Shakesville

Redefining Queer

First of all, Dan Savage rules:

Straight Rights Update Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family-planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told The Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is OK." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine—a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year—from being made available.

The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're having those babies, ladies, and you're making those child-support payments, gentlemen. If you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.

What's it going to take to get a straight rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas wants to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking holy war, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

It’s not that they hate heterosexuality—it’s that they hate anyone who has sex for any other reason than babymaking. We don’t need a straight rights movement; we need a Sex for Pleasure Movement! Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered folks, single folks, married couples who are deliberately childless, married couples who just don’t want kids yet or have enough already—all of us are queer now. We want the right to have sex how we want it, when it want it, with whom we want it. We want control over making love and making babies, and our decisions are no one else’s goddamned business.

We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it—and get out of our pants!

And a personal aside to the Republican state rep who told The Kansas City Star that handing out contraception to single women is saying that promiscuity is okay… If you withhold contraception from women, I’ll take that as a reversal of the GOP’s position on blowjobs. You can’t impeach all of us!

(Hat tip to Jessica at Feministing.)

This Should Seal the Deal

Me4Pres makes Gore an offer he can hardly refuse:

I am pretty sure that Al Gore is hesitant to run in '08 because he thinks I will also be running. Knowing that he must read my blog like all political heavyweights daily, it is scary to say the least. It is not hard to understand why others are also hesitating to run…

I will make a deal with you, Mr Gore. If you run, I will use my powers for good and try to help you get elected. If you don't run, I will use my blog to encourage others to speed up global warming and destroying the environment. The decision is yours.

Nicely played, Me4Pres. I support your Dastardly Ultimatum Campaign 100%.

Unseen Gore Campaign Video

This is a campaign video shot by Spike Jonez during the 2000 election, passed on by Shaker Constant Comment. (If it won't play for you in-page, go here.) It’s a candid slice-of-life piece following Gore mostly around his home and spending time with his family, and Gore makes no attempt to hide its design, its intent to break down his image as “stiff.” At one point, he says, very quietly and frankly, “I’m a little more reserved than most, than a lot of the people I know in politics, but trying to break through that, that’s probably the most frustrating thing.”

It’s a wonderful piece. It really reveals the Gore some of us always saw underneath anyway, but so many others didn’t—at ease, funny, earnest, passionate.

As I watched it, I thought about 2000, and I thought about how I was torn to pieces when Bush was announced as our new president, because I feared so thoroughly the damage he’d do to the country. I thought about everything that has happened in the intervening five years—images of 9/11, the ignored Aug. 6 PDB, pictures I have seen of injured soldiers, of bloody Iraqi babies, the lost and displaced lives of the Gulf Coast, the endemic poverty within our borders that has only worsened. I thought about everything that has gone so very wrong as I watched Al Gore talk about becoming a man who found his place in the imperfect world of politics, who wanted to lead us, and I began to cry. And for a few moments, I let myself mourn the history we could have, should have, had.

Well Done, WaPo

I was all set to complain about the WaPo’s decision to hire a new conservative blogger, until I found out that he’s pretty darn smart. Ben Domenech, 12/12/01:

Never trust a male cheerleader.

Agreed.
(Hat tip to James at Your Logo Here, via C&L.)

The Lunatic O’Reilly Goes for Baroque

When I am compelled to subject myself to the sneering, language-mangling, condescending, heh-hehing visage of our president, some sort of high-school-chemistry-class-experiment-gone-haywire reaction happens in my gut, causing it to churn and gurgle, eventually producing some wicked concoction that gets into my bloodstream and travels to my brain, where the devilish compound then explodes in a white hot flash, and I am left a seething mass of teeth-gnashing, fist-clenching rage.

On the occasions I have had the misfortune to witness the undulating tangle of self-righteousness, delusion, and smugness that is Bill O’Reilly, I have approximately the same reaction, only ever so slightly less so.

