Well, That was Easy

Seriously, did someone at Human Right Campaign just push the Easy Button? A new ABC/WaPost poll has support for Gay Marriage up to 58% nationwide. That's up 28% in just eight years. Honestly, that's amazing. I don't know if there is anything close to that big and fast a swing in public opinion on a major issue of the day.

I could have sworn that those fighting for Gay Marriage were in for at least a decade of long hard slog to win nationally. This issue looked to be demographicly driven, with the young in favor and the old opposed. The Country was sure to change, but it would change slowly, as the young got old enough to vote and the old, er, "left" the Country. But this is a much faster change. This is people changing their minds.

Eight years ago Republicans were using anti-Gay marriage measures to drum up support. Now its conceivable that Democrats in 2016 could attack conservatives with Pro-Gay marriage measures.

Prop 8 Goes Down

A Federal Judge has struck down Prop 8. It turns out "gay marriage make me feel funny" isn't really a compelling argument. The case continues to grow for some sort of judicial review of Props before they go to the ballot. Like prop 209 before it (denied services to the undocumented) we could have all been saved a lot of time, trouble and attack ads if only the judges had gotten a crack at this first.

Of course, the courts being the courts, this isn't over. No tux rental just yet. This sucker is getting appealed and appealed again. Supreme Court, here we come.

Local Angle

Republican lawmakers who loudly attack gays while have lots of gay sex themselves is nothing new. But this latest case happened in my neighborhood. State Senator Roy Ashburn got pulled over at 2 am 13th and L Streets. Drunk, and coming out of a gay bar with an "unidentified" male passenger.

That's only a dozen blocks from my place. He was coming out of Faces. I've been there. Right there in my neighborhood. I though this sort of thing was reserved for certain Washington DC bars and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport bathroom. But we get this action right here in my city.

John McCain is A Sore Loser

McCain has changed his stance on ending don't ask, don't tell:

A former war hero, McCain said he would support ending the ban once the military's top brass told him they were okay with it.

"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to," McCain told an audience of college students during the "Hardball" college tour on MSNBC.

Well guess what? That day has come. Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs both declared in hearings that DADT should end. But McCain still doesn't want to change DADT. And was a real jerk about it today. So what changed? Did gay people become less able to shoot people in the last year? He didn't get it from home, cause his foxy daughter is all for gay rights (I follow her twitter). So what changed? Well, John McCain lost an election last year. He's really pissed about it. We been over this before. You want McCain to support something? Whatever you do, don't kick his ass in an election.

Ban Divorce

A real California Prop. Proposed anyway. This state always surprises me. It's time for the "Defense of Marriage" folks to put up. Letting gay folks get married doesn't hurt marriage. In fact, that leads to more marriages! Divorce is what hurts marriage. Without divorce, marriage would be perfectly safe. Make divorce illegal, and everyone stays married.

And happy.

So Confused

Cheney supports gay marriage.

If only every conservative jerk was issued a gay daughter, this debate would be so over.

Prop 8 Upheld

The saddest think of all is that California has been lapped by Iowa of all places. Iowa!

Notes on the Pagent

Strangely, I find myself having opinions on the Miss California gay marriage question row. A few notes:

1. Perez Hilton is just a gross human being, the worse kind of star-fucker in a world that has a lot. We do not want him to be the leading advocate for gay marriage.

2. Since when do real political questions get asked at these things? I always though it was "How do we bring about world peace?" and "Puppies, pro or con"

3. No seriously, when did the content of the answers start to matter? I always thought the question portion of the competition was a test of pose and being able to think on your feet. There's a forum for asking political questions and judging people on their answers. Its called candidates night.

4. Why are we still having beauty pageants? Does anybody actually watch these any more?

5. Maybe that's why they had political questions and freak show judges: to gin up some attention. Mission accomplished!

Most Evil?

The passage of Prop 8 has put about 18,000 couples in legal limbo. These are the folks who got married after the court ruling but before Prop 8 yanked back their right to marry. Guess who's leading the effort to undo these marriages?

