Rep. Bachmann, if you’ll just sign your name here…

According to RawStory,

When Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann signed a pledge that claimed black Americans were better off as slaves than they are today, she apparently hadn’t read it in detail.

Does she think this helps her case? I suppose it’s “less worse” if she isn’t on board with the idea that at least African-American children had the benefit of intact families under slavery, but it would have been better if she had read the fucking document before putting her name on it. I realize that Congressfolk tend not to read the bills they vote on, but that’s a habit she really ought to break, and fast.

However, she’s all about banning pornography, fighting the power of Sharia Islam (because that’s totally one of the main problems plaguing our nation today), and making sure same-sex couples can’t marry. I’ve no doubt she likes the part about promoting “robust reproduction,” too.

The FAMiLY LEADER issues a fauxpology:

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued,” group spokeswoman Julie Summa wrote. “We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”

“Can be misconstrued”? Really, Julie Summa? Really?! “We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused”?

Rough translation: “We’re sorry we got caught! We would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you damn gotcha journalists!”

It’s like Phyllis Schlafly let her cat dance on her keyboard!

According to ThinkProgress, Crazy-Eyes Bachmann is the first occupant of the GOP Clown Car to sign onto the FAMiLY LEADER pledge (no, I am not making up that random non-capitalization), a little manifesto for The Handmaid’s Tale with a wee side of V for Vendetta theocracy.

I have found a copy of the full text of the pledge, and I’ve read it so you don’t have to. Here are some selected highlights!

Faithful monogamy is at the very heart of a designed and purposeful order – as conveyed by Jewish and Christian Scripture, by Classical Philosophers, by Natural Law, and by the American Founders – upon which our concepts of Creator-endowed human rights, racial justice and gender equality all depend.

Yeah, that same Jewish and Christian scripture that portrayed powerful patriarchs with multiple wives and hordes of concubines. “Natural Law” just means they want more juicy sperm-meets-egg goodness. The “American Founders” would have to be some weird secret society I’ve never heard of, as our Founding Fathers weren’t really concerned with “family” “values.” We’ll see what these idiots mean by “racial justice” and “gender equality” in just a moment.

Natural Law: Under Control of Fertility

Sarah Posner covers the debate between Andrew Sullivan and Maggie Gallagher over marriage equality. It kind of makes me wonder why I didn’t go to see it.

Gallagher is insistent upon the primacy of natural law; that God’s intent for marriage was for procreation and absent that possibility, marriage isn’t marriage. (She offered an exemption for infertility, something about which she has previously written, unconvincingly.)

Does it make me a Nasty Gnu Atheist to point out that using “natural law” as a basis for “marriage” is really quite silly? It does, doesn’t it? But really, marriage is not a natural process. Sex is a natural process. Procreation is a natural process. Marriage is an institution that human beings created. We’ve changed the rules a lot over the millennia—overwhelmingly for the better, might I add—and we may continue to do so. One could just as easily argue that monogamy isn’t the most natural of arrangements, either. We didn’t evolve to pair off into neat little dyads and live happily ever after forsaking all others, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a model worth pursuing.

Curious Thought of the Evening

It’s only since same-sex marriage has been an issue of widespread debate that I’ve heard any argument to the effect that adoption and fertility treatments aren’t good enough ways of starting a family. Only since a handful of states have passed marriage equality have I heard anyone say with a straight face (pun acknowledged but not intended) that parents don’t fully love their children unless they conceive those children through coitus. (The effect being, not that we now have to outlaw adoption or fertility treatments for heterosexual couples, because that degree of consistency would bring reality too close to home, but that marriage law needs to discriminate against the couples who won’t create offspring through marital relations.) Only now do I have the pleasure of being within shouting distance of anyone claiming that adoptive parents, and those who used assisted fertility, aren’t good enough.

Let’s call it the Anti-Equality Excuse Generator. You just press a button, and a line of gibberish pops out.

Get off your ass, America!

Argentina now has same-sex civil marriage!

The U.S. … doesn’t!

Ireland makes progress while Real America throws tantrum

From the Irish Times:

Under the terms of the Bill, marriage-like benefits will be extended to gay and lesbian couples across a range of areas such as property, social welfare, succession, maintenance, pensions and tax.

Once the Civil Partnership legislation is fully enacted and implemented, gay and lesbian couples will be able to register their relationship before a registrar, as long as the partners are over 18 and not involved in any other unions.

Couples will be required to provide registrars with three months’ notice of a planned civil partnership, as is the case with civil or religious weddings. Any registrars who refuse to officiate may be prosecuted.

I can’t wait to hear what the Catholic hierarchy has to say about this.

