One of the many unsolicited e-mails I get, one of the few I open:

Dear Friend,

My name is Ms. Mabel Franklin, female, working with Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations (GSPN). EUROPEAN UNION Greece, We are organizing a global World Conference, Global Peace Index (GPI). Taking place from 2nd August to 15 August 2010 at Athens, . A 7-days summer tour to Historic tourist attraction cities around and Rome in from 16th – 22nd August 2010. In our request to invit people from various countries around the world, I went in search of your e-mails on the web site as a means of contacting people and organizations As a result, I picked your email from an N.G.O`s website.
If you are interested to participate or want to represent your country, and/or office you may contact the secretariat of the organizing committee for details and information’s. Email: globalsymposiumathens@europe.com

you should also inform them that you were invited to participate by friend of yours (Ms. Mabel Franklin) who is a member of the European Union All Nation for Peace and a staff of Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations. The benevolent donors from across the global and the Organizing Committee is responsible for the arrangements of all traveling documents and European Union traveling visa, Registered participants are only responsible for their own Hotel accommodation.


You may get back to me with my email address below.

Email: frasmabel@hotmail.com

Sincerely,
Ms Mabel Franklin

Look, Mabel, I know you mean well, but I just can’t count you as a friend. And frankly, I don’t recall putting any of my e-mails on an NGO site.

Just last month, President Obama reminded Americas that “America’s small businesses . . . create two out of three new jobs“.  Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank banking bill he’s pushing will hurt small businesses and the community banks they rely on.

Here in the Golden State, Roger Hart, a former community banker who has helped small businesses in the past, has castigated the state’s junior Senator for supporting the bill as it will make it increasingly difficult for small businesses to gain access to capital:

Reasonable access to capital is the primary issue for small business.  Currently, small businesses are unable to obtain financing as their community banks continue to struggle.   As seen by the increase in unemployment since the plan’s passage, it’s clear government programs have been ineffective in supporting the small businesses that actually create jobs.   And last month, Senator Boxer voted for a financial reform bill that would have subjected community banks to many of the same restrictions imposed on large Wall Street banks-despite the fact that community banks were neither to blame for our financial crisis, nor can they afford the cost of compliance with these massive new regulations.

I share the same concerns with the banking bill as does Mr. Hart.  It seems to add a new layer of regulation to all segments of the banking industry, even those not responsible for the market meltdown of 2008.  Fortunately, with Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., who supported the Senate version of the bill, opposing the reconciled version which includes “$19 billion in bank fees added [in]  . . . at the last minute“, the bill’s passage seems less likely.

With yet another Boxer initiative stalled, this begs the question:  with unemployment at record levels in the Golden State, what policies has Barbara Boxer proposed, pushed or passed to make it easier for entrepreneurs to create jobs in her jurisdiction?

This president continues to pursue big-government schemes and propose ever-higher levels of federal spending as the American people increasingly warm to his campaign rhetoric that we’ve been living “beyond our means” and want to reduce the size of government and slash government spending.

His policies toward Israel effect a “tectonic rift” in our relationships with that Middle Eastern democracy while the American people increasingly favor the cause of the Jewish State — and become increasingly skeptical about the concerns of her enemies.

Now, he’s chewing a Republican Senator out for echoing a Democratic colleague and saying we should “prioritize fixing the oil spill“!

In the wake of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama today summoned a bipartisan group of over 20 senators to the White House to push for energy and climate change legislation.

But one thing the President did not want to talk about at the meeting was the BP disaster, a Republican source told ABC News. And that, the source said, led to a pointed exchange with GOP senator Lamar Alexander from Tennessee.

“The priority should be fixing the oil spill,” Alexander told the President, according to the source. “That’s what any meeting about energy should be about.”

But when Alexander tried to interject the BP leak into the meeting, the source said, the President told the senator, “That’s just your talking point.”

Retorted Alexander, “No, it’s my opinion.”

