Fabulous queer dating tip #27: Demand that he respond to your message right now.

Whenever you message him, you are entitled to an instantaneous reply. No one ever has anything else going on, least of all work or sleep, and everyone spends all day in front of his computer or at worst checking his smartphone, right? If he tells you otherwise, he is obviously lying, and you should become manipulative or just plain nasty.

Quote of the week

"Coming Out does not commit you to the political agenda of the 'gay community.' It means you're openly gay. The End." — Steve Zlick, communing here

Quote of the week

“We have operated the Farm successfully for 32 years after the NPS cut the Farm from its budget in 1980 and are fully staffed and prepared to open today. But there are barricades at the Pavilions and entrance to the Farm. And if you were to park on the grass and visit on your own, you run the risk of being arrested. Of course, that will cost the NPS staff salaries to police the Farm against intruders while leaving it open will cost them nothing.” — Anna Eberly, managing director of Claude Moore Colonial Farm, a park that the federal government neither funds nor staffs, but which the federal government has shut down anyway.

How government licensing protects the LGBT community

... or, rather, protects people's delicate sensibilities from the LGBT community. From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit today against the town of Shannon, Miss., its mayor and its aldermen for unjustly denying a business license to a bar catering to the LGBT community.

* * *

The mayor asked [Pat Newton, the applicant for the business license] to justify why she should be permitted to open the bar. After stating her reasons, the mayor asked the aldermen and citizens to raise their concerns. Newton was confronted with questions laced with insults from citizens and aldermen. One resident asked how Newton could call herself a Christian. Another asked whether she would let her daughter go into “a bar like that.”

At the end of the hearing, an adviser to the town informed the board that Newton had met all the requirements for her application but that the application could be denied on public health and safety concerns. The board denied the application by a 4-to-1 vote – even though no legitimate evidence regarding public health and safety was presented.

If the burden is on a person who just wants to engage in voluntary commerce "to justify why she should be permitted" to do so, we can expect precisely that result.

Let's rely on a "14th Amendment" doctrine that I just made up.

The federal government is expected to hit the debt ceiling later this month. People are calling on the President to exercise his supposed power under the 14th Amendment to address the debt ceiling, a power that he supposedly has because the validity of federal debt "shall not be questioned." Not so fast.

The 14th Amendment, § 4, first sentence, actually reads,

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

Note those pesky words "authorized by law," which keep getting left out. If I didn't know any better, I'd almost think that people avoid quoting those words because those words get in the way of the desired result. Who makes laws again? The next section of the amendment gives a clue:

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.