Month: August 2005

Why it’s me, ranting in The Stranger, a little more than two years ago. Money quote:

As a lifelong lefty of the commie- pinko-faggot variety, I was shocked to wake up one day and find myself just slightly to the left of far-far-right raving psycho superstar Ann Coulter. In a column she wrote for National Review Online two days after the September 11 attacks, Coulter suggested that the United States “invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”

Someone at work handed me a copy of Coulter’s infamous 9/11 column after listening to me rant about the attacks and what our response should be. Sitting in front of the television, watching the remains of the World Trade Center burn, I had been telling my fellow lefties that we no longer had a choice: We would have to invade the Middle East, depose absolutely everybody–the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Saudi royals in Saudi Arabia–and start all over again. My position was rooted, I felt, in a lefty analysis of September 11: Our support for tyrants, dictators, and fascist monarchs created the anger and irrationality that led to the attacks. As Bob Kerrey wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “[I]t has been a terrible and tragic mistake for the U.S. to be in favor of freedom every place on earth except in Arab nations.”

Unlike Coulter, though, I wasn’t in favor of converting “them” to Christianity; replacing one idiotic fairy tale with another doesn’t seem like a net gain to me. But I was–and still am–in favor of the West remaking the Middle East–AKA invading their countries and deposing their leaders. Like Ann Coulter, I felt that what we witnessed on September 11 wasn’t just about Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and Afghanistan. Islamo-fascism is a regional problem, like European fascism–and the Middle East would have to be remade just as Europe was remade.

What right does the West have to remake the Middle East? Well, the West made the region the mess it is today. At the end of World War I, the British drew lines in the sand around fictions they called “states,” lumping together different–and often warring–ethnic, tribal, and religious groups. We know now that these pseudo-states could only be ruled by brute force and that they would ultimately become breeding grounds for a murderous strain of religious fanaticism. (When we redraw the lines–and we will–hopefully this time we’ll have the wisdom to draw them around things that actually exist, like Kurdistan.) After creating these pseudo-states, the West made a bad situation worse by creating and arming many of the tyrants who ruled over them. As Christopher Hitchens wrote in the Nation, the fact that we helped tyrants achieve power in the Middle East should not prevent us from removing them from power; instead our history in the region doubles or triples our responsibility to remove them from power. “The sponsorship of the Taliban,” Hitchens wrote, “could be redeemed by the demolition of its regime and the liberation of its victims.”

The same argument Hitchens applied to the Taliban in Afghanistan applies to Saddam Hussein in Iraq–and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Saudi royals in Saudi Arabia. That Iraq wasn’t in bed with al Qaeda–the supposed trump card of the antiwar protesters–is beside the point. We should remove Saddam from power because we owe it to the people of Iraq, and because we have to start remaking the Middle East somewhere. Why not Iraq? Normandy wasn’t Berlin, but that’s where we started rolling back the Nazis.

But what right do we have to impose our values on them? About as much right as we had to impose “our” values on them Germans. There’s also the small matter of our values being superior–can we lefties get behind that concept? While we often fall short in practice, in theory, the equality of the sexes, religious freedom, the separation of church and state, tolerance, and secularism are superior to religious fascism as practiced in Saudi Arabia and secular fascism as practiced in Iraq. And then there’s the small matter of the Islamo-fascists’ stated desire to impose their values on us. In November of last year, Osama bin Laden sent a letter to the American people. In case you missed it, here’s the gist: “The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam…. We call you to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and trading with interest.”

Osama calls on us to replace the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law (stoning adulterers, decapitating homos, etc.), cease separating “religion from policies,” and end our “support [for] the liberation of women.” If we don’t get with the Islamo-fascist program, Osama says we should “expect [him] in New York and Washington.”

• • •

Osama’s letter reminded me why I supported the war to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, and why I support the coming war on Iraq. Or supported the coming war on Iraq. I’m officially against the war now–or against it for now, I should say–which may or may not please the peaceniks who’ve bothered to read this far.

