)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: PJ Salvatore • Sarah Palin • OkTrends • OkCupid • sexuality • sex • Polls/Surveys • Research/Studies

The unreliability of sexual orientation polls

The Wall Street Journal has a detailed report on the difficulties of establishing just how many gay, lesbian and bisexual people are present in the US. To give you an idea, here’s a little graph illustrating the vast discrepancies in the results of various polls, depending on how they’re phrased and presented:

It’s obvious that asking people in person whether or not they’re homosexual tends to make them slightly more guarded, especially in environments where they may not be free to speak freely, but it’s nonetheless troubling – albeit unsurprising – to see such a drastic variation depending solely on how the poll is asked. Polls like these are what’s used to determine LGBT policies and can drastically influence local and national politics, so it’s probably high time pollsters settled on a single, clear and all-inclusive method of determining just how many LGBT folks there are in the country.

Of course, the answer is simple: Use the Kinsey scale (which, despite its criticisms, is still a remarkably simple yet effective way to pinpoint just how gay people are(n’t)), and ask all such questions by phone or through paper or online questionnaires (trying to avoid online polls as much as possible), and always anonymously, to ensure that no-one feels the needs to misidentify themselves based on their environment.

I know, I’m a (predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual) genius.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Study: LGBT kids in supportive communities less likely to attempt suicide

It’s needless to point out how obvious it is that LGBT kids who grow up in environments that are more supportive and understanding are less likely to be miserable. And now, here’s a study concluding that gay, lesbian and bisexual youths who grow up in more integrative social environments are about 20% less likely to attempt to commit suicide than those who are stuck in more bigoted areas:

Results Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth were significantly more likely to attempt suicide in the previous 12 months, compared with heterosexuals (21.5% vs 4.2%). Among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth, the risk of attempting suicide was 20% greater in unsupportive environments compared to supportive environments. A more supportive social environment was significantly associated with fewer suicide attempts, controlling for sociodemographic variables and multiple risk factors for suicide attempts, including depressive symptoms, binge drinking, peer victimization, and physical abuse by an adult (odds ratio: 0.97 [95% confidence interval: 0.96–0.99]).

Factors that are said to help make these kids’ social environments more supportive include the usuals: gay-straight alliance groups and anti-discrimination policies in schools, a more liberal environment in general, and, evidently, the presence of other LGBT individuals and couples around them. In the end, there’s just no better remedy for feeling alone than to actually have people like you who you can relate with.

Although these findings are overly obvious to any rational person, studies like this are useful in part because they provide yet another blow to anti-gay bigots’ claims about how LGBT teens who kill themselves are only doing so because they “know that what they are doing is unnatural, is wrong, is immoral” (to quote as one particular asshat).

(via Joe. My. God.)

Daily Blend: Monday, April 18, 2011

James Mandarino

• Question for Jeff Ward at the Courier News: If this veteran cop [pictured] shouldn’t go to jail despite having “snapped”, tasered and brutally beat up two detained suspects on account that he’s got a stressful job, then should firefighters, trauma surgeons and commercial fishermen also be immune from ever facing jail time as well?
  (via @ebertchicago)

• No use in crying over spilled milk, though you might get arrested over it.
  (via The Agitator)

• Chris Sims at ComicsAlliance presents a good case why Batman would win against Harry Potter. (This Potter fan upholds that it would depend entirely on circumstance and who strikes first.)
  (via @ebertchicago)

• Do these remind anyone else of the Mummy?

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Man who didn’t sing crude song to first-graders sent to prison

Evan Emory

Remember Evan Emory? He’s the musician/comedian who sang a perfectly harmless song to a class of first-graders at Muskegon County, Michigan’s Beechnau Elementary this past February and then edited it later on to dub in crude and sexually charged lyrics before posting the final, edited video to YouTube. No kids had ever been exposed to those inappropriate lyrics at any point in time during the original filming of the video, and the only fair accusation that could be made against Emory was that he neglected to blur out the children’s faces in the video, leaving them identifiable. Which is still rather small potatoes, all things considered, and hardly an indictable offense, as far as I’m aware. (Which, in this modern world of insane child-protecting regulations, seems to be growing less and less. But, I digress.)

Tony Tague

For this non-offense, Emory was charged with “manufacturing and distributing child pornography”, an utterly insane accusation that carries with it a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and 25 years on the sex offender registry. Despite the fact that his video, objectionable as some may find it, didn’t contain the slightest hint of child sexuality. I wasn’t aware that just singing sexually crude lyrics to kids could be considered on par with molesting them in front of a camera … but, again, who the fuck knows these days with batshit zealots like Muskegon Country prosecutor Tony Tague, who originally charged Emory, in positions of power.

We now have the final verdict on the matter, and it comes off tasting somewhat bittersweet:

On Tuesday, Judge William C. Marietti of the Muskegon County 14th Circuit Court sentenced Emory under a previously arranged plea deal to 60 days in jail, two years probation, 200 hours of community service, mandatory counseling and fines and costs. And when he emerges from jail, Emory can’t be within 500 feet of children under the age of 17. All for a comedy attempt gone awry.

