The Template

So I really, really like this particular theme…except for all of the damned underlining. I went through the site’s style.css file looking for obvious ways to eliminate it, and none sprung forth. If any of you have any level of expertise at getting rid of the underlining of everything but the links embedded within posts, I’ll happily give you access. Otherwise, I’m slowly going to fight my way toward making this theme work for me. I especially like the simplicity of it.

American Family Association Demonizes Gays, Loses Voters

The American Family Association is worth supporting, because it’s one of the only American organizations focused on the real threat facing our nation: the homosexuals, their agenda, and their plan to take over your town. In case you’re not taking this threat seriously, read this:

Residents of the small Arkansas town of Eureka Springs noticed the homosexual community was growing. But they felt no threat. They went about their business as usual. Then, one day, they woke up to discover that their beloved Eureka Springs, a community which was known far and wide as a center for Christian entertainment–had changed. The City Council had been taken over by a small group of homosexual activists.

The Eureka Springs they knew is gone. It is now a national hub for homosexuals. Eureka Springs is becoming the San Francisco of Arkansas. The story of how this happened is told in the new AFA DVD “They’re Coming To Your Town.”

One of the first actions of the homosexual controlled City Council was to offer a “registry” where homosexuals could register their unofficial “marriage.” City Council member Joyce Zeller said the city will now be promoted, not as a Christian resort, but a city “selling peace, relaxation, history and sex.”

AFA’s “They’re Coming ToYour Town” documents the story of how and why this happened. And how homosexual activists plan to do the same in other towns.

That’s right - gays snuck out of the woods one night, overthrew a town, and turned it into the San Francisco of Arkansas. And they’re coming for you next. So stop worrying about threats like Islamist terrorists; the real threat is that guy down the street who has a really nicely maintained home, and the woman a few blocks over who’s a hell of a softball player.

Predictably, something this utterly stupid is absolutely burning up the internet today, and the concensus response seems to be twofold:

1. These people are idiots.
2. These people are marginalizing themselves and their political goals by tying conservatism and Republicanism to what amounts to nothing more than rabid gay hatred.

I obviously agree with 1. And 2? Americans are insular, and protective, and sometimes, we act like total morons, but eventually the right people win. The same people today who publish this kind of video were telling us fifty years ago that interracial marriage was an abombination, a hundred years ago that women voting was an abombination, and a hundred and fifty years ago that slavery was a very good idea. To put that another way, Kevin Drum argues about the fundamental damage that this socially conservative extremism is doing to the Republican/conservative brand:

There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process. It’s the wing that goes into a legislative frenzy over Terry Schiavo but six months later can barely rouse itself into more than a yawn over the destruction of New Orleans.

You’d think numbers like that would concern the party; you’d think numbers like that might compel the party to change course. You’d be right. Maybe not immediately, but as the Republican party continues to have less and less to do with small governments that don’t leave you alone, and more to do with massive governments that manage every aspect of your private life, they’re going to be progressively marginalized by American voters, especially if all the party is capable of doing is demonizing very small minorities for no good reason.

More On Christian Demands

Yesterday, I wrote about the misplaced demands of Christians, who seem to believe that for everything gays get, they should get something too. And by that, they seem to believe that they genuinely deserve the civil rights of other citizens.

John Cole of Balloon-Juice - a professor at West Virginia University, I ought to note, the school that I attend… - points out that the last eight years have been a buffet for (Some) Christians, who have gotten almost everything they’ve demanded. Gays, meanwhile, have gotten the right to marry in Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as a promise from New York to recognize those marriages. That’s about it.

The lesson, as always: (Some) Christians are either lying, ignorant, or both. What else can be thought of about this? Christians have gotten everything they wanted: torture, anti-gay measures across the country, intervention into the Terri Schiavo mess, abstinence only, the war on pornography. Think about that for a moment, and remember it the next time anybody claims that Christians are oppressed. It’s a nonsensical claim not borne out by any of the, yknow, facts.

