Abe Lincoln's "Gay" Wisconsin Tryst Recounted

Does the recently outed Abraham Lincoln have something in common with the 46 year old "King of Pop"? A 1923 newspaper article on file at the Wisconsin Historical Society suggests it may be true and - even worse - the very first Republican President was a lousy bed partner. His "appearance of sleep but wild jerking about" sent "the small boy" whose bed he was sharing fleeing to the couch. And it all happened here in Cheeseland in 1859!

(For more hysterical history, commentary and other assorted stuff, visit the Reality Check website.)

Gannongate Gains Gravitas

The saga of disgraced gay White House press corps whore Jeff Gannon (AKA James Guckert AKA outcall escort "Bulldog") continues to gain mainstream press coverage, including an item on the notoriously "fair and balanced" Fox News.

For those "returning from Mars" revelations about Gannon's questionable press credentials, his active moonlighting as a male prostitute, his involvement in the "outing" of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame, his disinformation campaign against former Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle, and other dirty tricks has been the stuff of the "fifth estate" blogosphere for weeks. Among the collateral damage was the outing White house Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

Even as he tries to sell his hotmilitarystud.com website for $15,000, Guckert/Gannon has resurfaced with a new website, aimed at real time historical revisionism. Apparently G/G wants both to prove that Orwell's 1984 was precocious and that the American public's short term memory now equals that of a goldfish.

(For those of you who may be off put by the photo at the top of this entry, that is an actual photo of "Bulldog Gannon" from his outcall website. Gannon cut off everything above his chins. My commentary was added for emphasis and to lower the parental advisory rating to PG-13.)

God Smites Pope For Anti-Gay Remarks

Pope John Paul II was rushed to the hospital early this morning in what clearly appears to be a full blown "smiting" by a vengeful Lord God Almighty. While the mainstream press and the Holy See's spin doctors attempted to downplay the event, Vatican insiders also noted that the Almighty's response was less than 36 hours after the pontiff called gay marriage part of the "ideology of evil" in his newly published tome "Memory and Identity."

During a personal conversation with the Son this morning, I was informed that the Big Guy is tired of all divisiveness being engendered against His gay and lesbian children.
"That old Polack is really getting under my omnipresent skin" the Son claims his Dad told him off the cuff during "welcome to heaven" cocktail reception for the latest tsunami victims currently dying by the thousands of hunger, malaria, typhus and other post-disaster diseases. "He thinks its all about him. He should know better: it's all about Me!"

When I asked the Son about the other, more bigoted comments against LGBT people by American televangelists, He pulled me closer and whispered in my ear. "Dobson's next," my own personal Savior hinted conspiratorially.

(For more irreverence, commentary and other assorted stuff, visit the Reality Check website.)

SuperBug Update

One more factor to consider in the recent HIV SuperBug story: the condition of the meth addict's immune system. Tina does to brain cells and T-cells what a nice sport bottle full of Liquid Drano would do to the lining of your digestive system. This guy may have progressed because he was already a mess at the time he was infected.

The late, great AIDS activist Michael Callen wrote in his 1990 collection of writings and speeches Surviving AIDS that he had been diagnosed and treated for over sixty curable and chronic sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and other illnesses related to his voracious sexual lifestyle before he was diagnosed with HIV. He wondered aloud why he had not been dead long before he caught the bug. Callen also noted that at least some of the who men passed so quickly in the early 80's did so as much to immune systems trashed by drinking, addictions and multiple STIs as due to a lack of understanding of the new virus in town.

HIV Super Bug or Superinfection

While the startling headlines from New York last week may have shaken the HIV/AIDS community, its important to remember all the facts are not yet on the table.

One fact that remains unknown is whether the 40-something crystal meth and sex addict has a new virulent strain of HIV or is superinfected with multiple strains of the disease.

Clinical evidence has already shown that reinfection does exist among those HIV+ people who do not modify their risk behaviors. Clinical evidence also has shown people can be infected with multiple sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) in one encounter and that certain STIs - especially herpes simplex II, syphilis and human papillomavirus - actually create circumstances that facilitate multiple STI infection.

So until we see the genotyping and phenotyping of this supposed supervirus, the jury's out. Is this is truly a single super bug or merely multiple infections of different strains of HIV?

Best Evidence

The best evidence against the existence of a "Supreme Being" is the consummate pettiness and arrogance of those who believe in the concept.

Bicker amongst yourselves.

Reality Check Website Updated

The news copy from the Volume XII, No. 2 issue of Quest is now available on my Reality Check website.

Vote! Vote! Vote!

I stopped by my polling place to vote this AM on the way to work. It was 9:45 AM. Polls had been open since 7 AM. I was the fourth voter.

Last November I voted an hour and a half earlier. That time I was the 117th voter.

