Friday, February 21, 2014

FINALLY, A JIM CROW THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH.

Conservatives finally have something to celebrate -- a wave of laws to deny public-accommodation relief to gays who've been discriminated against, so long as offending business remembers to cite the Lord or His equivalent. There's a bunch of it out there but National Review's Kevin D. Williamson will do:
Barry Goldwater, who set the great precedent for Arizonans’ shocking liberal sensibilities, had been an instrumental figure in the Phoenix desegregation effort but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he believed that by expanding the federal mandate it would lead to cumbrous and byzantine federal micromanagement of social affairs, and about that much he has been proved correct. The concept of “public accommodation” has been so inflated that as a practical matter no private sphere exists outside the home when the question of discrimination arises. That situation does not inculcate mutual toleration and respect, but the opposite.
And that's why there's still racism -- because Big Gummint won't get out of the way and let businesses say, "Keep walking, nigger, we don't serve your kind."  (Or "faggot," whatever.)

It's like they don't want any more votes, isn't it?

301 comments:

  1. There is literally no limit to the invidiously discriminatory practices that people can justify on "religious" grounds. Could a slope be any more slippery than this?

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  2. mgmonklewis12:45 PM

    Fortunately, in South Dakota at least the pro-bigotry bills were defeated in committee in both the state House and Senate. Of course, it's shameful that anyone was pushing them in the first place, but we'll take our victories where we can get them.

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  3. Their top-rated comment is special. She describes a event from her youth in which she worked as a typesetter and was presented with a booklet containing what she described as "horrific acts." Let's make this interactive - what do you think this booklet depicted?

    A.) Methods of torture.

    B.) Instructions on making incendiary and explosive devices.

    C.) Vivid descriptions of racially motivated homicide.

    D.) Buttsex.

    No points for guessing it was "D." She followed this up with a most trenchant comment: "[F]or the sake of all things decent sometimes discrimination is necessary." Yes, sometimes we must shed the overly idealistic virtues of a liberal society and, against our own ethics, bar the gates to the undesirable. After all, two dudes? Ew.



    (Before you bring out the "compensating for something" angle - which is a cliche at this point, anyway - I might point out that this was from a woman. Actually, most of the more virulently anti-gay individuals at NRO are women - there was a lady from a week or so ago going on about how gay people shouldn't be allowed to bring up their partners at the office and insisted that sexual sins committed by gays are worse than those committed by straights. I don't have an explanation for this - I was kind of hoping one of you might have a theory)

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  4. mgmonklewis12:49 PM

    It's the standard wingnut M.O. They should always get their way on every issue, so anytime they don't, it's a de facto "religious" issue in their minds.

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  5. coozledad12:50 PM

    Not to mention some kickass ritual sacrifice. I mean, I might refuse to serve a Republican at my hypothetical restaurant, and also, serve a Republican at my restaurant. Thank you, slippery slope!

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  6. Pupienus12:57 PM

    My strongly held religious beliefs prevent me from accommodating Chistians.

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  7. mgmonklewis12:58 PM

    Here's a link to the writeup about the Senate bill's defeat earlier in the week. The butthurt is strong in the bigotry supporters.
    http://www.argusleader.com/article/20140219/NEWS/302190025/S-D-lawmakers-toss-out-vindictive-bill?nclick_check=1
    I couldn't find a link to the House bill's defeat, which was yesterday.
    Keep in mind the Repubs have a supermajority in both houses, so the Democrats needed help to kill these awful bills. Apparently the wingnut hate-fest has gotten so bad that even some fellow Republicans are getting appalled.

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  8. Pupienus1:00 PM

    Why do you hate the Constitution Arizona? Why do you hate America?

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  9. coozledad1:02 PM

    The reintroduction of laws like that would have serious consequences for the flow of cash. When you see Republicans behaving sensibly, it's because they've suddenly realized they are likely to lose money.


    But it's not as though they really know a damn thing about money, except how to steal or inherit it.

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  10. In my opinion, the reasons people stay in religions/cults are myriad, and very rarely do these reasons have a damn thing to do with morality/justice/love. As for the more prevalent motivations, there is frequently a gender divide.


    Talibangelical men are into power. They hate teh gheys same as they hate everyone else who think that human beings have inalienable rights, along with an added ick factor, some compensation, probably jealousy and longing. They may still work with a gay man if there is a buck to be stolen/conned/donated for missionary purposes.


    Talibangelical women are into judgement and black/white 'morality'. Give them someone they can accuse, criticize, tsk at, talk down to, and they are in their preferred element.


    These ain't'nt universal, there are plenty of horrible reasons people stay religious, I can't cite anything so grain of salt, but I think I'm getting there. Nor do I conflate religion and faith. Priest have religion, and build $500k additions to their cabins with parish money. Nuns have faith, and get arrested for protesting nuclear proliferation. I'm fine with faith.

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  11. Helmut Monotreme1:07 PM

    Well when every stray thought that pops into their head is the 'voice of god', they are effectively granted divine sanction to do anything they please. It's mighty convenient.

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  12. Gonna need a bigger crockpot.

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  13. You speaks truth, coozledaddio.

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  14. D'aww, who's the handsome young man?

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  15. LookWhosInTheFreezer1:11 PM

    I'm guessing that her hubby/boyfriend has expressed an interest in some backdoor action and she's found that icky-gay-moral-decay is a an easier way to knee-cap his efforts than simply invoking her own lack of consent (thus acknowledging the concept in reality.) Better to be a homophobe than a suspected Feminazi.

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  16. It's like they don't want any more votes, isn't it?


    [Curtain rises on backdrop of two maps. One is the US House district map, gerrymandered to almost the molecular level. The other is the map of states at risk of switching from D to R in the Senate in 2014. A WINGNUT is standing on the shredded remnants of the Voting Rights Act, holding a tall stack of voter "fraud prevention" legislation.]


    WINGNUT: Thanks, but we've already got all the votes we need.


    [Curtain falls. Entire theater bursts into flames and is consumed.]

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  17. whetstone1:23 PM

    There is, after all, an almost infinite gradation of moral distinction
    between the views of well-intentioned people who do not wish to cater a
    gay wedding because of religious considerations and the odious,
    malicious position of Westboro Baptist et al. The courts and
    legislatures are poorly equipped to make those fine distinctions, but
    civil society has the ability to distinguish between an honorable
    disagreement and ill will.


    This reminds me of a comment thread I was directed to yesterday, about the lack of women in high positions in Silicon Valley. Commenters refused to believe that in such an elite, sophisticated meritocracy capable women would not be given a fair shake by execs/venture capital firms/headhunters/etc. Why, they're out to make money! (No one ever does anything shortsighted, stupid, or counterproductive when trying to make money.)