It’s difficult for me to pin down exactly what I find most revolting about O’Reilly—the unmitigated, bloviating assertions of rightness in the face of contrary facts? the incessant and rude interrupting of his guests? the self-referentialism? the self-reverence?—but suffice it to say, I loathe it all. There isn’t a moment that passes on his nightly cavalcade of dreadfulness that isn’t categorically offensive to every fiber of my being. He is a conceited, discourteous, lying swine, who has the unique capacity to nauseate me even on the rare and fleeting instances when I agree with him.

So it was with no small amount of pleasure I read Nicholas Lemann’s beautifully constructed takedown of the Mayor of Swillville in The New Yorker, to which I was directed care of the splendid Blogenfreude at Agitprop. To wit:

O’Reilly, like every political talk-show host with a big following, is a populist, who, in his beyond-irony way, is a rich, middle-aged white guy aligned with the ruling party, and who has the guts to stand up to the élitists who run (but also hate) this country. To say that that doesn’t make any sense is to deny oneself the pleasure that a close study of O’Reilly affords.

By the time I got to Lemann’s description of the sex-offender fixated O’Reilly’s program as “increasingly, not a conservative show but a cop show—‘O’Reilly: Special Victims Unit,’ perhaps,” and his recounting of O’Reilly’s masturbatory fantasies of the beheading of Michael Kinsley to further prove my theory that O’Reilly uses his outlier radio show to plumb the depths of his odium, I was flush with the fever of a happy contentedness that I generally associate with the need for a cigarette and a nap.

Now, it’s true that I hate Bill O’Reilly with a fiery passion that burns brighter than 10,000 suns, so perhaps those who, say, would describe the intensity of their revulsion for him as merely sufficient to power a small African village for three years won’t quite reach the pinnacles of ecstasy that I did. But give it a read, anyway. At minimum, it cleanses the palette, if momentarily, of the distaste left behind by the sheer verity of his existence.

Hmm

Looking ahead to 2008: Rudy Giuliani (R), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) "continue to be the most popular candidates in their respective party primaries," according to the latest Fox News poll.

Among Democrats, Clinton continues to be the clear choice as their party's presidential nominee with the support of 43% of registered Democrats -- "outdistancing by about 30 points potential competitors such as former Vice President Al Gore (12%), former Sen. John Edwards (11%) and Sen. John Kerry (10%).

Among Republicans, Giuliani remains the front-runner and edges out McCain by 7 points (29% to 22%). Other possible GOP contenders receive support in the single digits; former Rep. Newt Gingrich comes in at 8% and Sen. Bill Frist is backed by 5%.

(To be clear, this was a telephone poll of 900 voters nationwide, not an online poll or something else that would have primarily tapped into Fox viewers.)

It’s interesting that Giuliani is taking the lead. I suspect when conservatives find out that he’s pro-choice and pro-gay rights, however, they might change their minds. Unless he changes his on those issues, which wouldn’t be entirely unexpected, but would make his life rather difficult as a national candidate. Pictures like this won’t help, either:

That picture actually makes me like him more, but that’s only one of many differences between me and conservative voters.

The Equal Opportunism of Sexism

You know how I’m always saying that men have a vested interest in promoting gender equality because misogyny almost always manages to be as unflattering, at best, toward men as it is toward women? Here’s a perfect example, care of Salon’s Broadsheet:

“Manliness” author Harvey Mansfield apparently claimed (here we go again) that women only say they want “sensitive” -- or if they do, they’ve been brainwashed by feminists -- when what they really want is “manly.” (Because no man in the history of men, which is to say history, has ever been both.)

[…]

(Oh, I know what letters are coming. “But women do love bad boys!” “I’m a nice guy and women don’t date me because I’m not a jerk!” etc. Enough. Yes, some women have a thing for cads. And some men have a thing for beeyotches. You know what? Some people make sketchy choices. It’s not a gender thing.)