(H/t:  Washington Examiner).  That Democratic colleague mentioned above is my own Senator, no, not the one running for reelection this year, but the one who actually tries to do her job while showing respect for her partisan adversaries:

Many Democrats don’t want to vote in this election year on whether to cap the greenhouse-gas emissions linked to climate change, saying they prefer to work in the coming months on legislation directly responding to the spill.

“The climate bill isn’t going to stop the oil leak,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. “The first thing you have to do is stop the oil leak.”

Guess, by Obama’s standard, Democrat Dianne Feinstein and her Republican counterpart from Tennessee are pushing the same talking point.  Can someone tell me what kind of leader pushes the same policies he’s been pushing all along while failing to focus on a crisis which emerged during his tenure in office?

The American people aren’t as concerned about his energy policy as they are about fixing the leak.  I’m with Democrat Feinstein.  The first thing we do is fix the leak.

In the wake of the Dave Weigel contretemps, as the record of his participation on the left-wing Journolist seeps out, one question comes to mind:  how can a journalist dispassionately and honestly cover conservative bloggers when he is so eager to ingratiate himself with their left-of-center counterparts.

Even before Weigel was “exposed” this past week as harboring some attitudes common among the “netroots” toward conservatives, I had heard rumor of his animosity toward our ideological confrères.  That said, on the few occasions, I had checked out his column on the Washington Post‘s web-site, I found little to complain about.  His posts seemed pretty even-handed to me, but then I only caught them three, four, maybe five times.

Yet, even as he called opponents of gay marriage “bigots,” unless I missed something, he seemed entirely unaware of gay blogs on the right side of this blogosphere, including this one.

The real revelation is all this is really nothing new–it’s just the regular misrepresentation of conservatives — and our ideas — in the mainstream media.  If Weigel were truly interested in honestly covering conservatives, why would he participate a list whose very purpose is to push left-of-center narratives in the news media while undermining conservative ideas?  ”The Journolist,” Ann Althouse writes, “was a self-herding device. They wanted to be good cogs in a machine that would generate power for the Democratic Party, didn’t they?”

A number of other bloggers, including importantly Dan Riehl, have looked at the larger meaning of Weigel, the Journolist and the state of media coverage of the most dynamic political movement in America in the past forty years, a movement which has been flourishing for forty years (at least).  Dan believes the Post‘s coverage of “the Right was a blatant effort by big Beltway media to marginalize the Right – intentionally, or not.”

In addition to Dan, Ace also gets what’s going on here.  The problem he found in Weigel’s coverage was that the guy didn’t like his job well enough to do it well: (more…)

Last week, Roger Simon asked a question which has kept me thinking well into this one, “Does Barack Obama want to be president?”

Ever since viewing his depressing and disconnected “energy” speech last week, I have been mulling whether Barack Obama actually wants to be president anymore. That was an address given by a man who looked very much like he didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to continue. He appeared slumped and worn, as if he aged eighteen years in eighteen months. His demeanor was oddly distracted.

I am not being metaphorical here — I am quite serious. The more I have thought about this, the more I am convinced Barack Obama no longer wishes to be president. The degree that he admits this to himself, I am not sure. But I rather suspect that in the small hours of the morning he fantasizes he were anywhere but 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And who could blame him?

Now, much as I admire, respect and just plain like Roger (having met him and his lovely bride Sheryl) on numerous occasions, I have to disagree with him on this one–even as I think he’s onto something with his question and his post.  (Just read the whole thing.)

Roger’s right that Obama didn’t seem very engaged in that speech, treating it as most of us would treat a visit to a grouchy relative, an obligation we must perform to keep up appearances.  The president just plain seems frustrated by the unexpected crises a chief executive must face.  He’d rather give speeches and otherwise get the adulation of his fans (including especially various assorted celebrities).