    "Civil society has the ability to distinguish between an honorable
    disagreement and ill will." Well, sure. It also has the ability to say, "you know what? Ill will is awesome."

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  18. mortimer20001:27 PM

    I love Williams' tortured logic that the only thing which will truly inculcate mutual toleration and respect is the freedom to practice one's bigotry unencumbered by government. If only Lester Maddox wasn't prevented from keeping blacks out of his restaurant he would have hunk up his ax handle and been filled with mutual toleration and respect. How the fuck do you even begin to argue with that?

    The NRO comment section is a hoot. It's got everything from advice to bake wedding cakes that taste awful, the claim that not baking homo cakes is just like Hertz refusing to rent cars to blind people, to whines about the real victims of gaystapo bullying and discrimination: white people (alt. conservatives). So I guess Williams is right, these people have yet to reap the benefits of an unchecked flowering of prejudice.

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  19. Pupienus1:30 PM

    Me, of course. Teh Ho has that picture in his office so that people can ask who it is and he says "My husband." They have to ask when it was taken. "Last year."

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  20. Formerly_Nom_De_Plume1:31 PM

    genuine hostility toward gay Americans is today a distinctly minority inclination but one that still should be challenged


    If only there were some way of identifying the people with hostility toward gay Americans, and some way for people like Williamson to challenge them.

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  21. Spaghetti Lee1:31 PM

    to cumbrous and byzantine federal micromanagement of social affairs


    Gov't: "Don't treat people like shit because they're non-white or non-straight."


    Righties: "AUGH SO COMPLICATED I CAN'T TAKE IT! I HATE YOU! YOU'RE RUINING MY LIFE! (slams door)."

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  22. Bizarro Mike1:37 PM

    ...Then he would challenge them to buy more gold. End time's a-comin'! Get it while it's yellow!

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  23. Be sure to skim the fat off the broth first.

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  24. Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps1:50 PM

    The slippery slope is greased with Republican tallow. Recycle, reduce, reuse!

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  25. glennisw1:54 PM

    So, let me ask a question - if a business decides not to serve gay people, does the law protect an employee of the business who decides to defy that decision, based on his own religious belief?

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  26. Fats Durston1:54 PM

    At my small bizness, we reserve the right to refuse service to rock badgers, menstruating women, men who have recently discharged, Molech-worshippers, wizards and mediums, beard-edge-marrers, hunchbacks and dwarfs, Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. IT'S IN THE BIBLE!!!!!!

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  27. William Miller1:57 PM

    "The concept of “public accommodation” has been so inflated that as a practical matter no private sphere exists outside the home when the question of discrimination arises."


    Can't really argue with that. Good that Kevin's figured it out; not good that he's bitching about it.

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  28. Speaking of comments, I found another awesome one down there. There's a guy mediating on the definition of the word "discrimination," and...hell, here's the comment, I can't improve on it:

    There are several valid definitions of "discriminate"...To differentiate the bad, or the mediocre, from the good. It also means to "tell a difference or to draw a distinction" This is another "good" thing... To lose the ability to make those distinctions and to act upon your best judgment is to infringe upon your individual rights.



    Wow. I bet when you talk to people at parties, they suddenly realize that they have to call home? Even the ones who don't have kids?


    Have I thanked Rich Lowry recently? Thank you, Rich Lowry, for showing the world the caliber of your readers.

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  29. redoubtagain2:04 PM

    Now, I can't possibly be the only person who remembers Arizona losing Super Bowl XXVII over their Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday shenanigans.

    This will last just as long as it takes some plaintiff's lawyer to read Part 1 of the 14th Amendment.

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  30. if only there were some mechanism civil society could utilize in order to distinguish between an honorable disagreement and ill will.

    i would call this mechanism, "foverment."

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  31. Yeah, there's a lot of mutual toleration and respect in saying: "You're wrong and filthy and damned and I'll never do business with you."

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  32. vista2:32 PM

    All I ask is that these businesses be loud and proud of their discrimination and put large signs on their fine establishments that state they don't do business with the gays, atheists, minorities, etc. That way I too can exercise some discrimination and not do business with them.

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  33. mgmonklewis2:34 PM

    Reminds me of the summary of the Ring of the Niebelung in the tremendous short film All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vNReqUGtsc
    (about 6:00 in) "People on fire!"

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  34. Oh, I sadly know.

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  35. ChrisV822:35 PM

    And why do cripples always get the good parking spots and the spacious bathroom stalls? What about my rights??

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  36. Thats actually a helluva good question.

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  37. Jaime Oria2:37 PM

    Recognition of AI personhood! Rights for robots! Wait - what does a robot need an extra-roomy bathroom stall for?

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  38. Yeah, where is the hardship in it? Why wouldn't they want to to expand their consumer base? Oh, right, because of the bigotry they try to deny.

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  39. I think the answer simply lies in this: the kind of woman who reads and comments at the NRO is already a sliver of a subset of a lunatic fringe. If they are catholic they are enraged, frightened, and revolted by the sexual abuse scandal in the church and they have been taught to externalize the pedophilia scandal onto gay men, rather than on to pedophilic priests. If they are evangelical they are taught about the evils of homosexuality from an all over politicized viewpoint in which it is a danger to everyone.


    Interestingly enough the accusation in the original post that federal laws against discrimination leave "no safe places in public" jumps with the fact that for your christianist/dominionist type there are no truly public/secular spaces at all. If god is going to drown everybody for the sins of the few you can see how this would be obvious. No place is "private" from the avenging god so there are no private sins or private liberties which are not of concern to your neighbors.


    Its kind of the inverse of the way I feel about gun nuts owning major weaponry or atomic bombs in the house next to mine. I'm against it because, obviously, the barrier between his "private space" and my "private space" is only notional. Similarly, they feel very strongly that someone else's private sex acts impinge on their private lives and religious identity, like its a toxic miasma or a (literal) dirty bomb.

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  40. Really? You are adorbs.

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  41. tigrismus2:47 PM

    "[F]or the sake of all things decent sometimes discrimination is necessary."

    I wonder, has she read the Bible?

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  42. That's basically "tolerate my intolerance, libtards, or self destruct!!"

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  43. BigHank532:48 PM

    There is a disturbing interpretation of the Cain & Abel story that pretty much comes right out and states that not only are you responsible for keeping your brother on the path of righteousness, you're also responsible for their sins, too. As a matter of fact, by enabling another person's sin in any way whatsoever, you commit the worst sin of all: endangering their immortal soul. So by helping to publish a booklet that might encourage some dewy-eyed innocent to indulge in forbidden pleasures of the flesh puts you on the express train to hell.

