If this Freeper thread on the topic is any indication, Gay Bashing Monday is going over like a cold cup of cat shit coffee. Not that there isn’t plenty of paranoid homophobic Bush love going around, but have a look at a few of these comments. (Via Athenae)
This whole gay marriage thing confuses the heck out of me. Since when does the legitimacy of a marriage derive from the GOVERNMENT? I thought we conservatives didn’t put much stock in government. Government should have nothing to do with marriage, traditional or otherwise. The sanctity of my marriage is between me, my wife, and God. Our minister even intentionally left out the idiotic “powers vested in me by the state of California…” bit. Screw the government of California; screw the federal government — they weren’t invited to my wedding, and I don’t want them involved in my marriage.
Can someone please explain to me why it’s the ‘conservative’ position to support the government’s definition and endorsement of the sacred bond between me and my wife?
[…]
The Constitution is supposed to be about government behavior, not personal behavior. The attempt to change/outlaw one form of personal behavior was thumpingly reversed in a little more than a decade. Why do you want to change the focus of the Constitution?
[…]
I often wonder how I ended up with three kids. I guess it was before all this gay marriage talk. Actually the real reason I am against the amendment is more to do with government interference than gay marriage, but either way it does not bother me or my wife and somehow my three kids are surviving as well. I really feel horrible about some people who worry about it and stay up at night consummed with angst. I also laugh about the stories that doom is coming with the people marrying their dogs and cats and snakes and horses and even dolphins (someone posted a picture of the ceremony on our conservative site). I found it a hoot. Believe me, I am conservative as the next guy, but when you go to great lengths as that then I just have to laugh.
Again, if you want vile, homophobic, magical thinking weirdness, that thread has enough vile to keep you and yours flush with vile for generations. Don’t go over thinking you won’t be troubled by the majority of what you read. I’m beginning to suspect, however, that in some small way this issue is a wedge that splits the various components of the Republican party. Not as big an internal Republican wedge as immigration, but a split nevertheless. If we’re really very lucky, a little operant conditioning will take hold, and the rats will eventually stop trying to add bigotry to the constitution, because each time they try, it hurts them just a little bit more than the last.
is right twice a day.
Looks like at least some members of the alleged “base” (unlike the true “base”, the folks with the big bucks and open wallets) see that this is just a smokescreen, see that this is just a bone being thrown to the Religious Reich while the real insiders finish eating the porterhouse steak. They know that their marriages aren’t weakened by a couple of guys or girls shacking up. And they know that there are a lot more important things the Senate could be spending three freakin’ days on, especially when we’re coming up on the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and we’re no closer to finding OBL.
With luck, some of these voters may say “A pox on both thy houses” and simply stay home come November…
Excellent points. This is supposed to be red meat for the far right religious fundamentalists, but it’s so obvious, and so obviously doomed from the start, that even the most delusional wingnut can probably see it for the sloppy politics it is. I think the “true base” is probably a little bit horrified by the sorts of things that happened today. Homophobia is bad for business. Not as bad as it ought to be, of course, but the culture of this country (the buying public) is generally moving forward and becoming less homophobic, while the politics remains mired in primitive bullshit.
It is clearly red meat for the base. The problem is that they don’t have the votes to actually give the base their meat so instead they’re dangling the red meat within sight but out of reach so they can prove it still exists. Is there anyone who wouldn’t be pissed off at getting teased year after year without ever tasting the meat? I would be royally pissed off if they kept doing something like this to me with, say, health care reform. That is the logical emotional reaction to getting played repeatedly.
As for anti-gay amendments, today is the day we vote on Alabama’s state amendment and it looks like it will pass overwhelmingly regardless of turnout. I have yet to see a campaign commercial from anyone in either party who doesn’t mention that the candidate is pro-marriage protection. Sadly, this is what the vast majority here believe and you have to pander to it.
Even more telling of how it will go was the 2000 election, when we had an amendment on the ballot to finally eliminate the ban on miscegenation. It got 60% support, which means 40% of voting Alabamians still think it should be a felony for black people to marry white people. It’s pathetic how racist and sexist all of the nice churchgoers here still are.
