I find myself here having to apologize once more for infrequent updates. You know I love you guys, but everything’s been so busy and crazy and I think I’ve gotten into another of those lulls where I feel like my rage meter has sort of become all overwhelmed and stopped working properly. I still get really fucking angry about a number of things, but before I can think to write about them it just kind of bursts and sputters out and I can’t bring myself to give a shit about them. There are only so many times you can read about, for instance (among many), people for whatever reason earnestly defending insurance companies before your brain just kind of shits itself and says “fuck it, just play some video games or something for a while, I can’t do this right now”.

This has happened before, and passed, and I feel like this time it will as well, but while it persists my updates here are going to be relatively infrequent, and I’m sorry.

In the meantime, I’ve started a new webcomic that captures at least a portion of that anger. It’s incredibly lazy, and is all basically transcripts of conversations I have (mostly — and all to this point, at least — with my friend Tom who you may have seen in Rocket Man) throughout the day that I basically just copy/paste into the database to be spat out as a sort of pseudo-comic. It takes about three minutes of my time outside of the conversation itself, which would be happening anyway.

You can find it by visiting Human Mammal Dot Com or basically clicking on that link right there. There’s so much content that it’s going to be updated daily simply because if I didn’t I’d get this tremendous backlog of material that would necessitate me eventually putting up like eight posts a day or something just to keep up.

I want to keep providing you guys steady content, but it’s hard when I have to sit there and write out some long essay on top of everything else. So while I muscle through this terrible lull amidst my general existential angst and depressive issues, you can check that out. It’s still in beta and I know there are a bunch of bugs, and I’ll be adding more functionality soon, but it’s there and it wants you to look at it so please do.

MORE TO COME!

-The Mgt.

Jabberwock

…because obviously it’s not overpopulation and the subsequent mass consumption of resources that’s going to endanger humanity, but about ten percent of the population not reproducing, many of them wishing to adopt unwanted children. Yeah. THAT’s the problem.

Somebody get this guy a freakin’ Nobel already!

Jabberwock

One thing I find amusing in the weeks since the election is the backpedaling of conservative pundits on the definition of a mandate.

If you’ll remember in 2004, when Bush “won” with a whopping 50.7% of the popular vote, you couldn’t turn on a television or radio without hearing the word “mandate” about a hundred billion dozen times per hour, as though the outcome was some sort of epic landslide. Robert Novak crawled out from his coffin in the cellar of a Transylvanian castle long enough to hiss out the following in response to a question on whether Bush’s “win” was really a mandate:

Of course it is. It’s a 3.5 million vote margin. But the people who are saying that it isn’t a mandate are the same people who were predicting that John Kerry would win. … So the people who say there’s not a mandate want the president, now that he’s won, to say, Oh, we’re going to accept the liberalism that the — that the voters rejected. But Mark, this is a conservative country, and it showed it on last Tuesday.

Peggy Noonan warbled out the following on the same topic:

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988… The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan’s old record of 54.5 million…It will be hard for the mainstream media to continue, in the face of these facts, the mantra that we are a deeply and completely divided country. But they’ll try!

And, of course, all you have to do is toss this idea into the echo chamber of conservative commentators, and the message gets spread far and wide as incontrovertible fact: Move over, everyone — the country has spoken, and our Fearless Decider now has a free pass to oppress gays, privatize everything, create even larger gaps between haves and have-nots, and basically do whatever in fuck we damn well please.

Well, jump ahead four years, and what do these same pundits (and likely the myriad others who drink the Kool-Aid they make) think about Obama’s victory with 53% of the vote?

Here’s Robert Novak, just before grumpily slamming his coffin shut:

The first Democratic Electoral College landslide in decades did not result in a tight race for control of Congress.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt won his second term for president in 1936, the defeated Republican candidate, Gov. Alf Landon of Kansas, won only two states, Maine and Vermont, and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress by wide margins.

But Obama’s win was nothing like that. He may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities.

[Emphasis mine.]

What did Peggy “our country is united under the banner of conservatism” Noonan have to say about this?

This is already a dramatic time — two wars, economic collapse — and people are rattled. “Moderation in all things.” It should be noted here that the split in the popular vote was 53% to 46%. That is a solid seven-point win for the new president elect, but it also means more than 56 million voters went for John McCain in a year when all the stars were aligned against the Republicans…Mr. Obama has a significant portion of the nation to win over. He acknowledged this in his sterling victory speech, when he spoke of “those whose support I have yet to earn.” He does have yet to earn it.

So 50.7% > 53%, apparently. I mean, that’s grade school math, right there, and they fuck it up so bad it’s pathetic.

Now, it’s true that over 46% of the country voted for John McCain — over 50 million Americans. That’s a lot of people, and an election victory doesn’t mean you get to just ignore that many people just because your side was victorious. Real democracy means considering the wishes of the minority as well. But, see, here’s the difference: Conservative policies tend to be extremely oppressive, or at least facilitating of oppression. Bush had to ignore the wishes and demands of liberals, because implementation of conservative policies is on the whole fundamentally incompatible with freedom.

