New Mexico State Senator Bullshits about the History of Gay Marriage

Proof you don't have to know history
to get elected. Source: The Advocate

Via TPM, I see New Mexico State Sen. William Sharer is bullshitting about the history of gay marriage.

He says, for instance that Alexander the Great ordered his men to stop whoring around and marry women in the places they conquered.

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) married a Bactrian woman – modern day Afghanistan.  Alexander may have engaged in homosexual activity, but he married a woman. 

He directed his officers to stop “whoring” around and find a local woman to marry.

Bill's not much of a sharer, or he'd provide a link for his source on this. Alexander wanted his men to marry local women in order to better control the conquered people.  And I can find no reference that Alexander, who famously had a gay lover himself, ordered his men to stop "whoring" around. I'd bet Senator Sharer just made that up.

The Greeks, along with many other ancient people, had forms of gay marriage. The Bible, which I'd bet the Senator thinks is a history book, also had some interesting forms of marriage that didn't include what he'd call a "family." But who knows? Maybe his definition of family includes multiple wives, including forcing raped women to marry their rapists, war widows to marry their conquerors, and other fun stuff that often gets left out by Christians when they speak of Biblical marriage.

The Senator did manage to get something right:

Marriage was a well established system long before any Bible totin’ Christian ever walked on this continent.

But wait! The wingnut keeps talking!

Nowhere in Native American tradition has marriage been anything but the joining of men and women. – Although some tribes did allow some leaders to have multiple wives.

From the PBS film Two Spirits.

Native Americans indeed had a system of marriage well before any white people got here. Unfortunately for this bigot, that system included Two-Spirit people. They were gay. They married people of the same sex. They held special status in their societies.

These facts are easy to find for someone who cares about such things.

This bigoted wingnut goes on to mention a whole slew of completely unrelated things, including the 10th amendment (they never mention the 9th) to justify his bullshit.

Marriage is important because it is the foundation of the family...

Got that old folks, infertile folks, folks who don't want babies? No marriage for you, says the marriage Nazi.

Sex between a man and a woman produces babies – society needs babies – babies need both moms and dads.

Just forget all the evidence that gay couples raise children who are often better adjusted than those raised by straight couples, and there is no evidence that mixed sex couples raise children any better. And just forget the fact that soon women won't even need men to get pregnant.

Not that facts matter to this guy.

Bobby Jindal Can't Argue With the Actual Left, So He Makes Shit Up

Governor Bobby "Derpity Derp" Jindal

When you back a wild animal into a corner, it will sometimes snarl and flail pitifully. Fear overcomes it, and decision making gets compromised by the fight or flight instinct. Some animals, much better at running than fighting, wind up fighting in silly and stupid ways.

Such has been the case of late with the Republican Party. It's not the brightest animal to begin with, and it doesn't fight well (they tend to lie and cheat while committing a whole host of logical fallacies). Arguing with straw men is one of their favorites, but hey, at least it keeps them from talking stupidly about rape babies.

Now that Keep Talking, Wingnuts! has finished with High School Baseball, with the last of our liberal commie horde about to graduate high school, we figured it's time to jump back into the fight by going for one of the "leaders" of the cornered, slobbering, confused, tired, and dying animals that comprise the modern GOP: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

Because the left wants: The government to explode; to pay everyone; to hire everyone; they believe that money grows on trees; the earth is flat; the industrial age, factory-style government is a cool new thing; debts don’t have to be repaid; people of faith are ignorant and uneducated; unborn babies don’t matter; pornography is fine; traditional marriage is discriminatory; 32 oz. sodas are evil; red meat should be rationed; rich people are evil unless they are from Hollywood or are liberal Democrats; the Israelis are unreasonable; trans-fat must be stopped; kids trapped in failing schools should be patient; wild weather is a new thing; moral standards are passé; government run health care is high quality; the IRS should violate our constitutional rights; reporters should be spied on; Benghazi was handled well; the Second Amendment is outdated; and the First one has some problems too.

The source of America's long-term debt.

