Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Michael Savage Can't Stop Thinking, Talking About Gay Sex Acts


(Via Towleroad.)

I really wish I could leave my sex life where it belongs: in the bedroom. But Michael Savage simply won't let me. He really just can't stop thinking all day and all night about the sex acts I engage in behind closed doors. If this lunatic could place a camera in my room and record every intimate detail, I have no doubt that he would. And then he'd go on the radio and describe it all to his listeners.

There's really no question that Savage spends far more time thinking about the various ways in which mouths, penises, and anuses can fit together than I do. But he tries to cover up his obsessive voyeurism by loudly proclaiming how gross it all is--even though he can't bring himself to look away. What a pervert.

Bill O'Reilly Is Obsessed With Hot Young Men Kissing Each Other

"On the Internet, there are embarrassing pictures of Mr. Lambert. These pictures, that hint that he is gay, will they have an effect on this program which is a cultural phenomenon in America?" - Bill O'Reilly


(Via Towleroad.)

Embarrassing pictures? Really? They're only embarrassing if one has a problem with men kissing each other.

But, if this really is such repellent behavior, then why is O'Reilly showing the pictures on his TV program? Perhaps he's just a ratings whore like most television personalities. But maybe he secretly gets off on such "naughty" pictures. Just listen to the excitement in his voice as he discusses this issue. It's hard not to think that he's getting "all hot and bothered," as Andy Towle put it on his blog. And from what I can tell he was getting a lot more hot than bothered.

By no means do I begrudge O'Reilly his apparent enjoyment in watching hot young gay men make out. I'm happy to admit that I have plenty of videos of exactly that on the computer I'm using to write this blog entry. But what I don't do is go on national television and drool over such images while decrying them as embarrassing. Because he can't admit that he gets off on such things, O'Reilly is left to pant excitedly under his breath as he wonders aloud whether those naughty, naughty pictures will harm Adam Lambert's career. And that's what makes him a pervert.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal On Gay Marriage

Monday, April 6, 2009

Marriage Equality Defended In The Daily Iowan

Here's the editorial board's resounding statement in favor of the Iowa Supreme Court's recent ruling:
As the argument over gay marriage will no doubt continue in other parts of our nation, Iowa has taken a triumphant step away from most other states, a step away from the inequality of the past and toward a slowly evolving America focused on “with liberty and justice for all.”

This is not to say that the April 3 decision allowing gay marriage in the state of Iowa won’t be debated or questioned or that those who oppose the court’s ruling won’t redouble their efforts to impose their beliefs and overturn the latest precedent. However, the monumental finding that greeted news readers across the nation on websites April 3 and in newspapers over the weekend has set a defining tone that — hopefully — will ring throughout the rest of the nation in the months and years to come.

Continue reading.

And here's Dean Treftz's brilliantly sarcastic column on the horrors that ruling will soon bring down upon the state:
It started quietly enough.

Instead of the usual cummerbund-cufflink-bowtie man and dress-veil-girdle woman, state parks and Unitarian churches started also wedding pairs of two men — both in tuxedos — and two women — both in tuxedos.

They had love, rice, flowers (and for all I know girdles) — the works — and people forgot the danger. The newspapers, of course, loved it, and while they were snapping front-page tear-jerkers and slowly substituting “controversial decision” with “civil-rights progress,” the lawyers that had descended like so many queer locusts moved on to the next states.

Continue reading.

Bloggingheads On Gay Marriage In Iowa

For some reason I can't seem to manage to embed just the relevant section of this diavlog. Thus, I've just embedded the whole thing. If you only want to watch the segment on marriage equality, go to the Bloggingheads site and click on that segment's title below the video.


(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/18825)

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Gay Rights Opponents Are Perverts

I wrote the following column for the Daily Iowan in June of 2008:

California's state government will soon stop issuing marriage licenses in a discriminatory fashion. Rather than referring to any given happy couple as "bride" and "groom," the new documents will simply list them as "Party A" and "Party B." Thus, California will join Massachusetts and several European countries in granting full civil marriage equality to gays and lesbians.

As a young gay man, I find this development to be greatly encouraging. I am convinced that our society is moving in the correct direction: toward truly treating all people equally under the law. Unfortunately, not everyone understands that ending governmental discrimination against gays constitutes progress. Dissenters to such legal reforms unceasingly denounce them by holding protests, writing editorials, and posting comments on news websites.

Of course Americans are all free, as we ought to be, to express our opinions regardless of what those opinions are. But we must not allow people with reactionary, backward-looking views to promulgate them unchallenged in the public square. Those of us who know better are morally obligated to respond.

There will always be people who are slow to follow along as society's collective conscience gradually grows more attuned to the rights of minorities. Ridding oneself of long-held prejudices is a difficult process, and it is only fair to sympathize with those who lag a bit behind, particularly older people who formed many of their opinions in a radically different era. The best thing to do is engage with such people and persuade them through experience that gays are, except in the realm of sexuality, fundamentally the same as everyone else - and unquestionably worthy of equal treatment by the government.

The most vocal and proactive opponents of gay rights, as opposed to those who are simply set in their ways, don't warrant such gentle treatment. Truly reactionary, regressive political arguments must be countered with overwhelming rhetorical force. We must fight ferociously in the ongoing ideological struggle to move society further forward in its recognition of and respect for individual rights. And in doing so we have to be far less defensive.

Merely characterizing gay-rights opponents as homophobic or intolerant isn't enough. Doing so cedes too much rhetorical ground, implicitly allowing our adversaries to argue that gays are so inherently scary or repellent as to require one to have a strong stomach merely to put up with us at all. No, we must turn the tables completely.

I decided upon the ideal rhetorical device to attack those who agitate against gay rights in a discussion I had with a straight friend and colleague of mine who writes for a paper in Minnesota. After a long and rugged night filled with drink and debate, my friend and I concluded that right-wing culture warriors are perverts. They doth protest too much against gays, calling us a perverted minority in a desperate attempt to hide their identity as just that.

The perversion at the heart of anti-gay activism is readily apparent: voyeurism. The prospect of right-wing ideologues leering in through people's bedroom windows, straining to see exactly what sort of sexual practices they engage in with other consenting adults is gross and frightening. But that's effectively what these perverts advocate. Having no regard for privacy or basic decency, they obsess over other people's sex lives to the point where they barely seem able to think about anything else.

In order to disguise their depravity, these false moralists generally include feel-good words such as "family" or "Christian" in their fetid organizations' names. Don't be fooled. The preachers and politicians who work tirelessly to make sure gay people remain second-class citizens spend far more time worrying about gay sex than about helping American families.

Some of these sick bastards may even spend more time talking about gay sex than the vast majority of gays do. In fact, they've created an entire industry around their repugnant voyeurism, actually making money ceaselessly ranting about their disapproval of other people's sex lives. It's beyond disgusting: It's deranged. Rational people attempt to distance themselves from circumstances they find unpleasant, not dwell on them.

Opinion polls show decisively that our society is finally reaching a level of maturity in which we realize that people's sex lives are their own business, but we need to remain vigilant in maintaining forward momentum. So the next time you go toe-to-toe with these creeps, don't settle for offering up effete denunciations of their bigotry; instead, go for the jugular and call them out for what they are: pernicious, pathetic, window-peeping perverts.