    The same logic is used to argue against welfare, drug legalization, needle exchange programs, and Gardasil.

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  44. Of course she has, she's separating the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the tares.

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  45. Wrangler2:49 PM

    Ok Kev, by all means, compare marriage equality laws to the Civil Rights Act. Not only does this make it totally clear we are, in fact, talking about a civil rights issue; but it also ensures that any African Americans with strong anti-homosexual feelings will continue to think of voting Republican as something akin to brushing your teeth with razor blades.


    I'd love to play chess with KW. He probably makes his move and then immediately declares himself checkmate.

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  46. To change the robot baby.

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  47. redoubt2:52 PM

    National Review's Random Band Name Generator

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  48. Battery acid is hell on diapers.

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  49. montag22:56 PM

    Yeah, there's a definite attitude that they've got all the votes they need. They've been able to have equal Republican representation in the White House since 1952, and thanks to some truly Machiavellian gerrymandering, have broken the Democratic hold on the House and have gained the Senate a number of times (which has hardly mattered since their enforcement of the cloture rules has made anything but an overwhelming Dem majority moot). All that with a little over a quarter of the population.



    As importantly, with the help of the quisling DLC/New Dem movement and the Blue Dog Dems, along with a corporate money-driven media campaign, they've moved the substance and tone of the public debate further and further rightward. What was mostly unremarkable domestic policy in the Eisenhower administration has now become anathema even to no small number of Democrats.


    The current push to undo the Voting Rights Act, along with various and sundry other efforts to limit opposition voting, is just an ongoing effort directed at improving the odds (let's not forget that a modern chief justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, made his party bones intimidating and chasing away blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans at the polls), and reinforcing long-held aristocratic beliefs in the principle that, as John Jay said, "the people that own the country ought to run it."


    They know they win when fewer people vote, so, that's the direction in which they push (because winning is a lot more important to them than sensible governance), and the more extremely they behave, the more motivated their truly insane base is to endorse them. The Tea Party is not a separate party for a reason. There's nothing remarkable or unique in this observation. It's just SOP today.



    Is it wholly dysfunctional? Of course--but, how else does one transform a nominal democracy into a right-wing polyarchy or a plutocracy without rendering inoperative the democratic superstructure currently in place?

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  50. tigrismus3:02 PM

    I was thinking of the chopped-up and parts mailed out lady in Judges, which seems a tad more horrific than buttsex, but maybe she does apply the sheep/goats thing to NT/OT(except for the SMITING stuff, that's A-OK) texts and just ignores the "horrific acts" in books she approves of.

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  51. smut clyde3:04 PM

    The courts and legislatures are poorly equipped to make those fine distinctions, but civil society has the ability to distinguish between an honorable disagreement and ill will.


    That's why lynch mobs work so much better than trials.

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  52. sigyn3:09 PM

    That's a great idea. The same goes for any business using religion as an excuse to screw employees out of benefits. I know that I haven't set foot in Hobby Lobby since I first heard about them.


    And I used to spend a bit of money there (I'm poor but I like to redecorate).

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  53. mrstilton3:10 PM

    Wait. You made up that bit about the rock badgers, didn't you?

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  54. satch3:17 PM

    Also too:



    YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!
    And,
    I DIDN'T ASK TO BE BORN!!!*




    *Not valid in the Choice debate

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  55. mrstilton3:19 PM

    It's simpler that, I suspect. My hypothesis is that the Ladies-Against-Women-types who are outraged over gays (and boy, are they ever) are outraged because gay guys are violating the terms of the bargain.

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  56. synykyl3:22 PM

    Also, is it ok to discriminate against people who you only *think* may be homosexual? How about people you suspect of other behaviors you object to on religious grounds? Can you refuse to serve people who may be blasphemers, adulterers, bankers, priests, or politicians.

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  57. satch3:28 PM

    I've often wondered the same thing in the Choice debate, which is usually portrayed as clueless men seeking to control women's bodies. This explanation of why some of the most virulent, strident anti choice voices belong to women is as good as any.

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  58. smut clyde3:29 PM

    The hyrax cheweth the cud yet lacketh cloven hooves.

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  59. satch3:32 PM

    Hmm...that doesn't leave much of a target demographic...

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  60. a wave of laws to deny public-accommodation relief to gays who've been discriminated against, so long as offending business remembers to cite the Lord or His equivalent

    I, for one, welcome our new Cromwellian overlords.

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  61. MikeJ3:33 PM

    Bovernment?

    http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l8ixt0S5rd1qds1ppo1_500.png

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  62. Gromet3:34 PM

    Huh. Maybe. Sorta related, if I understand you right: the Southern Baptist girl I dated for 2 years was ever paranoid that I was cheatin' on her -- she hated my attractive female friends and would cry any night I got stuck late at work. It had little to do with love and was, I think, an issue of power: she wanted total control over all the sex I might get, and therefore a way to govern me and be taken seriously. Any perceived threat to her power caused a meltdown. I've never dated anyone else so religious and have also never been in another relationship with such a connection between power/control and sex. (She also would ration sex, declaring it something "special," not an everyday occurrence.) I don't think it is a total leap to imagine that a similar woman might resent gays because they have 100% "opted out" of being controlled. (Although in the case of my particular gf, she was politically liberal because her minister was -- the kind of person who prided herself on having gay friends. So obviously it's complicated and I could be off.)

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  63. MikeJ3:38 PM

    Why do they hate capitalism so much? Shouldn't I be allowed to fire or refuse to hire any redneck bigot that's going to cost my company money by refusing to serve customers? Instead they're telling small business owners that they have to keep these deadbeat moochers on the payroll when they won't even do their jobs.

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  64. satch3:38 PM

    The problem is that Woolworth's in 1959 Greensboro probably thought that, as a bidness model, segregation was just dandy.

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  65. I would like to try this "dirty bomb" thing that you mentioned.

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  66. Ellis_Weiner3:42 PM

    Or, uh, Jews?

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  67. Gromet3:43 PM

    That's a fantastic litany.

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  68. PersonaAuGratin3:46 PM

    Being in the typesetting business, she should have known that Gutenberg used to hear "Nice work on the Bible, but when are you going to give us a buttsex pamphlet?" almost every day of his life.

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  69. Geo X3:46 PM

    I don't quite know why, but that list struck me as maybe the funniest thing ever.

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  70. Gromet3:46 PM

    Gosh, that's a really good point! The GOP pitches these laws as saving the small Christian business owner, i.e., the florist who doesn't want to make bouquets for gay weddings. What if I own a floristry and have no problem with gay weddings -- but one of my employees habitually turns away gay customers? The GOP wants a law that makes it impossible for me to fire him? Wow.

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  71. Tom M3:50 PM

    please don't flush the used batteries.

