The Dish

A single-serving site of quotes by Bea Arthur from "The Golden Girls."  For instance:

You know, I don't think I ever had a sponge cake so moist.

TWBS.

It's not exactly startling to see that Karl Rove has denied he was aware his own father was gay, even as he guided the GOP into anti-gay wedge politics in the last decade (the Christianists, he coolly calculated, had potentially way more votes for the GOP than gays and their families). But it is important to note that it is untrue that he had no idea his dad was gay or that he was unaware it was the reason for his parents' divorce. From James Moore, the author of The Architect, a biography of Rove:

When I went to Palm Springs in 2005 prior to the publication of The Architect, one of Louis Rove's neighbors literally laughed when I told him Karl claimed he didn't know what happened to his parents' marriage. "He [Karl] was obviously hurt by the divorce. It's just absurd when he says, 'I had no idea what the problems were with my parents and their marriage.' He knew damned good and well what was going on. His father had decided to come out of the closet."

In fact, according to Louis Rove's best friend Joe Koons, Rove not only knew his father's sexual orientation but also was comfortable with it and had accepted his father's honesty.

People are complicated; families are only knowable from within; we should comment on their people's private lives with great reluctance. But Rove's cynical attempts to wage culture war against gay couples, servicemembers and our families surely make this a legitimate issue.

You cannot try to destroy gay couples' marriages while claiming privacy as soon as you face your own divorce or are asked uncomfortable questions about squaring your policy positions and your father's orientation. 

In fact, Rove's experience is as good an argument as any for getting over denial and for embracing marriage equality as any. His own family was torn apart by denial of homosexuality. His experience shows that suppressing, stigmatizing and preventing solid gay relationships is anti-family, not pro-family. He had a great opportunity to show this publicly and, from all accounts, he acted humanely, decently and lovingly around his father, and had a great relationship with him. This could have been a constructive, teaching moment. Similarly with Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter's de facto marriage and grandchildren. And with George W. Bush's personal ease and familiarity and empathy with the actual gay and transgender people he knew and worked with. 

These people should not be demonized. Many of them are humane in private and not bigots in any personal way. That's how they live with themselves.  But the tragedy of their lives and the last painful decade should not be missed.

They knew better. But they pandered to the worst. And their victims were among the people they loved.

Ben Smith updates us on the Israel-US situation.

The Onion scooped the NYT by seven years:

Long Beach, CA, resident Jeanne Bradley was recently given a special commendation by the city of Los Angeles for regularly attending WNBA games. "From midnight cheesecake noshers to moms who don't fool around with pain, feminist achievement covers a broad spectrum," said Bradley in her acceptance speech. "It is great to be a female athlete, senator, or physician. But we must not overlook the homemaker who uses a mop equipped with convenient, throwaway towelettes, the college co-ed who chooses to abstain from sex, and the college co-ed who chooses to have a lot of sex. Only by lauding every single thing a woman does, no matter how ordinary, can you truly go, girls."

A new poll finds that 73% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” The Wonk Room adds:

The survey, which sampled 45% self-identified Republicans and just 20% Democrats, suggests that military personnel are more comfortable serving alongside openly gay and lesbian troops than previously thought. The poll also contradicts the findings of a widely circulated Military Times survey, which reported that 58% of respondents are opposed to efforts to repealing DADT

A reader writes:

In terms of creepy game show hosts, nobody can top Richard Dawson of the Family Feud, who made it a point to kiss all of the female contestants, typically on the lips, and fondle them during the fast money round.  He actually wound up marrying a contestant.

National Lampoon's European Vacation parodied Dawson in the opening scene.

Commonweal speaks for many not represented by the hierarchy, and notes that the current pro-life position is based on an untruth:

One needs a good reason to oppose a bill that would cover 30 million uninsured Americans and greatly improve insurance for those who already have it. If the Senate bill did clearly authorize the federal government to pay for elective abortions, prolife Americans might have such a reason. To conclude the bill does this, however, requires one to believe that every ambiguity—every possible complication the bill doesn’t explicitly address—is a ploy by prochoice politicians to sneak abortion funding into the system. President Barack Obama and his party’s leadership have promised the bill won’t be used in this way.

Their critics instruct us to presume that they’re lying.

These critics point out that the bill departs from the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal support for any health plan that covers elective abortion. They insist this is the only conceivable way for the government to subsidize insurance without paying for abortion. This is false, as the Senate bill itself clearly demonstrates. Under the bill, anyone who buys a plan that covers elective abortion would have to pay a separate, unsubsidized premium for that coverage. Such premiums would be segregated from premiums for all other services in a special account, which would have to cover the full cost of elective abortions and couldn’t receive a penny from the government. In other words, the bill would preserve the Hyde Amendment’s principle without applying its method.

"Dependence of one state upon another creates perverse incentives for both. The unconditional backing of one side in a conflict does not encourage compromise but devotion to maximalist positions. Likewise, if a patron receives no reciprocity for its support, only the client state benefits from the relationship, creating an increasingly untenable situation for the patron. Maximalist demands backed by a patron’s support tend to be detrimental even to the client state in the long run—because they shield the client from the consequences of its actions.

While successive Israeli governments have taken advantage of the relationship with the U.S., this is ultimately not Israel’s fault. Were our positions reversed, Americans would do the same. And while it may feel satisfying to blame Netanyahu’s government or the religious parties in his coalition for the latest incident, the U.S.’s predicament is largely of its own making. At one point during his speech, Biden said that America “has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel.”  In fact, many U.S. allies have been far more reliable over the years.

