WTF Tuesday! Georgia

Republican … naturally … Paul Broun has been a fixture in Georgia politics for seven years now, and is one of the biggest rightwingnuttiest, asshatted, dicks out there, even in Georgia. He says biology is all “lies straight from the pit of hell” and believes President Obama has created a secret national police force to push a Marxist dictatorship.

Like I said, he’s a dick. But now that dick is leaving his job as US Congressman and running for US Senate and Jody Hice, the man hoping to take his place, makes Broun look positively lovely.

In a 2012 book, It’s Now or Never: A Call to Reclaim America, “pastor” and talk show host, Hice says that The Gays have a secret plot to recruit and sodomize children; he also states that supporters of abortion rights are worse than Hitler and sings that old GOIP standby about gay relationships being like bestiality and incest. Oh, and he says Muslims be stripped of their First Amendment rights because, you know, all Muslims were in on 9/11.

Hice claims homosexuality causes shorter life spans and depression, and insists same-sex couples cannot raise healthy children; you know, like his parents raised him. But I will give him a wee bit of credit, because he actually offers an answer to that age-old question, “How will same-sex marriage affect traditional marriage?”

He says it’s like asking the question, "'How does a trashy neighborhood affect you?”

Well, let’s get this queer, Hice, The Gays have been known to buy into those so-called trashy neighborhoods and gentrify them, making them better places for all, so, maybe you’re saying we can do the same for marriage? You know, raise the value of it?

And of course he ponders the question of love, calling it a “shallow and insufficient basis for marriage” and saying we can love all sorts of things, cars and dogs and kids, but we cannot marry them simply because we love them.

Yeah, he rang the “if we allow gays to marry then people will marry dogs” crazy bell.

But the biggest problem I have with Hice, and it’s not his anti-LGBT ideas, or anti-Muslim foolishness, or anti-Obama GOP goose-stepping rhetoric, it’s the fact that in his own book he quoted at length from a 1987 column by Michael Swift, a gay writer, to suggest that gay people prey on children:

“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.”

Oh dear, this makes The Gays sound awful, except …

Hice omitted first sentence of Swift's column, which noted that the entire essay was satirical.

Seriously, Georgia? This is your chance to rid the state of Paul Broun and one of your choices is Jody Hice? I mean, you can be anti-gay; I don’t care because in the long run, or more likely, the short run, you’ll be on the wrong side of history. And you can demonize an entire religion based on the actions of a few, but then where’s your outrage at the Catholic Church over their handling of pedophiles; or the Methodist church for the actions of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City?

But, when you “write” a book and take parts of another piece of writing by someone else and edit out the part where the writer clearly says this is a piece of satire, and you publish it as your homophobic gospel, well, I just can’t with stupid.

And you shouldn’t either Georgia.

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I Didn't Say It ....

Anderson Cooper, after his mother told him that former View co-host Star Jones claims he came out to boost his talk show's ratings:

"I will say and I actually haven't mentioned this, the only thing that did kind of annoy me and actually it annoyed my mom who brought it up to me, Star Jones of all people....I haven't thought about Star Jones in I don't know how long. I was unaware she was even on TV still ... but she apparently shows up on a morning show....If I was wanting to boost ratings, I would have waited to announce it on 'A Very Special Episode' that would have been promo'd for weeks and weeks and there would have been commercials ... 'Anderson's Huge Announcement. [And] as memory serves, in terms of boosting ratings, I seem to recall [Star] hocking her wedding every single day to get free products when she was on 'The View' and I seem to recall her lying about her gastric bypass surgery and making everybody else lie about it as well. So for her to suddenly emerge out of the shadows and suddenly attack me for this, I couldn't believe it."

Pot.Kettle.Star Jones.

Paul Tagliabue, former NFL commissioner, donating $100,000 at a Maryland marriage equality fundraiser:

"We had the privilege of raising our family in Maryland. We have the privilege of now living in the District of Columbia. We’ve lived in New York where they passed marriage equality. We spend time in the summer in Maine, where they are fighting it again. I think this is the time to view this not as an expense, but as a capital investment in our nation’s infrastructure.  At some point the tide has got to turn. You got to stop the litigation. You got to demonstrate that the litigation is not—the second guessing at the ballot box is not going to overcome the will of the legislature. At some point you’ve got to demonstrate that people who support this are going to be re-elected, and not get punished for supporting marriage equality. And I think right now is the time." 