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  72. TGuerrant3:52 PM

    They should set up St. Ronnie's List so that non-public service providers can make private arrangements with gay haters planning private festivities that exclude gays but need services uncontaminated by gayed commerce, like flowers, cakes, music, decor, hair, nails, fashion - all that straight stuff.

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  73. Ellis_Weiner3:53 PM

    I've probably cited this before, but it reminds me of a fellow summer-camp counselor who told us of the Vice-Principal of a school berating a kid for his too-long hair. "We respect your right to wear your hair as long as you want to," the VP said. "But you have to respect our right to tell you how long you can wear it."

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  74. If John Galt can't get the best parking space, why should he even create jerbs???
    ~

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  75. TGuerrant3:54 PM

    Let's do Presbyterians instead. That element of surprise thing, y'know?

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  76. Gromet3:55 PM

    Wheeeee! Implementing this law is going to call for a hell of a lot more "byzantine micromanagement" of the world than currently exists.

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  77. BigHank533:55 PM

    How do you get off the accused-of-being-gay list, anyway? Can one simply bone a random person of the opposite gender? Does the state have to provide a random person of the opposite gender?

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  78. BigHank534:00 PM

    I hadn't known that you made it to one of the family reunions, Jaime.

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  79. TGuerrant4:01 PM

    I've heard something like that from men about lesbians now and then. In being disinterested in het sex, those women render men superfluous - and therefore powerless - in their lives, according to that mindset, and that cannot be tolerated.

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  80. TGuerrant4:05 PM

    Operates like the No Fly List. Trying to get off it means you deserve to be on it.

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  81. Helmut Monotreme4:08 PM

    Let's remember that these anti gay bills didn't come out of nowhere, they are the product of a coordinated campaign by an ALEC-like organization. These laws were written by "The American Religious Freedom Program", which is part of the "Ethics and Public Policy Center" which is run by Edward Whelan, who among other things was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

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  82. Subscribe to my magazine and I'll show you how.

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  83. I know plenty of het women who see prostitutes as, esentially, "scabbing" and allowing men access to sex without love and without marriage/family or social ties. But I have never met one who thought of gay sex as a problem--but maybe evangelical women are different because of the ideology surrounding gay sex in the christian community. For normal people sexual orientation is just sexual orientation and you presume that the people of X sexual orientation just have, you know, sex, with people they are interested in. But for the christian homophobic community gay sex is seen as kind of "super sex"--like a dangerous drug that once experienced puts other forms of drug and experience in the shade. Its also another thing that men do that excludes women--just like power and politics do. So I think that specifically christianist women see gay sex as society destroying and as potentially very alluring to the men in their communities--just the same way they have always felt about alcohol and porn. Its not a way to form new families (the Massachuesetts way!) but a way to break up existing families.

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  84. I'm more worried about all the pottage hate.

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  85. Bizarro Mike4:19 PM

    Yes, that's it on the nose. There are people who cannot conceive of a relationship between a man and a women without sexual power being involved. This also seems to come up in all of the gender role bullshit, as if adults can't have a reasonable conversation to figure out who will do the dishes and the laundry.

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  86. smut clyde4:34 PM

    no private sphere exists outside the home

    If your home is a private sphere it's probably your own fault for hiring that avant-garde architect.

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  87. Gromet4:41 PM

    Sort of like, "If she drowns, then she wasn't a witch"!

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  88. Jaime Oria4:57 PM

    It may be an Ivan Sanderson-esque anecdote, but it seems native Africans called the hyrax "little brother to the elephant". How was it known that they're in fact related? Crypto-zoologically spooooooky, kids...

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  89. smut clyde5:04 PM

    it's not unreasonable to put them in a family, what sharing a few observable features... tusks, and internal testes. And armpit nipples. Much like my own familSHUT UP SMUT

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  90. smut clyde5:06 PM

    Does the prohibition on eating hyraxes (or possibly hyraces) give them a kind of forbidden-fruit cachet for observant Jews?

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  91. But or the christian homophobic community gay sex is seen as kind of
    "super sex"--like a dangerous drug that once experienced puts other
    forms of drug and experience in the shade.

    See Romans 1:

    For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against
    nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working
    that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. (Romans 1:26–27 KJV)

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  92. synykyl5:21 PM

    I was going to include atheists and Jews in my list, but I figured "blasphemers" covered any religious beliefs someone might not like ;-)

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  93. smut clyde5:26 PM

    A few years ago I was visiting some friends in Bochum, and the question arose of how the German economy handled all those used batteries collected for recycling. "Oh," Axel explained, "we sell them to East Germany as new ones."

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  94. Obviously, there ought to be a religious override to ALL laws, not just public accommodations laws.


    Therefore, you should have a sincere belief in MY religion, which holds that God wants no speed limits or taxes and has sacraments that include prostitution and drugs.

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  95. No wonder we're such good friends! I was thinking about them too!

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  96. montag26:02 PM

    Oh, I think Rich Lowry is mostly--albeit unintentionally--more interested in showing the world the caliber of Rich Lowry.

    He's done that admirably well. Starbursts, anyone?

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  97. montag26:06 PM

    Hell, there are a lot of Randians who think the John Galts are the only ones that should have the right to drive (or be driven, as is their wont).

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  98. montag26:11 PM

    Guess that makes `em all-around assholes, doesn't it?

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  99. JennOfArk6:15 PM

    It's like they don't want any more votes, isn't it?



    Not if they come from niggers or faggots or whatever.

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  100. Geo X6:15 PM

    The thing that's most maddening is that these people are just *making things up* to support being assholes. Go ahead--show me the Bible verses where it says you have to refuse to to do business with gay people. Not to belabor the obvious or anything, but you CAN'T DO IT, because there AREN'T ANY. It's just vaguely extrapolating from this sense that mah bah-ble don't like them queers to something that has nothing to do with anything. For people who claim to take the Bible LITERALLY, they sure are keen on subjecting it to all kind of wild free-association when they want to show how it demonstrates god wants them to be petty shitheads.

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  101. coozledad6:34 PM

    and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
    Pre-standardized spelling.

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  102. realinterrobang6:59 PM

    I'm gonna go with "no," given that I just saw a "P.L.T." on the menu of a kosher deli -- fried pastrami with lettuce and tomato, which has got to be the grossest thing Ashkenazi cuisine has given the world since kishkes (the Yiddish word for "haggis without the redeeming qualities of oatmeal"). That is like some world-class level substitution...

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  103. realinterrobang7:05 PM

    Or, you know, she might also get really turned on by the thought of all that cock, the way a lot of straight women like gay male porn...and (unlike most straight women who consume gay male porn) just feel really guilty about it.