Not just that, instead of considering the circumstances of the day, he wants to stick to the big-government agenda he’s been pushing all along.  It’s as if nothing has changed since the campaign.  (No wonder he and his fellow Democrats stick to their tired bromides about “inherited” problems and “failed [GOP] policies.”) (more…)

If this is recovery, I hate to see a Depression! 

• Near 10% unemployment for months on end
• Housing starts plummeted in June
• Americans are clutching onto what little savings they have
• Consumer Confidence plunged…

All of which led to this:

No matter where they look, investors are seeing economic trouble.

Stocks and interest rates tumbled Tuesday after signs of slowing economies from China to the U.S. spooked traders who were already uneasy about a global recovery.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 268 points, or 2.7 percent, and dropped below 10,000. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed at its lowest level since October.

Interest rates fell in the Treasury market after demand for the safety of government debt grew. The yield on the 10-year note dropped to as low as 2.96 percent, the first time it has fallen below 3 percent since April 2009. The yield is used as a benchmark for many consumer loans and mortgages.

The markets began the day by following Asian and European markets lower. Asian stocks fell after an index that forecasts economic activity for China was revised lower. European indexes continued the slide after Greek workers walked off the job to protest steep budget cuts.

Then, shortly after U.S. trading began, the market was hit with news that consumer confidence fell sharply this month because of worries about jobs and the overall economy. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 52.9 from a revised 62.7 in May. It was the steepest drop since February and economists polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast only a modest dip.

Nice work, Barry!  He may have inherited th problem, but the Stimulus & Healthcare Spending Us Into Debt Acts are killing the private sector recovery.

On a completely related and weird note, I pulled all of my current and future 401K holdings out of stocks & bonds Sunday evening and put them into a Fixed Interest account.  I just had a funny feeling that this week folks would finally realize that the worst is yet to come.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

A reader alerts me to a plank in the platform of the Montana GOP similar to language recently adopted by Republicans in the Lone Star State:

We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.

At least Montana Republicans avoided the detailed attack on the “practice of homosexuality” contained in the Texas platform.  That said, the inclusion of this plank — as of that in Texas — is both troubling and counterproductive and strikes at the heart of the basic Republican principle of freedom.

We’re not asking anyone to embrace what social conservatives call our “lifestyle,” we’re asking instead that they leave us alone to control our own lives, using our God-given liberty to engage in the pursuit of happiness in the manner which, we believe, best corresponds with our nature as individuals.

When social conservatives press the GOP to include such passages in their party platforms, they allow the media (and their allies in the Democratic Party) to turn the focus from the small government policies most state parties are coming to embrace and instead to portray the party as an institution seeking to regulate every aspect of our private lives.  And this even as reader darkeyedresolve, himself a former Democrat, put it in a private communication (which I quote with his permission), ” party platforms are pretty much rewards to activists”.

He noted further that “only the most passionate people are going to have time to take out of their lives to go to a convention and then sit around and vote on a platform.”  He hadn’t “heard of one prominent Texas Republican attached to it.”

The left dwells on these planks because it fits their narrative of an intolerant GOP.  They may well give more ink to such issues even as Republican legislators devote more time to opposing the Democrat’s big-government legislative initiatives and proposing small government reforms.

That said, reprehensible as these planks are, they are isolated occurrences.  Most Republicans have reached a kind of modus vivendi with the increasing social acceptance of homosexuality in American society and basically ignoring gay issues.   (more…)

If you want evidence to buttress our case that the various gay organizations see themselves as the gay wing of the liberal (or “progressive” as they style themselves) movement, look no further than this headline: Gay rights groups join boycotts over [Arizona's] immigration law.

So glad that at the conclusion of my cross-country journey, I filled my tank a the last station in Arizona before crossing into California (even though my tank was far from empty).  Not only am I standing up to a PC boycott (spearheaded, in large part, by people who haven’t even read the legislation), but I’m also defying the gay left.

From the article:

Twenty-three gay rights and advocacy groups said Tuesday they would join economic and meeting planner boycotts of the state already imposed by labor unions and Hispanic activists including the National Council of La Raza.