And fellas, if I were you, just to reiterate, I’d be huffy about GMA’s unexamined (and iffily illustrated) implication that you guys are either studly or sweet -- never both.

There are, maybe, some men who would protest being seen as both “studly” and “sweet,” but, generally, men who resist showing any tendency toward kindness or empathy are resoundingly unlikable, and are thusly disliked by both men and women (except for a stubborn, and quite possibly addled, 18%).

It’s impossible to reduce the desires of one entire gender down to a one-dimensional concept without turning the other gender into a cardboard cutout that then fits the desire. And this is to say nothing of my irritation that such polemics wholly ignore the women who want other women; when one goes on about “what women want,” and then proceeds to talk only about men, the implication, unintentional or not, is to suggest that lesbians are somehow not women, or some aberrant subset that doesn’t bear regard, instead of the lovely evidence of complexity among women that they are. (Ditto the exclusion of gay men in the reverse.) Humans are complex creatures, which is, perhaps, an inconvenient fact for the scribe of a book called “Manliness.”

As much as it annoys me to see myself and the women I love and admire reduced to female caricatures with such asinine works, it annoys me equally to see the men I love and admire reduced to male caricatures—and not just because it’s offensive; it’s uninteresting. I’m bored with the inundation of gender reductionism that seeks to turn us all into dull, uncomplicated, interchangeable masses, stealing from us the intricacies and layers that make us beautiful. I’m bored with the obvious falsity of it all. Sensitivity isn’t an antonym for manliness—to be sensitive, to be decent and tolerant and patient and considerate, takes strength. In the words of a man I have loved for many years, “It’s so easy to laugh / It’s so easy to hate / It takes guts to be gentle and kind.”

Mr. Mansfield (quite a name) can accuse me of feminist brainwashing all he likes. I think we could all do with washing our brains of the notion that “manliness” does, and should, exclude sensitivity. Complexity is not only real, but it’s interesting, and interesting is sexy—no matter which gender’s doing the looking or what gender they’re looking at.

Hey, Senator--here's your ass.

On a platter!

Sixteen year-old Tully Satre stood alone during a town meeting with Sen. George Allen (R-VA) and eviscerated the bigot.

I never dreamed of the day when I would reach a political debate on a human rights issue based on civil liberty and the foundations of our great country with a Senator, former Virginia Governor, and a potential candidate for the Republican Presidency. Senator George Allen (R-Virginia), held a public hearing in Culpeper this evening. I was there, and so was Culpeper.

Tully states that there were at leat 100 people in the room, several of them prominant figures in the community--and many members from his old church. This may have been daunting to some, but not Tully. When it was his turn, he stepped up:

"I wanted to speak with you in regards to a Hate Crimes bill that was introduced in Congress not too long ago." He nodded at me as I continued, "This bill sought to add 'sexual orientation' to the country's list of types of people that are victims of hate crimes. I myself have been victim to threats and assaults of hate crime based on the fact that I am gay, and I am a Virginian. Only two weeks ago my friend was in Richmond when he walked out of a restraint with his partner another person called him a 'faggot', drew a knife, and attacked my friend. Luckily, my friend lived - others are not so lucky. Last year, you supported legislation which sought to add 'sexual orientation' to the nation's hate crime list, and for that I thank you - but later this year you said that you regret your support for this bill and would not support this bill in the future, why is that?"

Senator Allen kept his smile, kept his poise, and prepared one of those typical political responses. He told me a story, that once he was at a Gay Pride Festival in Philadelphia, and there was a peaceful group reciting verses from the Bible across the street. They were arrested for assault. He believes in religious freedom, and believes religious freedom of expression is ideal in this country. I agree. Senator Allen continued to say that he believes sexual orientation is not a civil right Everyone broke into thunderous applause. I doubt the crowd understood - Senator Allen seemed to turn the table making my statement appear as if I was advocating for "special" rights, which of course is far from the truth.

