The Vegetarian Option is Steak
Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri just had some fun with a stupid answer that Michele Bachmann gave someone recently.
Bachmann's answer is not one she invented, it is a standard rightwing talking point that has been bouncing around for years. This is one of those statements bears some superficial resemblance to reasonable speech, but if you pay the slightest attention to it you realize it is simply veiled bigotry and nonsense. It is a classic eye-roller, but I have never seen anyone take the time to refute it.
Here's one way to do it:
The kicker really is that Iowa does give gay and lesbian people the right to marry the person they actually love, and does not require that the state approve the sex of the partner. She could have easily given a succinct, accurate, and noncontroversial answer, "In this state, gay people can marry" -- with a suitably indignant facial expression, her crowd booing the fact of marriage equality in Iowa, maybe a chant would spread through the crowd, "No gay marriage! No gay marriage!" she could have made the moment work for her.
Instead she chose to provide ammunition for a bright blogger and others to make devastating fun of her.
Jane Schmidt, a student at Waverly High School, in Waverly, Iowa, recently asked Michele Bachmann, “Why can’t same-sex couples get married?”
“They can get married,” Bachmann responded, “but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.”
(In Iowa, same-sex marriage is the law, at least for now, but never mind that.)
She later expanded on this in a response to someone else: “Every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex.”Michele Bachmann gets things straight on gay marriage
Bachmann's answer is not one she invented, it is a standard rightwing talking point that has been bouncing around for years. This is one of those statements bears some superficial resemblance to reasonable speech, but if you pay the slightest attention to it you realize it is simply veiled bigotry and nonsense. It is a classic eye-roller, but I have never seen anyone take the time to refute it.
Here's one way to do it:
Really?
This is the sound of a thousand heads hitting a thousand desks.
I’m glad Bachmann wasn’t there for history. “Why can’t Rosa Parks sit at the front of the bus?”
“She can sit,” Bachmann would say. “She can sit at the back of the bus.”
I’m glad she isn’t my waiter. “Is there a vegetarian option?”
“The vegetarian option is steak,” Bachmann would say, not blinking an eye.
“Is there a way for people in wheel chairs to access the sixth floor?”
“There’s a way. They can take the stairs,” Bachmann would say, still not blinking.
“There doesn’t seem to be an option for Republicans to vote.”
“Republicans can vote. They can vote Democrat like everyone else,” Bachmann would say, blinking a little in confusion.
“I’d like to find a synagogue.”
“There’s a synagogue right here,” Bachmann would say. “It’s a church.”
“Do you have apples?”
“Yes, I have oranges.”
At first Bachmann’s remark seemed like a peculiar thing to say, coming on the heels of her sensible remark that, “I think we have really forgotten what true tolerance means. True tolerance means allowing people to express themselves and their beliefs.”
But then it made sense.
As Bachmann would say, “We allow you to express different beliefs. You can express different beliefs that agree with us.”
I’m glad she’s here to keep things straight.
The kicker really is that Iowa does give gay and lesbian people the right to marry the person they actually love, and does not require that the state approve the sex of the partner. She could have easily given a succinct, accurate, and noncontroversial answer, "In this state, gay people can marry" -- with a suitably indignant facial expression, her crowd booing the fact of marriage equality in Iowa, maybe a chant would spread through the crowd, "No gay marriage! No gay marriage!" she could have made the moment work for her.
Instead she chose to provide ammunition for a bright blogger and others to make devastating fun of her.
posted by JimK at 8:38 AM
31 Comments:
She fits right in with the rest of her party of circus clowns.
"The GOP payroll-tax cut was something Democrats can and should work with [because] that same GOP payroll-tax cut made mincemeat of Republicans' own arguments about taxing "job creators".
Perhaps for those reasons, Republicans ended up voting against their own counterproposal on the Senate floor. By this I don't mean that an insufficient number of Republicans supported the GOP plan to put it over the top. (That would have been impossible, since no Democrats voted for it.) I mean that an outright majority of Republicans voted against their own plan. Twenty Republicans voted for the plan; 26 voted against, with Sen. John McCain (R., AZ) not voting.