It’ that me-tooism inherent in the gay left.  They want to join into every happening in which other left-wing and left-leaning institutions (and individuals) participate.  If they were genuinely concerned about focusing on improving the lot of gay individuals in American society and not just advancing the causes of the left, they would steer clear of controversial issues such as this one, particularly because it has no bearing on the well-being of gay Americans.

Is there no area of life that the busybody left doesn’t want to regulate?  Do they really believe that individuals are incapable of making good choices?  Now, we’ve got some nanny-staters suing McDonald’s for giving away a toy with its Happy Meal:

Remember last month, when the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance to prevent restaurants from giving away toys with unhealthy meals? Someone at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) must have thought that was a great idea. The advocacy group is planning to sue McDonald’s over Happy Meal toys, because it says the toys are designed to get children to use their “pester power” to convince Mom and Dad to visit the Golden Arches. Once there, kids acquire the latest cheap plastic doohickey, which comes with fattening food.

This is too much even for Brett Singer who believes that “CSPI seems like a good organization.”  He contends that that the “threatened lawsuit against McDonald’s is attacking the wrong problem”, asking “Does anyone really believe children will stop wanting McDonald’s french fries without the promise of a free toy? (Hasn’t anyone at CSPI ever eaten those fries?)”

Good point.  Great (rhetorical) questions.

Now, it’s one thing to remind us of the dangers of eating too much fast food, but quite another to try to prevent fast food companies from running their business as they see fit.  McDonald’s is not forcing children to eat Happy Meals nor are they forcing parents to take them there.  Why can’t these liberals trust parents to raise their children as they see fit?  Why do they remain convinced that children’s “pester power” overrides parental decision power?

Do they have such a low opinion of parents that they believe them incapable of standing up to their children’s “pestering”?  (Now, uncles on the other hand . . . )

Shouldn’t they focus on the parents and help them develop means (on their own, without the coercion of the state) to stand up to such pester power?  Eliminating toys from fast food restaurants won’t help kids learn anything about healthy nutrition.  By contrast, teaching children about making choices will.

Via Glenn Reynolds, we learn of a fundraising e-mail former Vice President Al Gore sent out on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:

After eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, America is now beset with major challenges: A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an economic downturn that has put good people out of work, and a crisis that I have dedicated my life to solving — global warming.

And yet, Republicans are asking for another turn at the wheel.

House Republicans are actually campaigning on the promise to bring back the same failed policies and put in place some of the very same leaders that created this mess in the first place. And they are deadly serious.

You can just hear the high dudgeon in Gore’s words:  ”deadly serious.”  Yes, to Gore, Republican policies mean death.  (He really believes that.  He does.  He does.)

Note how the former Vice President repeats several of the current Administration’s talking points, still blaming the Republicans for the problems which beset America (including an oil spill which happened well over a year after Bush left office).

And then he goes on about “failed policies.”  Is he even aware how the various policy proposals of Republicans in Congress (and conservatives in think tanks) differ from those of the previous (Republican) Administration?  Or, do they just assume that W adopted more free market reforms — even as they ran against him for spending too much? (I believe one Democrat used the expression, “living beyond our means“, to castigate that Republican president.)

And when Democrats like Gore throw out the accusation of “failed policies,” do they ever identify said policies and point to particular Bush era policies to which said new proposals are akin?

*Or, are we supposed to say, “crazed sex poodle“?

There are few men alive more trusted today to win a war that General David Petraeus.  Not only has he thought long and hard about developing battlefield strategies to combat the rise of terrorism in the current era, but he has battlefield experience — and had it had even before the successful “surge” in Iraq, a plan that he developed and implemented.

Now, many have concerns about the timeline the president proposed for Afghanistan, having our troops out by a certain date next year, but Obama did tap Petraeus to lead our efforts in that troubled land.  And his testimony today before the Senate Armed Services Committee shows that the general wants to win this war (even if his boss won’t use the term “victory”)

Gen. David Petraeus cautiously endorsed President Barack Obama’s exit plan for the Afghan war on Tuesday, leaving himself room to recommend changes or delays as he interviewed for the job of commander of the stalemated war.