The Religious Right got its start back in the 1970's & 1980's by voting themselves into elected education positions like those on today's ballot here in Wisconsin.

They understood that its easiest to turn the tide when the water is the most shallow. Apparently, as a group, progressives outside of WEAC haven't learned that message yet.

Whining isn't winning. Victory lies only in the vote.

Show that you have learned the lesson: Vote today!

White House Gay Sex Scandal - The Dirty Details

John Aravosis of AmericaBLOG has the dirt, right down to archived websites in his peice "A Man Named Jeff." (Warning: Some page links in the story contain sexually explicit photos.)



Aravosis sums up the hypocrisy nicely:

"This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a "daily basis." They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, "inappropriate," whatever. Monika wasn't a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can't find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

None of this is by accident.

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Ultimately, it is the hypocrisy that is such a challenge to grasp in this story. This is the same White House that ran for office on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. While they are surrounded by gay hookers? While they use a gay hooker to write articles for their gay hating political base? While they use a gay hooker to destroy a political enemy? Not to mention the hypocrisy of a "reporter" who chooses to publish article after article defending the anti-gay religious-right point of view on gay civil rights issue.

Who in the White House is at the center of all of this? Who allowed this to go on in the People's House? Who committed the crime of exposing Valerie Plame? Jeff Gannon has the answers to these questions, and boy we know he loves to talk."

Gay Sex Scandal In The White House?

Raw Story reports. You decide.

FRI Lies Continue Unabated

Julaine Appling of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin (FRI) has gotten her shorts into a bundle over a recent Capitol Times op-ed questioning the "truth" of the FRI's recently published tract entitled "Is Marriage in Jeopardy?" A February 10 FRI email to the faithful (among whom are many fair-minded moles), outlines the group's response to the editorial.

The FRI response is the fodder for my first new Reality Check column in some time. But to whet your taste, here's the original 2003 column. The points are as valid for the proposed Wisconsin Marriage Amendment to the state constitution as they were for the DOMA bill, vetoed by Governor Doyle in November, 2003.

Reality Check: The Lies The FRI Tells About Same-Sex Marriage

Originally published in Wisconsin IN Step September 25, 2003

Given their "virtuous" sounding name, it may seem almost impossible to believe. However, the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin (FRI) is attempting to mislead the citizens and lawmakers of Wisconsin through scare tactics, glittering generalities, circular logic, half-truths and outright lies about the need for its so-called "Defense of Marriage Act." Let's look at the FRI "Fact Sheet" taken from their own website most recently updated in late August 2003. Then let's look at the real truth of the matter. The "bullet points" below are taken in order verbatim from the FRI site. My rebuttal follows.

FRI "FACTS" ON MARRIAGE AND WISCONSIN MARRIAGE LAW

• Wisconsin's current law refers to marriage being between a "husband and wife." Opponents of AB 475/SB 233 claim that these words are sufficient to protect one-man/one-woman marriage. However, a liberal, activist court could determine because the law doesn't specify that "husband" means "man" and "wife" means "woman," and because there is no clear statement of the intent of Wisconsin's public policy about marriage, that the current law is broad enough to include something other than one-man/one-woman marriage.

SCARE TACTIC & OUTRIGHT LIE: The word "wife" comes from the 11th Century Middle English. For almost 1,000 years it has meant the female partner in marriage. No court in U. S. history has interpreted the word "wife" to mean anything other than that nearly millennium old, gender specific definition. Moreover, every court decision to date that supports same-gender marriage refers not to redefining marriage but to extending equality of opportunity to having unions legally recognized to all citizens regardless of sexual orientation. AB475/SB233 replace one heterosexual definition with another and thus in reality change nothing. However, the bills do perpetuate ongoing prejudice against LGBT people -- the real intent of the FRI.

• Throughout history, all civilized cultures have recognized marriage between one man and one woman as the norm.

OUTRIGHT LIE: Even the Bible refers to the plural marriages of some of its greatest heroes. Plural marriages, the same gender marriages and communal marriages have been recorded throughout world history in multiple cultures. The "norm" has been a diversity of unions, the majority of which have been heterosexual.

• Throughout history, all civilized cultures have understood that the best environment for children is to have both a physically present mother and a father, that is, a man and a woman married to one another.

GLITTERING GENERALITY: A classic propaganda technique that makes a seemingly important statement using vague language that states nothing factual. If "understanding" means written documentation, there are numerous historical and contemporary documents that show a diversity of environments can produce well-adjusted children. Well-constructed scientific surveys have repeatedly demonstrated that quality parenting involves consistency, boundary setting and other characteristics. These skills can be performed by any number of individuals, couples or even groups of adults. The findings by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association simply trump Bible-based bigotry.

