Framed

Iowanna Smile

My take on this:

1) Bravo to Iowa Judge Robert Hanson for having the courage to strike down that state's gay marriage ban.  It's rare for a trial court to strike down a statute, especially at the state level; usually, trial judges leave that sort of thing to the appellate courts.

2) Congratulations to  Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan and the other couples who managed to marry before Hanson stayed his ruling pending appeal.

3) Minister Mark Stringer, who performed the nuptials on his front lawn, makes me proud to be a (lapsed) Unitarian.

4) Was there ever a more aptly-named anti-gay Republican fulminator than Iowa  House Minority Leader Christopher Rants?

"I can't believe this is happening in Iowa," Rants said. "I guarantee you there will be a vote on this issue come January," when the Legislature convenes.

5) If gay marriage becomes (permanent) law in Iowa, then its prospects ought to be  good in other states.  Iowa has always been more liberal than, say, Indiana--but even so, places like Minnesota and Wisconsin might well follow Iowa's lead.

6) After so much news that makes me gnash my teeth, this story made me smile big.

UPDATE:

Melissa McEwan makes this prediction:

The timing of this decision undoubtedly means that same-sex marriage will probably be an issue during the very big and very important Iowa primary. Could get interesting.

I disagree.  Unfortunately, none of the Republican candidates and only (correct me, someone, if I'm wrong here) Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel on the Democratic side support the right to gay marriage.  Things would get interesting only if there was some significant disagreement within the parties on this issue.  But as it is, the "major" candidates are united in their cowardice on this issue.

Classic Crackpot Drops Frivolous Lawsuit

A lot of hits on Framed have come recently from people Googling "classic crackpot," presumably a reference to the frivolous lawsuit brought by a kook named Stuart Pivar against Pharyngula publisher PZ Myers over Myers' hilariously skeptical review of Pivar's kooky book.

There are now dozens of links to stories about Pivar that are revealed whenever one Googles "classic crackpot."  People like me who had never heard of Pivar before sure know who (and what) he is now.

And now there's some good news: according to PZ himself, Pivar has told a reporter that his lawyer is withdrawing the suit.

Ditto

Today we bring you another edition of What Greenwald Said:

The only kind of "morality" that this ["family vaules"] movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations -- from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage -- are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in "Traditional Marriage" while their "third husbands" and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.

Craig's List

Re Idado Senator Larry Craig's arrest for soliciting gay sex in an airport restroom, Andrew Sullivan gets it right:

[M]y sympathy [for closeted gay men and lesbians] vanishes when it comes to people who support amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage, as Craig did. There are limits to what you get to do to protect your own secrets, and being willing to permanently destroy gay men and lesbians' chances to marry the people they love, and with whom they have found happiness, is way, way outside them.

(For the record, I don't have much sympathy for straight people who support this idiotic and mean-spirited amendment either.)

Craig seems to have made a habit of voting against laws that would secure the rights of gay men and lesbians. In addition to supporting the Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, he voted against a bill that would have banned job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, against expanding the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, and was rated zero by the Human Rights Campaign in each of the last three Congresses (1, 2, 3; all pdf.) I truly can't imagine what it would be like -- how little self-respect a person would have to have -- to amass that sort of voting record while cruising for gay sex in airport restrooms.

Vietnam

At first glance, Bush's recent comparison of the situation in Iraq to the Vietnam War was puzzling to me.  After all, as John Cole points out, the right wing noise machine has expended considerable energy denying that Iraq is Vietnam redux.

But now I get it.  Bush's speech is entirely consistent with the strategy he has relied on for six years: if you can't win the fight you're fighting, start another fight.

After 9/11, the United States attacked al Quada and its Taliban allies.  We succeeded in knocking the latter out of power in Kabul, but Bin Laden and his gang escaped (due in part to our attempt to outsource our 9/11 response to the Northern Alliance).  Having  bungled the opportunity to destroy al Quaeda, Bush & Co. started another fight, the Iraq war.  Once again, we succeeded in driving a vicious government out of power, but failed to effectively deal with the non-state warriors who sprang up in the power vacuum we created.

So now another war must be launched--anything to keep the public's mind off the mess in Iraq.  Neocons dream of marching to Tehran, but even those who are not members of the reality-based community must understand that we simply do not have the manpower to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.  (Not to mention the fact that attacking Iran would be a colossal foreign policy blunder from which the U.S. might never recover.)

Instead, Bush has decided to start a war of historical revisionism. I guess he figures this is one he might actually win, and even if he doesn't, the only casualties will be the historical facts and a few academics.  Another advantage: just as launching the war in Iraq pushed Bush's failure to decapitate al Qaeda right off the evening news, so his Vietnamese gambit has, momentarily at least, displaced discussion of the here and now in Iraq.

Nothing But Red

I'm late to this, but for anyone (like me) who didn't read Joss Whedon's post about the "honor killing" of Dua Khalil when it came out in May, it hasn't lost any of its potency in the intervening three months.  Even the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn't powerful enough to change five thousand years of patriarchy in one summer.  Here's a sample:

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

In response to Whedon's plea for people to do something, a group of writers and activists have put out a call for submissions of writing and art to a publication to be called Nothing But Red.  This publication will respond both Dua Khalil's killing and to the larger issues Whedon raised.  I encourage those Framed readers of an artistic or literary bent to submit work to them.

Anthropomorphization

Anthropomorphization as a defense to incompetence, recklessness and multiple safety violations:

"I will never come back to that evil mountain."

That from the tragicomically inept Bob Murray of Murray Energy, the company that owns the Crandal Canyon mine.

Note how Murray has framed the mine cave-in.  First he insisted that it was caused by an earthquake, i.e., a natural disaster.  Now he suggests it was caused by an "evil mountain," i.e., a supernatural force.

Sorry, Bob.  There's no evidence of an earthquake.  What's more, mountains aren't evil; people are.  If there is any justice in the world, you will never come back to Crandal Canyon because you'll be in prison.

Brownie lives

Heckuva job, Stickie . . . .

Democracy Isn't Necessary

U.S. Officials Rethink Hopes for Iraq Democracy:

Nightmarish political realities in Baghdad are prompting American officials to curb their vision for democracy in Iraq. Instead, the officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security.

A workable democratic and sovereign government in Iraq was one of the Bush administration's stated goals of the war.

But for the first time, exasperated front-line U.S. generals talk openly of non-democratic governmental alternatives, and while the two top U.S. officials in Iraq still talk about preserving the country's nascent democratic institutions, they say their ambitions aren't as "lofty" as they once had been.

"Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future," said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war's major battlegrounds.

So we didn't invade Iraq to take away Hussein's (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.  We're not there because of (non-existent) links between al Qaeda and Iraq.  We're not there to maintain (non-existent) security in Mesopotamia.  And now we're not there to install a (non-existent) democracy. 

So why are we there?

Classic Crackpot

PZ Myers and his blog Pharyngula have long been essential reads for me.  So I was distressed to hear that PZ is being sued by some litigous kook named Stuart Pivar who has his knickers in a twist over some bad reviews PZ wrote (which may be read here and here) about his silly little book

Anyone who would file a lawsuit over a bad review of a biology book has no understanding of the scientific method, no respect for public discourse, and (in Pivar's case) no understanding of the law of defamation.  Ironically, one of the things that stuck in Mr. Pivar's craw was the fact that PZ called him a "classic crackpot."  By filing his lawsuit, Mr. Pivar has inadvertently validated this description.