Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 4/5

New York’s Cardinal Dolan wants to Improve the Catholic Church’s Message about Gay Marriage

Oh that’s great Cardinal!  I’m glad to see that a high-ranking member of the Catholic Church finally realizes that the Church has no right to make moral judgements for those individuals who aren’t Catholic and you’d stay out of the political arena and…wait a minute.

No.  That’s not what he thinks at all.  He wants gay people to know that sex is only OK if you are trying to produce offspring so while it is totally OK to be gay, you can’t actually have sex or be married or anything like that.  Gay people are totally entitled to friendship, though.

He also wants gay people to know that the Catholic Church is not anti “anybody.”  They don’t hate gay people.  They just want to make sure that gay people know they aren’t permitted to sexual fulfillment the way straight people are.

I came up with a new message! What do you guys think?

So basically, the difference between gay guys having male friends who are gay and me having male friends who are gay is a lifetime of unresolved sexual tension?  I bring this up an awful lot but you know what?  If that is really what god wants for gay people, god is a dick.

How about you work on improving that message, Cardinal?

Are All Anti-Immigration Memes this Dumb?

Read through this meme.  Just read it.

So what is it trying to say, exactly?  That the US Government should be more like North Korea or Iran?  That’s really what we want?  Let’s fucking SHOOT immigrants!  It’s what the Taliban would do!

While we’re at it, let’s dynamite the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln memorial because it is a graven image!

Really?  That would be better?

Is it trying to say that immigrants are what is bankrupting our country even though social programs for the poor (if they are poor) are not the majority of the problem and hey, aren’t these immigrants in our country mostly working and paying taxes anyway?

Wouldn’t we be less in debt if we hadn’t fought a war in Iraq for no good reason?  That was pretty expensive,  wasn’t it?

All I get from this meme is the knowledge that anyone who shares it knows nothing about immigration, nothing about our national budget and nothing about the reasons we shouldn’t be using Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea as examples of how to treat people.

Some People Aren’t Coming to CONvergence Because a Room Party they Like isn’t Going to be There

Any time I comment on CONvergence I need to be clear that I’m not speaking for the convention in any way.  I’m speaking for myself.  If you have a problem with what I think, do not mistake my thoughts for convention policy because they are not.

You know, it really sucks that CONvergence is so big that it can’t host every room party that fills out an application.  It further sucks that some of the parties that don’t get in are super popular.  I feel badly for people who want to do something at the convention and can’t.

I don’t feel badly for people who came to the convention solely because of that single room party.  I don’t feel their pain at all.

Instead, I feel the pain of over a hundred people who worked their ass off to put on a convention for those people who only give a rip about one room party.  There are dozens of room parties and they all work their butts off to put on something amazing.  Screw all of them, I guess.

And the folks that put on the panels, the people who book acts for main stage, the people who ensure there is food in consuite all weekend long?  Screw them too.

If that one party is the whole reason you come to the convention, I’m OK if you don’t come.  We’re going to have over 6000 people this year.  It is going to be crazy crowded and we are trying to figure out a way to deal with those crowds.  Losing a few people who were only there for one room party doesn’t feel like a big thing.  I’m pretty sure those people can find what they like somewhere else.

To be clear – if you like the convention, great! I totally understand that the fact a feature you enjoyed won’t be there is frustrating.

If all you enjoyed was that one feature, though, why were you going?

The Internet Freaks out over Cesar Chavez

So Sunday was Easter.  The Google Doodle, however, was not a picture of Jesus’ empty tomb (which would be pretty dull because – well – nobody’s there) or an Easter Bunny or Easter eggs.  Instead, it was a picture of Cesar Chavez, who is not the same person as Hugo Chavez.

Not very many people knew that, apparently, and got pissed off that Google wasn’t honoring their religion and was instead honoring a deceased dictator that they didn’t like even though Google was doing nothing of the sort.  In retaliation, they all said they were going to us Bing or Yahoo or some other search engine that wasn’t google.

That guy doesn’t look anything like Jesus! Jesus was a white guy!

Maybe they could use those other search engines to look up Cesar Chavez.  They probably wouldn’t like him either, because he organized farm workers and “organized workers” sounds a lot like “communism” to people who don’t know what the fuck they are talking about.

Georgia GOP Chair says that Marriage Equality is just an Invitation for Fraud!!!

This is a new one.  I mean, she mentions that gay sex is unnatural but her primary objection to gay marriage, it seems, is the idea that a couple of straight guys could just get gay married to defraud the government!

Oh my god!  We shouldn’t let gay people get married because evil straight people might abuse the law.

Because, you know, they couldn’t do that now, could they?

Actually, yeah.  They can.  She even admits as much.

So what is her problem again?

Oh, right. Gay sex freaks her out.

Fortunately there is a solution.  She can simply not have gay sex.

Arkansas State Representative Fails to Offer Words of Comfort to a Mother Upset About a Law he is About to Pass

I’m not sure why this is but the most important thing on a lot of conservative agendas right now is making sure that people can pray in schools.  One might think this is out of understanding for Muslim children, who are expected to pray five times a day.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s the reason.

In Arkansas, they are working to enact a law forcing schools to observe a minute of silence at the beginning of every day.  You gotta do it.  If you just happen to use that time to pray well then, that’s cool.  It isn’t state sanctioned prayer.  It’s state sanctioned silence.