And then the ass-handing begins:

"Well Senator," I began. "I too believe religious freedom of expression is part of what this country was founded upon - it is a beautiful thing to be able to express your views, however sexual orientation is not a civil right, it is a part of someone, and gay citizens are being denied basic civil liberty, very basic rights that most citizens are granted." The Senator said something along the lines of disagreement. "If you believe that this is how gay citizens should be treated," I continued, "I am assuming that is why you supported the Federal Marriage Amendment."

Be sure to read the whole thing! Perhaps leave him a comment, they're mostly positive so far. Only a few trolls.

The young man was very much alone in his stance, it seemed, given the cheering from the audience for all of Sen. Allen's answers. Apparently there were a few reporters there as well, one from the NYT--which freaked Allen out to the point that he recalled Tully and hemmed-hawed some non-answers to try and save face. Which is a fairly futile task when your ass was served up to you on a silver platter by a teenage constituent.

(cross-posted, hat tip Pam)

Question of the Day

First check out this fantastic chart at Alas, a Blog.

What do you think? Do you dig it? Not dig it? Do you want to play Devil’s Advocate and point out anything missing that would enable the “pro-life” crowd to argue that they should be taken at their word (that word being a genuine interest in protecting the life of a child as opposed to needlessly punishing women)? Did it make you think about anything you hadn’t considered? Reaffirm what you already thought?

Discuss.

(Via The Green Knight.)

Oh, don’t make her get the wire hangers!

[Filed under: Queer and Hag Cult Flick Fun.]

Very amusing answering machine message from Ms. Faye Dunaway, who—I have now made a mental note—will not appreciate it if I ever scream at her, “No more wire hangers!” Instead, I shall politely ask her about her brilliant film with Mr. Marlon Brando.

(Is she referring to Don Juan DeMarco? That film sucks bulldog balls.)

Via Lahoma00 at Dlisted, who notes, “this tape is more precious to me than a cocaine laced dick is to Tara Reid.” Ha.

Just ARGH

Check out this post at The Disgruntled Chemist's place.

In a move that manages to be equal delicious parts misogynist and xenophobic, some total knob-end decides to use a book called Physical Violence in American Families to refute a campus poster about International Women's Day.

And then, after The Chemist's critique, said knob-end further demonstrates his knob-endedness by threatening to sue. Well played.

Go English! Rah rah rah!

Poll Shows Support for Official English at New High:

ProEnglish Executive Director K.C. McAlpin said, "Eighty-five percent of likely voters incorrectly think English already is the official language of the United States. But when informed that the United States does not have an official language, virtually the same number -- 84 percent -- agree that we should make English the official language of governmental operations."

…McApin commented, "This is a huge boost for the English Language Unity Act, H.R. 997, a bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) that would make English our official language and which now enjoys the bipartisan co-sponsorship of more than a third of the entire House of Representatives. If congressional leaders want to find ways to improve Congress's standing with the voters," added McAlpin, "they could do a lot worse than to pass legislation that enjoys 84 percent voter support."

Who gives a shit?! What is the fucking point of worrying about making sure America has an official language? Especially when, evidently, the vast majority of Americans don’t even know we don’t bloody have one—and half of them can barely write, read, or speak English as it is.

ProEnglish. Pfft. What nonsense. The only conceivable reason to support this legislation is to justify barking, “You’re in America now! Learn how to speak English!” at someone.

Like Mr. Shakes has heard once or twice with his wacky Scottish accent.

I swear to the fates, the day some slack-jawed moron working the drive-through at Taco Bell told Mr. Shakes he “need[s] to learn how to speak English,” I thought I was going to have to forcibly hold him down, lest he jump through the open window and throttle the guy within an inch of his very life.

The best, however (which I’m quite sure I’ve mentioned, though it bears repeating), was, after telling someone at the BMV that my husband had recently emigrated from Scotland and inquiring what he’d need to do to get a driver’s license, I was handed a copy of “Rules of the Road” and asked, “He reads English okay, right?”

WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU THINK THEY SPEAK IN SCOTLAND?!

Forget a national language. We need a national geography lesson—and it can start with the debunking of the common misconception that America is the center of the bloody universe.

Two soldiers, and what we owe them

All they ask is an honest accounting

The New York Times today recounts the ongoing and frustrating efforts of Patrick K. Tillman to learn just how his son Pat died in Afghanistan. Cpl. Pat Tillman went from professional football player to Army Ranger to martyred hero to victim of an unexplained friendly fire incident. His story is nationally known - even if the actual circumstances of his death are not - due in large part to the lionization of Cpl. Tillman by the public and the media in the early days after his death. Now that the initial account of that death has unraveled, the story's notoriety has forced a belated official investigation:

After repeated complaints from the Tillmans and members of Congress contacted by them, the Army is immersed in a highly unusual criminal investigation of the killing, and the Defense Department's inspector general, which called for the criminal investigation this month, is looking separately into the Army's conduct in its aftermath.

Senior military officials said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had expressed outrage to top aides that the Army was having to conduct yet another inquiry into the shooting, prolonging the family's anguish and underscoring the failure of the Army's investigative processes to bring resolution.

When even Rumsfeld takes an interest - Rumsfeld, who famously once allowed his signature to be rubber-stamped on letters sent to the families of those killed in action rather than taking the time to sign them himself - you can be sure that official attention is finally being brought to bear. That raises a troubling question, however, one asked aloud by the mother of Cpl. Tillman:

"This is how they treat a family of a high-profile individual," she said. "How are they treating others?"

This brings us to the matter of Pfc. LaVena Johnson.

Pfc. Johnson was no professional athlete prior to military service. She was an honor roll student out of Hazelwood Central High here in the St. Louis area with straight As in her senior year. She played the violin, she donated blood, she volunteered for American Heart Association walks. Johnson elected to put off college for a while and joined the Army once out of school. At Fort Campbell, KY, she was assigned as a weapons supply manager to the 129th Corps Support Battalion. Johnson was shipped out to Iraq despite - according to family accounts - having flunked her weapons training.

Private LaVena Johnson of Florissant, MO, died near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005, just eight days shy of her twentieth birthday. She was the first woman soldier from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

According to Johnson's father, Dr. Jack Johnson, an Army representative said that his daughter died of "died of self-inflicted, noncombat injuries," but initially added that it was not a suicide. As described by St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Norm Parish, the story soon became confused. First the Army public affairs officer at Fort Campbell confirmed that Johnson had been shot in the head. He later reversed himself, stating that he could not confirm that injury. A local employee at the chapel handling Johnson's funeral arrangements did confirm a wound on the left side of Johnson's head that appeared to be a bullet hole.

The Army announced that the matter had been referred to its Criminal Investigation Division, all while maintaining that the referral did not mean that a crime had been committed. Less than a week later, the Army ruled Johnson's death a suicide. Dr. Johnson refuted the finding and pointed to indications that his daughter had endured a physical struggle before she died - two loose front teeth, a "busted lip" that had to be reconstructed by the funeral home - suggesting that "someone might have punched her in the mouth." Also in this later story by the P-D's Parish:

In the interview, he said the wound to the left side of his daughter's head may be an indication that someone else was involved, since she was right-handed. "I'm not a forensic expert, but I am just talking about what seems obvious to me," he said.

And since then there has been little heard of the death of LaVena Johnson or the investigation into that death. The office of U.S. Representative William Lacy Clay announced that it would press the military for answers, but no public statements at all have been issued by that office in the past months. The P-D did run a follow-up piece on the Johnson family written during the holidays. According to that piece, the Army's investigation was still ongoing though officials offered no comment. That official silence is to be expected, perhaps, yet perhaps not to be entirely trusted.

