1. STOP BLAMING BLACKS, you fucking pricks.
Blacks are only 6.2% of the California population. Considering the degree to which blacks in California are disenfranchised (primarily through being disproportionately locked up in California’s concentration camp prison system), THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY BLACKS WERE A LARGE ENOUGH PORTION OF THE ELECTORATE TO EITHER PASS OR NOT PASS PROP 8. Go read this by-the-numbers analysis, and then let’s move on to the next point:

2. What the FUCK is with going after blacks when way more Latinos and Asians voted for Prop 8? Hey, waita second, what the FUCK is with going after people of color when way more white people voted for Prop 8 than members of any of those groups? In other words, what the fuck is the point of racializing homophobia? White people started that shit. Prop 8 is the result of a problem with white people.

3. Do you want to get at the “common denominator” of homophobia and Prop 8? Then look at fucking religion. You may recall our post about Dealing with Christian Privilege - well, now’s the time to take a stand: Religious assholes no longer get a free pass to be shithead jackoff scumwads just because doing so is part of their pious little practice. Fundies, Mormons, Catholic fundies, the Jerry Falwell types - hey, guess what, THEY’RE THE PROBLEM. Instead of asking why so many black people are homophobic, let’s ask why so many white people are homophobic. Or, as Crooks and Liars put it:

Sorry, LDS and Catholic Churches, let me pull out my tiny violin for you. You have used the tenets of your faith to infringe upon my secular government to take away rights from people, and I’m supposed to feel bad that protests are targeting you?

Don’t take the bait. Bourgeois liberals seem to be in a contest to out-pacify, out-irrelevant, and out-do-nothing each other: “We’ll just stand reaaaaally still, see, and not say a word, and somehow this will magically teach the people who are hellbent on erasing the few civil liberties we have left that it’s really all about love.” Yeah, uh, y’know what? That didn’t work so great for eight fucking years of Bush and war, did it? Oh, and y’know what else? It’s too bad if your Catholic grandmother’s feelings are hurt for a couple days. THERE ARE PEOPLE BEING RELEGATED TO SECOND CLASS STATUS HERE. If you use a church to organize and fund a nation-wide campaign on a ballot initiative, guess what? You get called on it. And if that same church has a history of racism and abusing women and electrocuting gay kids, guess what? You’re really gonna get called on it. That’s not hate. That’s following the money and the volunteer hours.

The problem is really no different in black churches. Jesse Jackson - whoa, man - has some serious issues. But let’s not be stupid. Just as there are queer Mormons (now if that isn’t a shitty way to exist, I don’t know what is), there are queer blacks. Oooh, shocking. If you’re not an idiot, you already knew this, because teh gay, it is everywhere. Whatever the historical reasons for condemning gay love - oppression, criminalizing of sexuality in general - the single most powerful institution working to maintain homophobia today in America is the Christian church.

Let’s repeat that for the slow kids:

The single most powerful institution working to maintain homophobia today in America is the Christian church.

And we really don’t want to hear “some Christians are gay! Some Christians aren’t homophobic!” Yeah, uh, no shit. Go back and work on your Christian privilege right here. That’s not the issue. The problem is that so many Christians and non-fuckwitted types continue to give the hate campaigns a free pass to organize and teach homophobic bullshit in your own backyard just because it’s religion - ALL WITHOUT PAYING TAXES. It’s the state sanctioning religiously-motivated discrimination. Fuck that. I’m done allowing that. Aren’t you?

Links:
Affirmation.org: Gay and Lesbian Mormons

Mormons Stole Our Rights

Join the Impact: Nationwide Protests in All 50 States Saturday, Nov 15!

No on 8

Let us know about any more links we should put up.

Bristol turns 18 on October 18 — will her marriage to Levi follow a few days after? It would make for a lovely October surprise for the Republicans, a blatant bid to distract middle America with a high-profile wedding a few weeks before the election.

Check out this article, which says there may well indeed be plans to do exactly that.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if the bastards do exploit Bristol’s situation for their political gain, but then nothing surprises me anymore.

The reliably hilarious 23/6 dares to say it: Will someone please hack Bristol’s email account?

Following are some emails purportedly from Bristol Palin’s hacked email account. While their veracity cannot be guaranteed, we don’t care because they’re way more interesting than any of the “real” emails Sarah gets.

Sample email: From Gov.Palin@yahoo.com Subj You thought I wouldn’t find out?!

