Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 3/15
I get frustrated when science is doing something cool – in this case sampling water from a lake buried under four kilometers of ice to see if there is life there – and the results are less than thrilling.
I mean, it should be enough that they drilled through four kilometers of ice and took a sample of the lake water to begin with. And I admit, that is pretty fucking cool.
I was really hoping they would find something else there. Maybe they still will but for right now, it looks like the only thing they discovered was water.
Admit it. It would have been way cooler if they’d found one of these!
I don’t want to sound bitter but I’ve seen water before.
*Note: It isn’t over yet. There is a lot more scientific work to be done. For now, though, there are no ice monsters in Antarctica. Dammit.
Kentucky Wants to Pass a Law Making it OK to Discriminate Based on “Deeply Held Religious Beliefs”
This bill is clearly authored so businesspeople can discriminate against gay clientele without fear of a lawsuit. However, it would seem to me that the ramifications are far greater than just making sure gay people will never know if they will be refused service by a homophobic business owner.
I would assume this law would apply to anything someone could call a “deeply held religious belief” and it expressly allows people to ignore laws or regulations.
Boy, I sure can’t think of any ways people could abuse that legislative loophole.
I mean, I realize that it is super important to make sure that hard working business owners can refuse to help anyone who has a rainbow sticker on their car but why open up the floodgates to all sorts of other things? How about Muslim business owners refusing to sell liquor to women? Refusing to serve women period?
How about some weird Satanic cult trying to engage in human sacrifice?
OK, that second one is a little crazy, I admit. But it is no more crazy than trying to describe “discrimination” as “religious freedom.”
If you are going to write a law like this, you must really hate gay people. And no, I don’t think hate is too strong a word.
Minnesota Representative Abuses his Floor Time to Introduce a Friend who Left the “Gay Lifestyle”
Representative Glenn Gruenhagen has made several comments about homosexuality. He says there is no such thing as a gay gene, which is technically true but ignores the evidence that suggests homosexuality does have a biological component and is, therefore, not a choice.
But you know what? Who gives a shit? What if homosexuality is a choice (it isn’t)? What if people decide, for whatever reason, that they can’t find love with the opposite gender?
Fuck ’em, right? If they can’t find love like everyone else (who is straight) then we should make sure they know they are broken.
Broken and fabulous!!!
Well, Representative Greunhagen, you are the one who is broken. You are the one who believes that your moral code is the only moral code and the rest of us have to comply because otherwise you will be miserable.
I realize this is a horrible thing to say, but if legalized gay marriage makes Rep Gruenhagen miserable, I hope he is really fucking miserable. Soon.
Speaking of the MN GOP, In the Hearings on Gay Marriage, Several Cited a recent Survey’s Saying Majority of Minnesotans Don’t want Gay Marriage
Well look, I know being against Gay Marriage is a big GOP thing right now but I think if they are going to cite surveys as their reason for opposing such a measure, they should use surveys as their reason to vote for everything, don’t you?
For instance, a majority of Minnesotans favor raising taxes on the wealthy. 53% said so. How may GOP senators do you think will vote for that even though the same percentage said they are against Gay Marriage?
Given majority opinion has always been behind on issues of civil rights (and yes this is a civil rights issue), your argument is invalid. Stop claiming you are representing the will of the people if you are unwilling to do so on every issue.
When you know you’ve lost, you have a couple of options. One: you can lose with grace and dignity.
Two, you can come up with bullshit reasons why Gay Marriage is a problem by claiming it will cost the state money in benefits to same-sex partners.
Oh no! We can’t do the right thing! It would cost something!
Oh hey let me think about….who the fuck cares???? If we were talking about legislation banning contraception or abortion, there wouldn’t be any consideration of the amount of money we’d have to spend defending against the inevitable lawsuit, would there?
The people pulling off this shit are stalling. They are spiteful and petty and won’t stop until they run out of options.
The good news is: they are going to run out of options.
Missouri Bill Allows Doctors and Hospitals to Deny Reproductive Services to Women
Dear women in Missouri: your reproductive health is not as important as your doctor’s peace of mind.
Sure, you may die because they will deny you a life saving abortion or simply endure the pain of a bad menstrual cycle that could be fixed by going on the pill but at least your medical provider can sleep at night.
Not only that, but they will be able to avoid the pesky guilt that might arise from simply referring you to someone who would provide you the medical care that they were morally unable to provide. Because we don’t want doctors to feel bad about going against their morals where the health of their patient is concerned, do we?
This bill is about you, ladies. It is about the choices your doctors don’t want you to make and how they can make sure you won’t be able to make them!
Doesn’t that make you feel better?
Nothing makes a society healthier than a good dose of shame about their own sexuality. Sure, sex feels good and it can also be used for procreation but just because it’s natural doesn’t mean we should enjoy it.
The best way to ensure we have a healthy attitude about sex, apparently, is to convince young people that they should never fuck outside of marriage. And if they do have sex outside of marriage, let’s make sure they feel really bad about it.
Would it be OK if we had pre-marital sex with bags over our heads so they didn’t recognize us?
That way, kids won’t be obsessed with sex at all. They’ll just figure it is something that happens when they find the right partner (of the opposite gender) and they get married.
That seems like the way most kids think about sex already, right?
If we go with this plan, there’s no chance it would backfire and make kids more interested in sex, right????
And hey! If we don’t make gay marriage legal, that means the gays can never have sex while married so we can make them feel extra shitty about their sexual behavior. BOOM!
I won’t say a lot about this because Ryan’s budget is a showpiece meant to curry favor with the hard core Republican base in order to shore up his position as a strong Presidential candidate in 2016.
He calls it balanced but, of course, it is not. He isn’t interested in revenue generation, only cuts that will disproportionately hurt the poor.
He’d never do this sort of thing if he became President and neither would his party because they all want the senior vote and cutting Medicare is not the way to cut the senior vote.
So his budget is all about looking good without actually putting forward something that is a logical starting point to fixing the federal budget. I know some people want to think that Ryan is somehow different.
He’s not.
I’m Apparently the Only Person who Thinks the New Pope Looks Like Jonathan Pryce
This doesn’ t piss me off but other people need to see this. I’m seriously not making this up. Look:
Jonathan Pryce, Actor.
Fracis I, Pope
It’s the same guy!!!! Right?????
Oh – it does piss me off that this new guy is just as much of a homophobe as the last one. It doesn’t surprise me. But it pisses me off.
One response to “Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 3/15”
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Grail Diary 
Over here, actually, it is no longer lawful for doctors to refer to someone who is not a bigot. They have to provide the medically appropriate treatment, and only refer if it is medically necessary.