Briefly on Gay Marriage

-One argument that you’ll occasionally see from (Some) Christians is that the government does just as much to them, as a group, as those (Some) Christians do to gays. So for instance, you’ll hear, “Well, we banned gay marriage, sure, but they want our children to have sexual education classes in school.” The implication here is that we’re having some sort of tit-for-tat, and that for every aggression visited against these (Some) Christians, they get to visit some sort of aggression against whomever the threat is.

This is nonsense. Even if you are going to apply eye-for-an-eye thinking to the nation’s social debates - and God only knows why you’d want to do that - that sort of tit-for-tat thinking implies an equal exchange. But clearly, sexual education classes being made part of a school’s curriculum is light-years away from banning gay marriage.

If we were really having a genuine back and forth, gays would studiously work to ban Christians from getting married, and after accomplishing this goal, would see their own right to marry assaulted by Christians. Telling certain groups that they can no longer have access to particular civil rights isn’t the equivalent of sexual education being available.

In fact, nobody proposes any laws that reduces the aggregate freedoms of (Some) Christians. Even in the sexual education example, the parent can take their child out of public schools, or merely opt their child out of the specific classes. But nobody dare launch an assault against the freedom of Christians to marry, even if they’re responsible for the majority of American divorces and infidelities.

All gays want to do is receive the same legal protection from their government that straights can get for theirs; in other words, treat them fairly and otherwise leave them alone. It’s the same thing that any reasonable person asks for from their government. Pretending that this isn’t so, that gays owe (Some) Christians something because (Some) Christians have occasionally not gotten everything exactly the way they’d prefer them is silly in the extreme.

-I listened to Sufjan Stevens’ “The Transfiguration” to write this post, and then the song “Halleleujah.” Both are religious songs. They helped to get me in the mood.

Site Changes

Vegan Stewart is no doubt relieved: I figured out how to upgrade my software mostly without him, and am thus likely to only rarely consult with him. Considering that he’s been responsible for my websites for maybe five years, this has got to be a load off his mind.

Obviously, I just changed the site’s template, but I’ll be working on it further. This might not last. Expect very slow, plodding changes. Very slow.

West Virginia Shames The Nation Yet Again

I’ve used the above picture probably 10 times on this website. For me, it’s as illustrative as any when I’m going to write about West Virginia, and fortunately for my recent lack of blogging, my home state managed to get itself in the news again. We dodged the national media’s typical trope: West Virginians Racist Rednecks, Nation Shamed By Their Existence. Instead, we got the second most popular headline that involves us: West Virginians Most Unhealthy People On Earth, Nation Shamed By Their Existence. Oh, excuse me, the headline wasn’t quite that awful… W. Virginia Town Shrugs At Poorest Health Ranking. …yep, Huntington, West Virginia, as a town, didn’t care about a poor health rating. I can only imagine that the author was desperately hoping for some representative to cover his face and shriek, “Don’t look at us! We’re horrible!” Perhaps a closer reading of the story might reveal more? Hell, it’s been a while…how about a paragraph by paragraph breakdown of this particular gem?

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America’s fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

I…umm…really? That’s how we’re going to start? Right out of the gate huh?

“It doesn’t come up,” said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. “We’ve got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That’s usually the focus.”

That sounds like a reasonable enough response. Although I’m surprised that the journalist couldn’t get in a few more digs at Felinton’s horrifying appearance.

Huntington’s economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city’s financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

Yeah, hey, Mr. Dick Reporter, do you think that there are a lot of town’s in fantastic financial shape that have the sort of health problems that Huntington does? Maybe the town’s economic woes are a contributing factor to the city’s health crisis, and as such, judging the holy living bejesus out of the townsfolk is a simplistic, and not completely necessary, tactic. But who am I to judge?

Nearly half the adults in Huntington’s five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

God, people in Huntington are just awful human beings.

Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It’s even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).