Did the people in the streets convince me? No. Yes. Sorta. I believe in the power of people taking to the streets. I lived in West Berlin when demonstrations brought down the East German government; I was in Prague when the demonstrations toppled Czechoslovakia’s communist rulers. George W. Bush’s dismissal of massive demonstrations all over the world–calling them “focus groups”–only served to prove something we already knew: The man is an idiot.

And so are a lot of the protesters. “Violence never solved anything.” Really? Violence solved the Holocaust. “Bombs just make more terrorists.” Really? We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we dropped on Europe during World War II. Where are all the Vietnamese terrorists? “Innocent people will die.” True enough–but innocent people are dying right now in Iraq. The left’s selective empathy is shocking. My lefty pals feel the pain of Iraqi civilians–but only the pain that the U.S. inflicts or might inflict. You don’t hear much from the left about the pain that Saddam Hussein inflicts. “War kills the innocent.” No, the status quo in the Middle East kills the innocent–and as we’ve seen in Manhattan and Bali, not just the innocent in the Middle East. War at times is the only hope for an oppressed people–as each Iraqi refugee quickly informs the first Western reporter he can find.

But, whatever, I’m against the war on Iraq now. Why? Because George W. Bush blew it. George W. Bush failed to make the case. George W. Bush wasn’t able to convince NATO–NATO!–or the United Nations of the necessity of this necessary war. Now the Bush administration seems set on a course that may destroy NATO and the UN. I don’t know about the Bushies, but I think a world without NATO and the UN will be more dangerous in the long run than a world without Saddam Hussein will be in the short run. So I’m against the war. Hey, when’s the next peace march?

• • •

The Middle East is a mess. The West made it a mess. The West is going to have to clean it up. The longer we wait, the greater the odds that New York or London or Paris will disappear under a mushroom cloud. And more attacks will come. The quote at the beginning of this essay (“These are the enemies of God. They will burn in hell”) is from a videotape made by a pair of Islamo-fascists casing a public square in advance of a planned terrorist attack. The square was in Strasbourg, a lovely town in France, of all places. The enemies of God were the men, women, and children shopping, eating, and playing in the square. Their crimes? Being Westerners, Christians, French. And to Islamo-fascists, those are crimes.

The Islamo-fascists will succeed where the Bush administration has failed. Colin Powell couldn’t bring France, Germany, and Ru
ssia to their senses, but the next wave of deadly terrorist attacks no doubt will. So we’ll just have to wait until after New York or Paris or Seattle or Strasbourg is wiped off the map to do what must be done. Make no mistake, my fellow lefties: We, the West, will ultimately invade, occupy, and remake the Middle East. Unfortunately for future innocent victims of terrorist attacks, the United States can’t do it alone, which means we can’t do it now.

Actually, that’s the whole essay.

-posted by Dan.

BAWK, BAWK Did I say the other day that I was the only sex advice columnist who supported the invasion of Iraq? I guess I misspoke-it seems I lost my nerve, chickening out at the last minute in early March, 2003. But in April of 2003 I chickened back in again when it looked like the war was coming to an end. Remember the happy days when it looked like this war would, or could, ever end? By December of 2003, in The Stranger’s annual “Regrets” issue, I was basically all over the damn place.

After December of 2003, I decided it might be wise to finally take the advice that Neal Pollack had given me in an essay he wrote for The Stranger before the war began:

Meanwhile, in turncoat land, Dan Savage, generally liberal sex-advice columnist and medium-market weekly newspaper editor, writes pieces in favor of the war so persuasive that Rush Limbaugh reads them on the air. Hooray, Dan! You support the president! Now shut up and go test-drive that three-pronged dildo for your next column. I wouldn’t read a sex-advice column by, say, E. J. Dionne, and I don’t want to read a political article by you…. Shut up!

That’s just what I did. My career as a war pundit was nasty, brutal and short.

-posted by Dan.

TESTING, TESTING

This was the closest thing I could find to a three-pronged dildo. Tests showed that it kinda hurts.

-posted by Dan.