Ken Starr

Yes, that Ken Starr

I believe that Mr Starr is making a very strong play for the title of worst. lawyer. ever.

Prop 8 - The Musical

You knew it was coming, didn't you?

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

What's It To You?

Olbermann is getting a four year contract extension. He's not going away.

Hi, I'm No on Prop 8

My God, We liberals are hip.

Warning

This video will turn you into a lesbian.

Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl

Well, What do You Know!

Looks like the good people of California are surprisingly OK with gay marriage. They just needed a little push from the friendly neighborhood judge.

Gay Day

The California Supreme Court just overturned the law banning gay marriage. Which means we now have gay marriage in California. How long it lasts... well it is California, so we get to vote on it. Again. The gay marriage ban won something like 60-40 in 2000, but a lot of old fundy-dudies have, um, left the voter pool and many enlightened youngsters have entered. So this issue is still in play. But gay people are going to get married for next few months, and the world isn't going to end. So maybe that turns some people around.

Pet Issues

Ah, here is a story in Slate that gets right at one of my pet issues: The ridiculous tendency to try and turn all pop-culture manliness into homoerotic.

But sophisticated critics routinely dismiss this sort of quasi-heroic cinematic friendship as "homoerotic," and they do so with such offhand certainty that it's easy to miss how doltishly unimaginative this interpretation is. Indeed, claiming a macho film friendship is not-so-secretly gay has become its own kind of silly convention, a fake-subversive cliché. It is better—sounder both aesthetically and sociologically—to view the masculine pathos in films like Point Break in light of the tradition of heroically minded philosophy that runs from Aristotle to Nietzsche.

I always have to be careful about this, least it be interpreted as homophobic, but this effort to turn all male friendships into hidden gay subtext really does put the squeeze on the space in which guys can relate to each other. If every form of male friendship is "gay" then all we are left with is Bachelor parties and Beer commercials and other over the top "I'm extra heterosexual" kind of activities.

A Miracle!

Ted Haggard is cured!

Completely Heterosexual

With just three weeks of "intensive counseling" Wow, that was easy. You couldn't give up smoking in three weeks. But "the gay" must be easier to drop.

"I wish I knew how to quit you"

Ted Haggard knows.

Domestic Front

And in domestic news Mary Cheney is pregnant. Yes, the gay daughter. Cheney's grandaughter has two mommies.

Work the Steps

So after starting off with a "never did it" and then moving to a "Yes I buy Meth, but I didn't use it" and "Massages only, no sex" super-minister Ted Haggard is today doing confession:

Saying that he was a "deceiver and liar" who had given in to his dark side, the Rev. Ted Haggard confessed to sexual immorality Sunday in a letter read from the pulpit of the megachurch he founded.

The disgraced former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents 30 million evangelical Christians, apologized and said "because of pride, I began deceiving those I love the most because I didn't want to hurt or disappoint them.

Now, here comes the worse part:

"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he said.

The man is gay. He has spent his whole life hating that fact, trying to surpress that fact. He's tried to pray it away. He build a giant church and an entier movement around dening what he is. Now I would hope that exsposing this lie will give conservative Christians some pause, but my guess is next week we will again be hearing about how being gay is a choice and how the evil homosexuals are trying to recruit your kids and blah blah blah.

Oooookkkkkkeeeee.

Here's the lead:

A leading evangelist and outspoken opponent of gay marriage has given up his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex.

and here's the kicker:

"It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true. He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation," the e-mail stated. A copy was obtained by KMGH-TV in Denver.

I'm not a big follower of the Evangical community, but TPM assures me that:

this is the conservative equivalent of Jesse Jackson getting caught wearing a hood at a Klan cross burning. The political implications are enormous.

TNR points us to the following pic, which say bit more than a thousand words.

Now this isn't the epic hipocrisy that you think it is. Haggard is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage. He is not an outspoken opponent of three year relationships with gay prostitutes.