Old links, like old bananas, shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste.
So when I find myself with a surplus of unused links and bookmarks, I try to mash them up and make something delicious.
George Clooney, a movie star, is heading for the stage, where the Academy Award-winner will star in:
… the West Coast premiere of “8,” a play chronicling the historic trial in the federal constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, written by [American Foundation for Equal Rights] Founding Board Member and Academy Award-winning writer Dustin Lance Black and directed by AFER Founding Board Member and acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner. The production is an unprecedented account of the Federal District Court trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the case filed by AFER to overturn Proposition 8, which stripped gay and lesbian Californians of the fundamental right to marry. Black, who penned the Academy Award-winning feature film Milk and the new critically-acclaimed film J. Edgar, based “8” on the actual words of the trial transcripts, first-hand observations of the courtroom drama and interviews with the plaintiffs and their families.
Pleaseohpleaseohplease let Dylan Baker be cast to play the role of Tony Perkins. That would make me very happy.
Scott Fujita, an NFL football star, is among the latest group of celebrities to make a video in support of marriage equality.
The fascinating thing about these videos is how essentially conservative they are. The themes tend to be old-fashioned commitment, fidelity and fairness. “Marriage is love, family, commitment,” the graphic for these videos says. How exactly does that constitute a dangerously radical agenda?
Alvin McEwen, asks, “Does the religious right even care about the victims of anti-gay persecution?”
Ooh, pick me … I know this one. No. No, the religious right does not care about the victims of anti-gay persecution.
OK, next question, Warren Throckmorton asks, “Do broken parental attachments cause homosexuality?”
The answer, again, is no.
Throckmorton also responds to “Hillary Clinton’s Remarks Calling for Decriminalization of Homosexuality“:
Clinton … appeals to the Golden Rule. I like this.
Finally, progress comes from being willing to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. We need to ask ourselves, “How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love? How would it feel to be discriminated against for something about myself that I cannot change?” This challenge applies to all of us as we reflect upon deeply held beliefs, as we work to embrace tolerance and respect for the dignity of all persons, and as we engage humbly with those with whom we disagree in the hope of creating greater understanding.
Clinton here is not calling for anyone to agree that homosexual behavior is in line with their religious beliefs. However, she is calling for people to act in accord with their religious beliefs about reciprocal treatment. If you don’t want to be discriminated against for something intrinsic to you, then don’t do it to others.
As Dan Savage noted — “Religious Justifications for Bigotry Are Nothing New” — the Golden Rule is often awkward for those clinging to faith-premised discrimination.
“Religious beliefs about reciprocal treatment” ought to prevent people like Chuck Colson from arguing that “deviant” minorities ought to be denied the rights enjoyed by the majority simply because the majority outnumbers them. And it ought to prevent people like Bryan Fischer from arguing that homosexuality should be made illegal. But that would require the Golden Rule to be part of Colson’s and Fischer’s religious beliefs, and I’m not seeing a lot of evidence that this is the case.
And, yeah, that Savage link is from September and the first Throckmorton link is from August. Banana bread is for clearing out the old bookmarks and links, not the new ones. This next link is from October.
The active-duty officer wrote to Tom Ricks:
At what point in time should journalists, bloggers, etc … hold those who made wildly inaccurate predications on the lifting of the ban accountable? All the retired generals and officers … who predicted that soldiers would leave the military by the thousands, or John McCain and other politicians describing how it would affect us as a fighting force? At some point I feel that the public should be reminded of their predictions so the next time they make predictions that are way off the mark, fewer people will give them credence.
But as Steve Benen noted:
The political world just doesn’t seem to operate this way. McCain will continue to enjoy his standing as a leading voice on military affairs because the establishment says so. If ridiculous predictions had any bearing on credibility, conservative Republicans would never be able to utter a word about economic policy in public again without being laughed at. We’re talking about a group of folks who said Reagan’s tax increases would be a disaster, Clinton’s agenda would cause an economic collapse, Bush’s policies would work wonders, and Obama’s agenda would make the 2008 crash even worse.
The “ex-gay ministries” that have promoted the idea of heterosexualizing GLBT people into ex-gayhood finally seem to be realizing that their decades-long track record of near-total failure implies something about the effectiveness of their methods. We’ve now had a string of former leaders of such groups admitting, “Nobody Quit Being Gay.” As a result, “Exodus International Ponders New Message to Save Itself from Bankruptcy.”
I suppose that’s something like the accountability for wild inaccuracy that the major wrote about.
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