The other half of our star-crossed couple, Levi Johnston, is receiving some internet attention as well. Bill Maher has purchased freelevi.org and is offering to give the domain to Levi so he can use it to raise the funds to escape. As one would expect with Maher, he is far more concerned with Levi’s plight — he calls him “America’s number one political prisoner” than with Bristol’s sad fate of having to carry and then raise this baby. It’s easy enough for unwilling fathers to escape, Mr. Maher. I very much doubt he needs your help. If this marriage lasts more than two years I’ll eat my Bible. Bristol’s gonna end up a single mother, one way or another. Here’s a bit of Bill Maher’s advice to young Levi:

And even if the money doesn’t come in, listen to me, it’s not too late: just grab your skull bong, climb out the window, and get on the highway. I can’t actually come get you, or even let you stay at my place because I’m pretty sure you’d smoke all my weed, but just call me from a pay phone, I know of a safe house you can stay ‘til after the election, it’s like the witness protection program for baby-daddies.

via 23/6:

Bristol Palin and her fiancee Levi Johnston were seen looking unhappy together at a Sarah Palin event. HuffPost OfftheBus’er Donald Mitchell describes the expectant parents as such:
“But not once did they look at each other, speak to each other, or in any way acknowledge each other’s physical presence. Not once. For an entire hour. Instead, Bristol stared straight ahead and Levi had the glazed look of a trapped feral animal.”

Well gee, that doesn’t sound at all like they were planning on getting married anyway and just moved things ahead a little because of the baby. I’m sure this is exactly what 17-year-old Bristol wants her life to be right now: having a baby and marrying a lunk-headed high school boy. Let’s review what a catch Levi is, shall we? His MySpace page is private now, but here’s what his profile said:

I’m a fuckin’ redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shit and just fuckin’ chillin’ I guess. Ya fuck with me I’ll kick ass.

What a charming lad. I am sure there is no parental pressure to get married going on. Nope, none at all. I am sure Bristol’s parents aren’t deliberately dooming her to a miserable marriage and early divorce all for the sake of appearances.

FREE BRISTOL! 

So much for the sanctity of marriage! Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell brings us this:

Carol, McCain’s first wife, wasn’t even a comma in the video presentation about McCain’s life that was shown to millions of viewers during the Republican convention.

But it was Carol who was left behind to take care of the couple’s three children while McCain served his country.

And it was Carol who stuck with McCain during his long incarceration in a Vietnam prison camp.

If McCain is a war hero, then Carol is a war heroine.

Yet she was written off when McCain fell in love with a younger woman.

When McCain returned from Vietnam, he discovered that his wife, a former swimsuit model, had been seriously injured in an automobile accident.

And he dumped her for Cindy McCain, the wealthy heiress (like Paris Hilton!) 17 years his junior. With whom he ran off just about immediately after coming home to discover his wife not the picture-perfect beauty she had been before.

Why does this matter? Two reasons. First, as one commenter on the original article noted, anyone who helps blow the long gaseous stream of nonsense about morality and marriage better be playing by the rules he’s trying to enforce. If gays violate holy matrimony “between one man and one woman,” certainly divorce does also. He’s divorced! Throw him in jail! What? Oh, right, because when rich Republicans do it, it must be okay.

Secondly, if you’re going to go on and on about the horrors and torture of being a prisoner of war - even though you’re a confessed war criminal who, under the stress, renounced his country - then let’s not ignore the fact that Carol went through her own torture. She had twenty-three surgeries, spent six months in the hospital, walks with a limp, and is five inches shorter than she was before her accident. Nevertheless, she doesn’t blame the fact John McCain dumped her on her accident.

“My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40; he wanted to be 25. You know that happens . . . it just does,” she said.

No biggie. Shit happens, right? We’re glad that Carol doesn’t harbor bitterness, for her sake. But how the hell does John McCain expect anyone to take him seriously when he’s windbagging on about morality and marriage? Sometimes you just need a younger, richer, hotter bitch to fuck. It’s totally understandable! Except when it isn’t. Except when it means dumping your crippled wife and sticking her with the childrearing of your three children. Except when it’s not about a couple finding themselves unable to reconcile their differences, but about an entitled, arrogant bastard thinking he’s above rules, above laws, above even common decency.

This guy is supposed to be so honorable - I’m still waiting to hear what it is that makes him so honorable. And no, as McCain himself observed, dumping napalm on women and children does not a hero make, even if you put a dress uniform on it.

The 8-year-old Yemeni divorcee with her lawyer - Reuters

Some of the commenters on yesterday’s interview with Fetus Palin seem to be a little unclear on what the word “choice” actually means. I thought I’d try to help clear up the confusion.