That's quite a gish-galloping straw man for an old Progressive to handle, especially coming from the Governor who wants the GOP to stop being the stupid party, but let me give it a go... I love efficient government that stays out of wars, wants to prevent Wall Street from crashing the world economy again, and wants to stop big government handouts to corporations like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and the military/security/government complex. This grass-fed red meat lover (who understands that the earth is round and warming, because I believe scientists), can't stand factory farms or factory government, and realizes that our debts should and could easily be repaid if we weren't getting bilked by the medical industrial complex that charges us twice as much per person for health care as the rest of the civilized world pays. I also realize that borrowing cheap right now to invest in infrastructure would more than pay for itself, put people to work, make us more competitive and productive, and raise revenues and reduce debt through growth--something Republicans used to understand before they got infected with Obama Derangement Syndrome.

This old leftie knows many intelligent people of faith who believe in global warming, evolution, and vote for Democrats. I know that a glob of cells in a womb is not a baby (and, no Rep. Michael Burgess, the fetus is not masturbating, but please keep talking). I know that forcing women to give birth to rape babies is violent, immoral, and would be the epitome of big, intrusive government. I support straight and gay marriage and don't think either is discriminatory. I think it's interesting that apparently Jindal thinks pornography is not fine, but then thinks it's the left that has a problem with the first amendment (way to stop being stupid, Governor). I think banning large sodas is stupid, we should just tax them so taxpayers aren't left with soda companies cost shifting the negative externalities onto the rest of us (same goes for carbon). I think there are rich people everywhere who greedily look out for themselves at great cost to the rest of us, and there are rich people everywhere who are kind and generous who would have no trouble paying a slightly higher tax rate.

Weather is getting wilder.

I think the right wing of Israeli politics is unreasonable, and I hope the left there does better in the future. I do think trans-fats are bad, again, because I believe what the scientists tell me about it. I think kids in failing schools should be helped, mostly by paying teachers more (like cops, firefighters, nurses, soldiers, et al, I don't like the fact that we call them heroes, but pay them like chumps--you get what you pay for). I think wild weather has always been around, but again, I believe the scientists who are telling me that global warming is like steroids to the weather, making it even more wild more often than it would have been if we didn't allow oil and coal companies to cost shift the negative externalities of carbon onto the rest of us.

I think moral standards are extremely important. That's why I was physically assaulted multiple times by members of Jindal's Morality Party for opposing the Iraq war. It's why I wish we'd have put some bankers in jail for their fraud that fed the housing bubble. It's why I think the death penalty should be abolished, military spending should be cut, and quality health care should be a right, delivered efficiently and less expensively, via Medicare-for-all (there is not profit in health, only in treating sickness).

The Founder of the Unitary Executive Branch

I think the IRS should look into groups that want to be tax exempt. All of them. And any group that is mostly taking sides in the political world should have to pay taxes, and making them pay taxes is not unconstitutional. I think when reporters leak national security security secrets, the government has a right to, and should, investigate them. I also think the executive branch needs a huge power check, something Republicans didn't give a damn about when GW Bush was expanding the executive, and Dick "Deficits Don't Matter" Cheney was calling it "unitary."

Benghazi was a tragedy, just like the many attacks on our embassies during the Bush administration (and others), and that the only thing about Benghazi that wasn't handled well was the Republican response to it (or, more accurately, lies about it--but please continue, Governor).

I think the second amendment is fine, provided you read and follow the whole thing, especially the "well regulated militia" part.

But the best part of Jindal's little bed-wetting tirade is this:

Their philosophy does not work and it got our nation into the mess it’s in.

Trickle-up Economics. Big verison.

This little fucker has some mighty big balls, I'll give him that. The philosophy that got us into this mess is the same one that has been robbing the working man of his productivity gains ever since Ronnie Reagan and The Trickle Down-o-nauts had their number one hit back in 1981: "We'll be stealing your productivity now."