SO, HOW’S IT GOING? Like any liberal who supported the invasion of Iraq, I’m frequently asked if I’m pleased with myself now. I get the question all the time-I mean, I edit a big lefty paper in a big lefty city, for crying out loud. And, hey, folks have a right to ask. What irks me, though, is that the folks who ask me if I’m pleased with the state of things in Iraq employ this… tone. It’s a tone that implies that I not only thought the invasion might be a good idea, but that I’m also personally responsible for the conduct of the war, as if I were popping in at the White House and the ranch Crawford once in a week and Rummy and Condi and Dick-and George too, let’s not forget about the Mountain-Biker-in-Chief-were hanging on my every word. As we all know now, the folks in this administration doesn’t listen to members of their own party about the conduct of the war-to say nothing of the brass at the Pentagon or the troops or the mothers of dead soldiers. It’s not like the sex advice columnist community is getting much of a hearing.

-posted by Dan.

CINDY SHEEHAN: Oh, regarding Cindy Sheehan…

I’m all for what she’s trying to do. Yes, she appears to be-say it ain’t so!-slightly partisan. But since when does being slightly partisan disqualify someone from having an opinion? Rightwing bloggers would have us believe that, unless you’re a Republican (and an R who supports the war, no questions asked), you have no right to speak out about the war. Cindy Sheehan, partisan or not, is free to form opinions about this war-a war that she being fought by“her kind of people”-and guess what else? She’s an American. She can have an opinion about the war, and she can 1. express her opinion freely, and 2. “peaceably to assemble [and] petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The President is on vacation for five weeks. The First Amendment is not.

-posted by Dan.

BUT WHERE ARE YOU ON IRAQ NOW, DAN? I think I hear my mother calling me.

Seriously, I have to go do some work at The Stranger-you know, the kind of writing that, unlike blogging, actually comes with a paycheck attached to it. I will post more on Iraq later.

-posted by Dan.

And, yes, I intend to finally-finally-get my thoughts about Iraq down in blue-and-white. Even if I hadn’t promised to yack Iraq before my guest-blogger stint was up (how much more fun it is to talk about wayward priests and binki trees!), the sight of Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice grinning like idjits without a care in the world on the cover of this morning’s NYT would have provoked me into saying something.

-posted by Dan.

BUT FIRST… let’s tie up a few loose ends.

Danish parents name/call their kids “Skat”?

Phonetically speaking, “skat” sounds the same as a word we use to describe the singing of gibberish and, uh, something that it’s way too early in the morning to even contemplate, in Danish “skat” means “sweetie,” “darling,” or “honey.” This means, of course, that all Danish mother’s call their kids “skat.”

I’m sure the liberals wouldn’t like us littering a park with a bunch of binkies. Those kids having trouble getting the binky monkey off their backs can send theirs to Binky Land. There’s a story about some new baby needing a pacifier. You put the binkies in the mail and send them to Binky Land.

I much prefer the Danish approach. While popping a binky in the mail may be easier for parents, there’s a communitarian aspect to the Denmark’s binky trees that we Americas should emulate. There’s a reason we don’t do baptisms by on the web, or get married in secret, or perform graduation ceremonies by mail. We perform these things in public. “This is very important,” the public nature of a baptism or a graduation implies. While giving up a binky isn’t the accomplishment that, say, getting that Ph.D. is, it’s still a major step for a toddler, and deserves an honored place in a public setting.

Here on the University of Minnesota campus there’s a tree festooned with old shoes. There’s been rumors that undergrads who lose their virginity head over to the Washington Avenue Bridge and toss their sneakers onto the Shoe Tree, I guess for posterity. Anyway, I’ve included the link to a Minnesota Daily article about the Shoe Tree from 2003. Fact is, no one knows the true origins, but Nerve.com went with the sex angle. (Hmm, I wonder why?) Maybe they should have a tree that dispenses condoms and lubes. You know, for those who decided lose their virginity regularly.

-posted by Dan.

From the inbox…

Andrew: You made a big mistake is letting that fool Dan [Savage] use your web site for his personal vendettas. His vituperative writing and obviously one-sided view of everything is just showing what a left wing crazy he is really is and you’re a fool for giving him the web site. You disappoint with your lack of judgment in this matter.
-Sol K.