Let’s start with everything we can all agree on. In America, we believe in freedom, right? However, we also believe that freedom doesn’t include stepping on other’s freedoms, right? That’s why the anti-abortion Ladies of the Right want to make sure even your raped sister is forced to carry her fucked-up pregnancy I mean, Special Blessing, to term. We also want freedom from terrorism and freedom to practice (or not practice) the religious ideas we believe in. The U.S. government believes we have a threat to all of those freedoms coming from some really scary people, the Islamofascists. These bad people believe in the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, not the divinity and resurrection of Jesus. Whoa.

Most terrifying of all? Some of them want to keep girls from marrying too young. In the wake of a Yemeni 8-year-old girl’s divorce proceedings, reformers in Yemen are trying to change the laws:

SANA’A, April 30 — The issue of approving a law defining the marriage age for Yemeni youths prompted lengthy discussions and debates among human rights activists and religious leaders at an April 29 conference held by Siyaj Organization, a new Yemeni NGO focusing on underage marriage and children’s rights.

Attorney Ali Al-‘Asemi stresses that the Yemeni legislature must increase the marriage age to 18, as well as punish those parents and guardians who force their young daughters to marry.

Why is this? What horrific liberal feminists would try to restrict the rights of girls to get married and do God’s will? Especially if they’re pregnant expecting little bundles of God’s love?

According to a 2006 estimate by UNICEF, 60 million marriages occurred worldwide before the age of 18, while in the Middle East, which includes Yemen, there were 3.3 million marriages before age 18, said Naseem Al-Rahman, chief of communications and advocacy for UNICEF-Yemen.

He further noted that in Yemen, 365 out of 100,000 women annually die in childbirth*, often because their bodies are too young and immature to endure labor.

Girls who marry before age 18 are twice as likely to die during pregnancy, Al-Rahman pointed out.

*Abortion is much, much safer than this.

Oh, my! What nation of sickos would allow such atrocities to occur? They obviously must believe in some kind of satanic religion!

Religious leader Sheikh Hassan Al-Ahdal affirmed that Islam stresses the importance of youths attaining maturity, wherein a girl is able to make a reasonable choice of marriage partner.

“According to medical studies, girls at age 15 aren’t mentally or physically mature enough to enter a marriage relationship,” Al-Ahdal noted, affirming the Islamic teaching that no individual or parent has the authority to force a daughter to marry.

Yemeni customs traditionally are Bedouin, belonging to the pre-Islamic era. “It’s forbidden and unacceptable to force a young girl into marriage and destroy her life; thus, whoever does so must be assured that he or she is doing wrong and committing a sin,” said religious leader, Sheikh Al-Mortadha Zaid Al-Mahdhouri.

So, wait. I’m confused. We need to wage a “holy war” against Muslim oil-producing nations because… why? Honestly, Ladies of the Right, I’m not sure if you’re trying to destroy places like Yemen or become more like them:

Regarding early marriage in Yemen, general health expert Dr. Abdullah Al-Kamil says some studies assure and focus that nearly 25 percent of girls under age 15 marry in Yemen, while the other 25 percent marry between ages 11 and 15, 70 percent of whom live in rural areas.

Ten percent of Yemeni men prefer marrying 10-year-old girls, while 65 percent prefer girls between ages 15 and 19. Only 27 percent prefer girls over age 18. This percentage decreases to 12 percent in rural areas and 4 percent in cities.

This is not what I want for America. I want my freedom back. I want girls and women to have our freedom to choose for ourselves, not for our mothers, not for our tribes, not for politics, and certainly not for someone else’s religious views.

Free Bristol Palin.

A Palin kind of woman

Now you can get your outfit for playing the enthusiastic sub in the “Rape the Flower Girl” wedding fantasy. What a beautiful America this is.

September 9, 2008: Bristol Palin’s fetus has granted our interview request. We are the ONLY media outlet to be granted an interview. We are SPECIAL. Earlier this morning, we sat down with Bristol Palin’s fetus and were able to ask some tough questions. We bring you the EXCLUSIVE transcript of the ONLY interview with Fetus Palin.

Free Bristol Palin: I think the question we’d all love to ask is: Who would you vote for, if you were able, on Nov. 4?

Fetus Palin: Ron Paul. Throw-away protest vote all the way.

FBP: Really?

Fetus: Or I’d write in Matthew Shepard. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.

FBP: Were you anticipating your grandmother’s nomination?

Fetus: No way. I had no idea. I mean, why her? She’s a mess. Everything she touches turns to scandal. She can’t even fire people without fucking up. She’s a worse choice than Lieberman was. She lies so fast even she can’t keep track of all her BS. It could work out for me, though. It probably means I won’t have to mess with her during my most formative years of cognitive and emotional development.