• Throughout history, all civilized cultures have recognized that children growing up to be stable, contributing citizens is the guarantee of that culture's future. These societies have therefore historically protected marriage.
  

GLITTERING GENERALITY COVERING AN OUTRIGHT LIE: Cultures that permit quality parenting are a product of the stable social systems that result from the acceptance of naturally occurring diversity of race, ethnicity, religious belief, etc. Religious intolerance is one of the most pervasive and destabilizing forces in recorded human history. Such intolerance has lead to such things as religious wars, pogroms, Inquisitions, heretic burning and - most interestingly - the settling of the majority of the colonies that formed the United States, whose founders wisely created a "godless" Constitution. The FRI of WI is just a contemporary example of such religious intolerance.

• Marriage is not just about "love and commitment." It is the union of the two sexes and the union of two families, and the means by which families are built and maintained and family names and lineages are perpetuated.
  

OUTRIGHT LIE: Apparently the FRI hasn't read the traditional marriage vow that expressly asks each party to "love and honor" and to commit to do same "until death us do part." If family names and lineages were important to those other than royalty, there would not be a hobby known as genealogy. Tracking lineage has uses a variety of records and tracks not only traditional marriages but "unsanctified" unions.

• Marriage is not discriminatory. All citizens have the same right: if they meet the other statutory requirements, they can marry if their intended spouse is someone of the opposite sex.
  

HALF TRUTH: Marriage is not discriminatory, as long as anyone can participate in it with the adult they choose to commit to. Categorically limiting the civil marriage definition to reflect a particular version of a religious dogma is in fact the very dictionary definition of discriminatory. It also violates both the Constitutional principles of separation of church and state and of equal treatment under the law.

• Research has shown and continues to show that monogamous, life-long marriages between one man and one woman result in, among other things, fewer abortions, safer homes for both women and children, safer communities, less poverty and welfare, less premarital sex and out-of-wedlock children, fewer divorces, a healthier society, more revenue and a broader tax base, and more citizen involvement in civic activities.
  

GLITTERING GENERALITY AND HALF-TRUTH: With the exception of abortion and tax revenue, the same can be said for same-gender unions that are lifelong and monogamous. And if same gender couple's relationships are legally recognized, the tax revenue issue will be true as well. The statement also begs the question: with over 10,000 heterosexual divorces disrupting families in Wisconsin in the last decade, why isn't the FRI working to strengthen the above mentioned "lifelong" marriages?

• Because monogamous, life-long marriage between one man and one woman brings order and numerous benefits to society, there is a legitimate "state interest." Governments, therefore, should protect and strengthen this institution in public policy and programs.
  

CIRCULAR LOGIC COVERING AN OUTRIGHT LIE: In order to ask for the force of law, you have to prove your case. As the above rebuttals show, the FRI has woefully failed to do so. Inclusion of same-gender civil marriages will also bring greater stability to the LGBT community that makes up anywhere from 4-10% of the entire population. Is such enhanced stability not a legitimate "state interest"? (Just a side note to the FRI folks: you put your summary argument last, not next to last.)

• Marriage encourages the sexes to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses. It is the way that men and women, with all their differences, have been united to bring out the best in the individuals and therefore in the children and in society at large.

HALF TRUTH AND GLITTERING GENERALITY: All working relationships between two people - marital or otherwise - work best when the parties bring complimentary skills and deficits to the union. All people are unique and our society in its advancement of full gender equality has demonstrated that beyond basic biology, most of the so-called "differences" between men and women result from sexual stereotyping and cultural conditioning.

In theory at least, individuals and organizations make decisions after coldly reviewing all the facts and weighing all the risk-versus-benefit arguments. When it comes to its "facts" to prove the need for its so-called "Defense of Marriage" law, the FRI simply hasn't made its case. However, the reality of contemporary American and Wisconsin partisan politics is that all decision-making occurs with foresight that extends merely through the next election cycle.

Balanced perspective comes only from retrospect. History will not be kind to either the legislative supporters of Wisconsin's DOMA or its prejudiced primogenitor, the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin.

Marcia Cross Says She Ain't So

So Marcia Cross is desperately claiming she's not a lesbian. Of course confessing live on camera to Babs is irrefutable proof she's straight as an arrow, right? The only things missing there were glycerin tears and a big box of Puffs - better make that Kleenex, Puffs sounds too gay.

Reality Check Website Updated

The latest copy from the Volume XII No. 1 issue of Quest is now up on my Reality Check website.

Also check out Action Wisconsin Executive Director Christopher Ott sparring with Wisconsin Public Radio Ideas Network host Ben Merens over the proposed constitutional ban on marriages and civil unions on Merens' program* this afternoon

(*RealPlayer software necessary)