Oh good, the toothless reference. We were running short on those recently, what with us being so goddamned racist and overweight all of the time. Again, Mr. Dick Reporter, how good is dental care in impoverished regions generally speaking? Is Huntington an outlier against those? But again, I digress.
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Mormons Ask For Sympathy

Excuse me for being incredulous, but are California Mormons actually portraying themselves as the victim in the state’s Proposition 8 debate? Judging from the nonsense included in this article, it would seem that they’re determined to try. For example, this:

Many Mormons believe they are being unfairly targeted and compare the anti-Mormon sentiment to a witch hunt…”This is not fair – a lot of people wanted this passed, not just Mormons,” said Lynnette Black of Sacramento who rallied in support of Eckern in front of Music Circus last week. “We (church members) worked hard and within the law. It’s very hard to see this attitude toward Mormons.”

Frankly Lynnette Black, go straight to hell. It doesn’t matter if you’re working within the law if your goal is the disenfranchisement of other citizens, merely for the alleged crime of not adopting your specific beliefs. (Beliefs, mind you, that were endorsing polygamy as recently as 140 years ago.) Now, as for this nonsense about it being unfair that Mormons are being targeted for their despicable anti-gay hatred, remember that no gay is seriously proposing genuine legal retribution be visited upon Mormons. As opposed to, oh I don’t know, the damned Mormons who just contributed $20 million to write legal disenfranchisement into the Californian constitution.

It isn’t just Mormons, of course. Christianity has really adopted this notion that its being persecuted in America. Visit the predominant social conservative websites, and you’ll see the ever implicit, and occasionally explicit, idea that Christians are somehow an endangered species. Doesn’t matter that almost every member of every elected body in the United States is a Christian; doesn’t matter that we’ve had an unbroken string of Christian presidents for this nation’s entire existence, or that the vast majority of judges and police are Christian. To hear Christians tell it, they’re barely keeping their heads above water in the massive wave of repression being visited upon them here in America.

This is news to Chinese Christians or Sudanese Christians, who are risking jail or death to believe as they do. But of course, American Christians are rarely, if ever, consistent on anything (other than their hatred of gays). And now Mormons are adopting the same absurdist nonsense, despite having an entire state to themselves, despite a despicable record of racial relations, and a horrifying history of endorsed polygamy. To believe these idiots, it is unfair that gays would aim their animus toward them, because all they did was contribute half the budget of the pro-Proposition 8 advocacy, and did so at the direct instruction of their church. That Mormons would insist that they’ve done nothing wrong is outrageous.

Again, it is worth noting that Mormons actively campaigned to deny fellow citizens legal protection. Gays are merely pissed at Mormons. Any reasonable person would side with the gays against the Mormons, because the gays aren’t proposing genuine legal retribution that makes a Mormon a second class citizen in his own home.

Two Movies: Role Models and To Live And Die in L.A.

I saw two movies this weekend, which is quite the accomplishment considering that I’ve got two kids and am in the middle of the academic rush season. (”What’s that student of mine? You say you can handle another paper? Fair enough then; it is assigned!”) Still, it was nice to get away from all that to revisit movie watching, also known as what was once my favorite activity.

I saw Role Models, which was perfectly profane and fantastic, which meant that the guys over at the The Onion AV Club had to bemoan the fact that the movie was in anyway sweet. Because, yknow, god forbid a film be both profane and sweet. That’s just ostentatious. Representing the cultural vanguard has got to be a daunting proposition, because you’re never allowed to just enjoy something; you constantly have to be lecturing even moviemakers sympathetic to your cause (like Role Models’ David Wain, who is about as AV Club as it gets). For once though, couldn’t the reviewer (in this case Nathan Rabin) explain how he would have handled a plot that has two man children sentenced to 150 hours of community service with actual children at a Big Brother/Big Sister facility? How else can you wrap it up other than the two adults, profane to the end, taking a bit of pleasure in their experience and ultimately giving something back to their younger comrades? What in the hell are you supposed to do? Because the only other obvious answer, and again it should be noted that I am nowhere near as smart as these hipper than hell reviewers, is to have the adults do their time with the kids, not learn a thing, and leave as if the experience didn’t matter. Of course, the film is a comedy, and it isn’t much fun seeing children abandoned, but then, I don’t think Modest Mouse is a particularly good band.