I must say how great guest blogger Dan Savage is. He is insightful, he makes me laugh out loud, and the self-conscious mutterings, while diminishing, as he gets more comfortable, are funny and human. Thanks for thinking of him.
-Anita S.

-posted by Dan

Msgr. Eugene Clark, the 79 year-old rector at St. Patrick’s Cathedral accused of having an adulterous affair with his “longtime personal secretary,” a married woman, stepped down today. Newsday reports that the Roman Catholic priest once blamed the Catholic sex-abuse scandal on “the campaign of liberal America against celibacy.” Now we know the monsignor himself was a deep-cover, highly-placed operative in the War On Celibacy. Indeed, if the aggrieved husband is right, Msrg. Clark fired a few shots in this war himself.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as my Caholic mom likes to say. It’s a sad day for practicing Catholics, St. Pat’s, and, of course, for that every-dwindling band Catholic priests who can keep appearances-and their black trousers-up. Still, we did get two great new euphemisms out of this scandal: I’m going to keep referring to my boyfriend as my “longtime personal secretary,” if only to keep the number of posts on this blog that touch on homosexuality to a minimum. That’s one.

The other? The cuckolded husband of Msgr. Clark claims that his wife told him she was “sorting books,” when she was, he alleges (and he has video), actually holed up in a hotel room with the Msgr. Eugene “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” Clark. I intend to spend some time “sorting books” with my “longtime personal secretary” this evening.

Right after I shower with my son, of course.

-posted by Dan.

I’m going to post what I’ve learned from You People about Copenhagen’s binki (binkie?) tree a little later today, but first I wanted to post this photo. (I just love postin’ photos!) It’s a shop window in Denmark…

Anyone know what SLUTSPURT means? I expect it doesn’t mean the same thing in Danish that it does in English. Oh, and that guy on the right? That’s my longtime personal secretary. I pixilated his face, at his request, since, thanks to a certain someone in New York City, being called a “longtime personal secretary” today is like being called a “White House intern” in 1998.

-posted by Dan.

But does his father shower with him? From today’s Seattle Times.

-posted by Dan.

FROM THE INBOX:Readers weigh in…

The idea that Republicans in power have ever favored personal freedoms is a myth. (I say “in power” because libertarians favor personal freedoms, and some of them are Republicans, but none holds, or to my knowledge ever has held, power.) Republicans have always opposed gay rights, pornography, and civil liberties in general; they favor freedom only for big business. There’s an old joke that liberals want to regulate big business but not our sex lives, while conservatives want to regulate our sex lives but not big business. In other words, each wants to regulate the other.

RE: “I predict that soon we’re going to have-and need-a straight rights movement in this country.”
Funny, I think what we need is just a plain rights movement. I thought gay rights were straight rights and vice versa–how can they be separated? Must we be stuck between those on the insufferable left who think there are inalienable rights to an equality of result and to never ever ever be offended and those on the insufferable right who have no concept of the Ninth Amendment which last I checked says just because a right isn’t in the constitution doesn’t mean it isn’t a basic human right? I think the presumption of Liberty is in trouble, though it probably always has been and has always required active defenders. (And having said that, why are the organized Libertarians so insane?)

Remember when Reagan appointed Everett Koop as surgeon general? How it was going to be the end of science in medicine as we knew it? Well, Koop got in a lot of trouble with the Wingnuts by (among other things) refusing to endorse a “study” that “proved” that women who had abortions had a higher instance of breast cancer, and in fact he very publicly endorsed another, real study that showed no correlation could be observed.

RE: “The GOP’s commitment to personal freedom, fiscal sanity, well-managed wars, and family values,” When has the modern Republican Party ever actually tried to live up to those commitments? They have been very good at using them as talking points in an attack on liberalism, but whenever they actually gain power, these concepts are tossed out the window. Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and a series of Republican-controlled Congresses…I don’t recall any of them being true champions of any of the “commitments” you list.

When I saw your post on beer, I thought it read “bears.” As in you had three bears last night. I got very confused when I read that your brother pours three over his breakfast cereal, but Woof!

-posted by Dan.