FBP: So what is it like to surpass all other celebrity fetuses in terms of media coverage?

Fetus: It’s been tough, I’m not going to lie. It’s not really my choice, you know, but at this stage, nothing really is. I’m gestating and that’s about all I can handle.

FBP: There’s been a lot of talk during this campaign, and certainly after the discovery of your existence, about choice. Reproductive choice, marriage choice, family choice. What’s your take on choice?

Fetus: ‘Choice’ is nothing but a fucking cliché. In this family? Are you kidding? Let me clear some shit up here, okay? Everybody makes a big deal out of the fetus. Like we’re some magical Jesusy icon of purity and blessing instead of a half-baked bag of zygotal accident. I’ll be straight with you: I want nothing to do with being born. You start asking a fetus whether it wants to get born, and I’m telling you half of us will tell you we want nothing to do with our parents’ clusterfucks. This is no exception. Seriously. Has anyone come up with a teleabortion? Zap that my way, please! But like I said, I get no choice. I’m talking to Suri Cruise about working on a memoir together. She got a pretty raw deal too, so hey, maybe we can make something out of this.

FBP: What do you think of Bristol and Levi’s wedding?

Fetus: Well, it’s sort of a lose-lose situation. Either they throw together something undignified in a hurry with a cake decorated with hockey sticks, and Mom’s gotta wear some huge preggo dress, or they wait until I’m born and then they dress me up in some stupid angely flower costume. I’d prefer to be well hidden in the amniotic sac when that circus goes down, but then again, Mom’s life already sucks so much she ought to be able to have one princessy day where she doesn’t feel like a humpback whale among child brides.

FBP: Any speculation about what your name might be?

Fetus: No, they’re keeping all that secret even from me. If they follow family tradition and name me something stupid like “Adapter” or “Trenchcoat” or “Permanent Press” I’m going to be fucking pissed. Give me at least a chance at later anonymity, you know?

FBP: As we’ve all seen, Levi stated on his MySpace page that he didn’t want kids. How does that affect you?

Fetus: I don’t want him to be my father either. I mean, what kind of jerk slips one past the goalie with a girl who doesn’t even know what sex is? Did he tell her the baby grows in your stomach so you can only get pregnant from oral? They all think science comes from the devil so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s unaware that I don’t actually reside within her digestive track. He’s an ass. And took one too many pucks to the head, I’d guess.

FBP: What did you think about the initial rumors that Sarah’s baby, Trig, your uncle, was actually Bristol’s?

Fetus: Well, I figured if anyone was going to bend the laws of science to out-breed the Duggars, it’d be the Palins, but obviously I was at least a little skeptical. Frankly, I was just happy Dick Cheney had nothing to do with my conception. I’m a little unclear on Trig’s paternity, though, to be honest.

FBP: We promised we’d keep this short so we’ll let you go back to, um, gestating.

Fetus: Yeah, I appreciate that, thanks. Keep up the good work.

FBP: We’ll do that. Thank you for your time.

This has been covered almost everywhere, but we’d like to point out that Sarah Palin’s greatest consistency is in her utter hostility and violently dehumanizing policies toward women.

From OpEdna:

Of all of the things I’ve learned about Sarah Palin in the last week and a half, this has got to be the most disturbing. While Sarah Palin was serving as the Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the city charged victims of sexual assault between $300 and $1200 for their own rape kits. A rape kit is a sexual assault forensic evidence kit, used to collect DNA that can be used in criminal proceedings to assist in the conviction of those who commit sex crimes. The kit is performed as soon as possible after a sexual assault or attack has been committed. It is usually humiliating and uncomfortable for the victim–imagine enduring that and then paying $1200 just so that the criminal who assaulted you might be caught.

You’d think Sarah Palin would want that forensic evidence collected so that, in case of pregnancy resulting from the rape, she could force the woman to marry her rapist and have a happy Christian family. And then Palin’ll say, “That’ll be $1200, you whore.”

You may remember the uproar that ensued a few months ago when Barack Obama stated, in regards to abortion, “If (my daughters) make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby”.   Of course he was way off; his daughters’ hypothetical mistake should be punished with marriage.  Marriage at the age of 17 to a childhood fling who may not be ready for fatherhood.  Marriage that will most likely preclude getting an education.  Marriage that will most likely, according to statistics, fail, leaving the young woman single and uneducated.

All these factors may not mean much to the Palins; after all, they are relatively affluent and will almost certainly afford a stable environment to Bristol and her baby.  But what about the millions of other young women Mrs. Palin’s policies of abstinence-only sex education and criminilized abortion would put in the same position?  For them sex will indeed equal punishment, whether it ends in marriage or not.