For instance, it’s impossible to dictate who an adult can and can’t love while also giving that same adult the ability to decide for themselves who they do and do not love. It’s impossible to give religious freedom while denying the right to perform marriage rights to churches and individuals who believe they can’t deny any two consenting adults the ability to marry each other regardless of genitals. It’s impossible to force teachers to propagate the message that science has nothing to do with the scientific method while also allowing them to teach their students what science actually is. It’s impossible to outlaw abortion while still giving a woman the right to her own body. It’s impossible to ban pornography and contraception while at the same time giving individuals the right to sexual freedom.

Conversely, Obama can for the most part ignore conservatives’ wishes and demands, because conservatives in the end are still free to do as they themselves please (save for oppressing other people, which is a right they should unquestionably and forever be denied). Their churches don’t have to marry gays and they themselves don’t have to have gay relationships just because gay marriage is legalized. They can still send their children to “Sunday School” without worrying that some third party has the right to come into their Bible study classrooms and countermand everything they teach. They have the right not to get abortions or use contraception, and not to look at pornography.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to claim a real electoral mandate in the case of either a 50.7% or a 53% win. Obviously, Obama won by a larger percentage, substantially more electoral votes (which is really meaningful, given that the Electoral College is skewed in favor of more conservative states) and over 7 million more people, but anything in the range of just over 50% isn’t really a mandate. The real mandate comes from the fact that liberal policies give the individual the right to be individual — that they don’t oppress anyone in the same way conservative policies almost always do. The real mandate comes from the fact that oppression is wrong.

Jabberwock

For the first time in a long, long while, I’m feeling proud to be an American. I know Obama isn’t going to fix every problem in the world, and that having a rather immense majority in Congress, while nice, isn’t necessarily going to bring about all the necessary reforms and things that we so desperately need, but it’s finally — at long last — a step in the right direction, an indication that there is still hope for us and that we are capable of learning from our experiences. So thank you, America, for not completely fucking things up.

In Michigan, a medical marijuana initiative passed by a landslide, surprisingly, and restrictions on stem cell research were loosened.

There is, however, some bad news out in California, where cruel, bigoted morons managed to triumph over morality and decency and Civil Rights and human kindness by passing Proposition 8. I’m feeling such a profound hatred for so many people right now in an Ahab-style “chest/cannon heart-fire” way that if my wrath could somehow manifest itself, millions of humanity’s most bigoted members would suddenly find themselves immortal with instant regenerative capabilities, roasting ceaselessly and inescapably on the surface of the sun. It really is a shame that we have so little protection against the use of democracy as a tool of oppression.

If these people, these immoral cretins, are going to piss-parade around the ever-increasingly-laughable idea of the “sanctity of marriage”, then I’m going to have to demand that they outlaw divorce, and, further, that people (with much overlap with those who voted “yes”, here, I’m sure) stop dressing up their hideous little inbred monstrosities of pets in tuxedos and dresses and giggling in embarrassing, anthropomorphizing glee about how Pongo and Perdita are getting “married”.

Shame on you, California. Words cannot possibly express the profundity of my disappointment in so, so many of you. To every one of you who voted “yes” on Proposition 8: May every misfortune and tragedy that has the opportunity to befall you succeed in doing so, so that you may yourselves sample the misery you’ve inflicted (and will likely continue to inflict) on so many of your fellow human beings — people who have done you no wrong, yet you persist in your baseless sadism and cruelty.

Let the outcome of Proposition 8 serve as a reminder that we cannot ease up after this one victory, however major — as meaningful and amazing this election may have been, it’s only one battle in what will assuredly be a long, difficult struggle to drag the ignorant kicking and screaming (and perhaps kicking them and screaming at them) into enlightenment.

Jabberwock

(Via AgtO)

More lunatic shittery from one of science fiction’s popular contemporary authors. I’ve already addressed why Card is a bigot moron whose trumpeting of his cultural superiorism is an affront to man and any truly loving God that might possibly ever exist, but I thought I’d post this as a reminder.

In related news, …WHAT?

There has to be a cure for neural malfunctions of this magnitude. There HAS to be. I mean, maybe these people need schizophrenia medication to help bring them back in touch with, y’know, reality.

Jabberwock

An Epic-Length Election Rant

This is in response to a handful of the comments on the post you’ll find by following this link.

nb89: I’m not sure if anyone could ever really take away gun rights, considering they’re outlined pretty clearly in the Constitution and the public would likely not take such changes well. If the U.S. government has learned anything from its own enforcement of laws at the barrel of a gun, it should be “don’t piss off the person/people with all the guns.” While I don’t believe that abortion rights and gays’ rights are necessarily in this same category of “safe” freedoms like Icarus does, I really don’t think anyone will be successfully banning guns anytime soon. Especially since it’s not just the president who runs things but Congress as well.

Voting based on a single issue is like buying a car based exclusively on the dimensions of its door handles. And this particularly demonstrates poor decision-making skills when aside from that single issue, all the other perspectives on issues that you’ll be endorsing as well are pretty awful things that you don’t or wouldn’t otherwise support.