James Dobson cites some peculiar advice for parents who don’t want their little boys to grow up to be gay cowboys. The gem below, currently up on Dobson’s website, is from quack anti-gay Dr. Joseph Nicolosi:

Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

I don’t know whether to file this ridiculous/tragic or tragic/ridiculous.
And it’s wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. I have two older brothers, Bill and Ed. We had the same father, also Bill, and he played the same games with us. I don’t recall ever showering with my dad, but I’m pretty sure Dad didn’t drag my brothers into the shower and waggle his penis in their faces either. So it seems unlikely that my want of face-time with dad’s cock made me gay. And somehow-once again, we had the same Dad-my brothers managed to grow up straight.
I have a son, and I don’t shower with him, and I can’t imagine that the Docs Dobson and Nicolosi want me to. My boyfriend, however, does occasionally shower with our son; he takes him swimming at the Y, and you have to shower before you get into the pool. But I kind of doubt that seeing my boyfriend’s penis in the YMCA showers made our son straight. (I’ve been examining my boyfriend’s penis for more than 10 years now-in the shower and other locations-and it hasn’t made me straight.) And I’m convinced our son is straight.

Why? Because the first time he picked up a football he threw a perfect spiral.

-posted by Dan.

…is preferable to santorum on the bat.

Writing about Rick Santorum without mentioning my past association with Senator isn’t easy. But a promise is a promise, and I swore to Andrew that I would keep things relatively clean during my stint here on AndrewSullivan.com. But, like, you know, what’s to stop an enterprising reader who wanted to Google my name and Santorum? Nothing, of course, but it’s not a Google search for the faint of heart.

I can’t resist running this photo, though.

That’s Senator Rick Santorum. At the bat. A inch or two closer and the photographer would have gotten the-substance-that-shall-not-be-named-in-this-space all over his lens.

-posted by Dan.

Rick Santorum, perhaps my favorite Republican U.S. Senator, opened his fool mouth last Thursday on NPR. As Bush has moved his party away from its longtime commitment to fiscal sanity, balanced budgets, and black ink, Santorum (and the wing of the GOP he represents) has moved the GOP away from its historic position on personal freedom. Basically Santorum’s GOP is all for personal freedom-so long as you freely choose to refrain from smoking pot, pulling feeding tubes out of brain dead loves ones, and doing what you like in your own bedroom (or, in the case of Msrg. Clark, your own hotel room).

This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want.

Listening to Santorum, I found myself wondering what part of “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” he doesn’t understand. That’s Amendement IV in the Ye Olde Bill of Rights. Call me ka-razy, but the right to shut the door to your bedroom and not have to worry about a sanctimonious, hypocritical, creepily fey U.S. Senator sneaking in and lifting back your blankets seems implicit.

And make no mistake, hetero readers: Santorum doesn’t just seek to stamp out the kind of relationship I enjoy with my longtime personal secretary. The Santorum wing of the GOP is targeting your privacy, your rights, and your pleasures, too. From porn (just as popular in red states as it is in blue) to divorce (more popular in red states than in blue) to masturbation (equally popular in red and blue states), the Santorums and Scalias and Bauers and Dobsons want to tell you how to live, who to love, and how exactly you should love ’em. When Santorum made his famous “man on dog” comments he wasn’t just defending anti-gay sodomy laws, but anti-straight sodomy laws too. Santorum doesn’t just believe that the state should have the right to regulate gay sex out of existence, but two out of three most popular straight sex acts too. In his dissent in Lawrence, GOP and Bush/Santorum favorite Antonin Scalia didn’t just bemoan the fact that the majority decision could lead to same-sex marriage rights, but that it would prevent the government from passing and/or enforcing laws against masturbation and pre-marital sex. Oh, the horror.

Whatever happened to the party that backed rugged individualism? Of personal freedom? Of autonomy? Remember Newt Gingrich’s stirring speech at the 1996 GOP convention in San Diego, in which he praised the way in which American freedom lead to the creation of beach volleyball? If that’s too painful, remember Dick Cheny saying freedom means freedom for everyone?