    Women aren't supposed to like sex! Women especially aren't supposed to get turned on by anything kinky and dirty! Eww!

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  104. smut clyde7:17 PM

    That situation does not inculcate mutual toleration and respect, but the opposite.
    Out of curiosity... does Williamson try to reconcile his concerns with the NR's old-time editorial policy in favour of apartheid? IIRC, Bill Buckley was not concerned with "inculcating mutual toleration and respect" because he believed that one-sided intolerance and disrespect were entirely warranted by the cultural and genetic superiority of white peoples.

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  105. smut clyde7:24 PM

    Honestly, I only buy those illuminated manuscripts for the sake of the articles, and not for the rude marginalia.

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  106. smut clyde7:27 PM

    Why, they're out to make money! (No one ever does anything shortsighted,
    stupid, or counterproductive when trying to make money.)


    Case in point: no English pubs have ever put up signs barring Irish, Gypsies and dogs.

    ReplyDelete
  107. M. Krebs7:29 PM

    I would eat that.

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  108. Mooser7:45 PM

    Now the big lie here, as always whenever they talk about this, is that segregation was a voluntary system. That is, under segregation, those who chose not to associate with other races don't have to. That is not the way segregation worked, at all. Segregation was imposed on whites and non-whites alike. And it was only imposed for the benefit of one party. I've noticed that rightards have been lying about this for years now that segregation is becoming a memory, and not a living system. It's the up-dated "happy slaves" nonsense. Up-dated to Jim Crow, that is.

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  109. Mooser7:48 PM

    Also, they do have some idea of where to draw the color line, I hope? After all, we wouldn't want people cheating, or being denied rights they are entitled to. So that is one thing a rightard always needs to stipulate: if you want to talk about race, you need to tell exactly how we can delineate these "races".

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  110. Mooser7:52 PM

    "says you have to refuse to to do business with gay people."


    Nope, you have to do something even stupider than that. You have to refuse to do business with people you perceive as gay. I mean, will they be having sex in your store!
    So you are going to turn away business, with imprecations, because of a set of mannerisms, speech patterns, or clothing style you perceive as gay. Another words, the customer is always wrong. That'll work out good.

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  111. randomworker7:53 PM

    Kevin used to be one of their more rational ones but he's gone down the rabbit hole too, I fear. The comments there are pretty awful. I couldn't make it past the first page or so.

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  112. KatWillow7:53 PM

    The courts and legislatures ... etc


    That's the THE stupidest statement EVER. EVER.

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  113. KatWillow7:55 PM

    Doesn't the Civil Rights Act cover this?

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  114. smut clyde8:01 PM

    Now the big lie here, as always whenever they talk about this, is that segregation was a voluntary system. That is, under segregation, those who chose not to associate with other races don't have to.


    I have to disagree there, because you have the libertarians arguing that segregation was an involuntary system, imposed by gubblement. So in the libertarian counterfactual world, absent segregation laws, businesses would have integrated naturally, in response to market forces. This seems to be Williamson's tack here... Governments should never intervene to prevent exploitation because that merely prolongs the exploitation, whereas in the absence of intervention, the people profiting from exploiting others will quickly stop doing so (just out of self-interest).

    Much as the Southern states would have abandoned slavery voluntarily if it weren't for Northern aggression.

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  115. KatWillow8:04 PM

    Yes, they already believe hetero sex is disgusting and immoral.

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  116. Mooser8:10 PM

    Aimai, bullets from ordinary guns often go through walls or windows and cause damage or injury to nearby properties and people.

    ReplyDelete
  117. KatWillow8:11 PM

    {If you really believe in tolerance, you'd tolerate my ______________ (bigotry, sexism, anti-science, homophobia... and so on.) Liberal Fascist Hypocrite!

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  118. Mooser8:12 PM

    Yet a policy of chastity until marriage was not, as far as she was concerned, even worth bargaining for? Nope, a distant dream of bygone days, that kind of chaste behavior. Or, maybe she just liked sex?

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  119. KatWillow8:16 PM

    They HAVE had some success with medical folk refusing to supply women with needed drugs and legal medical procedures. I'm thinking mostly of contemptible pharmacists who not only have refused to sell "abortion" medications, but refused to sell a (I think) coagulation drug to a woman who MIGHT have had an abortion. That Walreeens' employee got away with his/her behavior, since it was conscience or "religious" based. So I no longer shop at WALLGREENS

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  120. montag29:40 PM

    Oh, dear, do I have a story along those lines. There was a near-sphere involved... and a fellow who set Albion College's unofficial consecutive days on acid record... and a mountain side....

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  121. It's an obsolete spelling. Remember, the archaism in the KJV Bible is a feature, not a bug, of the translators. It isn't contemporary English of the late 16th Century.

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  122. You forgot the Assyrians!

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  123. Rabelais is magnificent. Somehow I doubt that he's what they had in mind...

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  124. She also would ration sex, declaring it something "special," not an everyday occurrence.


    Hang on, though ... the ration wasn't zero? From a Southern Baptist? Jeez, I always knew that my parents were picking some awful churches, but now I just want to cry.

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  125. So, just Jews from Westport, CT, then?

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  126. smut clyde11:13 PM

    My morbid curiosity leads me to wonder what an Operational Field Ration of Sex would involve, though I am sure it would be formulated by leading dietitians to supply all the calories and nutrients required for optimal function.

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  127. Can one simply bone a random person of the opposite gender?


    Hey, it worked for Julius Caesar.

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  128. smut clyde11:15 PM

    I would eat that, deep-fried in batter.

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  129. God wants no speed limits or taxes and has sacraments that include prostitution and drugs.


    Do you, uh, have any pamphlets?

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  130. smut clyde11:16 PM

    It's the messiness.

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  131. For people who claim to take the Bible LITERALLY, they sure are keen on
    subjecting it to all kind of wild free-association when they want to
    show how it demonstrates god wants them to be petty shitheads.


    Just for fun, try asking them about the evils of interest-bearing bank accounts sometime.

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  132. Fats Durston11:22 PM

    It'll be a cold day in hell before I recognize Assyri-uh!

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  133. chuckling11:46 PM

    And drone strikes.

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  134. chuckling11:52 PM

    Totally lame opposition helps.

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  135. chuckling11:57 PM

    Well, if you take the bible literally, and I think we all should, it's clear that god is a petty shithead, so they get the spirit of the thing, if not all the mechanics.

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  136. Gabriel Ratchet12:37 AM

    Ah, the Appeal to Webster's -- always a classic. This is the same sort of dipshit who says of course he's not homophobic because strictly speaking he isn't afraid of homosexuals ...