But wait, as the kids say: It gets weird! One of the GOP nays was the second-highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, Minority Whip John Kyl, R.-AZ, who I guess is unwilling to back away from his impolitic comment five days ago on Fox News Sunday that "the payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation" because only tax cuts for wealthy job creators can achieve that. Which I guess displays a certain kind of stubborn integrity under the twin pressures of common sense and political expediency. Also voting against the GOP proposal were Republican conference chair Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) and Republican policy committee chair John Thune (R., S.D.). Indeed, the only member of the Senate leadership whom Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-KY, could get to support the "GOP plan" was Republican conference vice-chair Sen. John Barrasso (R., WY). That's gotta hurt.
I might add that the "GOP plan" failed even after Grover Norquist, all-powerful president of Americans For Tax Reform, came out in favor of it."
Bachmann's remarks would fit right in in Saudi Arabia where they have all sorts of suspicions about sexual behavior.
"RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A report given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said Saturday.
The ultraconservative stance suggests increasing pressure on King Abdullah to retain the kingdom's male-only driving rules despite international criticism.
Rights activist Waleed Abu Alkhair said the document by a well-known academic was sent to the all-male Shura Council, which advises the monarchy. The report by Kamal Subhi claims that allowing women to drive will threaten the country's traditions of virgin brides, he said. The suggestion is that driving will allow greater mixing of genders and could promote sex.
Saudi women have staged several protests defying the driving ban. The king has already promised some reforms, including allowing women to vote in municipal elections in 2015.
There was no official criticism or commentary on the scholar's views, and it was unclear whether they were solicited by the Shura Council or submitted independently. But social media sites were flooded with speculation that Saudi's traditional-minded clerics and others will fight hard against social changes suggested by the 87-year-old Abdullah.
Saudi's ruling family, which oversees Islam's holiest sites, draws its legitimacy from the backing of the kingdom's religious establishment, which follows a strict brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. While Abdullah has pushed for some changes on women's rights, he is cautious not to push too hard against the clerics.
In October, Saudi Arabia named a new heir to the throne, Prince Nayef, who is a former interior minister and considered to hold traditionalist views, although he had led crackdowns against suspected Islamic extremists. His selection appeared to embolden the ultraconservative clerics to challenge any sweeping social reforms.
Prince Nayef was picked following the death of Crown Prince Sultan."
Bachmann's comments would be even more welcome by the Saudis if her husband delivered them for her.
"she chose to provide ammunition for a bright blogger and others to make devastating fun of her"
well, the blogger isn't very bright, with her non-analagous metaphors, and I'm certain Bachmann isn't devastated
having fun? hope so, because gay "marriage" isn't a political winner and hasn't won at a ballot box yet
simply put, those who suport the gay language game aren't as likely to vote as those who are opposed to it
"This is one of those statements bears some superficial resemblance to reasonable speech, but if you pay the slightest attention to it you realize it is simply veiled bigotry and nonsense"
oh good, let's give it some attention
"I have never seen anyone take the time to refute it"
thank heaven, someone is now taking the time to discuss this
in all the non-analagous examples used by the not-very-bright blogger, someone twists the meaning of a word just like gays do with all kinds of words, including "marriage"
calling the back of the bus the front
or calling a steak vegetarian
or calling a synagogue a church
or calling an apple an orange
is just like calling a marriage gay
it's a contradiction of terms, an oxyMORON, if you will
brought to you by the biggest group of MORONs in the country: lunatic fringe gay advocates
but Americans have consistently demonstrated that they aren't falling for it
that's because Americans aren't MORONs
It's just like calling the right to marry somebody you don't love "a right."
actually, marraige isn't a right
you have to find someone willing to perform the ceremony
churches have long refused to marry people if they think they're incompatible or if they don't undergo premarital counseling
you only have the right to seek it
success in any endeavour is not a right
So then why did Michelle Bachman call it a right? I guess she was wrong twice.
think she said the right to "avail" yourself to marriage
Oooo, look who posted 6 nervous comments, one telling:
"gay "marriage" isn't a political winner and hasn't won at a ballot box yet"
Key word = "yet"
Cue the music .... For the times they are a'changin'.
my use of "yet", as you well know, is ironic
or maybe you didn't know
for the less educated, let me be more clear:
no self-determined society will ever abolish the definition of marriage and replace it with something including homosexual relationships
"...Fifty-three percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed believe the government should give legal recognition to marriages between couples of the same sex, about the same as last year [2010 CNN poll], according to the nationwide telephone poll by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center. Forty-four percent were opposed.
People are similarly conflicted over what, if anything, the government should do about the issue.