And it’s even worse when the issue in question isn’t actually in any real danger. Sure, they can pass restrictions like waiting periods and background checks and maybe even required safety classes, but that’s all just because that shit makes sense. I can’t really see why it’d be a good idea to allow people with histories of violent crime or mental illness the ability to purchase guns just so that I can get mine and get it RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND. I don’t think it’s a good idea to make the world a terrible place just because I’m impatient. But getting all worked up about this is like if your house caught on fire and you made a special effort to grab your favorite titanium block while leaving your family photos behind. I’m not saying there’s no danger at ALL, but putting it at the top of your “freedoms in danger” priority list seems maybe a little misguided.

And regarding your final paragraph, do you REALLY want to use the argument that “Americans love rich, white men, so I do too”? Really?

Icarus: Thanks for the compliments (though I think you perhaps give me too much credit ), and no worries about length. I don’t really mind length when the post is actually saying something. It’s not overlong unless it’s redundant or repetitive or insane or completely irrelevant. Sometimes you just can’t say everything you want to in only a few paragraphs.

You know, in all honesty McCain is actually a much better choice than the alternatives, many of whom were front-runners for a while. Romney scares the fuck out of me with basically every position he supports, Giuliani’s campaign was nothing more than tastelessly capitalizing on whatever pants-shitting fear 9/11 can still instill in people, Huckabee’s an all-around nutcase who wanted to set up concentration camps for people with AIDS, Ron Paul’s a xenophobic racist nutter… I think if I had to choose from that list, I’d have probably gone with McCain as well.

I really like his attitude toward nuclear power, and while I don’t necessarily support completely removing the AMT, I do think it needs to be tied to inflation. I’m also with him on his dislike of extravagant CEO salary (which has risen from about ten times that of the average employee to roughly five hundred times that of the average employee over the last half-century), though I’m not entirely sure the “shareholders vote” would be the best fix for the problem. Definitely as step in the right direction, though. But it’s his social policies that worry me the most. After all, this isn’t so much about McCain as it is about us.

Elaborating a bit on a point I made above: It really would be nice if what was the most sensible and the most fair and the most humanizing was what always succeeded, but considering how so many people have reacted when gay marriage initiatives have been on the ballot over the last few election cycles, it’s hard to claim there’s a favorable trend. Abortion is maybe a tiny bit safer, but it will likely all depend on the next Supreme Court Justice to be appointed. Considering the current conservative president was able to appoint two Justices during his time in office, I’m somewhat less than comfortable with the trend continuing.

Because our government is supposed to be representational, it can be considered a good thing when elected officials bend to the will of the public. After all, the idea is that they’re supposed to represent our interests. The problem here comes in defining who “we” are. Sure, you can say “well, 51% of the population thinks gay marriage is wrong, so I’m going to represent them and work toward making gay marriage illegal”, but that only really works if you feel that 49% of the country — which is a LOT of fucking people — can be completely dismissed, and don’t count as “we”. I think a lot of the problem is that “we” for a lot of people — particularly conservatives, especially when it comes to social policy — is only the majority. When you think like that, you end up effectively telling a huge chunk of America (and the world) they can all go fuck themselves.

Though it’s certainly not always the case and there are plenty of liberals who serve as exceptions to this since it’s practically built into our system of government, I feel that in general, liberals tend to have a greater respect for the individual than conservatives do. (I’ll get to Libertarians in a second.) Conservatives far more often than liberals tend to appeal to an authoritarian daddy-style governance, and there seems to be a greater trend among conservatives — particularly those with religious bents or sentiments of cultural superiority — to use any opportunity in which they can assemble a majority to ensure that their right to social coherency supersedes an individual’s and minority groups’ rights, even in situations where an individual’s actions don’t encroach on the consent or volition of anyone else.

That is, I feel that when liberals attempt to make restrictions on individuals’ actions — like waiting periods for guns, for instance — there’s more of a utility in mind behind it and less of a sentiment that we just don’t like a particular action and have deemed it A Bad Thing To Do. This is particularly rotten when the individual’s actions don’t impact anyone but the individual, and when there are large — though non-majority — numbers of people who support that individual’s rights to those actions.

(Here’s why I don’t think most Libertarians have as much respect for individuals’ rights as they often like to boast: Many Libertarians don’t seem to recognize that government is business and business is government and business can be just as oppressive and dangerous if let loose without any kind of restriction. Business has the same government-like, authoritarian structure, but without the same public checks available. It’s amusing that they disfavor an egalitarian voting structure wherein each person gets or at least should be getting the same number of votes, instead championing a completely classist, non-egalitarian “voting” structure wherein people “vote with their dollars”. I find it difficult to see how this would in any way curb businesses from becoming corrupt or exceeding their boundaries or otherwise becoming oppressive and terrible. As long as Libertarians feel this way, and think that businesses are somehow equivalent to individuals and should be treated as such when it comes to lawmaking, they’ll have as little respect for the individual as every other authoritarian. There’s sort of a misrepresentation in “political spectrum” analysis in that Libertarians can be libertarian against the government and show up as “libertarian” as opposed to “authoritarian” on the scale, but they’re still actually strongly authoritarian when it comes to business.)