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  137. Geo X1:32 AM

    It's kind of weird that you have the exact same approach to the Bible as a crazed wingnut. You certainly wouldn't take their views about anything ELSE at face value, but when it comes to the Bible...?

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  138. MikeJ1:35 AM

    Or boiled in its mother's milk.

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  139. philadelphialawyer1:54 AM

    "The concept of 'public accommodation' has been so inflated that as a practical matter no private sphere exists outside the home when the question of discrimination arises."

    When I leave my home, it seems to me, I am almost outside of a strictly "private sphere." Why would it be otherwise? I leave my apartment, and already, I am outside an area that I have any business referring to or thinking of as "private." Even if I lived in a stand alone, single dwelling house, as soon as I reached the sidewalk or street, I would be in a public space. Public transit, stores, hotels, motels, restaurants, highway rest areas, gas stations, office buildings, schools, sports facilities, gyms, hospitals, etc, etc,--- none of them are part of any "private sphere."

    Unless I then go to the home of another person, or something that really is a "private club" (and not just a bar or restaurant pretending to be one) or, perhaps, a church or temple of some sort, I am in a clearly public sphere.

    I think this reflects basic physical reality as filtered through common sense legal definitions, rather than any "inflation."

    "That situation does not inculcate mutual toleration and respect, but the opposite."

    I don't see why this should be the case. Erring on the side of "public" rather than "private" means that fewer areas are in play for would-be discriminators. No, you can't kick the gay man, lesbian woman, trans sexual person, Jew, Muslim, African American, Latina, or Native American out of your bowling alley, your coin and stamp shop, your bakery, your medical office building, your tavern masquerading as a "private club," etc, etc. And you have to provide them with the same services as you do everyone else.

    You can't make people feel respect, but maybe you can make them have to pretend to show it. And, while to me, "toleration" is pretty weak tea, and not the word or the status that I want for myself and others, still, it is better than intolerance. MLK said, "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." I think something similar applies here. The law can't forcibly inculcate respect, but it can prevent blatant manifestations of disrespect. And that is pretty important.

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  140. philadelphialawyer1:56 AM

    "....I am almost ALWAYS outside....."
    Wish I could edit....sigh.

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  141. Of course, without federal government intervention, the usual response to the success of black-owned business was arson and murder- in the case of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the entire wealthy black enclave (Black Wall Street, as it was known) was put to the torch.

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  142. Church of Christ, Hedonist!

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  143. philadelphialawyer2:02 AM

    "There is, after all, an almost infinite gradation of moral distinction
    between the views of well-intentioned people who do not wish to cater a gay wedding because of religious considerations and the odious,
    malicious position of Westboro Baptist et al."
    Is there? Both want to discriminate against gay folks based on some reading of the same text that they both consider to be divinely inspired. And who says the folks not wishing to cater a gay wedding are "well intentioned?" As I see it, they have the same intentions as the WB folks. They think God wants them to treat gays differently and worse than they treat other folks. And, to me, that is NOT a good intention. Yes, the WB folks are more malicious and odious, but I fail to see the difference in kind rather than in degree. And the difference in degree is not all that great either.

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  144. For a quickie with Glenn Reynolds!

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  145. philadelphialawyer2:07 AM

    Yeah, with a little semantic juggling, anything can be made into a matter of "rights." I have the right to move my fist about as and where I choose in the immediate atmosphere above the Earth, and it is up to you to keep your face from being struck by it. Any other rule would violate my right!

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  146. All from the party of small government!

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  147. sigyn2:08 AM

    Such a busy little man, doing his part to spread misery anywhere he can. What does he do for relaxation? Steal candy from babies?

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  148. The only reason they aren't WBC supporters is because the WBC pickets soldiers' funerals. If they didn't claim that God kills good 'Murrican soldiers because of the ghey, the entire conservative movement would be behind them 100%.

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  149. That's just evil.

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  150. Pottage/frottage, they're easy to confuse.

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  151. Smarter than Your Average Bear2:37 AM

    Not in the US. Your employer can fire you for simply having the wrong political party bumper sticker on your car.

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  152. Buttsex is okay with Southern Baptists, but only among heteros. Haven't you heard of "saddlebacking"?

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  153. MRE... Must Ration Erections!

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  154. Smarter than Your Average Bear2:43 AM

    Wouldn't be anything left then

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  155. Smarter than Your Average Bear2:45 AM

    The truth often is ;)

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  156. Was this sandwich a kosher substitute for the goyisch hyrax, lettuce, tomato sandwich?

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  157. Yep, less calcium than in a single Tums, and less gray matter than the boiled head of a flea.

    ReplyDelete
  158. Daniel Björkman3:03 AM

    Yeah. Conventional wisdom is that any woman who isn't completely brainwashed by the patriarchy will naturally be pro-choice, because she might need an abortion someday. Yeah, well, she might - and a fiscal conservative might need welfare someday, but does that stop him from a) being sure that that will almost definitely never happen, b) being sure that if it does happen, he'll "take responsibility for his own fate instead of begging for handouts", and c) shitting all over the people who need welfare right now?

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  159. philadelphialawyer3:05 AM

    Yes, and of course the truth is that segregation was both a voluntary and an involuntary system at the same time, when viewed from different perspectives and in different times and places.
    For African Americans, there was pretty much nothing "voluntary" about Jim Crow. They were denied access and entry into institutions that otherwise appeared to be open to the general public. Or they were relegated to less desirable areas (like balconies) or to using the back or kitchen door and not the dining area and so forth. And they had no say in the matter.
    For Whites, the situation was different. While I suppose it was theoretically possible for them to find establishments which would not accept their trade on account of race, the truth is that those establishments were almost always inferior and that very few Whites wanted anything to do with them in the first place. Also, Whites, if they chose to, could usually mix with African Americans in certain marginal places (nightclubs, even more informal parties and so forth). And there were places, like the Cotton Club in Harlem, that actually catered to Whites and prohibited African American customers, even though the entire staff, including not only the wait staff, but the entertainers, were African American. Certainly, White folks could with impunity walk down "Black" streets in "Black" neighborhoods, and so forth, as they chose, and the parallel opportunities were not available to Black folks.
    As for time and place, voluntary and involuntary are not so easy to separate. Most places outside the South never had formal, apartheid like legal regimes of racial separation. The courts would enforce racial covenants relating to real estate, and the schools were often de jure as well de facto segregated. But there were not laws that said that restaurants, hotels, sports teams, swimming pools and so on HAD to be segregated or Whites only. And some businesses in some places and at some times, were, one supposes, segregated or made off limits entirely for Blacks because of the "voluntary" desire of their owners. On the other hand, custom is something half way between law and "voluntary" practice. A restaurant owner might want, as an individual, to practice racial neutrality, but if his customer base was mostly White and racist, he might feel that he could not do so. And White folks might do more than merely not patronize an integrated establishment, they might burn it down. White people, in the North, West, Midwest, and West Coast, "expected" certain kinds of establishments, especially "high class" ones, to be segregated or for Whites only. That was the culture and the custom. Was compliance with that expectation purely voluntary? Not really.
    In much of the South, there was an explicit legal regime of racial separation. And, over time, in many places, it actually got more and more explicit, detailed and incapable of evasion as time went on, rather than otherwise. Indeed, as segregation started to come under fire, States and local governments often dug in deeper, and made the laws more ironclad and draconian and ridiculous. Of course, it was also the case that many, probably most, White Southerners supported these laws. After all, they (and not Black people, who for the most part could not vote) elected the people who made the laws. And many, if not most, Southern Whites probably supported racial segregation regardless of what the law said as well. So, to say that segregation in the South was "involuntary" when it came to White folks, is, I think, pretty disingenuous too.
    Frankly, I think the voluntary/involuntary debate is mostly useless and ahistorical. It is important to conservatives and libertarians because it seems to have various implications for their ideological pet causes and peeves about government, the nature of society, and so on. But, for Black people living under Jim Crow, it was a distinction without a difference.

