Recently, antiwar activists in San Francisco proposed a measure that would ban all military presence from the city - recruiters, bases, what have you. Which is of course their right, no matter how stupid it is. It is also my right to flatten my testicles with a hammer.
Last year, that city's supervisors voted to not bring the USS Iowa to town to serve as a floating museum for the same reason: miltary bad. But that proposal is now being revisited. A group of interested citizens are trying to get the Iowa docked in San Francisco Bay, but only if it's a museum about the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered troops in the US military.
As a gay-loving liberal, I have to say... if the city of San Francisco is so coddled and complaisant in their absolute certainty that their freedom and security (including, importantly, the right to kiss who you want in public without fear of public execution) is a diety-given eternal guarantee free of obligation, vigilance or sacrifice that they want the military out out out, and not in the gay way, let them have it.
And if the Iowa does come to San Francisco Bay, I ardently hope that some interest group doesn't strong arm it into being some floating testament to diversity. Bending over backwards to celebrate the diversity of every damn group from hare-lipped citrus growers of Korean descent to... frigging Baptists, who have fuck-all to complain about but still have some bullshit *persecution complex* that makes them feel holier or something (that's what it is with everybody... suffering is holy, ennobling in some vaguely defined and mealy mouthed way)... makes a mockery of the best and brightest tenets of our society. I suppose the story of gays and lesbians (and transgendered folk! Don't forget the transgendered folk!) in the military does need to be told, but does it need to be told in that fuzzy Barney-voiced good-for-you!! fight-the-power way that it undoubtedly would be in the suggested museum? Or can we just have a cool little low-key museum somewheres that covers the gamut of gender/sexual identity matters in the military, from women who fought as men in the Revolution and Civil Wars, the issues or lack thereof of foxhole companionship in the Great War, etc., the effects of the sexual revolution, the fallout from the post-Vietnam drawdown, don't-ask-don't tell on to the present day? That could actually be interesting. But I bet you a million dollars whatever exhibit they would put aboard the Iowa won't be. Not at all.
Wait... which one of you crapped in my Wheaties?
[wik] Not that it's any of my business or anything. And not that this museum is anywhere near being established. But I've had about enough of holding hands and singing kum-by-yah as if it's some sort of public statement of ideological purity, and this little damp squib was enough to set me off again. A few years ago I stood among a group of earnest white wealthy Birkenstocked New Englanders with their fists in the air shouting "Amandla! Owetu!" and other misappropriated slogans from actual struggles in which people died for their freedom, looked around, and realized that celebrating diversity very often amounts to a condescending pat on the head. So eff that.
[alsø wik] If you haven't seen the documentary "Murderball" yet, you just have to. Try to tell one of those wheelchair rugby guys that you feel his pain and celebrate his whatever, and he's likely to punch you in the nuts and throw you off a tall building.
[alsø alsø wik] Via Reason's hit and run, comes news of a new law in Washington (the state) banning private-sector discrimination based on sexual orientation. Julian Sanchez points out the delicious helping of cognitive dissonance in the deliberations leading up to passage:
Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, said, "Discrimination against anyone is unacceptable, and it is wrong."
"Unfortunately the bill before us today is not the magic tool that will end discrimination in our state," he said. "In reality, it takes us in the opposite direction.
"The passage of this legislation puts us on a slippery slope towards gay marriage. The two are linked. ... Are any of us naive enough to think the court won't take notice?"
So, if private discrimination is banned in the name of diversity, this means that the right of people to freely associate in homogenous groups has been abridged. Which is funny, as well as unconstitutional. But the real threat is that someday gays might associate for life with the buttsex and the stubbly kisses.
Guh?
[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] And don't kid yourself. There are several compelling and trenchant arguments for approaching allowing gay couples to marry gradually, letting public opinion and time iron out the objections and unintended consequences. But you don't hear those too often in the popular (read: dumbified and soundbyted) debates thereon. What you hear instead is a lot of pretty language about sanctity and tradition and nature that boils down in large part to "ewwwwwww."
[see the løveli lakes...] See what I mean!? This WorldNetDaily piece is incensed that the new AOL Instant Messenger slogan is "I Am." Because it's blasphemy, see? God told Moses his name is "I Am." And AOL's marketing guys, remembering their days of Sunday School, thought it would be a lark to take the name of God in vain in a product name designed to appeal to the very broadest dialup using Churchgoing segment of the population. Because that's what evil corporations do.
[the wøndërful telephøne system...] I wonder what the WorldNetDaily people are gonna do when they hear about my friend Dan. After he got his wife pregnant for the first time, he renamed his cock "The Supreme Creator."
[and mäni interesting furry animals...] It's like our national sport isn't baseball anymore, but drawing fouls. You know, like that move they do in NBA basketball where someone's jersey brushes you and you leap backwards ten feet as if hit by a truck, stagger, and fall to the floor with a crash, all the while screaming "Ref! Reeeeeeeeef!"
Which is pathetic.
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