Perhaps the last guy would understand how he ended up with three children if he had had real sex education.
I suspect the reason why this gay marraige stuff is even in the platform is economic reasons – big business is hesitant to cover even more benefits for dependents and is loathe to give up fewer pensions after death if there is a clearly defined 100% certified spouse. I rather suspect for some of those pensions, they may get to absorb it.
There is cited that even domestic partnerships/civil unions/whatever, that they only get about 1/3 of the rights married people do, and I suspect those are some expensive rights. I would like to see those rights enumerated, priced out, and put out there so people stop buying that “civil unions” really solve the problem. Unfortunately – haven’t the time skill or energy to do it myself.
But seeing all this unbecoming frothing at the mouth may make the “fiscal” repubs back away from that glass of Koolaid
You raise an interesting – and valid – point. Once there is a safe, cheap treatment – or a vaccine – for AIDS, the business community will no longer give a hoot about the issue: Businesses that discriminate only hurt themselves by foregoing talented people that their competitors hire. The fear of insurance costs for AIDS victims counteracts that now, but remove that factor and the issue will fade away for the business community, except for a few nutjobs.
As far as the relative benefits of civil unions versus marriages issue, the ideal would be for government to only issue “civil unions,” open to anyone, and churches to only perform religious marriages, open to whatever discrimination their faith requires. This policy worked well for both Ancient Rome and the USSR, and I believe is also standard practice in Asian nations.
The government would, after a few court cases, (once we restore balance to the Supreme Court) not be permitted to discriminate, and people would not feel their religious beliefs are being persecuted, because it’s “not really a marriage” in their eyes. The civil unions are about things like inheritance and insurance, the religious unions are for love (if you’re gay, find a Unitarian minister) and/or procreation (if you feel strongly that procreation is part of the package, find a Catholic priest).
As gays become more visible and accepted in the larger society, a sect that discriminates against them will come to be seen as “backwards” and immoral by the society at large, like we today see a faith that doesn’t allow interracial or interfaith marriages.
The comments by conservatives listed in the diary point out a split between Western Republicans, who generally tend more Libertarian, and Southern Republicans, who tend more Talibaptist. This same split is appearing for other “morality-based” issues as well. We need to pour gasoline on that fire, heh heh heh.
You ask:
“How is gay bashing Monday playing with the base?”
This question made me wonder where you live. Seeing as how you do not seem to know how gay bashing goes with “the base”. (And they ARE base, those who vote for BushCo. Basic base.)
So I went to your contact page. United States, it says. Not much help there. It also says your email address has the phrase “rowhouselogic” in it. Now the words “row house” mostly have to do with central East Coast inner cities…Baltimore, Philly, maybe Wilmington or Camden, NJ. Or even Brooklyn. With a probable minor in gentrification, seeing as how you are posting on a “liberal” or “progressive” blog. I went to <http://rowhouselogic.com> on the off chance that I would get more clues, and sure enough…right at the top, an impressionistic, photoshopped montage of inner city rowhouses and what appears to be a white twenty-something inner city pioneer wearing denim and sweatshirt inner city pioneer drag.
Now, I have nothing AGAINST white inner city pioneers, having been one myself since about 1964…I mean, we all have to find our frontier wherever it is available…but I HAVE found the current two or three generations of such liberal slum settlers by and large to be SADLY uninformed about what is up in medulla oblongati of the lower primates who make up the immovable 30%+ of the BushCo base, so I am going to suggest a little experiment to you.
You can do it in the relatively safe environs of your own city, or you can get in a car and go in any direction except seawards until you reach about 30 miles past the bedroom community/commute line of said city. YOU know…where the condos no longer grow off the side of the highway?
Eliminate ALL physical clues that you might be some sort of sniveling white liberal…dress, haircut, etc…and any Friday or Saturday evening of your choice at about 7 or 8 PM walk into any bar you see that is populated exclusively by white people who do not wear suits and ties but are not exclusively young nor out actively sex hunting.
Belly up to the bar, oder whatever beer that you see is popular there, and strike up a conversation about gays.
