Google demonstrates how to use your platform and reach judiciously and subversively

Google is ubiquitous. Everyone everywhere uses Google at some point. And right now, at least in the US and probably Canada, the Google Doodle — the logo Google uses on its main search page and on the top left of every search result page — is sticking it to Russia over the anti-gay human rights violations happening there presently.

Google Doodle, Feb 6, 2014.
Google Doodle, Feb 6, 2014.

A rainbow of silhouetted athletes form the logo, and beneath the search box, this quote:

“The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” –Olympic Charter

This is not just subversive, it’s downright defiant. The message is clear: the discrimination that Putin and his government have entrenched in his country, the discrimination that anti-gay right-wingers are cheering in America, is a betrayal of everything the Olympics was intended to stand for. Humanity’s colors are at its most vibrant when it is not suppressed by bigotry and intolerance of difference, especially over something so fundamentally human as who you happen to love.

Google has not always entirely lived up to its mission statement of “Don’t Be Evil”. But on this issue, at least, the pendulum is obviously swinging far in the morally righteous direction. Thanks, Google, for siding with the angels this time.

Google demonstrates how to use your platform and reach judiciously and subversively
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A Dynasty Falls

And good riddance.

Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty reality television show, recently did an interview in GQ — yes, Gentlemen’s Quarterly — wherein he described how his evangelical Christian beliefs come into conflict with the idea that some people might be gay in an absolutely offensive display of what many Christians really do believe. His TV show on A&E about his family of conservative rednecks — who became rich after he built an empire on the Duck Commander duck lures — now faces the terrible wrath of public opinion.

When my sister heard the news that he’d given his interview in GQ, and that GLAAD had publicly denounced his words, she posted a link on her Facebook wall. One of her friends — an ex co-worker apparently — swanned in to drop this steaming pile of opinion on her wall about how terrible it was… that anyone was asking A&E to reconsider hosting this douchenozzle’s opinion.
Continue reading “A Dynasty Falls”

A Dynasty Falls

Obama Boy: I sense this is going to backfire.

Remember the “I’ve got a crush on Obama” meme that happened in 2008? The one that arguably helped win a bit of the youth vote? There’s evidently a new variation on that meme for the 2012 election cycle: a guy who has a similar “crush” on Obama.

Considering the very legitimate grievances gays have with Obama’s wishy-washy and states-rights-y stance on gay marriage, regardless of the fact that it is an incremental improvement over previous slavering homophobes in office, I can see this being very ill received by the gay community. It also doesn’t help that the guy doing the singing is apparently straight, and thinks this comportment he’s acting (what with the butt-jiggling and all) is representative of the gay experience. I suppose it MIGHT be, for some individual gay person, but I’m betting someone’s going to take issue with this representation.

I don’t know. I’m seeing this from the hetero-privileged perspective, and I don’t think it’s in any way affiliated with the official campaign in the same sense that the Obama Girl video wasn’t, so I think it might win a few votes and might tweak the noses of the aforementioned slavering homophobe party, but I can see this backfiring otherwise and in a very big and real way by earning outrage and LOSING more votes than was gained. What do you folks think?

Obama Boy: I sense this is going to backfire.

Supporters fail miserably at defending “gay concentration camps” pastor

Memo to Pastor Worley supporters: prepare to answer tough questions like “do gays really deserve to be put in concentration camps” when you go on a show like Anderson Cooper.

I honestly don’t have a ton of respect for AC’s interview style most times, but I felt a real pang of empathy when he put his chin on his hand halfway through this. He was giving this lady the easiest questions imaginable and she was completely failing to address them. She wasn’t even trying, it seemed. What’s worse is, AC was obviously intentionally going easy on her, ratcheting DOWN the questions as she seemed progressively incapable of answering them, handling her first with kid gloves then padding them in Nerf foam.

I’m curious. Does anyone know of any anti-gay bigotry that ISN’T inspired by rampant and ridiculous levels of religiosity?

Supporters fail miserably at defending “gay concentration camps” pastor

David Barton: punish homosexuality, “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says”

I know Chris Rodda is probably going to cover this eventually, because, I mean, look at the target. But since I’m doing an ongoing series of Youtube clips of religiously-motivated anti-gay bigotry that’s come scuttling out from the dark recesses of the public dialog on whether homosexuals are human beings with rights, I figure I might as well add this here.

So, theocracy then, is it? The Rule of the Bible vs. the rule of law? You do realize that that’s Sharia, only, you know, using a different book, right?

Hat tip Right Wing Watch.org.

David Barton: punish homosexuality, “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says”

Another self-Godwin: Baptist pastor for queer concentration camps!

My focus has been on gay rights lately primarily because the Western world’s focus has been on gays. While Obama’s stand was hardly a stand at all, triangulating and capitulatory to states rights (and thus individual states’ rights to violate human rights) as it was, I happen to think this shift in national focus is one of the good things about his announcement. Getting us talking about gay rights again is the surest way to make change, to get people to recognize gay rights as human rights, especially with waxing public support for gay marriage.

Except it also seems to be bringing all the asshats out of the woodwork with their religiously-motivated bigotry. And this guy, Pastor Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina, gets a gold star.

While one pastor calls gay rights akin to Hitler, another is perfectly willing to unabashedly suggest making gay concentration camps. How completely rational. Every value you exhort in this video, I’m aginn’ it, and you personally make me pukin’ sick. You and your three or four “amen” sycophants.

Hat tip to, well, everyone bringing this video up pretty well everywhere.

Another self-Godwin: Baptist pastor for queer concentration camps!

Harry Jackson: “Gays = Hitler.”

Ho hum, yet another religiously-inspired bigot who thinks being disallowed from their bigotry is something akin to a cultural Holocaust. These people aren’t getting any cleverer.

The icing on the cake, I think, is when he says that gays can’t reproduce, so they must “recruit”. Like being a minority and trying to get equality is a numbers game — that they’re fighting for rights to marry one another (and have all the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples), just so that they can more effectively form two-person recruitment cells or something. The very presence of a pair of gay men in your neighborhood will cause further gayness! Maybe they’ll go door-to-door asking “have you heard the good news about buttsex?” Or something.

I can’t even try to argue this seriously. There’s no “there” there.

Harry Jackson: “Gays = Hitler.”

Maddow on GOP homophobia flip-flopping: “absolute bull”

I can’t believe this nonsense about Thorne-Begland being blocked from becoming a judge by Republicans because he’s gay. Impeccable credentials, bipartisan support, and a waxing public support for gays, and yet these backward-looking Republicans are entrenching themselves in their homophobia.

Only now that they’ve realized their anti-gay opinions are anathema to public discourse, they’re lying about it!

I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise.

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Maddow on GOP homophobia flip-flopping: “absolute bull”