Tag Archives: gay rights

The Minnesota Marriage Amendment Will Probably Pass. Here’s Why.

Posted on by
8

People who support it don’t know what it is.



I’m not kidding. There are people in this state who are planning to vote “yes” on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment without even knowing what it is. They have an idea, of course. They have the vague knowledge that it’s about gay marriage. The problem is that they think that the Amendment up for vote in the November election is to legalize gay marriage.



I know these people exist because I actually talked with one of them this week.



I was on the road at my new job with my trainer. He was a nice guy but really, really conservative. Like, all over the board. Socially, fiscally, the whole package. As some of you regular readers know I’m really, really liberal. We talked politics for a bit but were able to keep it civil. Making our points and respecting (but not agreeing) to the other person’s opinions. I get into so many ranting political arguments on the internet that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to have some polite debate.



He did fuck with me a little. He made me listen to Rush Limbaugh as a joke (but also because he wanted to listen to Rush Limbaugh) and we all know how I feel about him. During the local station’s little two minute news segment the reporter said something about how Augsburg College is officially opposing the Minnesota Marriage Amendment and how they’re the first college in the state to take a stance yada yada gay panic. Here’s the conversation we had that followed hearing that story.



TRAINER: A college taking a stance on gay marriage. That’s messed up.



ME: Hey, good for them. This whole “kick ’em while they’re down” amendment is messed up, anyway.



TRAINER:“Kick ’em when they’re down”? Alright, you probably know how I feel about all of this (the subject of gay rights came up in conversation a few times and he didn’t state his opinion, probably out of concern of being viewed as intolerent. He did, however, say things like “well, I’m a Christian so…” or “well, I’m a conservative so you probably know what I think about that”) but what are you talking about?



ME:This whole amendment is just about making gay marriage “super illegal”.



TRAINER:Super illegal?



ME:Yeah, this vote isn’t even about legalizing gay marriage.



TRAINER:Wait, what?



ME:Yeah. Gays can’t get married in Minnesota. When I went to get the marriage certificate with my wife, there was a thing at the bottom that said “is one of you a chick and one of you a dude?” The wording was a little more official but yeah, it’s already illegal to get gay married in MN. This vote is on whether or not to change the state’s constitution to say that gays can’t get married. So, it’s already legal but if this passes it will still be illegal and hey, fuck you, queers.



TRAINER:Really?



ME:Yep. If this doesn’t pass, gay marriage will still be illegal.



TRAINER:Huh. That is really a kick ’em when they’re down thing, huh?


I didn’t press the issue past that. I’m not about to change some hardcore conservative’s views, I’m the new guy at work so I don’t want to get into an argument with my trainer and frankly, I was surprised that I got him listening and thinking about the whole thing.



Here’s the kicker. This guy isn’t an idiot. I’m not about to follow him around with a notebook writing down his quotes but he is by no means stupid. He’s just a regular guy and he thought that this vote was to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota when it really isn’t.



He can’t be alone. How many other people in this state have the same ideas about this vote?



Shit, maybe instead of yelling at people I don’t agree with I should try to have a conversation with them.



There has to be a less confusing slogan than this one.

Heterosexual Awareness Month: A Thing That Actually Exists but not Really

Posted on by
2

When I was 15 years old I had my first job at Rainbow Foods pushing carts and cleaning up dropped jars of baby food. I’d spend my lunch break in the breakroom eating something from the deli and reading a copy of Weekly World News –



The LAMESTREAM media never reported on how termites ate the Eiffel Tower.





I loved it. The articles about Bat Boy leading people on a high speed chase, interviews with a still alive Elvis, the so-right-wing-it’s-downright-fascist columns of Ed Anger. Made me laugh out loud in the breakroom. Whenever a coworker saw me reading it for the first time they’d just scoff and say “Are you retarded?” (it was the ’90s. People said the “R” word back then.) “You know none of that is true, right?”



Of course I knew it wasn’t true. It was a humor publication. They didn’t come out and say it was bullshit because that’s part of the joke. Stephen Colbert doesn’t begin each show by saying “I’m actually pretty liberal”. That’s how satire works. Granted, Weekly World News was a little ham-handed in their approach so most people didn’t get it.



That’s going to happen whenever you attempt satire, though. Whether you do it well or not, there’s always going to be some people that don’t get the joke. There’s a whole website dedicated to facebook posts of people who think Onion articles are real.



The reason I bring this up is that yesterday I found out about a facebook group for Heteroxexual Awareness Month –



We’re here! We’re straight! Oh… you’re already used to it? Okay.





This group has declared July “Hetero Awareness Month” and has been posting about hetero pride. Everybody’s pissed off about it. Each recent post is littered with comments of people fiercely debating gay rights. There’s a tumbler dedicated to posting screencaps of the group and commenting on how stupid they are, a buzzfeed article with the 20 most ridiculous posts on the group, forums and blog posts decrying the group’s obvious homophobia.



Seriously? This page is an obvious parody. They couldn’t be trying any harder to make it known that it’s an obvious parody. Look at this –



Do you really think they believe that celebrities are coming out of the closet in an effort to silence them? Really?