Then I saw what might be a critical darling: William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. which, quite frankly, sucked. In fact, that descriptor may not quite be doing the film justice when you consider Friedkin was responsible for both The Exorcist and The French Connection. Both of those are good movies; this was just boring. The only good part - the twist toward the end - was marred by the partner’s transformation immediately afterward. That was stupid piled high on a fail sandwich. So predictably, in this article’s third paragraph, we see that the A.V. Club’s heavy hitters recommend this movie to somebody not particularly into the Friedkin oeuvre. Because nothing says pleasure like seeing Jane Leeves from Frasier as one of the movie’s sex symbols; likewise, does it ever stop being fun seeing William Peterson freaking out for the millionth time while inexplicably calling people amigo?

Needless to say, the AV Club and I disagree yet again. Yet it is the only collection of reviewers that I trust. God only knows what this means.

Reporting Live: Trusted Source Alex

One of the pleasures (frustrations) of being a parent is talking with your child. The experience is generally fun, but it’s like pulling teeth to get my daughter to tell me what happened at school. She’s seven. She’s too young for this sort of thing.

So I tried another tactic the other day. I asked her to tell me one story about school, and promised I wouldn’t pester her for another one. She agreed, and then said, very matter-of-factly, “We had recess. I went to the monkey bars. I can now skip a bar.”

She’s been pretty excited about the monkey bars for the past couple of days.

She then added, “But I can’t go backwards anymore.”

“Oh no!” I said, genuinely, because she’d been pretty excited about figuring out how to go backwards on the monkeybars. “What happened?”

“I think it’s because of the cold.”

That, in case you’re wondering, is why it is fun to talk to your child. Her comment struck me as being out of left field, but I looked over at her, and she seemed pretty certain that the cold was affecting her monkey bar skillz. Who am I to disagree with her conclusion? We drove on.

At Target
Then she had the day off from school for Veteran’s Day, so I dragged her and Trusted Source Jack on a trip to Target. We were walking by the Christmas section, and she said, “Oh, hey, Dad! A white plastic Christmas tree. We should get one.”

At which point I went on my rant about fake trees (they’re awful) and white trees (they’re even worse) and explained that at no point in her life would I ever agree to even considering a white plastic tree decorating our home for Christmas. My rant took a couple of minutes.

At the end of which, she said, “Yeah Dad, I know. I was just trying to make you angry.”

Proof positive she’s a daughter of mine.

I. Love. The. Religious.

They’re so particularly adorable when they’re busy suggesting that it is impossible to know good if you aren’t religious. Or to quote the awful American Family Association’s Tom Wildmon:

“How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God?”

Yes, because knowing good from evil is impossible without regularly reading the insane rantings of men at much as 2000 years old filtered through an endless number of translations which has left us with the version of Christianity that even Christians can’t agree upon. It would be one thing if Christians could at least agree amongst themselves upon the book’s interpretation, but take five Christians and you can only guarantee that you’ll have five different interpretations of the Bible.

It’s the presumption of the religious that is so irritating, as the above quote makes clear. To assume that I can’t tell the difference between acts, that I cannot rank order behaviors in my head because of my total lack of interest in the Bible; it’s really a shocking allegation that is breathtaking in its utter rudeness. But of course, these particularly insulting Christians are the same ones who claim that they can love gays while systematically denying gays any legal protections, so it’s pretty clear that their connection to reality is tenuous at best.

Cue the following, “It was clear that their connection to reality was tenuous when they started believing the Bible in the first place.” I’m not necessarily interested in that, although quote’s like Wildmon’s make it easier for me to be.