Anyway, more on McCain:

“And as far as the war is concerned, I’ll say this – I like that McCain’s stance on it is simply, “listen to our generals.” No politician in Washington is going to match the depth of understanding of the men who are actually there, and I don’t think Obama really gets that. McCain is old enough to know what he doesn’t know and to let others handle their own areas of expertise; Obama, it seems, is not.”

Being a general doesn’t somehow automatically make one a genius, nor does it make one objective. Yes, these people are obviously rather brilliant strategists, but war isn’t merely about winning battles. I mean, guns are really effective at putting bullets in people, but you don’t always want to just let your gun do the talking. And what is “winning”, anyway?

Iraq is a fucking mess, and the sad truth may very well be that the only resolution will come after a civil war. The country’s borders were essentially drawn up by the British with no consideration given to the differences between the groups of people living within that designated space and how they felt about each other. Saddam was an enormous, fascist asshole, and he did some horrible things that he definitely needed to answer for. But it’s difficult to believe that we can curb sectarian violence without becoming almost as totalitarian and nightmarish as he was. Really, it seems like the only realistic options are to either pull out and let the Iraqis have their long-coming civil war, or bring back the draft and become an incredibly strong military presence within the country indefinitely, turning it all effectively into a police state. And we don’t really have the resources for the latter.

But, well, Iraq is a clusterfuck that we could discuss for years. And have, in fact.

Obama’s just as much a politician as any other. It’s a slightly different brand of politics that tries to be anti-politic, but the resistance is sometimes almost as politic as what it’s trying to rebel against. I guess he shouldn’t have tried to set himself up as a kind of “beacon of hope” or whatever, because now whenever he pulls the same two-faced political shit that everyone else does (like making retroactive changes to his website — though keep in mind that I doubt Obama himself is actually sitting there behind a copy of Dreamweaver or whatever), it makes everyone feel betrayed. Which, well, I guess there’s a point in that it does make him seem a little disingenuous if he acts like other politicians, but I’d rather have a politician who was at least TRYING to be a better person and actually seemed to understand how fucked up the entire setup is than one who’s totally comfortable with our political infrastructure the way it is. You can claim McCain is a “maverick” or whatever, but there, almost all of the rebellion is a part of the same system it’s rebelling against. It’s like calling the dude with all the tattoos and piercings and shit who hangs out around the mall and skateboards a rebellious individual.

And I don’t really see Obama as a horrible person for refusing to come out and denounce the Betray Us blah blah ad whatever. That someone doesn’t participate in that kind of an idiot piss parade doesn’t really make me feel like they’d be a horrible leader, and I don’t really care that I don’t know every candidate’s official endorsement or official denouncement policy on a bunch of mostly inconsequential shit and heavy-handed attack ads. There are more important issues to worry about than what Obama thinks about what MoveOn thinks about what General Petraeus thinks about the war.

Anyway, one of the things that really turned me off to McCain and made me feel that he completely lacked integrity has to do with the 2000 primaries. There were push polls that said things like “if you knew McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child, how would that affect your voting decision?” (particularly sinister, given his adopted daughter) and “Would you be more or less inclined to vote for McCain if you knew his wife did drugs?” Now, while it was never verified that it was the Bush campaign that did it, everyone at the time felt confident identifying it as a Rove trick, considering he’d pulled the exact same shit in the past. It was a particularly nasty campaign in general. Thing is, after all was said and done, McCain turned right around and aggressively kissed Bush’s ass. And, yeah, that was probably the best thing to do politically, to get along with Bush after the primaries, but he didn’t have to turn around and act all buddy-buddy like Bush somehow didn’t basically roll him up and drag him between his ass cheeks a few times.

I guess it wouldn’t really be the end of the world if McCain won, especially compared to some of the aforementioned assholes we could’ve had as an alternative. But this tumble toward conservatism — especially with regard to social elements and the notion that the government is our disciplinarian father — is something that I really dread continuing. We can’t all just sit around waiting for the absolute perfect candidate to come along while repeatedly voting against our own interests and driving the country deeper and deeper into social conservatism (and possibly total ruin) just because Obama is whatever nasty thing and a politician. I mean, it’d be great if we finally had a viable option for office who wasn’t a politician, but I’m not going to vote Republican until that fantastical magic time, just like I’m not going to vote against laws protecting gay rights just because they don’t have every single little detail one could possibly want, waiting until that one perfect law comes along.

By voting for someone, you’re claiming they represent your values, and I know I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable endorsing drawing legal borders defining what parts of a woman’s body belong to her and which to the public, or making wild and completely inaccurate assumptions about how gays’ minds work and then basing laws on those idiotic assumptions, or etc.

I’ll admit it: When it comes to certain issues like nuclear power and, to limited extents, certain economic issues, McCain seems to be on the right track, and to be an intelligent man with some good ideas. But when it comes to social issues, I find it hard to describe him and anyone who endorses policies like his as anything but intellectually-decrepit, authority-handjobbing shitheads.