And Bush.
Yea or nay…and nay about gays would be MUCH the safer bet unless you are about 6′ 6″ tall and well over 300 lbs.of truly intimidating muscle.
You can do the same thing regarding immigration, about Iraq…well, Iraq is changing because we’re so clearly losing…about any and all Fox News pounds.
And you will soon become disabused of the notion that “the base” is changing in any way whatsoever.
It is not.
Nor will it.
Do not mistake the blogosphere…left OR right…for the real world.
Freepers and dKos-ers…they ALL live in Fantasyland.
Realityland?
THEIR Realityland?
Where the base REALLY lives?
FoxNewsland.
Bet on it.
“You are getting sleepy…”
Very, very sleepy…”
Try it.
The experiment will save you HOURS in wasted diary writing.
Bet on it.
AG
Very astute Arthur. Yes, I am white, inner city and out of touch. My point was a little one, and wasn’t really a point at all by the time I was done butchering it. I’m not trying to say that the Bush base is changing in any way shape or form in any direction or another. Rather, that this particular political stunt doesn’t seem to be playing as well as they might have hoped. Don’t worry, I’ve never mistaken the internet for anything other than the internet. I’m pretty grounded that way, but I welcome the suggestion nevertheless. Sadly, it’s all I have to work with when I’m writing on the internet other than personal experience which, as you noted, is sadly limited and is hard to hyperlink to. I ask my wife for advise sometimes, but she was asleep. Yeah, the more I look at this, it was a pretty sloppy post and I should have thought better of it. I’m trying to extrapolate meaning out of what a pile of Freepers say, and that’s a stretch. Anyway, sorry if this wasted anybody’s time. It will go away soon enough and it won’t be able to bother you any more.
You write:
“Anyway, sorry if this wasted anybody’s time. It will go away soon enough and it won’t be able to bother you any more.”
I wasn”t “bothered”, Chris.
Really.
And no one’s time is wasted tring to figure out what is up here.
I am just trying to focus us ALL into some sort of consistent sense-making. Because if we do NOT start to understand exactly what is up…including the fact that a PermaYahoo population exists everywhere on this planet at about the same perecentage of all populations (It’s genetic, I think.) we WILL go DOWN.
Later…
AG
au contraire. I think you can extrapolate from both right and left blogs, you just have to bring the temperature down from a high boil to at least a low simmer before you get closer to reality.
AG is right and so are you to have posted this message. Bush’s pandering is from extreme weakness. He has lost it bigtime and now kowtowing to save his ass within his own base. This is a wonderful moment to savor.
And start to let go of the perennial paranoia of the losers. And get back to work for Nov 2006.
despite this post being entirely too condescending, it is very comical.
Condescending?
Maybe.
Trying to keep it light.
I could have gotten all serious…
I and others of my generation fear that there is a generation out there that has lost touch with the mood of a large segment of the American people…”
Then someone would have said that it was entirely too something else.
But I didn’t.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
My point remains.
Call me condescending or call me widely experienced. I do not give a damn.
“The base” is ALWAYS with us.
And by the numbers it is an immovable 30% here in the United States.
They were Tories in the days of the American Revolution.
You can see them in Haiti, in France, in China, in Somalia…you can see them EVERYWHERE.
The lowest poll numbers Bush gets? What are they? 32%? 31%? 28%? + or – 3 points? THAT’S the bottom line percentage in this country, and I have a suspicion that if a genetic test could be devised for basic base and were applied all over the globe…that’s the percentage you would come up with everywhere.
Roughly a third of the people of this world ARE “base”. And an easily marshaled base as well. Not so smart, but the numbers are there.
Give them pitchforks or muskets or M 16s or votes and tell them to go get the bad guys…why by God, they DO it!!!
“Which way did he go, which way did he go???” stumbled the eternal base character in the Bugs Bunny myth. The dumb dog. But in those cartoons, there was always only ONE dumb dog. And one smart wabbit.
I personally think that those Warner Brothers myths helped us immeasurably to prevail against the Nazis, and would LOVE to see similar myths in action today.