Petraeus, the emergency replacement following the sacking of the previous commander, told a Senate panel that Obama wants him to provide unvarnished military advice. Petraeus has previously said that he would recommend putting off any large-scale withdrawal if security conditions in Afghanistan can’t sustain it.

Obama has said troops will begin to leave in July 2011, but that the pace and size of the withdrawal will depend upon conditions.

Emphasis added.  That the president wants unvarnished advice from a military man like Petraeus goes well for the future of this war.  The line above about withdrawal depending upon certain conditions suggests Obama has shifted a little in its insistence on a speedy conclusion to this operation.

The choice of Petraeus suggests as much.  Indeed, some other things the general said indicated Petraeus’ focus on victory:

Petraeus also promised to “look very hard” at the rules of engagement governing troops in Afghanistan, if confirmed as the war’s next top commander. (more…)

One of their leaders, Robert Byrd (DEMOCRAT-WV), has met his maker (whomever that may be).  Brief anecdote from Byrd’s resume:

Well-respected by the Democrat Party and liberals, Byrd is often given a “pass” on his earlier affiliation with a white supremacist group. Senator Byrd served as an active member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) attaining the offices of Kleagle (recruiter) and  Exalted Cyclops.

Byrd joined the KKK when he was 24 in 1942. His local chapter unanimously elected him the top officer of their unit.

According to Byrd, a Klan official told him, “You have a talent for leadership, Bob… The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation.” Byrd later recalled, “Suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities! I was only 23 or 24 years old, and the thought of a political career had never really hit me. But strike me that night, it did.”

I cannot shed a tear on the passing of this man.  Sometimes evil is in the heart of man and displayed for all to see. 

I feel sorry for the state of WV who didn’t have adequate Senate representation during the past 20 years while Byrd’s brain turn to mush.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

For all the hoopla about President Obama’s signing last year of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act (a completely unassociated rider to the Defense Authorization bill for this year, in a cynical and overtly political attempt to wrestle Republican votes that would otherwise never have occured), today is actually a monumental day for gay and lesbian rights.

For it is today that the Supreme Court has decided in the case of McDonald et al. v. City of Chicaco, Illinois, et al., that:

Applying the standard that is well established in our caselaw, we hold that the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.

If you want anti-hate-crimes laws, you can’t do better than allowing gays and lesbians to defend themselves with firearms. And that SCOTUS two years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller ruled that the Second Amendment says what the Second Amendment says, they established this common-sense approach to our Liberties.

Further, that today SCOTUS applied these rights to individuals, by incorporating them through the 14th Amendment, you couldn’t get any more equal protection for gays and lesbians.

Truly a great day for Liberty and equality today.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

I’m happy to announce my participation in the “Same Sex Sunday” podcast’s new political panel (think: “This Week” or “Fox News Sunday” but all LGBT).  I’m the proud token conservative!  LOL

This week, Phil interviews The Advocate magazine’s Chief Washington Correspondent, Kerry Eleveld about Tuesday’s White House LGBT Pride Reception, rumors of the departure of Rahm Emmanuel, and General McChrystal’s comments about the Commander In Chief’s executive branch (read her Advocate piece on the subject here). We also discuss Joint Chief Chair Admiral Mullen’s comments on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” review process, as well as the Supreme Court’s decision on hiding Washington Referendum 71′s petitioners’ names from Public Record.

Also in interviews, Joe chats with Charlene Strong about what it was like to be mentioned by the President at Tuesday’s White House LGBT Pride Reception speech. Joe and Charlene also speak about the documentary “For My Wife” about the death of Charlene’s same-sex spouse the influence that story had on the effort to bring Domestic Partnerships to Washington State.