Tagliabue has a gay son, but it’s nice when our straight allies step forward, not just with a check, but their words.

Actions + Words = Change

Rick Santorum, endorsing Mitty’s call to defund PBS, and proving yet again that he is unfit for any public office:

"I've voted to kill Big Bird in the past. So, I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn't mean I don’t like Big Bird. I mean, you can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know.”

Seriously.

Stop talking.

Tony Perkins, on Mike Huckabee's radio show, on Dan Savage's declaration that Tony Perkins, who calls himself a Christian, “sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work”:

"As my teenagers would say, he has some issues. He is a man with some real deep-seated issues ... and Dan Savage is nowhere near, he's a hundred and eighty degrees from the positions that we have taken. It's wrong and I will tell you this, we are pursuing everything possible to deal with him because he is out of control. This is the bottom line, Mike: is that if you don't embrace and celebrate homosexuality and everything associated with it, then you are intolerant. And the truth of the matter is, let's just be very, very truthful, and that's what we deal in is the truth, that even is society embraced homosexuality, there would never be that sense of self-fulfillment because it's outside the way God created man and woman. And that's the bottom line. They cannot erase that, even if they get every law on the books changed, it will never change that."

No one, no one, is asking Tony Perkins to “celebrate” homosexuality. I think we’re just asking for equality under the law. I think we’re just asking to be treated like everyone else. But Tony Perkins, in his zeal to see that inequality stands, denigrates gay people at every turn, and that trickle down theory hits LGBTQ youth sack in the face, perhaps making them feel less than, and see suicide as an alternative to living in a Tony Perkins world.

Dan Savage, responding Tony Perkins’ threat to sue him for his comments:

"Sue me, Tony. I'd love to see you talk about my 'issues' on a witness stand. I realize that this isn't how you think the world is supposed to work, Tony. You believe—and you're old enough to remember a time when—people like you were free to say vile and disgusting things about people like me without anyone objecting. Certainly people like me weren't allowed to call people like you out. You still believe you should be free to lie about me and other LGBT people with absolutely impunity—we're all pedophiles and terrorists and Satanists—and that we should have to shut up and take it because... well, I'm not sure why you think we're not allowed to respond when you lie about us. Maybe that's something we could get to the bottom of during the depositions."

I’d love to be on that jury.

Patrick Abner, on his recent marriage to MSNBC's Thomas Roberts:

"I never imagined in a million years that I would be on a stage kissing my male partner, spouse — husband, Thomas is saying — in front of my father. I never thought that would be the case. And to be able to do that and have not just my father but my whole family be proud of me, that’s something special."

The times, they are a’changing.

Paul Broun, Republican representative from Georgia, speaking at Liberty Baptist Church:

"All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.  What I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it.  It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that."

So he votes The Bible?

Vote him out.

And, for the record, and another sign as to what’s wrong with Washington, Paul Broun is a physician who sits on the House Science, Space and technology Committee.

Oh, but he does.

Matt Bomer, along with his partner Simon Halls, accepting GLSEN's Inspiration Award, and talking about his own experience growing up gay:

"When I was in high school, there was no safe haven, there was no outlet for you to speaking your mind. So I did what any self-preserving 14-year-old would do—I signed up for the school play and also the football team to cover my tracks. When that happens, when you aren't allowed to speak about who you are, one of the most authentic parts of who you are, which is who you love or is who you're attracted to, [one] feels invisible."

And if you’re invisible, no one will notice if you aren’t there.

This has to change.

Sam Champion, on GMA, talking about his upcoming weeding to Rubem Robierb: 
“I have met the most wonderful, giving, loving, caring person. I am so, so lucky to have someone like this in my life. I felt like we lived in a small town… I was born in Paducah, Kentucky, and to me that’s exactly what it felt like. We walked out on the street and everyone was like, ‘Hey, congratulations.’ Thank you for the tweets, and the Facebook and just coming up on the street and saying the most wonderful things.”

Best wishes, though all this ringing endorsement might have come earlier had Champion decided not to stay clsoeted for so long.
But....better late than never, eh?