Shooting the Messenger’s Numbers
Nate Silver, the famed statistician behind the FiveThirtyEight election forecast blog at the New York Times, is wrong. And gay. At least according to the more virulent elements of right-wing media. That he’s wrong is only confirmed by his gayness, just as surely as his gayness is the source of his wrongness. Nate Silver is a tautology of being queer as hell about everything.
Hardcore conservatism’s loathing of science has lurked around GOP politics for so long that its easy to forget how nasty it is. Over 40 years, that disdain has slid from “pointy-headed intellectuals” to something very like a jock slapping a math book out of a kid’s hands and saying, “NICE NUMBERS, FAG.” But this is what you do when you can’t crunch the numbers yourself or when they will not save you. You shoot the messenger.
Reblogged from gawkercom with 108 notes / Nate Silver Politics Election 2012 USA Homophobia
Reblogged from hypervocal with 48,873 notes / Homophobia Gay Rights USA Politics Literally Language English
Interesting hour-long look at the Bible and what it says (and does not say) about homosexuality. As The Stranger put it:
Vines’ argument and his insights are highly relevant to gay Christians, to their families, to Christians who point to the bible to justify their bigotry and the pain they inflict on LGBT people (including their own LGBT children), and to anyone who happens to live in a country that is majority Christian.
Full transcript found here.
There is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be identified as a sinner: newspapers love to describe words or deeds as “racially charged” even in those cases when it would be more honest to say “racist”; we agree that there is rampant misogyny, but misogynists are nowhere to be found; homophobia is a problem but no one is homophobic. One cumulative effect of this policed language is that when someone dares to point out something as obvious as white privilege, it is seen as unduly provocative. Marginalized voices in America have fewer and fewer avenues to speak plainly about what they suffer; the effect of this enforced civility is that those voices are falsified or blocked entirely from the discourse.
Reblogged from thepoliticalnotebook with 268 notes / Racism Homophobia Misogyny Women's Rights Opinions
If you haven’t already, this is a must-read:
On the death of Tyler Clementi, a gay Rutgers student, and the charges against his roommate, Dharun Ravi, who used a webcam to spy on him. Clementi took his own life shortly after the incident:
An online video chat, using an application like iChat or Skype, starts like a phone call: one person requests a conversation, and the recipient must accept the request. But Ravi had tweaked his iChat settings so that the program could automatically accept incoming calls. According to Ravi, he had made this his computer’s usual setting. Whatever the case, that evening the program was set to auto-accept; he also turned off his monitor, or darkened it to black. At 9:13 P.M., he was beside Wei at her computer. He opened iChat, and clicked his name on her chat list. A few feet away, his computer accepted his request, and Ravi and Wei saw a live video image of Room 30.
Reblogged from longreads with 43 notes / Long Reads Gay Rights Suicide Homophobia Sad News
“Diversity creates conflict. If we celebrate diversity, we create conflict.”
Reblogged from kohenari with 374 notes / Gay Rights Homophobia Racism USA Politics News Election 2012 Rick Santorum
14-Year-Old Girl Calls Out Rick Perry in Iowa on Gays in the Military: “Why do you want to deny them their freedom when they’re fighting for your rights?”
Perry’s Day Ends in Confrontation Over Fracking, Gays in the Military
By Rebecca Kaplan | NationalJournal
DECORAH, Iowa—What had been a calm day for Rick Perry filled with church services and friendly audiences ended on a sour note as the governor found himself in two confrontations in his last town hall of the day over controversial natural gas extraction techniques and gays serving openly in the military.
In the first exchange, Perry found himself debating with a college student whether hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”—a method for natural gas extraction—pollutes the area groundwater. After the event ended, Perry found himself explaining to a 14-year-old girl—who later told reporters she was openly bisexual—why he opposed gays serving openly in the military.
Reblogged from abaldwin360 with 295 notes / News Politics Rick Perry Election 2012 Military Gay Rights Homophobia
A report released this week by the National Center on Family Homelessness, “America’s Youngest Outcasts,” finds one in 45 American children 18 and under — 1.6 million — live on the street, in homeless shelters, motels or with other families last year.
That number is up 33 percent from 2007. The numbers come from the Department of Education and do not include unaccompanied youth.
About 20 to 40 percent of youth who leave home like Cocco to live on the streets identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), according to National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
In one study, 26 percent of teens who came out to their parents were told they must leave home. Others said they were physically, sexually or emotionally abused. The task force added that LGBT youth also reported that they are threatened, belittled and abused at shelters, not only by other residents, but by staff, as well.
The top 10 anti-gay foes spend three times as much as 40 LGBT advocate organizations.
Reblogged from think-progress with 842 notes / Politics Gay Rights Money Homophobia
What staggers me in Cain’s remarks is that he is not interested in what actual, you know, homosexuals say about themselves. The presumption that 99 percent of us are liars about one of the core aspects of our being and psyches is, the more you think about it, deeply insulting. How many gay people does Herman Cain actually know? I have a suspicion not many.
Andrew Sullivan responding to Herman Cain’s claim that homosexuality is not a choice.
Reblogged from jonathan-cunningham with 91 notes / Herman Cain Homophobia Gay Rights Opinion
Megyn Kelly Debunks Gay-Bashing Psychiatrist’s ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Theories
Reblogged from soupsoup with 136 notes / Megyn Kelly Homophobia
"Gay People Are More Dangerous Than Terrorists"
Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern (R) argues that homosexuality is “more dangerous” than terrorism because “It’s something they have to deal with every day. Fortunately we don’t have to deal with a terrorist attack every day, and that’s what I mean.”
Kern appeared on the radio show of Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality recently, as part of the promotional tour for her book, called “The Stoning of Sally Kern: The Liberal Attack on Christian Conservatism - And Why We Must Take a Stand.”
“You know if you just look at it in practical terms, which has destroyed and ended the life of more people?” she asked. “Terrorism attack here in America or HIV/AIDS?
