But I'm not mainstream.

Just as hipsters vehemently deny being hipsters, but still end up in the skinny-jeans-wearing herd, many gay people love to express their disdain for mainstream gay male culture — and heaven knows it has its faults — while partaking of it anyway. In fact, claiming to have distanced oneself from mainstream gay male culture is increasingly part of mainstream gay culture. Moreover, I'm sure we all know people who claim not to be gay clichés while actually being some of the biggest gay clichés around. Yet the aspect of mainstream queer culture that most badly needs to be challenged — political correctness, with its anti-rationalism, groupthink, and shocking resemblance to the religious right — gets a free pass.

Government is always more progressive than the private sector.

Just what it says on the tin—government is always more progressive than the private sector. Every right-thinking person knows this, and when I say that every right-thinking person knows something, I completely absolve myself of any burden of proof.

Why, then, are Arizona and Indiana the latest states, but not the only states, in which businesses have lobbied the state legislatures to move policy toward a less socially conservative position? When one tries to make such a point to politically correct dogmatists, they carry on as though all of reality were just one big outlying data point.

Gays and African-Americans in Maryland

This article says some of the same things that I've been saying for a while. We shouldn't take African-American support for granted, and we should focus on the undecided rather than on true believers.

Nonetheless, the author also states the following:

There must also be more willingness among proponents of LGBT rights to engage in supporting issues that are important to blacks, Latinos, Asian Pacific Islanders and other social issues, (e.g. education reform, immigration, job creation and training, etc.). Several black elected officials, as well as communities of color in general, have grown tired of the narrow agenda that has been presented to them by some LGBT organizations.

Has Queen Carlotta declared backwards day again? This assertion, besides being weasel-worded, comes close to being the exact opposite of the truth. We're the ones who are obsessed with racial and ethnic inclusiveness, sometimes to the self-parodying extremes of excluding those who cannot provide the right tokens and of downplaying our own agenda to placate others (including those "Asian Pacific Islanders").

Crystal Cathedral bans homosexuality in choir

From this:

The Crystal Cathedral in Southern California has taken the surprising step of asking its choir members to model a biblical lifestyle, which would include abstaining from homosexual behavior.

* * *

In a statement Tuesday regarding the covenant, Crystal Cathedral Senior Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman said dialogue over "reconciling love and adherence to God's Word" has led to a number of people being hurt.

So is Senior Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman going to adhere to the word of her God on the role of women in church? After, all, we wouldn't want people to think that she's a cafeteria Christian. Oh, but ... all together now ... that's different!

Then again, I'd love to see more queer people stop trying to gain the acceptance of churches and similar institutions that make such a huge point of not accepting us and withdraw the sanction of the victim from such institutions. For one thing, it would be fun to watch homophobic churches lose so many gay choir members and organists.

Maryland (2)

It's a good thing that Prince George's County has solved all of its problems, so that pastors from that county have the luxury of passing moral judgment on queer people who want to get married. For those who are unfamiliar with this area, Prince George's County combines the good public schools, low crime, and clean politics of the inner city with the cosmopolitan sophistication of suburbia.

Isn't there something in the Bible about motes, beams, and eyes, or about knowing every tree by its fruit? Oh, but those verses don't directly address homosexuality, so they need to be "interpreted correctly," or they were "meant for the church back then." Or something.

Finally, it's odd whose support our activists take for granted. I have spoken to LGBT activists who expressed genuine surprise upon learning that some of the biggest opposition to our rights came from African-Americans.

Maryland

The news from Maryland isn't the greatest, but let's put this into perspective. Maryland has traditionally been a socially conservative state and recodified its sodomy law less than a decade ago. The real news is not that the marriage bill failed, but that it came as close as it did to passing. If the 'phobes let their reality-deflector shields down for very long, they should realize what this means for their long-term odds.

Today's vocabulary words: erotica and pornography

erotica, n. what makes me hard

pornography, n. what makes you hard

Religious right or P.C. left? Quote 16

In this series of blog posts, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read each quote and guess, before doing a Web search, whether someone in the religious right or the politically correct left said it.

16.

Transgender activism is based on the premise (or claim) that a person who feels they have been "born into the wrong body" has a right to a sex change. Through cosmetics, grooming, clothing and an official name change, such a person can adopt the opposite sex's gender role. * * * Radical Lesbian Feminist Academic Janice Raymond ascribed transsexuality to a "Patriarchal Fifth Column", which is "infiltrating womens’ space" and “raping womens’ bodies” in her book The Transsexual Empire - Making of the She Male.