Here in America.
But back then the myth-makers were mostly smart immigrants with a rebellious streak (Except of course for the 30% base that came out of Disney), and now…?
Now the 30% rules the airwaves.
AND the country.
The United States of DisneyLand.
And that 30% always and forever eventually crashes.
Because they are too fucking stupid to see their own shoelaces, let ALONE tie them.
Now when I see and hear people saying things like “WOW!!! Looks like we’ve got them on the RUN!!!”…which I have seen altogether too often recently on left blogworld (Check out my current diary What are YOU thinking? for more on that subject.) I feel that it is literally my DUTY to step in and say “WAIT a minute, here!!! They do NOT ‘run’. They have nowhere to “run” to. And they do not change. either. They are eternal and must…however temporarily…be BEATEN!!! Decisively. Or else the human race is finished. Over. Kaput. Done with. On the back end of the evolutionary slippery slope. And every time you/we DO “beat” them, then the John Philpot Curran principle comes into effect and we have to do the same damned thing over again. Forever. Or until we finally lose. Because there IS no “winning” with them. We NEED them. To fulfill the natural balance of nature.”
(John Philpot Curran from his speech on the Right of Election of Lord Mayor of Dublin, July 10, 1790. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and punishment of his guilt.”)
So I tried to keep it light.
And I’m glad that you found it humorous. That was my intent.
But behind the humor…I am as serious as death here.
The left’s failures over the last 60+ years are DIRECTLY attributable to its inability to realize that the base does not change its mind.
It quite literally HAS NO MIND TO CHANGE.
Not very damned much of one, anyway.
It does what it is told to do, until the food and shelter runs out. And then it riots in the streets. When we break OUR “eternal vigilance”…which is a totally natural human tendency, especially among the intelligent (“Phew!!! I’m glad THAT’S over. Let’s go have a few beers.”)…why, before y’know it, there they jolly well are again, in the White House in the Reichstag, in the Kremlin, in the President’s mansion in Somalia or Haiti, and once again we have trouble right here in Riuver City. Trouble with a capital T and that stands for sTupidity.
Strong but wrong.
So I “condescend” to try to say this.
Any which way I can.
it is NOT “condescension”, Booman.
It is terror.
I literally feel TERROR at how close to the edge we are in this country right now, and I dfeel that i MUST do my little bit every chance I get to warn people.
Paul Revere, v.2.
“The Basish are coming!!! The Basish are coming!!!”
And we MUST NOT underestimate their capacity for stupidity.
They are eternal.
And they are DANGEROUS.
Sorry if I offended.
It was not my intent.
My INTENT…as always…is to wake people the fuck up.
And when I hear some version of the “ZZZZzzzz” sound and I have the time to do so.
I try.
Any which way I can.
Time’s up now, though…gotta go to work.
But…JUST like the base…
I’ll be baaaaack…
Later…
AG
This has me a little perplexed. Did I say anything like “WOW!!! Looks like we’ve got them on the RUN!!!” or suggest that the people you are talking about are changing their minds on anything at all? If I did, it was certainly in error, because it has nothing to do with the post I meant to write. I was just talking about this one stupid political stunt that isn’t working. When I wrote that we would be lucky if the rats got conditioned by another failure, I was referring to the rats doing the pandering, not the rats being pandered to. If I strike you as a peppy, optimistic cheerleader for the Democratic party who is gushing over that Party’s candidates, I have clearly misrepresented myself on this site. I have to say, I’m at a total loss as to what to do here.
Welcome to the club, Chris. AG has a habit of picking on us front-pagers.
picks on me
picks on me
picks on Steven
picks on spoon
make Chris feel inadequate, as his offenses apparently didn’t warrant the posting of an entire diary directed at him…
well, Arthur has a tendency to turn his longer comments into diaries, so, we will see…
Not this one.
Tired of preaching into the wind, I guess.
AG
that’s good, because Chris doesn’t need a lecture on the nature of the American electorate. He’s not an idiot.
None of us need presumptuous lectures about what our life experiences are based on nothing more than that we live in rowhouses.