In other news, I made a short film, and a link to it will be available soon.

Jabberwock

It seems Microsoft has started disallowing people on XBox Live from having the word “gay” in their Gamertag. What’s amusing in this particular case is that it’s not even about homosexuality at all, but about trying to use a surname that contains a particular word. Even surnames like “Cuntin” are hilariously verboten.

But even beyond surnames, since when is being openly gay offensive? I mean, sure, okay, I’ll admit it’s weird that someone would so aggressively define themselves by their sexuality that they’d stick their orientation into a username. After all, I’m not about to go and insert “straight” (or “white” or “male” or “blue-eyed” or etc, for that matter) into a Gamertag because I don’t feel those traits are particularly important to who I am overall as a person. But I could if I wanted to, is the thing, without Microsoft deeming it offensive. I can also see how they might want to prevent a bunch of gigglefucks from making Gamertags like “GaysSuck” or whatever, but I’m sure there’s already a system in place for dealing with complaints of people cleverly skirting their “profanity” filter, or for addressing people who make Gamertags like “BlacksSuck”, so why couldn’t that kind of thing be dealt with on a case-by-case basis?

What really steams my piss about this is that months ago, there was a video circulating about a guy playing Halo 3 multiplayer with a gay Gamertag and getting harassed and jeered at by all the teenage shitbrained homophobes you’d expect to find playing Halo 3 online. So Microsoft’s response is apparently to deem anything with the word “gay” in it “offensive”, except of course for all the players calling each other “faggot” or whatever over the headsets.

Jabberwock

Even if it were true that children with homosexual parents were somehow “more troubled”, as fundamentalists and traditionalist shitheels like to claim — and most studies indicate there’s no correlation, but even if it were true — isn’t it far more likely that it’s the fundamentalists’ and traditionalist shitheels’ attitudes toward homosexuality creating social pressures and a culture of homophobic hatred that would be the primary cause of the problems?

It’s like if I constantly told some little kid, “you are WRONG for wearing that red shirt. I hate your red shirt. Did your mom buy you that red shirt? Then your mom is WRONG. You’re WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG!” and I led a ceaseless campaign to get other people to subscribe to my perspective. And then one day the kid breaks down and cries, and I say, “hah! Look at THAT! The kid in the red shirt is crying. This just proves my point: Kids shouldn’t wear red shirts, because kids in red shirts are more likely to have emotional issues.”

But then, getting fundamentalists and traditionalist shitheels to engage in self-examination is like trying to pull out an elephant’s teeth through its ass while it’s backed against a brick wall wearing a titanium chastity belt.

Jabberwock

So, we have the death penalty — the institutionalized systematic murder of individuals which is barbaric regardless of what they’ve done and turns every citizen in the country into a murderer by proxy — but we can’t allow gay marriage.

Jabberwock

Via Metafilter, via Janet, comes a list of the top hundred stupidest things that have come out of the mouths or fingertips of fundamentalists. (Link will take you to a Google cache. The actual link is here, but the site appears to have gotten pretty hammered by traffic and has been unresponsive.)

Before you click, though, I have to warn you: The list is so infuriating it makes me want to go outside and find a baby and scream at it for a while, very close to its face.

For people who so adamantly wish to deny that we share a common ancestor with apes, fundamentalists certainly aren’t making much of an effort to come across as any more intellectually advanced than lower primates. It would help if they actually used their frontal lobes a little more often.

Good grief.

Jabberwock

Okay, not really. It’s more like a tale of two concepts of marriage, but that doesn’t make as good a title. Brace yourselves, because I’m probably going to piss you off in just a second. Please bear in mind this is coming from someone who easily could (and we really do want to) but intentionally refuses to become legally unionized with his long-term partner until gays have the same rights.

Call me a cynic, but if the 2004 elections were any indication, if we retain the American-style “democracy” that we currently implement, where it’s not only legal but encouraged for ego-tripping morally-condescending morons to police other people’s personal lives for things they think are “icky”, gays can expect marriage rights that are recognized in more than three states maybe three or four years after the United States government starts actively giving a shit about global warming. Then, all two or three hundred gays who are still alive in the country and not coalescing into a disgusting mass of floating bodies in our newly-expanded oceans can get married all they want. It’ll be awesome. And then when we’re all extinct twenty years after that and, I dunno, cockroaches or tardigrades take over (I’m rooting for the tardigrades, personally), then they’ll have to deal with whether or not to freak out about matching sets of genitals.

There’s a lot of history to this, but it’s pretty simple: Despite all laws and the dose of common sense that should have prohibited it happening, we allowed bleed-over of church into state. I’m not entirely sure when it happened; from what I can tell from brief and lackadaisical research, it’s a different law in each state. Given that marriage is a social institution in general, not specifically religious or legal, it’s easy to see how this extremely-poorly-thought-out-in-retrospect situation happened. The problem — and here’s the crucial fuckup — is that religious officials have been given legal authority to endorse marriage certificates. What’s worse, we didn’t even make a trade-off to allow Senators to take people’s confessions.

