WEIRDEST LOL OF THE DAY

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin notes the following quote from presidential candidate Rick Santorum:

“When you look at someone to determine whether they’d be the right person for public office, look at who they lay down with at night and what they believe,” Santorum said.

Rick's is a mind that blows mine. Rick's body may leave the bed and the bedroom, but seemingly his mind stays behind.

Picture from Wikipedia.

TAKING DOWN THE PROFESSOR'S ARGUMENT AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

The argument by Prof. John Araujo, SJ, Loyola University School of Law, posted at Mirror of Justice, comes via Rob Tisinai at Box Turtle Bulletin:

Let us assume that two planets which have not yet been inhabited by humans are to be colonized by them; on Planet Alpha, heterosexual couples only are assigned; on Planet Beta, only homosexual couples. In one hundred years, will both islands be populated assuming that reproductive technologies are not available to either group? I suggest that Planet Alpha will be; but Planet Beta will not. Why? The basic answer is to be found in the biological complementarity of the heterosexual couple necessary for procreation that is absent in same-sex couple.

Rob calls the professor's argument 'The Stoner Argument Against Same-Sex Marriage' because it reminds him of stoner conversations back in his college days.

Stoner: Dude, I just blew my mind.

Rob: I’m trying to study.

Stoner: Dude, I figured out why gay marriage is, like, a no-go!

Rob: I don’t have time –

Stoner: DUDE!

Rob: Fine. Tell me.

Stoner: Suppose we dump a bunch of gays on an empty planet.

Rob: Why would we do that?

Stoner: Dude…

Rob: Never mind. Go on.

Stoner: And we dump a bunch of straights on an empty planet.

Rob: Okay.

Stoner: So if we come back to Planet Straight in, like, a hundred years, we’d find a bunch of new people. BUT! If we go back to Planet Gay, there’d be like no people at all.

Rob: Why not?

Stoner: Because – dude! – they’re gay.

Rob: So?

Stoner: They’re gaaay.

Rob: They can still –

Stoner: Gaaaaaaaaaay.

Rob: What’s your point?

Stoner: Um…

Rob: Right.

Stoner: I remember! Don’t let gays marry.

Rob: Why?

Stoner: Dude, one of the planets is empty.

Rob: So your point is…we shouldn’t colonize planets with lesbians and gays?

Stoner: YES! Wait. No. Don’t let gays marry.

Rob: On other planets?

Stoner: No, dude, here, now, today!

Rob: Why not?

Stoner: Because of the planets, dude! The planets!

Rob: I don’t get it.

Stoner: Dude, you need to smoke more weed.

As I read the conversation, I was rolling on the floor, and I can tell you that it's hard to read while rolling on the floor. I hope Rob doesn't mind that I stole his very clever satire in its entirety. I couldn't resist. If he asks me to take it down, I will.

THE HYDRA WON'T DIE

From Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin:

When Uganda’s Eighth Parliament came to an end last May, the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill died with it. Almost immediately, M.P. David Bahati vowed to resurrect the bill in the Ninth Parliament. Two weeks ago, Frank Mugisha of Sexual Minorities Uganda told reporters and bloggers that there are persistent reports that the bill may be resurrected sometime in mid- to late-August. Ugandan MP Otto Odonga, who has said that he would apply to be a hangman even if it were his own son who was gay and at the gallows, confirmed to Warren Throckmorton that the bill will be brought back “perhaps by the end of August,” and that it would pick up “from where the last parliament ended.”

Read the rest of the post over there.

What will it take to bring to their senses people so filled with hate that they want to kill fellow citizens because of who they are? In his Presidential Address to General Synod of the Church of England in July 2011, Archbishop Rowan Williams praised the Anglican churches in Congo and Kenya for acting as the last refuge for oppressed people in the countries. Where is his call for the Anglican Church of Uganda to be the last refuge for GLTB people in the country, who are, even now, being persecuted and killed? Why the strange silence?

Image from Wikipedia.

WHAT ARE LITTLE BOYS MADE OF?

You may or may not have seen the two episodes of "The "Sissy Boy" Experiment" on "Anderson Cooper 360", the nightly news show on CNN, about the young boy, Kirk Murphy, who was not quite five years old when he was taken to UCLA for early intervention treatment in an experimental program for young boys who showed evidence of excessive femininity. Yes, that is UCLA. The purpose of the treatment was to change the excessively effeminate behavior and prevent the young boys from possibly growing up gay.

The story is heartbreaking. If you'd like to watch the two episodes which have already aired, here are the links:

The "Sissy Boy" Experiment Part One

The "Sissy Boy" Experiment Part Two

Jim Burroway, who blogs at Box Turtle Bulletin, investigated the story, and he will be seen on another episode on CNN sometime next week. Jim published the results of his separate, in-depth investigation, which gives a much fuller and more detailed report on Kirk's story, at Box Turtle Bulletin under the title What Are Little Boys Made Of?. Jim's report is long, in seven parts, but I plead with you to take the time to read it. I read it in two intervals because the report is so very tragic and emotionally wrenching that I had to stop at Part 5 and resume the next day.

Kirk's main counselor seems to have been George Rekers, a young graduate student at the time. Yes, the anti-gay activist George Rekers, the co-founder of the Family Research Council, who was caught recently at the Miami Airport traveling with a young male escort.

Rekers, who is also a professor emeritus of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina and a Baptist minister, recently testifed against gay adoption in Florida, where he resides.

No doubt Rekers testified as an expert against gay adoption. If you made up the story, no one would believe you, but, tragically, the story is all too true. Kirk's picture at the head of the post shows him at about the age that the therapy began.

As Jim Burroway says:

In this original BTB investigation, we speak with his family and friend who knew the real “Kraig” to uncover the truth behind Reker’s greatest success story. Their stories reveals the tragedy of a terrible experiment on a very young boy which would haunt him for the rest of his life. It is not only an indictment of a man who built his anti-gay career on Kirk’s suffering, but a rebuke to others — those in the mental health profession then and in the contemporary ex-gay movement today — who would place their careers and agendas ahead of the well-being of this young boy and countless others like him.

Kirk Murphy committed suicide in 2003 at the age of 38.

Thanks to Jim Burroway for his hard work in investigating and telling Kirk's story.

Photo from Box Turtle Bulletin.

FOR THE WHINERS ABOUT THE "RALLY"

From Jim Burroway, who lives in Tucson, writing at Box Turtle Bulletin:

The memorial was nothing short of magnificent, and it was exactly what this city needed. It was, at turns, somber and celebratory. Tucsonans have been in a severely depressed funk, dazed and stunned that something like this could happen here.

I hear some small-minded grumbling that the event was somehow too “raucous” or a “rally.” Well you know what? A rally is just what we needed. Those who sit in judgment in their comfortable offices and studios on the coasts tut-tutting last night’s memorial haven’t had to drive by the still-closed Safeway every morning and every evening to and from work. They haven’t been within a thousand miles of the nightly vigils at UMC and at Gabrielle Giffords’s congressional office. They haven’t turned on television to see their own neighbors grieving in wall-to-wall coverage.

Jim should know.