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  160. smut clyde3:09 AM

    So you're telling me that there were few prosecutions or lynchings of whites for drinking from the "Coloureds only" drinking fountain, or moving to the back of the bus?

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  161. Gromet3:15 AM

    Ha, well, here's TMI: I was 28, raised lax Catholic in NJ, and almost every girl I ever dated was Jewish; I was as unprepared for Southern Baptist reality as anyone could be. She was 24, she'd dated one guy for three years, plus a fling with a soldier -- that's at least two guys she'd gone sexy-time with, right?

    No. After our 3rd time, iirc, she confessed she'd only had sex once before me and it was "an accident." Shortly after the 3rd time, she took to locking herself in the bathroom and crying all night. "You ruined my life!" She was going to have to start lying to her mother now! Her life was a lie! Tears.

    You might wonder why I didn't flee at that point. Well, love? I wanted to make everything all right. I wanted her to see I was decent, and to realize that sex was, like, the best.

    I never stood a chance. Eventually, she demanded I marry her before we ever do it again. I was shocked! I said I couldn't marry someone who refused to sleep with me -- that meant we didn't have a functioning relationship! I didn't understand how she did not understand it this way.

    Anyway, I broke up with her. She was crushed -- she really thought we'd marry! That was the only reason she'd had sex with me at all! It was all so weird. And the second it ended, every (Yankee, Californian, atheistic, smart) person I knew said, "Thank God! She was awful."

    Anyway, that's how I learned about the South and about religion.

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  162. Gromet3:18 AM

    She claimed to like sex but it was freighted with terror and sorrow for her, because it rendered her impure and therefore an outcast. Or something? I just wrote the TMI history that would be my reply to you but I made it my reply to mds above...

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  163. philadelphialawyer3:54 AM

    Yeah, vanishingly few.

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  164. ColBatGuano4:19 AM

    Maybe they can require the gays to identify themselves, like with a badge or something.....

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  165. chuckling4:31 AM

    Taking it at face value recognizes its fictional qualities, historicity where appropriate and the political aims of its authors. Finkelstein and Silberman, or G.A. Wells are crazed wing nuts?

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  166. mommadillo5:51 AM

    You do realize that Jonah Goldberg will take this as a challenge?

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  167. BadExampleMan6:36 AM

    It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

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  168. coozledad7:15 AM

    And it would immediately followed by the morning hate.

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  169. coozledad7:19 AM

    Nah. He's probably more like Putin. He just sucks their bellies.

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  170. coozledad7:43 AM

    Among quite a few of them it's just more window dressing. Part of the collection of things they are expected to amass before they croak.

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  171. mrstilton8:07 AM

    [Hyraxes as forbidden fruit:] That would explain the guilty expressions on all those yeshiva bocherim I constantly see emerging from behind the hyrax cage at the zoo, wiping blood and fur from their lips.

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  172. mrstilton8:09 AM

    3rd declension, I believe; the plural is "hyractes".

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  173. David_LloydJones8:42 AM

    I was at a discussion on exactly this point at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, in Santa Barbara, a few years ago.

    The thing everyone agreed on as the meeting broke up (so they could all rush out to the parking lot to act like bobbysoxers as Kenneth Arrow drove up in his limousine!) was "We better work this all out soon -- while we got the the votes and they don't."

    -dlj.

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  174. David_LloydJones8:58 AM

    My favourite bit of kashrut lore is the the locust.

    Like other bugs it's treif, a no-no to eat, but some kind rabbi-mashgiach (the guys who actually enforce what's kosher and what's not) ruled an exception for times of famine.

    During a famine caused by locusts eating your crops, it's OK to eat the locusts if they have "truth" written on their bellies.

    Wey-yull, "truth" in Hebrew is "emet," which is written pretty much with a series of vertical lines, so any bunch of wrinkles will do. You wouldn't have to be very hungry at all to look at IIIII and decide that it said "emet," specially written for you by the great Maitre D in the sky.

    -dlj.

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  175. JennOfArk10:17 AM

    See: Cenotaph for Sir Issac Newton.

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  176. I know--this is why talking to people whose basic idea of "home" includes enormous empty swathes of ground around a private dwelling is a waste of time when talking about gun control in cities. They continue to act and believe that a person's actions in their "private space" have zero repercussions on people in immiediatly adjacent private spaces. They reify the idea of private property.


    There have been a number of reported incidents, one yesterday on KagroX's Gunfail at dkos, of people firing guns "on their own property" at targets fixed to the edge or boundary of the property. It should be obvious that if you are shooting at a target fixed to the fence you share with someone else that you are literally shooting into their space but apparently this did not occur to our heroes.

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  177. The first rule of (p)frottage is never talk about (p)frottage.

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  178. Jaime Oria10:57 AM

    Étienne-Louis Boullée libel !

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  179. Jaime Oria11:01 AM

    Sheesh - haven't those geniuses thought of just building them with easily accessible and activated off switches? Or at least program them to build the next set of von Neumann machines with said off switches?

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  180. "Much as the Southern states would have abandoned slavery voluntarily if it weren't for Northern aggression."