There are people — morons, really — who don’t see this as a problem or a violation of church and state, because you don’t have to go to a church to get a marriage license signed. Well, that’s true — you don’t. In fact, if you want, your best friend can obtain the right over the internet to perform marriages, and you can have them do it. The difference is, your best friend likely hasn’t laid their own claim to marriage as an institution. (Also, unlike the church, they probably have to pay taxes. But I’ll let that one slide, because I’m such a nice guy.)

What’s happened is, we have this big stupid Venn Diagram of what marriage is. We have the legal “marriage” and the church “marriage”, and we call them both the same thing, and most people seem to actually consider them such. Sure, there’s some overlap, so you can see how people could maybe get confused, but the institutions are — or at least should be — entirely separate. But no, marriage is marriage, and in most cases, if you get married in a church, as long as the priest or deacon or minister or whoever endorses the certificate, you’re married under the law as well.

The whole thing is a clusterfuck of problems, but the key incompatibility seems to be as follows: Churches do not want gays to be able to get married, “marriage” being the operative term of dispute. Gays do not like differences in terminology, specifically ones that seem to separate them from other people, even if the intentions and rights are all the same. In other words, churches don’t want gays to “get married” and gays don’t want to have “civil unions”, they want “marriage”. Which is understandable, really. Imagine this distinction extrapolated into other parts of their lives: Bob, a straight guy, has a title of “Corporate Regional Manager”; Joe, a gay guy with the same position and pay and benefits, has the title of “Regional Corporate Manager”, because he’s gay and the company he works for is run by petty assholes. Sure, he can tell all of his friends “I’m Corporate Regional Manager”, but he knows, and they know, that that’s just not the case. And arbitrary terminology with no intrinsic meaning or significance is important. It’s impossible to just plain not give a shit about bigots abusing power in a way that’s ultimately benign, futile, and ineffectual.

I don’t mean to be a calloused, insensitive jerk — no wait, I kind of do, actually, because I’ve been persuaded by the media to believe that it’s somehow charming and endearing — but proponents of “gay marriage” who during the last major election were seemingly unwilling to accept any progress in the right direction because of some bullshit terminology difference (”civil unions”) are guilty of the same arbitrary attachment to labels as the religious people who wanted to “protect marriage”.

Who cares if you’re technically “in a civil union” if you basically get all the legal perks and recognition that “married” couples do? It’s not like you’ll get arrested if you tell people you’re married after everything’s all set up. Then, in maybe another two or three presidential elections, when most of this generation of elderly people (who are typically the most married (har har) to social traditions and actually think there’s some genuine significance to them) have finally been stuck in the ground, we can put an initiative on the ballot to have some intern go through the law with some white out and replace every instance of “civil union” with “marriage”. But I guess it’s just easier — not to mention far more fruitful — to expect impassioned religious zealot nutcase bigots to concede on their positions entirely, or to hope that the general public will suddenly not be stupid, or to hope that politicians will actually stand up and defend what’s right.

Then again, there is a relatively easier fix that addresses the issue at it’s core — where the bleed-through of separation of church and state is taking place: Marriage, as a term, should be entirely separated from the law, for everyone. Of course, they can still get all the partnership rights if they want to, gay or straight, but it’ll be called something different. For everyone. If you want, you can go have your little happyfest and cram all your relatives into uncomfortable wooden seats and lick a Bible and get married before the Eyes of the Lord and all that, but there will be no legal officializing as the result of this event. In order to be recognized by the state, and to gain all the legal benefits that we’ve all expected to come with this kind of partnership, the couple has to obtain, exclusively from the state, endorsed by a state official (e.g. not a priest), a Certificate of Civil Union.

Even if it doesn’t fix everything — by which I mean, we’ll still have to deal with insurance companies who do their best to ensure that people can’t cover those they love under their insurance policies, and of course all the assholes who don’t think that gays should get anything at all — I think there are enough people who so desperately cling to their precious terminology that it will make a substantial difference. After all, nearly all the polls I remember (and the few I just found in a Google search) indicated that there were typically more people — especially outside of cities — who favored “civil unions” but not “marriages” for gays.

But even more than that: Alone at oh, say, 30%, for instance, to take the numbers from the FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll from Nov. 4-5, 2006, in favor of gay marriage, it’s a tough run to beat the 32% who oppose any rights at all. But combine it with the 30% in favor of civil unions (who are, I’m hazarding speculation, here, unlikely to go further and vote “yes” on an initiative to legalize gay marriage), and you have 60%. Which — and I’m no math expert, so you might want to double-check this with a college professor or something — is close to double 32%.

And even if I’m entirely, just profoundly wrong about all of this, that it would make no difference at all to give up the terminology and say the hell with the word “marriage”, that it wouldn’t even change a single vote, then at least we’ve accomplished the actually pretty damn important task of severing a large church tentacle from its invasive position wormed up in the guts of the state. I don’t care what my sexual orientation: I’d much rather have a Certificate of Civil Union with all (or even just most) of the benefits of marriage than to call myself “married” and have that creepy overlap with religion with all their claim staked in the term as a social institution or other such traditionalist bullshit.