Then, in our first ever politics round table, Bruce Carroll, Michael Crawford, Chris Geidner, Cathy Renna and Dr. Jillian Weiss join Joe and Phil to discuss the Supreme Court decision on Washington’s Referendum 71–Doe V Reed. We also discuss recent changes at Secretary Clinton’s State Department involving transgender Americans’ passport and employment in that department.

Our round table also debates where we are going with efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel, Tuesday’s White House Pride reception, and the Labor Department’s new rules including same-sex partners and LGBT families in the Family and Medical Leave Act. We also talk about the first installment of CNN’s Gay in America series, “Gary and Tony have a Baby” with project consultant Cathy Renna, and finally we tackle where we are at on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

The actual podcast is at the bottom of this link.  I tried to embed it here, but no luck and I’m on a short time leash today.

I’m not sure how often I’ll be on, but the podcast airs every Sunday!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

My SINCERE apologies for the delay in dancing on the grave Al Gore’s career this week.  Kaput.  Just like the climategate emails proved Global Warming was “fixed”…. this incident will purge Gore’s fradulent preaching for quite some time, if not forever.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The Portland Police Bureau has released an audio recording of the interview between a detective and the massage therapist who accused former Vice President Al Gore of groping her in 2006.

The woman spoke with Detective Molly Daul in January 2009 – two years after she canceled three appointments to meet with investigators.

During the interview, the massage therapist describes Gore as a “crazed sex poodle” as she details the moves he made during a late-night appointment at a downtown Portland hotel.

Police declined to file charges against Gore, saying there was insufficient evidence.

Now let’s be clear: no charges were filed.  Gore is legally innocent ’til proven guilty in this particular incident.  But where there’s smoke, there’s fire.  Why the sudden divorce from Tipper this month?  What about all of the rumors of Algore’s affair with TV producer Laurie David?  Why did the media ignore the accused sexual assault stories when accurately reported by the National Enquirer? (oh, off topic…)

So think about this:  Algore and John Edwards could have been our President & VP and both of their sex antics (and alleged criminal activities) would have made Bill Clinton look like an innocent puppy in comparison.

In the meantime, let me enter into evidence the following:  John McCain, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  Quite a comparison with the sleazy Democrat standardbearers of late.

And no, it isn’t “all about sex”.  It is about telling the truth and being honest with your family first so you have the capacity to be a leader.  In advance of smart-ass Iraq/WMD comments:  ALL foreign intel officials believed Iraq had them in 2003, so it was a collosal intelligence community fail, not a deliberate lie from Bush or Cheney.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Weighing in on the change of heart some pundits (including my beloved Peggy) who waxed eloquent about Obama during the campaign have experienced now that that Democrat has taken the helm of this great nation, Bill Quick first castigates them, then points at the benefits of the Obama Administration to the conservative movement:

Since Obama’s election will turn out to be the worst thing to happen to the leftist project in America in the past hundred years, and will free a generation from the chains of leftist quackery at just the time such freedom is most sorely needed, I actually thank our lucky stars for useful idiots like you two. Without such, we might have been saddled with John McCain, and that would truly have been a disaster for conservatism, liberty, and America.

There’s something to that.  (Via Instapundit.)

The indispensable Jennifer Rubin offers:

Voters can figure out that “stimulus” means “stimulate the growth of government”: “Since the beginning of the recession (roughly January 2008), some 7.9 million jobs were lost in the private sector while 590,000 jobs were gained in the public one.  And since the passage of the stimulus bill (February 2009), over 2.6 million private jobs were lost, but the government workforce grew by 400,000.”

Friday, for the third (maybe fourth) time in the past six months or so, someone came up to me in a gas station and asked for some cash** so he could get back home to the Valley (pretty sure all the others like this guy mentioned the Valley).  This fellow said he had used up all his money on anti-freeze for his car and pointed to a white car with the hood up.