Indeed, this exaggerated claim about Israel is made precisely to conceal how little reciprocity Israel shows its benefactor. Israel’s dependence on the many forms of U.S. aid ought to make it one of the most easily influenced and accommodating of allies, but the certainty that the aid will never cease, and that no administration will risk accusations that it has “abandoned” Israel, has had the opposite effect. 

Washington created the conditions for its own embarrassment by creating a bilateral relationship defined by dependence and warped by unaccountability. If it is unwilling to place conditions on the support it provides to Israel, and unwilling to enforce them when it does, Washington will continue to find its pronouncements ignored and its efforts in the Near East frustrated," – Daniel Larison.

Yes, I know. "Excitable Andrew" is getting excitable again. The recent flurry of stories about sexual abuse and acting out in the Catholic church is just a flurry. The Pope is not Cardinal Law. The hierarchy remains entrenched in the developing world. Benedict's gamble – to double-down on denial about the celibate priesthood's sexual problems, to add more incense to the smoke-screen and more pageantry to the theater of it all – is working.

But it isn't. Let us review the recent evidence. The American church is still shell-shocked by abuse cases that have implicated the very top of the church hierarchy in recent years. Many Catholics – from the liberals to the arch-conservatives – will never feel the same way they once did about this institution, nor should we. The church in Ireland is in tatters, attendance cratering and vocations collapsing. Yes: Ireland. This is a function not just of the abuse crisis, but it has played a central role. We just found out that the current primate, Cardinal Sean Brady,

as a priest in 1975 … was at meetings where children signed vows of silence over complaints against pedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth.

Brady refuses point-blank to resign:

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, said this week that he will only resign if he's personally asked to by the Pope. In Ireland increasing calls for his resignation have come amid allegations that he attended meetings were children were asked to sign vows of silence over the abuse they had suffered.

But if the Pope asked Brady to resign, wouldn't he also have to ask himself to resign? After all, the Pope was part of a similar cover-up in Germany in which then-cardinal Ratzinger knowingly assigned a pedophile priest to therapy, without informing the authorities that he knew that the priest had forced an eleven year old boy to fellate him, and then allowed that priest to continue in his career, with his finally being convicted of more child abuse six years later. He was only removed from pastoral duties a few days ago.

The current moral authority for all Catholics personally put the interests of the hierarchy above the welfare of vulnerable children. He heard a case of a priest forcing an eleven-year-old to perform oral sex on him, and he did not take that priest to the police, as he should have, or removed him from his duties immediately. He sent him to therapy and allowed him to continue molesting children in future parishes, and never informed the parents of the priest's past. Would you have done that? Would anyone you know have done that? Would anyone you know who had done that be able to sleep at night?

I don't know of many things I find as repugnant as knowingly putting the interests of an institution's public relations before children's protection from molestation. Yet this is the Pope we have. This is the moral judgment he made.

How can anyone retain confidence in that figurehead? How can any orthodox Catholic not find this repugnant? And what has the Pope done since this has been revealed? He has said nothing, and put out a p.r. campaign to accuse critics in Germany of being anti-Catholic.

In Mexico and beyond. the last Pope and this allowed a serial molester and cult-leader, Marcial Maciel, continue his predatory habits for decades, and postponed any serious investigation until it was too late. His theoconservative allies in America defended Maciel for years. Late theocon-in-chief, Richard John Neuhaus, attacked those investigating the abuse allegations and declared that it was "a moral certainty" that Maciel was innocent of all charges. Now, in Brazil, another dam is breaking. This new story beggars belief:

Brazilian authorities are investigating three priests accused of sexually abusing altar boys after a video allegedly showing one case of abuse was broadcast on television, police and church officials said Tuesday.

The case came to light after the SBT network aired a video purportedly showing an 82-year-old priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy who worked for him for four years. Other young men appeared on the report saying that they, too, had been abused by Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa.

Also under investigation are Monsignor Raimundo Gomes, 52, and Father Edilson Duarte, 43, for allegedly having sexual relations with boys and young men…

In its report last week, SBT showed footage of a man who looks like Barbosa having sex with the 19-year-old. It said the footage was secretly filmed in January 2009 by a 21-year-old man who charges Barbosa had abused him since age 12.

But here's what remains staggering:

An SBT reporter visited Barbosa's house to conduct an interview and confront him with the allegations.

Before raising the allegations of sexual abuse, the reporter asks if the priest had ever sinned.

"Who has never committed a sin?" Barbosa responds.

The priest is then asked if the region has problems with pedophilia.

"I think it is more (a problem) of homosexuality than pedophilia," Barbosa says.

Asked directly if he ever abused boys, Barbosa says he could only answer such a question "in confession."

How much more do we have to see, how much more damage has to be done to human beings, before the hierarchy cones to terms with its denial about homosexuality, its warped psyche on sexuality, the brutal consequences of its celibacy requirements … and the total iniquity of allowing children and teens in your care, entrusted to men of God, to be raped and abused and molested with impunity for years? 

When will this Pope step down?

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI waves through a car window at the end of his visit to Rome's Lutheran church, on March 14, 2010. The Vatican fought attempts to link Pope Benedict XVI to child sex abuse in a counteroffensive on Saturday against widening paedophilia scandals. By Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images.)

One vote at a time.