It certainly is good to hear that the original bullshit about “child pornography” has apparently been tossed out the window, though it’s aggravating that Emory was burdened with such ill-fitting charges in the first place. I suppose this is the best sort of sentencing we could’ve hoped for, given the hysteria surrounding the case from overzealous parents and prosecutors. Emory should probably consider himself lucky that he wasn’t publicly lynched at this point. Such is the abysmal level of reason to which the child-security-crazed hoi polloi has sunk.

(via The Agitator)

Daily Blend: Saturday, April 16, 2011

New WorldNetDaily logo

• Florida Senate committee approves bill to effectively destroy separation of church and state in allowing public funds to go to sectarian organizations.
  (via Joe. My. God.)

• Alex Pareene at Salon.com: WorldNetDaily [pictured] is a “bottomless repository of feverish bullshit” run by “frauds and crackpots” with an “audience of halfwits [that] will eat up any garbage it's served”. Oh, that’s good.
  (via Right Wing Watch)

• Kindergartner suspended for crying.
  (via The Agitator)

• Richard Dawkins concedes that modern Evolutionary Theory cannot account for the continued existence of Creationists.
  (via @ebertchicago)

• Finally, I’ve learned that frequent commenter and friend Uzza is now undergoing “a touch of homelessness”. My very best wishes for a speedy recovery.

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Supplemental tags: Creationism/ID • Uzza • Sad

Why does Vox Day love bullshitting about “immoral atheists”?

Pictured: Murderin’ atheist!

In which our favorite pseudo-intellectual Christianist crank can’t resist indulging in some more anti-atheistic fear-mongering:

As I pointed out in TIA, it is not difficult to understand why extraordinarily ambitious atheists in positions of great political power show such a strong predilection for mass slaughter. They are usually obsessed with forcibly modifying society on a large scale and it is impossible to do that without "breaking a few eggs". Contra Sam Harris, their bloody acts are perfectly rational; we can and should reject their justifications but we cannot fault their logic. But how does one explain the likes of largely apolitical atheists like Terry Pratchett, whose early-onset Alzheimer's has led him to produce a work of murder propaganda?

Oh, my. “[M]ass slaughter”? “[F]orcibly modifying society on a large scale”? “[M]urder propaganda”? What telling evil has Vox uncovered, here? Evidence of a massive atheistic genocide cover-up? New research indicating the presence of a long-supposed Evil Gene found only within atheists in that God-shaped hole in their shriveled black hearts? What tale of inhumane depravity could possibly spawn such rhetoric?

Well, if one happens to check out the excerpt he quotes from the linked article, the answer to such a query is … “nothing much”:

Viewers of the BBC2 show will see the writer, whose Discworld series of books have sold millions of copies worldwide, at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland with the 71 year–old motor neurone disease sufferer, named only as Peter.

Sir Terry, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2008, also reveals that he is "a believer in assisted death".

In 2008, a documentary on Sky Television called Right To Die? showed 59–yearold Craig Ewert ending his life. He also suffered from motor neurone disease.

Dr Peter Saunders, director of the charity Care Not Killing, criticised the BBC's decision to broadcast the programme, saying it was acting "like a cheerleader for legalising assisted suicide".

Friday Canine: Contemplative fox kit is contemplative

[source | full size (560×721)]

Delaware House passes civil unions bill!

Looks like we have one more bit of good news on the LGBT equality front today: The Delaware House of Representatives has voted in favor of allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally declare their togetherness. From the Sussex Countian:

Dover, Del. — Cheers and applause erupted in the House of Representatives chamber this afternoon after lawmakers approved legislation creating civil unions for same-sex couples in Delaware, paving the way for the bill to be signed into law by a governor who also supports the measure.

Senate Bill 30, passed by that chamber last week, creates a civil union designation that entitles same-sex couples to the same rights, benefits and privileges under state law enjoyed by opposite-sex married couples.

When the law takes effect at 10 a.m. Jan. 1, 2012, Delaware will join seven states and Washington, D.C., in recognizing civil unions. Gov. Jack Markell’s staff said he will host a signing ceremony for SB 30 next month.

[…]

The legislation passed with a vote of 26-15.

As usual, any advancement is good advancement on the way to Gaytopia.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Stewart rips into ridiculous “pink toenails boy” story

It’s not just the Right that’s willing to take any seemingly benign morsel and run it through the hype machine until it becomes the latest overblown pseudo-scandal. Here’s Jon Stewart ripping the media a new one for its ridiculous overreaction to clothes retailer J.Crew’s latest ad, which featured a photo of the company’s creative director painting her five-year-old son’s toenails pink in what can evidently only be a sign that teh queerz r coming 2 pervert us all:

The Daily Show - Toemageddon 2011 - This Little Piggy Went to Hell Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Non-US readers: Go here to learn how to enable Comedy Central videos.

There’s just no-one out there better at taking the shit out of deserving idiots than the Daily Show screw. Ladies and gents, I salute you.