His funds exhausted, he needed cash for gas.  This guy at least acknowledged the mistake he had made.  (“All my fault,” he said–or something similar.)

Now, what caused me to doubt the sincerity of this guy’s plea was not just that I had heard it before, but also the sight of his his well-prepared prop.  I mean, if you had filled your car with anti-freeze, wouldn’t you close the hood?  And most people dispose of their anti-freeze bottles instead of stacking them neatly in an easily visible spot near the bar holding the hood up.  (For display purposes only?)

People tend not to stack such bottles very neatly when done with them.  When, on my cross country drive, I filled my car with oil (just west of Oklahoma City), I tossed the bottles aside (before throwing them away).

So, I’m wondering if anybody else experienced such a “scam” and if so, was there more to it than extorting cash from a gullible fellow.  I mean, the guy put together a pretty elaborate scheme just to get a few bucks.

——–

*Maybe it’s not a scam, just an odd coincidence.

**Another time three woman approached my car while I was getting in it and asked for money (or maybe a ride) so they could get home to the Valley.

One reason I have a great deal of difficulty taking seriously most (but not all) gay marriage activists (particularly those of my sex) is that they are loath to discuss the emotional significance/meaning of the institution.  And as I study male psychology, I wonder that it often takes a woman (or a child, or combination thereof) to activate the nurturing aspects of our psyche that seem to come more naturally to women, aspects essential for developing enduring relationships.

To be sure, there are some men who seem to have already internalized those “feminine” qualities.

Several years back, I had an e-mail exchange with a leading advocate for state recognition of same-sex marriage.  He practically bristled at my questions about his failure to address monogamy in the conversation on expanding the definition of this ancient institution.  He simply could not (refused to?) see the link between sexual fidelity and emotional intimacy, how that ideal deepens the bond between the two individuals in a marriage.

Indeed, at those meetings on gay marriage, I found that those most willing to point out that monogamy was an (essential) aspect of marriage were (almost*) always women.

Look, I realize these thoughts may seem kind of random, but because of several serendipitous circumstances on my cross country journey coupled with thoughts about my dissertation — and how Athena’s relationship with Tiresias (this paragon of wisdom to the ancient Greeks being the only individual who had lived as both a man an a woman) fits in — has got me thinking about this yet again.

I fear sometimes we men don’t work at developing emotional relationships with other men.  That so visual and physical is our sex drive, we don’t want to consider the emotional consequences of infidelity.**  This is not to say that men don’t achieve emotional intimacy, indeed, many do.  But, they’re not the ones at the forefront of the movement for state recognition of same-sex marriage. (more…)

I had not intended to blog on the story about the hullabaloo in Arkansas about a 10-year-old boy serving as the Grand Marshal of  Gay Pride parade until a reader caught something in the article that I had missed:

The boy has begun a media blitz of local and national television stations, explaining that he refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because it says “all men are created equal,” but gays don’t have the same rights as everyone else. That, the boy says, is why he has become an ambassador of gay rights.

“Which,” ThatGayConservative (TGC) asked, “Pledge of Allegiance would this be?”

Let’s see. Here’s the Pledge:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Hmm. . . TGC is right.  That expression about men being created equal isn’t there, but the word “liberty” is (you know the word that gay activists shun).  Guess the boy should be glad his school is not forcing him to recite the Declaration of Independence.  (And let’s note that gay activists notwithstanding, that august document does not include “equality” in its list of rights.)

My question is who put this boy up to his little stunt.  I mean, he’s just mouthing the same slogans as every gay activist in every city in this country.

All that said, the reaction of  the American Family Association (AFA) is almost as hysterical as the zeal of gay activists to honor someone for repeating their favorite cliché.  The AFA has called has called selection of the boy to be grand marshal “a form of child abuse”.  Give me a break.  A PR stunt it may be, but child abuse it clearly is not.

Just as many gay activists need to tone down their rhetorical excess so too do some social conservatives.  Indeed, sometimes it seems the two groups are made for each other.