Of course, the real solution — which I like to call “The Final Solution” (kidding) — is to simply not allow religious fundamentalists to make these kinds of decisions at all. Religious freedom is fine and well — I don’t care if you believe in a giant, invisible talking ape penis from the Crab Nebula that you think grants wishes for every hundred donuts you eat. (Of course, I’m still probably going to mock you for it because it’s a retarded belief, but that’s more a personal thing for my own amusement than an objective “let’s deal with government and real issues” thing.) But if we value ANY OF OUR OTHER FREEDOMS — even ONE of them — then we need to recognize that we HAVE to — absolutely HAVE to — curtail the freedom to establish laws based in religious beliefs.

The primary objective of any civilization that values freedom at all should be to ensure individual autonomy, and prevent individual autonomy from encroaching on the individual autonomy of others. (Note, the idea of a corporation’s or a business’s autonomy requires some explanation, here. But that’s another essay/post/whatever these things even are anymore.)

But in the meantime, let’s do ourselves an enormous favor and ease up on our obsession with the word “marriage”. Let ‘em have their stupid term and all the “sanctity” they feel it embodies. They can write it on a piece of paper and stand in a circle around it and have their big “defend the institution of marriage” circle-jerk until they’re exhausted. The greater the distance we can put between ourselves and the influence of religion, the better off we’ll be. I’d rather have a civil union ring on my finger any day than to spend the rest of my life wrestling a wedding ring out of the hands of a religious nut.

Jabberwock

Okay, okay, so not quite “just in”, since this essay is about three years old, but I only recently discovered it.

I’ll spare you all some boring introduction and cut right to the meat of this morally condescending, self-righteous shitbag’s “argument”. Or, more accurately put, all his pre-existing, superstitious, bullshit prejudices, which he scrambles desperately to try to justify using whatever shoddy-assed “science”, fabricated “statistics”, and illogical blind leaps he can sling at everyone else like a really pissed off ape on a high-fiber diet. He blathers on absolutely forever, so I’m not going to be rebutting every single thing he says, but I’ll slice up the gist of it.

Rampant insanity tucked behind the fold…
(more…)

Jabberwock

This isn’t technically a review, as the film in question has yet to be released, but even having only seen the preview, I feel comfortable condemning the upcoming homophobic, obligatory-until-his- increasingly-unfunny-career- finally,-finally-dies Adam Sandler summer “comedy” I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry without even needing to see it.

The rough synopsis I was able to gather from the preview runs as follows: There are two straight roommates, Chuck and Larry, who want the benefits of domestic partnership without actually having to be gay. Their domestic partnership is challenged by the government, as there are doubts about the authenticity of their claims about their homosexuality. Adam Sandler’s character (it doesn’t matter which one he plays as they’re both the stereotyped White Male Character always playing the lead in these shitheaded films) lusts after the woman investigating their partnership, but he’s tormented by the fact that he can’t actually pursue her. HILARITY ENSUES.

This whole thing is awful on so many levels. Right out of the gate with the general premise, they play into the conservative anti-gay-marriage argument about how “but… but… but… ANY two guys could get the benefits of a domestic partnership regardless of whether they were truly gay”, reinforcing the outright fucking retarded fears of conservatives and people who are “on the fence” about gay marriage. I can only imagine how many morons there are out there who’ll watch this, think “OH MY GOD, IT’S REALLY POSSIBLE” and then vote against gay marriage initiatives because of this potential “problem”. Of course, nobody seems to give half a shit about the number of straight people who get married and aren’t actually in love. Two roommates in possession of different sets of genitals could just as easily get married for the benefits without wanting anything to do with each other beyond that.

Then there’s the idea of the state investigating someone’s partnership because of the validity of their homosexuality, which is completely ridiculous. Apparently the sentiment of the filmmakers seems to be that this should be part of any domestic partnership law, that the state should be able to challenge you whenever it feels you’re not being gay enough. Which is a sentiment that, if it doesn’t already exist in the public, I’m sure this movie will help to propagate. How many marriages are subject to the same level of scrutiny? How many people are investigated for not being straight enough? Can your marriage be revoked by the government if you’re not fucking your wife or husband often enough, or if you have sex with other people, or if you have sex with — *gasp* — someone who has genitals that match your very own!?

Homosexuality itself is twisted into a grotesquerie, seemingly written with a total obliviousness to human sexuality in general. According to the film, men who are sexually and emotionally attracted to other men can ONLY be attracted to other men. Any attraction to women at all somehow indicates one isn’t really gay but just pretending. Apparently, the writers of this movie have never heard of, erm, bisexuals. Also illustrative of a complete lack of understanding of human sexuality is the notion that polyamory isn’t compatible with marriage-like relationships, and that either partner having sex with anyone else would render the partnership invalid. There are plenty of heterosexual marriages where, if one partner wanted to have sex with someone else, the other partner would be okay with it. So why couldn’t the same attitudes be present in a homosexual marriage or domestic partnership? Apparently, the writers have never heard of open relationships, either.