So, we’re supposed to just….stand here?

Totally different.

The parent of an atheist child wrote that she was concerned about the law so a caring representative sent her a few choice biblical passages to help.  Here’s one of them:

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

Thanks for the comfort, god!  That will make a little girl concerned about bullying feel so much better!

Sitcom Character Dates and then dumps an Atheist

Why does she dump him?  Because he’s an atheist.

How can he love anybody, she wonders, if he doesn’t love god?  Yes.  Somebody wrote that.

The guy doesn’t believe god exists.  What does that have to do with loving or not loving anybody?

As a member of the godless minority, I’m used to having my beliefs poorly represented in popular culture.  This doesn’t annoy me so much as frustrate me.

At what point will being an atheist be depicted as something that is – you know – just kind of normal?

Manager Tries to Fire a Gay Employee because he was Assaulted

The husband of a co-worker took a 2×4 to his face and the result, according to his manager, was too much negative publicity.  Better to fire him and face the negative publicity from that, I guess.

It’s what Donald Trump would do!

Well the CEO of the company stepped in and suggested that firing a guy because he got beaten up was perhaps a step to far.  I see no mention in this article about the manager being fired for opening Applebees up to one hell of a discrimination lawsuit.

To all the members of the religious right out there who seem to think that you don’t hate gay people, keep in mind, your words inspire behavior like this.  You can claim you “love” gay people all you want but if you weren’t out there publicly fanning the flames of homophobia and bigotry there woulnd’t be assholes with two by fours beating up gay guys in parking lots.

Is that really what you want to encourage?

If not, shut the fuck up.

North Carolina Legislators Figure State’s Rights Trump the Constitution so they are Going to Establish a State Religion

Dear far right members of the Republican party: this is not smaller government.  Deciding that the federal government can’t stop you from forcing one particular religion on the citizens of your state doesn’t protect anyone.

It, in fact, ensures discrimination against all other religions will happen.

It will also ensure that you’ll have to fight this one all the way to the supreme court and I don’t think you really want to win.  Because if you win, the supreme court will effectively say that states can now do whatever the fuck they want and the federal constitution means shit.

Do you really want that?

Sure you do.  Until the Democrats are in control.  Then you don’t want it at all.

Grow the fuck up and deal with the fact that religion and politics are supposed to be separate.

Update:  In a strange turn of events, the North Carolina Speaker of the house killed the bill, probably in an attempt to prove that not all Republicans are idiots.

Minnesota House Republicans Introduce “Compromise” Bill for Same-Sex Civil Unions

Republicans are trying to make it look like they don’t have anything against gay people since it has finally occurred to them that homosexuals are a voting bloc they might want to court.

In an attempt to avoid pissing off the religious right (that is a larger voting bloc), they are offering a “separate but equal” option that they hope will possibly draw some conservative Democrats away from marriage equality.

At least that is sure what it looks like.  It definitely doesn’t look like they understand that the legal right surrounding civil unions are still easy to ignore.  Nor does it look like they understand that words have power and “marriage” is a more powerful word that “civil union.”

Hey – does anyone know a baker who makes civil union cakes?

What they do seem to understand is that they are losing and they will do anything they can to pretend they were sort of on the right side of history.

University Professor Engages in the Worst Kind of Thought Experiment

The gist of his argument is that a crime hasn’t actually been committed if a woman is raped while she is unconscious and therefore has no recollection of the event.  We are assuming that she doesn’t get an STD or pregnant.  With no negative result from the rape, is there really a crime?

Uh….YES.

What the fuck kind of messed up thought experiment is this?  He equates unconscious rape with someone suing other people for looking at pornography.  Read the article if you want to follow the convoluted logic train to crazy town.

If we were to follow his particular path of logic drugging a woman unconscious so one could “reap the benefits” (his words) would not result in a rape charge unless she were impregnated or otherwise injured.  I suppose there would still be charges stemming from illegally drugging her.

Clearly this is a thought experiment but it is a bad thought experiment because any suggestion that the act of rape is somehow “not as bad” if the victim is unconscious is kind of stupid.

Rape is rape.  Rape is wrong. How’s that for a thought experiment?

Roger Ebert Died

I don’t get too choked up about most celebrities but Roger Ebert was one of those guys who had a direct impact on who I am and what I think.  I didn’t always agree with his opinion of a movie but his reviews were always sincere.  He wanted me to understand why he liked or disliked a movie.  Then, based on what I knew of his reviews, I could decide for myself.

In the last few years, when cancer took away his speaking voice, his writing voice grew more distinct and interesting.  While he was never willing to call himself an “atheist” or an “agnostic,” he wrote extensively about his godlessness and death in a way that made him approachable.  He was a liberal and never apologized for his political point of view.  When someone would tell him to “stick to movie reviews,” he would tell them that he couldn’t review movies without taking his own biases into account.

Martin Fucking Scorsese cared what Roger Ebert thought.

I want to believe that somewhere he and Siskel are talking about all the movies that came out since Siskel passed away.  The realist in me knows that isn’t what is happening.  The romantic in me smiles at the possibility anyway.

You want to really understand Ebert?  Listen to the commentary tracks he recorded for Citizen Kane or Casablanca.  They are filled with trivia, yes, but also passion for film.  Ebert was passionate and he taught others how to be passionate as well.

Sadly, we will never do it as well as he did.