Keep the humor coming though.
Right.
AG
I am an equal opportunity deployer.
Not ABOUT frontpagers.
Not at all.
I agree or disagree on the merits of any post AS I SEE THEM.
The fact that I disagree with you tactically speaking about how we should best oppose the system as it now stands is quite true.
The fact that you say who is a front-pager and who is not here is also true. And naturally enough, you choose people who are on your particular wavelength. Thus I tend to disagree with them, too.
That’s all there is to THAT tendency.
I do NOT “pick on” you front-pagers.
Not because you are front-pagers, anyway.
Later…
AG
You wrote:
”Im beginning to suspect, however, that in some small way this issue is a wedge that splits the various components of the Republican party. Not as big an internal Republican wedge as immigration, but a split nevertheless. If we’re really very lucky, a little operant conditioning will take hold, and the rats will eventually stop trying to add bigotry to the constitution, because each time they try, it hurts them just a little bit more than the last.”
MY point?
Nothing is going to split the various components of the Republican Party except imminent defeat.
And my other point…their “base” is solid as a rock.
Dumb as one, too.
What do I see happening now?
Fom the diary I referenced above. :
That was the straw that broke THIS silence’s back.
“Who knew?”
That did it.
Read on if you dare.
I do not know about the cowering.
What I read? In their actions? In their statements? In the way that they stand and look into the camera as they bleat their latest demonization lines?
“Immigrants and queers? They ALL gotta go!!! And them damned Uranians, too.”
They are still supremely confident.
Confident in their continuing ability to create “new realities” that will distract the populace from the results of the previous new realities. They are PERFECTLY predictable. Like the steroided-out Barry Bonds (The perfect sports analogue of BushCo. BondCo/Balco.), they WILL hit another home run and they WILL slip out from underneath prosecution once again.
And you know what?
On the evidence of the last 6 to 8 years?
They have every REASON to be confident.
On the evidence.
They control the media, and the media control the populace.
End of story.
You say that what you wrote is about “this one stupid political stunt that isn’t working.”
I think it IS “working”. On the psyches of the choir to which it is being preached. Keeps ’em nicely hyped up, just in case a critical thought DOES raise its lonely head in the limbic system that we laughingly refer to as their brain.
More further down this thread.
AG
I’m not going to argue with you. I can accept that I fucked up on the language. One day I’ll express what I intend to with the words I write. Today is clearly not the day. The next few years don’t look so great either.
You are pissed at me over this post and that’s cool. I’d like to add that you don’t know me from a hole in the wall. You don’t know what I think about subjects I haven’t written about on Booman, or anywhere else, and that is perfectly understandable. That I appear to agree with positions I didn’t even know existed is also understandable, if you choose to understand such things in a very forward thinking way. Chalk it up to my youth if it feels better. I don’t give a fuck.
How old am I, by the way? Just curious. Is anybody not my age capable of naivete, or are they exempt from that particular affliction simply because they aren’t my age? More specifically, were people of your generation blessed with a wisdom denied those who came before and after your birth? It would be good to know, because there are a lot of us out here who wouldn’t mind giving up and spending some time sunning ourselves on the beach.
I realize that I’m new here and I haven’t introduced myself properly. I’m not planning on a grand statement of purpose, because I don’t really think that kind of bullshit has a place outside of Freshman year in art school. Some fool me.
Get to know me. I might even convince you, over time, that I’m not just another doe eyed, naive youth who mistakes fiction for reality. Call me on it if I fuck up, but please refrain from calling me on shit that has nothing to do with me.
We all agree that this post of mine is for shit. You won. Savor and Enjoy. I’ll never mention, or link to, discord within the Republican party again, and I sure as shit won’t ever use the word ‘base’ again in any context. Who needs it?
I know GOP tricks have become very transparent to members of the pond, I just hope that folks out there who depend on many MSM venues for their “news” have seen this wedge issue stuff played out enough times to begin to develop a reflexive knee jerk negative reaction to it. If so, November could be quite exciting for us. If not… I don’t even want to contemplate what that would mean.