Support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage has shifted in recent years, from a narrow majority opposed in 2009 to narrow majority support now. Some of the shift stems from a generational divide, with the new poll showing a majority of Americans under age 65 in favor of legal recognition for same-sex marriages, and a majority of seniors opposed...."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/14/national/main20105897.shtml
The writer Anatole France observed that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/805.html
His point, of course, being that this “equality” was not equal, because the rich had no need to “sleep under bridges” or “to beg in the streets.”
Here. the law "in its majesty" (in most states and under the federal DOMA), prohibits both straight and gay people from marrying persons of the same gender.
The GOP circus clowns can't stop themselves from making fools of themselves. Perhaps they have ODed on tea.
"...No fewer than nine [New Hampshire] state representatives are openly supporting Birther Orly Taitz’s effort to get Barack Obama off the ballot because they believe he is not a citizen.
...late last month a contentious hearing at the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission featuring lawyer/dentist Taitz and a pair of Republican representatives — Harry Accornero and Susan DeLemus — who were furious when the panel voted to keep Obama’s name on the ballot.
...A meeting between the representatives and the Republican House Speaker, Bill O’Brien, was cancelled late last month amid concerns about unruly behavior by some of the representatives at the ballot commission hearing, which is now under investigation. And House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt has attempted to distance his caucus from the Birthers, calling out their “ridiculous … continued obsession over President Obama’s birth place,” the Concord Monitor reported.
Meanwhile, the Monitor published a blistering editorial ["Lawmakers' actions shamed the state"] on Friday calling out the nine representatives by name:
"Later, when the ballot commission unanimously denied Taitz’s request, pandemonium ensued. Shouts of “treason” could be heard. Accornero rose from his seat and began shouting, “Why don’t you rip up the Constitution and throw it out. You all should be accused of treason, and we’ll get people to do that too.” He went on to call Obama a treasonous liar and warned Mavrogeorge that he’d “better wear a mask” when he came to Laconia.
The video is being aired nationally, and the unruly representatives have brought shame on the institution they serve and the state of New Hampshire. They deserve the censure of their colleagues. They also deserve to be replaced by voters."
The nine reps are: Harry Accornero, Susan DeLemus, Al Baldassaro, William Tobin, Moe Villeneuve, Laurie Pettengill, Larry Rappaport, Lucien Vita, and Carol Vita."
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/nine_nh_republicans_help_birther_cause/singleton/
yes, anyone who doesn't believe Obama is a true-blue patriotic American must be nuts
but why does Obama seem determined to reduce the influence of our society in the world, like his unAmerican father did, whose "dreams" he wrote a book about?
"Here. the law "in its majesty" (in most states and under the federal DOMA), prohibits both straight and gay people from marrying persons of the same gender."
David, the klaw never did such a thing until recent years when activist judges went along with gay agenda advocates and tried to redefine marriage by government fiat
before then, it was assumed everyone understood what marriage meant
which is how words maintain meaning
so complaining about laws forbidding gay marriage takes some chutzpah
it's a chicken-egg problem
like with reporters who moderate debates trying to get candidates to attack one another so they can write stories about how offended they are by the uncivil behavior
the laws are there to combat those who have tried to misuse our judicial system
"Consider his confusion of views on colonialism. In the 1971 Ph.D. dissertation Newt wrote at Tulane University, titled “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960,” he is anti-anticolonialism.
“If the Congolese are to confront the future with realism they will need a solid understanding of their own past and an awareness of the good as well as the bad aspects of colonialism,” he argued. “It would be just as misleading to speak in generalities of ‘white exploitation’ as it once was to talk about ‘native backwardness.’ ”
He warned against political pressures encouraging “Black xenophobia.” What’s xenophobic about Africans wanting their oppressors to go away? It’s like saying abused wives who want their husbands to leave are anti-men.
He sees colonialism as a complicated thing with good and bad effects rather than a terrible thing with collateral benefits.
Laura Seay, an assistant professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta and an expert on Africa, blogged that Gingrich’s thesis was “kind of a glorified white man’s burden take on colonial policy that was almost certainly out of vogue in the early 1970s. Gingrich wrote this as the Black Consciousness and Black Power movements were approaching their pinnacles. It was most decidedly not the time to be arguing that white European masters did a swell job ruling black Africans through a system that ensured that most Congolese would never get a real education.”
When it comes to America’s British overlords, Gingrich is not so sympathetic. The bludgeon of American exceptionalism that he uses on President Obama was forged at Valley Forge.