I have no intention of ever actually seeing this film. I abhor the attitudes present in the writing, which will inevitably scoot their way through the dusty air of darkened theaters into the heads of many idiot viewers. Sure, nobody’s going to force anyone who doesn’t want to see it to watch this film, but that’s sort of a specious argument in this case. The kinds of people who are likely to watch this film are exactly the ones who shouldn’t, as their prejudices and dipshit perspectives will only be reinforced by the nightmarish, Orwellian “The Great Eye of America should be in the bedroom of every homosexual couple” world depicted. They will be influenced to oppose gay marriage and domestic partnership legislation because of fears of sham-marriage scams that already take place every day with straight marriages.

This is a movie that should never see the light of a film projector. It’s yet another arbitrary, lowest-common-denominator, turdlike stream of celluloid shitting out of the leviathan anus of modern production companies, bloated from the gluttonous symbiotic feeding relationship they’ve developed with sheeplike viewers who’ll feed the monster dollars to eat up nearly anything that it’ll shit back out without any consideration paid to the message endorsed.

Then again, perhaps it’ll all turn out to be a totally ironic and intelligent take on the entire fascist concept. Wait, no… no it won’t.

Jabberwock

Those who seek to denounce some particular form of sexual behavior often like to brand it as “unnatural”, basically meaning that it does not exist in nature — that is, among non-human animals — and thus cannot be normal for humans either. Oddly, the people who do this often tend to be those who reject evolution and thus do not believe that we are related to the other animals, but let that pass.

In most cases, in fact, it’s not true. Animal sexual behavior is very varied, and unsurprisingly, it’s our fellow mammals who tend to be the most imaginative. Masturbation, promiscuity (in both genders), oral sex, foreplay, incest, rape, homosexuality (in both genders), erotic dances to whip up a partner’s interest, sexual play among adolescents, and even lifelong commitment to a single partner — all these things have been observed among other mammal species and are common enough in at least some to qualify as normal behavior for them. (Note too that a couple of these examples remind us that blindly taking what occurs in nature as a guideline for what should be acceptable among humans would be rather dangerous.)

But there is one form of human sex-related behavior (indeed, one which the moralists consider an essential prerequisite to sex of any kind) which has no counterpart in nature. It’s marriage.

No naturalist studying any species on Earth has ever reported a case in which two animals who wanted to mate with each other insisted on finding a third animal to stand around reciting mumbo-jumbo at them first. Only humans do that.

Personally I’ve always found the concept of marriage somewhat insulting. Its underlying assumption seems to be that the feelings a man and woman have for each other are not enough in themselves, and need to be “legitimized” by bringing a third party — the church, the government — into the relationship to provide its stamp of approval.

In fact, if people feel motivated to be monogamous, they will be, with or without a piece of paper from the church or the state. And if they don’t feel motivated, the piece of paper probably won’t help.

Others are entitled to their own views, of course. But denunciations of behavior as “unnatural” are impossible to take seriously — especially when the one practice which has no counterpart in nature is upheld as normative.

Infidel753

I’ve been thinking recently about the way the debate about gay rights is typically framed. Specifically, the way proponents of gay rights are often put on the defensive, having to present all the evidence demonstrating why homosexuality isn’t a choice. And it’s not, by the way — while there’s no more concrete or clear-cut an explanation for it than there is explaining sexual fetishism or exactly how one’s personality develops or basically nearly anything having to do with the development of the human mind, there’s definitely enough demonstrable proof and sound logic to indicate it’s not just some decision a person makes regarding who or what they find sexually arousing and attractive. But that’s not the point.

See, even if it was a choice – even if someone could map out the entire thought process involved – would that somehow make it wrong or something not worth defending? If I sit down one day and deliberate and finally arrive at the decision, after long and arduous research and consideration, to shove my dick into another consenting adult man, why would that be anyone else’s business? If I somehow decide that I’d have a much more enjoyable and fulfilling life if I spend the rest of it with another man, and the feeling is reciprocated, why should we not be entitled to fulfill our wishes? Why is there implicit sentiment framing the current debate that it would somehow be a negative thing if it were something a person chose to do instead of it being beyond his or her control?

If I may wander off a bit, here: In a way, every decision we make isn’t entirely our own will anyway. They’re all influenced by countless other factors – many of them beyond our awareness – that have surrounded us since birth. No, there isn’t anything directly governing our actions, but there are influences involved that can affect us without our consent or control, altering and shaping our thought processes and, thus, likely crucial decisions that can have substantial impacts on the directions of our lives.

Anyway, why do we even have to argue this whole “choice/not choice” thing? Why are we automatically conceding this point by even allowing them to bring it up, and then explaining it? Whether homosexuality is a choice should be entirely irrelevant to the overall debate. It’s like if when blacks were fighting for equal rights, there was all this commotion about whether they were genetically or physiologically predisposed toward using the same drinking fountain, or if it was a choice they made later in life. What the fuck does it matter? They’re thirsty, give ‘em a goddamned drink already.

Jabberwock