Yay for Ireland!

And the music at the reception was freaking EPIC.

Congratulations, Alanis!

That man had better treat you right, or I will cut him.

Just kidding. I’m sure he’s a sweetheart.

(But he had better treat you right. I’m just sayin’.)

This is where Sullivan loses me.

On hospital visitation rights:

I fear it’s a way to tell gays they cannot marry. The Democrats will say: see, you can already have hospital visitation rights. Now please stop alienating people with all this civil rights talk. And the Human Rights Campaign can last a thousand years mediating these morsels of compassion from the executive branch. I favor the right to designate anyone in advance as your next of kin in hospital. But for gays, I favor merely the same rights as straights. Which means to say: no more and no less than civil marriage.

I am just as much in favor of marriage equality as any other young person who gives a shit about the dignity of LGBTs, but I am still ambivalent about the efficacy of marriage in general, and I have more than had my fill of well-meaning older grownups who want me to believe that marriage is the magic elixir to everyone’s problems. Breaking news: it isn’t.

We will never have a society in which everyone who lives past the age of 20 manages to get married and stay that way, and what’s more, that is a good thing. It is a positive sign that economics and social pressure do not succeed in coercing all eligible adults into tying themselves to people who might or might not turn out to be good partners in the long run. It is a positive sign, also, that people who find that their spouses are not the lifelong soulmates they thought they were, and in fact are miserably stultifying people to live with, have the liberty to divorce. For some people, regardless of sexual orientation, marriage simply never happens. For many, it doesn’t work out.

There is no natural reason why civil law and institutional rules have to make life (and death) needlessly difficult for people who have not had the good fortune to get married and make it work. We are not a problem, and we do not need to be marginalized at the end of our lives. Even if Obama were all in favor of marriage equality–which he doesn’t seem to be–he could not make it a nationwide legal reality any time soon. With or without Obama’s support, same-sex marriage is going to take some years to catch on. In the meantime, there is absolutely nothing wrong with treating unmarried people like human beings, for a change.

Your marriage is not subject to a simple majority vote.

At the Courage Campaign liveblogging of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Brian Leubitz shows us this blog post from Prop 8 counsel:

What is at stake in the Perry case is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman; a federal court decision overturning Proposition 8 could also ultimately nullify the people’s vote on marriage in 45 states and the federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress in 1996.

This brings me to my third (and presumably final) fisking of the arguments against marriage equality. As I said before, there are three basic categories of opposition to same-sex marriage, distinct from homophobia in general: children, religion, and tradition/definition. Everything else is indistinguishable from discrimination in general against sexual minorities. So, now I’m going to talk about marriage as a tradition and definition.

To say that marriage is traditionally defined as between a man and a woman sounds like the epistemological equivalent of a deepity, a coinage by Prof. Daniel Dennett defined approximately thus: a deepity is a statement with two meanings; one which is true but superficial, the other which appears profound but is in fact meaningless.

Interfering with the legislative process of where you don’t live

“Democracy” means something different when we’re talking about DC:

Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, appealed that ruling to Superior Court. Last week, 39 members of Congress filed a brief in support of Jackson’s appeal, arguing that the election board overstepped its authority in denying a public vote on whether marriage should be defined as a being between a man and a woman.

So, this is the situation: there is a bill which will extend marriage rights for people who live in DC. That bill was passed by democratically elected council members who represent DC, and signed by the democratically elected mayor of DC. The people trying to fuck with the bill are a pastor from Beltsville, which is in Maryland (hangs head in shame) and therefore not DC, and 39 Congressfolk who do not represent DC. The DC Board of Elections and Ethics says, TWICE, that they can’t fuck with the bill. A judge who serves the people of DC says they can’t fuck with the bill. So these people coming from everywhere except DC keep on saying, “We wanna fuck with the bill!”

Sorry, what’s that about marriage equality being undemocratic, again? What’s that about “judicial activism”? Does “the will of the people” now mean letting elected officials make decisions for people they don’t represent, and whose interests are therefore of no consequence to them?

All that said, I can see where Bishop Harry Jackson is coming from. Beltsville isn’t in DC, but it’s not far away, either. A very large share of Maryland’s population works in DC and/or lives near it. When DC starts letting same-sex couples marry, it’ll only be a matter of time before a critical mass of people in Prince George’s County see enough to realize it’s not the downfall of civilization. Once PG County is on board with marriage equality, well, Montgomery County will already be there and the rest of the Baltimore-Washington corridor will either be there already or not far behind. And then Bishop Harry Jackson will find himself in the position of ministering to legally married same-sex couples who held their weddings at other churches. I suppose that would make him uncomfortable.