In the introduction to his novel about George Washington and the Revolutionary War, “To Try Men’s Souls,” written with William R. Forstchen, Gingrich writes: “The British elites believed this was a conflict about money and about minor irritations. They simply could not believe the colonists were serious about their rights as free men and women.”
Gingrich, a radical precursor to the modern Tea Party when he staged what conservatives considered the second American Revolution in the House in the ’90s, wrote with delight of London’s shock when Samuel Adams started the original Tea Party.
But while an anticolonial disposition is good if you’re Adams, Washington and Jefferson, it’s bad if you’re Barack Obama’s Kenyan father living under British rule two centuries later.
Gingrich made one of his classic outrageous overreaches last year when he praised a Dinesh D’Souza article in Forbes, saying you could only understand how “fundamentally out of touch” and “outside our comprehension” President Obama is “if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”
D’Souza’s absurd ad hominem theory tying Obama to his father goes like this: “This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
This was a typical Newt mental six-car pileup. The man who espouses Christian values being un-Christian in visiting the alleged sins of the father upon the son; the man who reveres the anticolonialism of the founding fathers ranting against the anticolonialism of the father of America’s first African-American president. How do you rail against the Evil Empire and urge overthrowing Saddam and not celebrate liberation in Africa?"
That's two in this comment section who seem to have forgotten it is not Christian to visit the alleged sins of the father on the son.
Anon writes:
"Here. the law "in its majesty" (in most states and under the federal DOMA), prohibits both straight and gay people from marrying persons of the same gender."
David, the law never did such a thing until recent years when activist judges went along with gay agenda advocates and tried to redefine marriage by government fiat
********************
Anon entirely misses the point I was making. This was not a "process" point. It was a very simple observation on the occasional absurdity of laws that apply "equally" to everyone. Just as the rich never need to sleep under bridges or beg in the streets, straight people have no need to be able to marry someone of the same gender. But just as the poor, in Anatole France's time (and now, sadly, in our time) had (have) the need to sleep under bridges and beg in the streets, gay people do need the right to marry their same gender soulmates.
So, Anon, if you oppose truly equal treatment, you should explain why in non-tautological terms.
well, I do oppose equal treatment but that's not what we're talking about
gays would be treated equally if we made up an institution to recognize their relationships
calling them "married" is just allowing them to pretend they are straight
nobody's blaming Obama for his father's views
he views America negatively and feels it is not a positve force in the world, as revealed by his own actions
and with many family members, including his father, who are not U.S. citizens and a childhood spent in foreign cultures, that's not surprising
given those facts, which make him different than any modern president, it's not crazy to ask where his heart is and it's not crazy to look for the answer in the effect of his actions
"Support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage has shifted in recent years, from a narrow majority opposed in 2009 to narrow majority support now"
ho ho ho !!
polls showed Californians in 2007 overwhelmingly supported it but then there was an election process where the implications were discussed publicly
the rest is history
if America overall really supports it, surely our more radical states did so long ago
so why has no states' voters approved it?
Anon, considering gay men following the law, how would you feel if your daughter married one?
exclusive homosexuality is a myth
there is a continuum of sexual preference but there is no one who can't through reparative therapy achieve the capacity of maintaining a hetrosexual relationship
" there is no one who can't through reparative therapy achieve the capacity of maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship"
Here's a tiny list of former "ex-gay" leaders and clients of reparative therapy programs. Each of these men now lives as a gay man, is in sex addiction therapy, or is dead by his own hand.
John Paulk
Michael Johnston
Wade Richards
Gary Cooper
Michael Bussee
John Evans
Jack McIntyre
Colin Cook
Jeremy Marks
Phil Hobizal
Christopher Austin
Peterson Toscano
You can read about each of them here. Only one of them, Christopher Austin, who started Renew Ministries and was affiliated with NARTH was convicted of sexually assaulting a client of his.
Let's see your list of ex-gays who are "maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship."
Even PFOX can only find one "ex-gay" to serve on its Board.
"Beyond the one hopeful parent of a future ex-gay, PFOX’s directors are more fit to provide political influence than ex-gay support. Paul Rondeau, the group’s president, is not ex-gay. Estella Salvatierra, vice president, is a civil rights attorney and is not ex-gay. If Scott Strachan, the group’s secretary, is ex-gay, he’s not talking about it. Michelle Hoffman, the treasurer, once told the Montgomery County School Board that “I know many former homosexuals and am proud to call them my friends.” Peter Sprigg, a director, is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and has publicly identified as everstraight. Retta Brown, a director, is not ex-gay. Robert Knight, a former director of Concerned Women for America, is not a woman and is not ex-gay. Barber, a director, works at Liberty University Law School and is not ex-gay. Quinlan, a director, is ex-gay.