    Actually, in this case, I think they WOULD have eventually abandoned slavery, which is why, as I've said in other forums, Lincoln was wrong to fight the Civil War. By 1860, we actually had become two different countries, and the union, at least the union of slave and free states, was no longer worth preserving. Wikipedia has an interesting "Abolition of Slavery Timeline" entry, and one of the many interesting things in it is the fact that the United States was the only country which ever went to war with itself over slavery. Every other advanced... and most not so advanced... countries, ended it voluntarily, Brazil, in 1888 being the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. True, the Civil War ended slavery, but it also left the South with an excuse for the rancid resentment and institutional racism that lingered for the next 150 years. Of course, it could be argued that the Confederate States Of America would have ended up as a North American South Africa, which ended official slavery in 1834 but continued with Apartheid for the next 160 years, but I'm not sure it could have held out as a pariah nation as long as South Africa did.

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  181. Fried everything and anything is very southern and Iowa state fair. I don't think fried pastrami sounds bad, as long as they weren't frying the lettuce.

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  182. This is the sort of hermeneutic reasoning that made me love reading the Pirke Avot, and then despair. First: figure out what you want to do. Then: find a series of talmudic observations that can be related to it poetically, or by location, or by time-of-reading, or through numerology. Hey, presto: new insight totally validated by god.

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  183. Wait, was this booklet the revised standard Bible? Because that has some prett-ty gross stuff in it.

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  184. DocAmazing11:13 AM

    No longer applicable in Colorado.

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  185. David_LloydJones11:13 AM

    Well, Jaime, the words "pull out the plug" did come up from time to time...

    -dlj.

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  186. I really feel sorry for her. She must have been raised to believe in the "one true love" model--first you find your one true love,then you get married, then happiness! But she was adrift in a world in which she had already experienced two guys who were, retrospectively, not her one true love and she'd already "given it up" to one of them. Now she was in a quandary because she was dating you and you didn't recognize her most important feature and sacrifice (sex) as creating and solemnizing that perfect, permanent, union. It was just a thing that friends do together like hiking, or eating out, or sharing lazy summer afternoons, that is good in and of itself and also may lead to permanent ties. For her the whole point of entering into a dating relationship was to get married and she didn't know of any other way to get you to agree to this without offering you sex. But sex wasn't as important to you as it was to her (interestingly enough even though no doubt in her version of events sex was more important to you than it was to her.) and it didn't signal a permanent relationship.


    Its not so much that she confused sex and sexual power, or relationships and sex, its that she had been taught that the goal of all relationships was marriage with sex as the benefit afterwards. She could use sex to get to marriage, or marriage to get to sex, but the goal was marriage. While for you a happy relationship was the goal.

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  187. Oh,come on, if it were possible for Jonah to take something as a challenge he would quickly drop all work on the subject because it would involve effort. If we want to protect something from Goldbergian attention we should probably label it a challenge and have it mailed to him directly, along with a glove to slap across his own face. It will never see the light of day in one of his columns.

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  188. I agree with you but I think there is some really weird way in which the very people voting for these bills, and even those who support these bills, actually do imagine that the bills are largely harmless and even innocent of real malice. I think we never go broke underestimating the total inability of these people to add one and one and get to two, or to plumb the depths of their own malice, or to recognize that what differentiates collective action from private action is scale.


    For example I think that people who support these discriminatory laws actually fail to think it through--just like anti abortionists who talk windily of abortion as murder routinely deny a willingness to actually lock women up as murderers and are even shocked that anyone interviewing them would take such a sharp tone about things. People really don't take any moral or intellectual responsibility for the logical implications of the acts they support or the legislation they write. My guess is that a large number of these people don't even think that their fellow bigots are actually planning to make life miserable for a fairly large subset of the community as in all gay people. When they imagine the impact of the law its like this:


    Elderly wedding photographer can refuse flaming queer couple...
    My grandma the pharmacist can refuse to poison a baby in the womb...
    They totally don't imagine the havoc caused by wholesale refusal to provide services to an unknown and indeterminate number of people by everyone from the registrar of deeds to the parking attendant at the mall. They don't imagine the deaths potentially caused by some nurse refusing to give cpr to that "old gay guy" and they don't imagine that people like them, or cousin sal, or whoever might get "mistaken" for gay and not be served somewhere.


    In short they lack honesty, probity, forethought, and the basic principle upon which democracy rests: that which is hateful to you, do not do to others/do unto others that which you would have them do unto you. Put yourself in the position of the person being legislated against as well as in the position of the imaginary top dog whose rights are being protected.

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  189. A letter in Ann Landers' column yesterday described a situation in which the letter writer had a crazy neighbor who open carried a gun on his hip at all times and would pat it fondly and declare "no one messes with me." All the neighbors hate this guy because he is an obviously hostile, paranoid, kook who is extremely close to killing someone either on purpose or by accident. You'd think this was a fairly simple, obvious, proposition: a guy who open carries all the time and never has occasion to actually defend himself is, definitionally, paranoid and overreacting and a danger to the neighborhood to boot. A fairly large number of the below the line commenters have an ENORMOUSLY hard time admitting that a person's (current interpretation of) a second amendment right to bear arms doesn't guarantee his sanity or the probability that he will never accidentally kill himself or others completely unjustifiably. In fact one person went so far as to assert that all the neighbors were probably "fine with it" and that the letter writer was the crazed troublemaker.

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  190. But you know from the Prop 8 hysteria about public donations to Prop 8 and the incredible anger about the publication of the names/addresses of gun owners in New Jersey that these people hate the idea that they could be boycotted or avoided for the natural consequences of their acts.

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  191. Really? How horrible--and how crazy.

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  192. Church of Christ, and He Smiling.

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  193. You aren't "sure it could have held out as a pariah nation as long as South Africa?" Aren't the Southern neo-confederates still holding out?

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  194. I wanted to add to this very, very, good comment that some rights continue to inhere in persons even in someone else's private space--that is just because you are in a private space (which privileges those with property rights over those without it, btw) doesn't mean the property owner can do anything he wants with you. This is the root of right wing rejection of domestic violence laws and also child protection laws--they believe that the family is a private sphere and that what happens in that private sphere, or in the private home of the family, is a matter solely for the management of the family owners/patriarchs/parents.

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  195. mortimer200012:18 PM

    Exactly. The one thing Personal Responsibility promoters are never willing to do is to bear any, so holding them accountable for their own actions is a form of aggression that makes them the victims. If businesses who refuse to serve gay people are outed as such, and boycotted by even the very people they deny service to in the first place, the bigots will whine that they are being targeted unfairly for their beliefs by gay bullies (vid. the comment section).

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  196. I meant him wanting us to imagine Glenn Reynolds having sex, because fuck no!

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  197. mortimer200012:26 PM

    MY religion, which holds that God wants no speed limits...

    I could go a hundred miles an hour
    Long as I got the almighty power
    Glued up there with my pair of fuzzy dice...

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  198. satch1:31 PM

    Maybe we should reconsider that whole secession thing... this time with us seceding from Conservistan...

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