At first glance, the contrast between the cases of Pat Tillman and LaVena Johnson seems disturbingly vast, but at the core the situations are the same. In each case, the death of a young person who served us in a dangerous place and time was not explained to the families they left behind, the families that gave them up so that they could serve us. An honest accounting of their passing is all the dead ask of us. We owe them that much.

The facts behind Pat Tillman's death, whatever they may be, could easily have officially ignored and would be now save only for the public attention already invested in his story.

The facts behind the death of LaVena Johnson - whatever they may be - deserve no less attention.

(All Post-Dispatch stories on LaVena Johnson now behind that paper's archive wall. Thanks to Grey Eagle: A Female Soldier for its post on Pfc. Johnson. This piece is cross-posted.)

#9

I have only one thing to add to Rana’s most excellent post, below.

Secular ≠ Atheist
Someone who advocates a secular (non-religious) government is not necessarily personally aspiritual or irreligious, and I’ve noticed the rightwing increasingly conflating the two terms, so that anyone who mentions the word “secular” in reference to the government is de facto deemed atheistic—which itself has become a dirty term (and that’s a whole other post).

It’s quite similar to the engagement of the term “pro-abortion” to refer to people who are pro-choice. Many people who are politically pro-choice are personally pro-life, would themselves never seek an abortion yet also maintain no interest in forcing someone else to bend to the same personal boundaries. As Rana aptly demonstrates, someone can quite easily be spiritual and/or religious and a vociferous supporter of a secular government. Indeed, many people—including plenty of evangelical social conservatives—are proponents of secular government, because, although their particular brand of religion gets the most ink these days, they wouldn’t want to be subjected to, say, a Catholic government.

Those who seek to undermine the distinction between secularism and atheism, in an effort to cast any suggestion of a strict separation of church and state as antagonistic toward religion (having already managed to cast all atheists thusly, in many quarters), are not merely anti-American, but, in a very practical way, anti-religion. If your religious beliefs don’t match up perfectly with theirs, they are overtly hostile to your religion, as well.

And, in truth, not every individual who supports infusing government with more religion shares exactly the same religious views—a puzzle they’ve no intention of addressing, no less solving—which exposes their faction for what it is: a sectarian political movement.

They’ve done everything they can to disguise it as something more sacred, but under its skin, it’s just another political animal, and is therefore subject to the same debate frame, irrespective of protestations to the contrary.

Spreading Freedom

Afghanistan style:

In a key test of religious freedom in post-Taliban Afghanistan, reports the Times of London, a court in Kabul is trying 41-year-old Abdul Rahman and could sentence him to death. His crime? Being a Christian. Rahman was arrested last month after his family accused him of having renounced his Muslim faith, an offense punishable by hanging under the Afghan constitution. The judge in the case, Alhaj Ansarullah Mawlawy Zada, called his country's constitution perfect, and said Rahman deserved punishment for "teasing and insulating his family by converting."

Maybe the Afghanis could spread some of that brand of freedom back our way, since, of course, none too few conservatives would like the same kind of freedom here—except, you know, with the religions reversed.

Drum Smacks Sully

Pretty funny.

Except for this: “Conservatives should face this reality and stop playing games.” Yes, they should.

Bush on Theocracy: “Move along, nothing to see here—unless you like the idea, and then, uh, nudge nudge, wink wink, uh...”

Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy, a book which examines the influence religious extremists have over (and in) the White House, was a guest of Lou Dobbs' yesterday. Curiously, Phillips is a former Republican strategist who "helped design that party's Southern strategy, made his name with his 1969 book, 'The Emerging Republican Majority,' which predicted the coming ascendancy of the G.O.P.," but now spends his time as a populist social critic—and he's none too pleased with what he sees as the increasing stranglehold of religion on the Republican Party and American politics in general.

Crooks and Liars has the video and a partial transcript:

Phillips: …One of the reasons I think we have kind of screwed up economic politician in some ways is that a lot of Americans have stopped worrying about the economy because they're waiting for the second coming.