Personal freedom is like free speech: Some people are going to exercise their personal freedom and/or freedom of speech in ways that make you uncomfortable. So long as they’re not imposing themselves on you, they should be left alone. And, I’m sorry, Rick, but the haunting fear-or certain knowledge-that someone, somewhere, is enjoying himself in ways that you think are sinful does not qualify as an imposition.

-posted by Dan.

REAGAN REPUBLICANS: You still hear the term “Reagan Democrats” being tossed around. They’re still out there, I guess. (The fact that their wages haven’t budged since Reagan conned them into voting for him hasn’t brought them, or their kids, around.) But where are the Reagan Republicans, I wonder?

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

I wasn’t a fan of Reagan when he was president-and that’s putting it mildly. I loathed Ronald Reagan. I voted for the very first time in 1984 for Walter Mondale, and I was stunned when Reagan not only won, but won by a freakin’ landslide. (Full disclosure: Mondale; Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry.) But Reagan managed to outlive my hostility, and when he died I felt same sense of sadness as most other Americans.

These days I’m positively nostalgic for Ronald Reagan. Yeah, yeah: He shrugged off apartheid, he ignored the AIDS epidemic, he saddled us with voodoo economics and Star Wars and all that horrible red White House china and he attempted to trade arms for hostages (and broke the law doing it), but at least he wouldn’t have sent government workers into our bedrooms to announce that they were there to “help” us.

-posted by Dan.

BREAKING THE 11THE COMMANDMENT: Those crazy kids at InTheAgora.com have declared today “Breaking the 11th.” It’s a reference to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” (Is the 11th Commandment still operative? Or is it permissible, as la Bush/Rove in South Carolina, to speak ill of a fellow Republican’s wife and child?) From InTheAgora.com:

With Republican control of the House, Senate, and Presidency, perhaps now more than ever in recent history, it is important for rank-and-file Republicans to loudly proclaim our dissatisfaction with the way our leadership have become heady with unchecked power. Too often these days, we are asked to support the Party as an end rather than a means. And also too often, the policies, positions, and rhetoric of our elected Republicans run contrary to the principles that lead us to identify with the Grand Old Party. And, unfortunately, too often Republicans are complacent or silent in the face of such betrayal.

Like the GOP’s commitment to personal freedom, fiscal sanity, well-managed wars, and family values, Breaking the 11th doesn’t quite live up to its hype. “Countless weblogs will be taking part in this event,” InTheAgora.com claimed, “and you’re encouraged to join in too.” Can you count to three? That’s how many other blogs appear to have signed up. The InTheAgora.com kids asked Andrew to sign up too, but with Andrew away and me guest blogging all week (once again: Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry), I’m afraid AndrewSullivan.com will have to sit out the “Breaking the 11th” festivities. I’ve never recognized the 11th commandment, you see, so I can’t really break it. Despite the fact that my dad and some of my best friends are Republicans, I speak ill of Rs all the time. Constantly. But I’m happy to watch the “Breaking the 11th” fireworks from the sidelines.

-posted by Dan.

COULDA BEEN A CONTENDER?:

I’m not that inspired by the writing “Breaking the 11th” has generated so far. Joe Carter at TheEvangelicalOutpost.com has this to say about Rick Santorum:

Rick could have been a contender. He probably would have made a decent President. But he’s made too many odd statements to be electable. He’s said stuff that even makes me uncomfortable-and I’m generally in agreement with him on most issues. We needed someone with his principles but he let his loose tongue sink him. Too bad.

Yeah, it’s Santorum’s tongue that’s the problem. He has a hab
it of saying out loud what his wing of the GOP believes: the government should insert itself into your personal life and regulate the sexual conduct of consenting adults.

-posted by Dan.

STRAIGHT RIGHTS: A good example of how the GOP’s war on personal freedom and sexual autonomy impacts straight people too, look at the GOP’s maneuvering on EC, or emergency contraception. Go read this, this, and, most appallingly, this. Remember: EC is not an abortifacient. It is birth control-a particularly effective form of birth control that Republicans like Mitt Romney would deny to rape victims.

I predict that soon we’re going to have-and need-a straight rights movement in this country.

-posted by Dan.