Come on. The very idea of homophobes trying to start a straight pride is pretty ridiculous, much less one that posts pictures like this –



Nobody wonders why there’s no hetero milk. This is a joke. They’re trying to make a joke.





Or this –



Every house needs closets. Otherwise there’d be clothes everywhere and you wouldn’t be able to hide Christmas presents.





I get why people are upset. There are homophobes out there that try to portray themselves as the victim. I’ve seen the whole “You claim to be tolerant but you’re intolerant of my belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman!” argument plenty of times before (which doesn’t make sense. To have “tolerance” you need an absence of “intolerance”. Being against gay marriage is “intolerant” so it’s literally impossible to be tolerant of that). This page, however, really ramps that view up to the degree where they think that there’s an actual threat on heterosexuals and they need to help people say it’s okay to be straight. It’s ridiculous –



Of course heterosexuals are everywhere. Nobody’s ever said otherwise.





Getting people to think heterosexuality is normal at a young age is all part of the straight agenda.





Parody, satire, troll, call it what you will. Whoever started this group obviously doesn’t actually believe this stuff and is trying to get some laughs. That has to be it. The only other explanation is that they’re incredibly stupid and hateful.

More Like Chick-fil-Gay AMIRITE?

Posted on by
4

So The Muppets snubbed Chick-fil-A this week, cancelling a toy sponsorship deal with the fast food chain due to CEO Dan Cathy coming out and saying he’s against gay marriage.



Well, he didn’t say he’s against gay marriage. They rarely do. He said “”We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that…we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”



So the Muppet company severed ties and said they’d donate their payment from Chick-fil-A to GLAAD. Good for them.



Now some people are saying that the Muppets shouldn’t get into political issues but it’s been public knowledge for a while that The Muppets have liberal leanings –



about 50,000 people shared this on George Takei’s facebook page today.





Also, if the Muppets should stay out of social issues, so should a greasy chicken shack.



What really gets me, though is that this is another example of people trying to oppress the gays by saying they “support traditional marriage.” Great. Support traditional marriage all you want. I support traditional marriage. I’m even a part of one! Here’s the difference between how I support traditional marriage and how Dan Cathy supports traditional marriage. I also support gay marriage.



Seriously. You can support both. You don’t have to choose one or the other. When Jena and I applied for a marriage license the guy behind the counter didn’t ask what we thought about gay marriage.



In fact, you don’t even need to support gay marriage. You can think whatever you want about gay marriage just don’t donate a bunch of money trying to make it harder for non-traditional families because in the end that’s all you’re doing. You’re making things harder for people you don’t like. You’re messing with them, bullying them.



So when Dan Cathy says “I support traditional marriage”, what he’s really saying is “I don’t like gay people so I spend a bunch of money making sure they’ll never be truly happy. I think I’m better than them so I make sure that they don’t get the same privileges as me. Gay people have never done anything to me. I’ve never been attacked by a bunch of homosexuals or robbed by a gay street gang. This war I’m helping wage against them is completely unprovoked.”



So thank you, Muppets. Hopefully society will recognize the union of same-sex couples and someday even gay Muppets can get married –



“Back to the lab, beaker! We can test out my new motorized butt-plug!”





Of course I wasn’t referring to Bert and Ernie. They’re just roommates.

DC Announces Gay Superhero. “One Million Moms” Gets Panties in Collective Bunch.

Posted on by
1

DC Comics recently announced that one of its established characters is coming out as gay. Many fans are suspecting it will be a huge shakeup and DC is going to have Batman come out of the Batcave while others are banking on the easy money –



Too easy.




Gay characters in the DCU are nothing new. In fact, there’s a whole DC wikia page dedicated to homosexual characters. When I heard that a new character was coming out I just figured either Judd Winick was given a new title to write for or there was a female cop that they forgot to make lesbian. Seriously. If you’re a female cop in Metropolis or Gotham then you’re probably a lesbian.


Between this and Marvel Comics announcing that it’s first openly gay superhero Northstar is getting married, the thoroughly misnamed One Million Moms (there’s certainly less than a million of them) has started a boycott of DC and Marvel comic books.


You may remember OMM from when they made a big stink about Ellen DeGeneres being the new spokesperson for JC Penny because having a gay person try to sell you clothes on TV corrupts children or whatever.



If I remember right they were super successful in the campaign, JC Penny went out of business and Ellen was burned at the stake for laying with a woman as one lays with a man. They’re really a force to be reckoned and I’m sure the comic book industry will crumble under the pressure in a matter of days.



I mean, their demands are reasonable. They just want the entertainment industry as a whole to not acknowledge that homosexuality exists for the sake of their children. From their “issues” page on their website, “Children desire to be just like superheroes. Children mimic superhero actions and even dress up in costumes to resemble these characters as much as possible. Can you imagine little boys saying, ‘I want a boyfriend or husband like X-Men?'”



If your kid is saying that than he was gay long before he read any X-Men.


p.s. My prediction for the DC character that comes out of the closet: Woozy Winks

“Cling tightly to my butt cheeks, Woozy!” “I’m clingin’, Plas! I’m clingin’!