Dobbs: And you mean this quite literally?

Phillips: I mean it quite literally.

Yikes. Unfortunately, that's not as crazy as it sounds. There's an entire movement of people who not only don't care about decimating the economy, but are quite content to let the environment fall to ruin as well, for the same reason. They have a keen interest in theocratizing the American government, and although we often stumble over what we call them, causing all sorts of fusses when it appears all Christians are being lumped together, these folks have a name. They're called Dominionists. Anyway...

Phillips' book was referenced in the first question of yesterday's disastrous press conference I mentioned earlier. (Video and transcript.) Today at TPMCafe, Phillips comments:

Parenthetically, when Bush was at the City Club in Cleveland on Monday, someone in the audience cited my book and asked whether Bush would comment on how he felt about the relevance of the Apocalypse to the current-day Mideast. He spent five minutes evading the issue and the word. He has to. If he has to talk about these things, he'll lose a lot of people, and if he ducks, true-believers may start to wonder.

GOP presidential aspirants should take note, because they'll face the same conundrum. The Dominionists aren't going anywhere when Bush finally takes his leave at long last. In fact, (if you can believe it) they're disappointed that Bush has not managed to do more to accommodate their plethora of demands. These people may be lunatics, but they're patient—and any GOP hopeful will have to straddle the same intimidating fence if they want to tap into the not-insignificant Dominionist vote. That's why we're already seeing the so-called maverick McCain courting the god-vote by endorsing the teaching of intelligent design in schools, supporting an Arizona state ban on gay marriage, and giving hesitant but nonetheless positive feedback on the recent abortion pan passed in South Dakota.

The question about Phillips' book was not just another stumbling block for Bush, but a glance into our collective future come 2008. How does one manage to indulge the Dominionists without making the rest of us cringe in revulsion? That'll be fun.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

Congratulations, Shakers!

We've made the Koufax Awards finals for Best Group Blog. So go vote!

(Thanks to everyone who let me know. I was out of it, as usual, and had no idea.)

The War for Women's Autonomy

Next front: birth control.

Salon's Priya Jain weighs in on the new front with a significant article on The Battle to Ban Birth Control, which is the next front in the war for women's autonomy, as those who would seek to eradicate reproductive rights look toward increasingly conservative courts to extend their battlefield beyond abortion. Jain notes that the anti-contraception movement is already making inroads, by exerting pressure on insurance companies to refuse coverage of contraception, lobbying for "conscious clause" laws to give pharmacists the legal right to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, and attempting to redefine pregnancy itself to broaden the scope of abortion and reclassify some contraceptive methods under its umbrella.

As ever, the usual caveats apply. If you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex. Aside from the fundamental flaw best filed under "Human Nature," with this argument (in evidence with the failure rate of abstinence-only sex education, for a start), the argument conveniently ignores both the worst and most ordinary case scenarios—rape and marital sex, the former of which victims can't avoid, and the latter of which (which is the only acceptable frame for the anti-sex lot) one shouldn't have to avoid simply to prevent pregnancy.

In one sense, the movement is so ludicrous that it seems almost laughable; in another, it chills me to my very bones, because it's all too real. And it's hardly just about birth control—because, of course, a women's capacity for controlling her own reproduction effects every other aspect of her life as well. Amanda Marcotte:

That’s why our side is accurately described as pro- and theirs as anti-choice. As I highlighted below, the anti-choice movement has a pretty thorough conformist goal in mind, a plan for all women to follow that involves marrying the first guy you fuck out of necessity because you couldn’t prevent pregnancy and being dependent on him because you can’t get childcare and your own job and financial independence. It’s about not just being unable, therefore, to choose how many children you have, but also really about restricting your choice of a mate and whether to have one at all.

That doesn't sound especially great for the guys, either. Ahem.