This philosophy of deregulation, putting foxes in charge of hen houses, spending trillions more than we need on the Pentagon, lying us into a $6 trillion war that maimed and killed millions, rigging markets to redistribute wealth and income upward, not raising the minimum wage, subsidizing big oil, big pharma, big coal, big agriculture, causing huge deficits through tax cuts to the rich that don't create jobs, not investing in infrastructure, relying on Reagan's EMTALA law that requires ERs to treat those who can't pay for health care (ironically, the most expensive socialized medicine possible) and generally screwing the working people of this country for 3 decades is what got us into the mess we're in. It's Bobby Jindal's I-got-mine-fuck-you philosophy that's gotten us into this mess, and the only reason we're not getting out of it faster is because this moderate president hasn't been progressive enough, or willing enough to, as Jindal suggests Republicans should do, "...go kick the other guys around."

Kicking wingnuts around is my favorite hobby. So, Governor Jindal, I'm sure your staff can find me. Come on up and we'll sit out in the garden and drink a beer (my treat, even though I'm worth a fraction of what you are) while I kick your sorry ass all up and down the political spectrum, especially when I get to the part that I can have better "conservative" outcomes through my Progressive philosophy than your heroes who lied us into war, stagnated middle class wages, and crashed the world economy could ever have.

The War Between the States is Why We Have Gay Marriage

From the 16th Arkansas Infantry site.

Via Right Wing Watch, I see that former Constitution Party Presidential Candidate and Bible-Jackhammerer Michael Peroutka was on Steve Deace's radio show propaganda catapult again, this time to tell us that Lincoln freed the gays!

Part the first: God!

But what we really need is a dose of reality, what we need to do is wave reality over this situation and go back to what God called marriage, not what the state has perverted the definition to be but what God called marriage. That’s what we need to return to. There is no way we are ever going to validate homo or sodomite-marriage because God defined marriage as between a man and a woman once and forever.

Apparently, Peroutka doesn't read KTW, or he'd know that he might not care for the Biblical definition of marriage. Or maybe he would; the whole slaves-have-to-marry-their-masters thing might just work for him, since the Human Rights Campaign called Per­outka an “active white supremacist and secessionist sympathizer.”

Part the second: More Power!

"...there have been a number of watershed events in American history that have taken us away from this view that I’m describing, this American view. One of them was ‘The War Between the States.’ Ever since then there’s been this huge black hole of centralized power that’s formed in Washington D.C. People sometimes talk about ‘The War Between the States’ as being about the issue of slavery, I believe that history is written by the winners, it wasn’t about that at all. What it was about was consolidating power into the hands of a few people."

Like most wingnuts, the "hands of a few people" he's blabbing about are the 435 voting members of the House of Representatives, the 100 US Senators (where, in theory, 11.3% of the 50-state population could stop any bill from becoming law), the nine Supreme Court members, and the President. So, Peroutka's "hands of a few people" that the civil war gave so much power to is really 545 people.

But we already knew wingnuts have trouble with math. Physics, too, seems to be a problem, since a "black hole of centralized power" would be where centralized power gets sucked out of existence. But then, this guy probably thinks the earth is 6000 years old, so...

Civil War Monumnet, Cherry Valley, NY, photo by Robin Supak

Like most confederate apologists, Peroutka is trying to spread misinformation about the Civil War. I've even seen this kind of bullshitting rewrite of history up here in "Upper Appalachia" where wingnuts in trucks with Confederate flag stickers flip off the monument to the Union dead as they drive by. I love to keep wingnuts talking, of course, but we must be sure to always challenge this particularly vile lie.

The best way I've ever seen to debunk this I learned from Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has famously said that the Civil War isn't tragic. It's something to celebrate, because it was a successful battle in the centuries long war on black people.  If you find it necessary to explain this obvious point, point the bullshitters to the Cornerstone Speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, and maybe it'll get through their thick skulls:

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell." 

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.

I hope Michael Peroutka keeps talking, so we can all hear how the Civil War is why we can't return to Biblical Marriage, where raped virgins have to marry their rapists, soldiers can marry the widows of the man they just killed, men can have multiple wives, masters can marry slaves, etc. Maybe more people will start to realize that the Civil War wasn't tragic.