...Of PFOX’s 10-person board of directors, nine claim a home base in Maryland, Virginia, or D.C.; Quinlan, the group’s token ex-gay, is the only non-local. For years, PFOX was content to keep the ex-gay perspective on the outskirts of the organization. Falzarano formed the group in 1995 as an alternative to Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). But Falzarano would turn out to be the first in a line of PFOX ex-gays who would be deployed and disposed of at the organization’s convenience. In 1998, Falzarano was forced out of the group after accusing the religious right of using ex-gays as political pawns. Succeeding Falzarano as the ex-gay face of PFOX was Richard Cohen, a Bowie-based “sexual reorientation” therapist. Cohen was similarly scrubbed from the group after he demonstrated his bizarre therapeutic techniques on national television. His “touch therapy,” in which a man pets and rocks another man in his arms in order to re-create the parental bond, came off as particularly homoerotic. "
The Ex-Gay Movement that Wasn't
"Here's a tiny list of former "ex-gay" leaders and clients"
interesting that you threw in "and clients"
how many on this list have never had a heterosexual experience?
Anonymous said...
well, I do oppose equal treatment but that's not what we're talking about
**********
I see. Your position is that there should not be equal treatment because homosexuality is something that can and should be suppressed, marginalized, and changed. That is both cruel and, with respect to "change", grossly inaccurate.
You are probably wise to stay anonymous. Otherwise, someday your children or grandchildren would Google (or what ever the technology is then called) and be very embarrassed for you.
"I see"
said the blind man
"Your position is that there should not be equal treatment because homosexuality is something that can and should be suppressed, marginalized, and changed"
well, not preferenced
society should encourage, and preference, heterosexual relationships
"That is both cruel"
please, to say it is cruel to regard homosexuality as inferior to heterosexuality is not realistic
the rebellion against conventional society is something gays are quite comfortable with, and for many, the whole point
and regardless of how you try to shove the normalization agenda down citizens' throats by governmental fiat, it will always alien to most if the population
"and, with respect to "change", grossly inaccurate"
don't know what you mean here
"You are probably wise to stay anonymous. Otherwise, someday your children or grandchildren would Google (or what ever the technology is then called) and be very embarrassed for you."
yes,
I have a dream today
that someday we will be judged by color of our IPod and not the content of our characters
"how many on this list have never had a heterosexual experience?"
I thought you were the expert on "hetrosexual [sic] relationships" and how reparative therapy enables them. Apparently you don't know very much about these men who haveclaimed to be ex-gays at some point in their lives.
I don't see your list of ex-gays who are able to maintain "hetrosexual relationships." What's the matter, has the cat got your fingers?
"Let's see your list of ex-gays who are "maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship.""
PFOX claims:
"Each year thousands of men and women with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave homosexuality via secular therapy, Homosexuals Anonymous support groups, faith based ministries, and other non-judgmental environments."
Of these "thousands of men and women with unwanted same-sex attractions [who] make the personal decision to leave homosexuality (each year)" surely you can compile a little list of gays who have been successful at becoming ex-gays and are "maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship," can't you?
I didn't say everyone was maintaining a heterosexual relationship
I said they had the capacity to
the few that truly don't, because of some mental problem, can be helped by reparative therapy
maybe it should be mandatory for the truly looney!!
anon, do you think everybody has the capacity to maintain a homosexual relationship?
Oh I see, so according to you, "ex-gays" have the capacity, but not the ability "of maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship."
Show us your proof that "ex-gays have a capacity of maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship."
Of course there is no such proof, just like there is no big or small "list of gays who have been successful at becoming ex-gays and are "maintaining a hetrosexual [sic] relationship."
You are simply taking up bandwidth posting your unfounded comments.
"Michele Bachmann was left speechless after an awkward encounter with a young activist named Elijah at a South Carolina book signing.
[She] greeted the soft-spoken 8-year-old and his mother at a meet-and-greet event for her new book, "Core of Conviction: My Story," which was released last month.
"My mommy -- Miss Bachmann, my mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing," Elijah said to Bachmann, after some lighthearted coaxing. A dumbfounded Bachmann then shot the boy's mother an icy look before the pair walked away."
Post a Comment
<< Home