One of the most curious aspects of this fondness for the golden days of yore, back when women had no control over their bodies and pumped out babies with regularity, is that it ignores the quantitative societal differences between then and now which makes supporting a huge family on one income a virtual impossibility. The economy is not the same. The workforce is not the same. My oldest girlfriend is a high school teacher at the same school in the same town at which my father spent the vast majority of his career as a teacher. He supported a family of four on his salary alone; my girlfriend, on the other hand, who has a comparable house and now two daughters of her own, couldn't possibly support her whole family on just her salary. It's a different world, one in which a single income simply doesn't go as far as it used to. I struggle to comprehend how the anti-choicers expect families to function were their every wet dream to be come true. Short of our entire society snapping into a completely different shape in the blink of an eye, the realization of their movement would be absolutely disastrous.

But hey—who has time for details when there's a war on?

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)

Gimme More Gore

Hi, my name is Melissa and I'm a Gore-aholic.

Regular (long-suffering, indulgent) readers of Shakespeare's Sister are all too well aware of my huge crush on Al Gore. Not the kind of crush that would, say, lead to his impeachment, ahem, should he ever find his way into the Oval Office, but a deep and enduring admiration which has spanned so many years, seen such dizzying thrills and disappointments, that it does, at this point, have the capacity to make me blush and babble endlessly about the object of my political affection, as if it were, indeed, a crush of another sort.

A tale I've told before comes from my 18th year—and my first opportunity to vote in the '92 election. I took the presidential campaign very seriously, convinced as I was that my measured contemplation of the issues would result in my casting not only a wise and discerning vote, but most assuredly the deciding vote that would singly hand the president to my chosen man. (Yes, ever the geek, I was more excited about voting for the first time than I had been about getting my driver's license.) I was discussing the campaign with my dad one day, very early on (maybe even as early as '91), and I said that I liked Al Gore. He looked at me with a knitted brow. "Al Gore?"

"Yes," I enthused. "He's a Senator from Tennessee, and he's very pro-environment and he's well into technology and—"

"Shouldn't you be going on dates or something?" my dad said, approximately.

Dates schmates. I had candidates to pay attention to.

When Clinton chose Gore as his running mate, I was on the moon. You see, I never found Gore to be the stiff, stuffy, robotic doofus that he was supposed to be. Okay, he was a bit shy and awkward, and kind of a nerd, but I never figured Lincoln or FDR to be the first on the dance floor, either. I liked him. I admired him. The entire Clinton presidency was, for me, about one thing—getting Gore into the White House. So you can imagine how I felt in November of 2000. Inconsolable is, perhaps, inadequate.

Nonetheless, I hoped we hadn't seen the last of Al Gore. And we hadn't.

Gore's been up to lots of interesting stuff lo these past few years—much of which is chronicled in a new cover story by Ezra Klein in The American Prospect. Jan Frel, also giving it a review in The Mix, describes it as "a gush on Gore's best hits since he left office," which, considering our current dearth of gush-worthy politicians at the moment, is certainly not a bad thing, as it also reminds us "about why he's among the more compelling nationally known politicians we have." A taste:

As it has turned out, Al Gore as presented by Al Gore is infinitely more electric and attractive than the anodyne stiff the media popularized and the voters remembered.

Since his loss, Gore has undergone a resurrection of sorts, shrugging off the consultants and the caution that hampered him during the campaign and--aided by new distribution technologies--evolving into perhaps the most articulate, animated, and forceful critic of the Bush administration. And now, with Democrats taking a fresh look at a man they thought they knew and speculation mounting around his ambitions in 2008, it seems that the man much mocked for inventing the Internet is in fact using the direct communication it enables to reinvent himself.

There's lots more where that came from. Gore lovers—well, you'll love it, as any hint that The Man may return for another go at the big time is enough to send us into a dither. As for you agnostics or full-on Gore-aphobes—do yourselves a favor and check it out. There may be something there to convert you yet.

(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)