The first rule of religion strikes again.

I've commented before on the first rule of religion, that the Word of God, correctly interpreted, always backs up whatever the person interpreting it wanted to believe anyway, and on its corollary, that all of those thou-shalt-nots are for other people. Here are some examples in practice.

You've no doubt seen the photograph of this charming person's tattoo, which makes him a walking billboard for Biblical cherry-picking. Now this article draws the following lesson from Christ's supposed celibacy:

On one hand, being celibate, Jesus refuses to claim any sexuality or human relationship as bearing the mark of Divine approval for humanity, not even marriage. However, rather than simply ignoring sexuality, in his celibacy, Jesus creates space for various sexualities and relationships to be present in God’s good future—heterosexual and homosexual, monogamous and non-monogamous, BDSM or vanilla. It is easy to forget that celibacy and asexuality are also queer, since they, too, disrupt the categories and the power dynamics of heterosexism (why is celibacy/asexuality absent from contemporary queer discussions?). However, it also upsets those who live in the binaries of gay/lesbian vs. straight, since Jesus’ queer sexuality destabilizes even that dichotomy. As celibate, Jesus affirms that no sexuality or form of relationship is held as the ideal for human life because humanity’s greatness is found in its diversity—even of sexualities—without hierarchy or rank.

This would be a stunning non sequitur even if it did not require us to assume away substantial portions of the New Testament, including some of the words attributed to Jesus. It just goes to show that if a deity created humankind in its image, humankind has been busy returning the favor ever since.

Political correctness means always having to say you're sorry.

In the endless and vitally important quest to find new things of which to disapprove, may I present the latest form of -ist, -centric, -phobic, and -archal oppression, namely, school integration. From this article:

White teachers were entrusted with the assimilation process of the black student population. Black children assimilated into this culture based on the normative practices of white aesthetics and Heteronormativity.

The integrated functions of oppression within the newly formed education system created a platform for black oppression and suppression of sexual identity. Black children had to forsake their ethnic pride (adopt the character of a white person) for any chance of social mobility. The Brown vs. the Board of Education streamlined assimilation of black children within the white culture, opened the narrow door of economic mobility, and provided a platform for white supremacy aesthetics in the hiring process of black teachers and the development of the young black mind. For a chance at economic upward mobility gay black teachers and students were forced to hide their true identity. What unfolds when these identities are elements of one person?

So it's official: No conceivable state of affairs can escape politically correct censure. Note also the association of heteronormativity with European-American culture, since we all know that it was completely unknown among African-Americans.

Quote of the week

"Even our vilest, most despicable, scum-of-the-earth citizens have equal protection under the law." — Hemal N. Sampat, in a letter to the editor in The Washington Post

Westboro Baptist and freedom of speech (2)

In one of the ironies of American political thought, the P.C. left is trying to out-Alito Alito on Snyder v. Phelps. Many commenters say that what Westboro Baptist Church did was hate speech and that hate speech is (for some unspecified reason) not free speech. I believe that we are playing a dangerous game if we adopt this argument, as homophobes increasingly characterize any disagreement with their goals as hate speech against them.

Today's vocabulary word: literally

literally, adv. a word usually used as its own antonym.

Westboro Baptist and freedom of speech

I agree wholeheartedly with the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Snyder v. Phelps. I am less thrilled with the reasoning used, which relies on a "hierarchy of First Amendment values" that in my view exalts the collective over the individual.

Some have asked where we go now. I think that we should let the Phelpses keep on doing what they are doing, which is whipping up antipathy for their own views, often among people who might otherwise sympathize. The Phelpses perfectly illustrate the principle that the most effective witnesses against a belief system can be its own believers.

More on America's "underfunded" public schools

It is teaching necessary for salvation that more money is both necessary and sufficient to improve America's schools, and as is always the case with teachings necessary for salvation, you must accept this one completely on faith. Nonetheless, additional evidence has come to light that the "underfunding" manifests itself in every way except funding statistics.

I have previously noted America's rank among the OECD countries in education spending. Now comes a study from the Center for American Progress, which can hardly be dismissed as a bunch of reactionary wingnuts, on return on educational investment, including comparisons of school systems within each state covered. The plots of achievement against adjusted per-pupil spending show nothing like the strong correlation that everyone is sure exists.