06/04/2012
'Look what we did to Starbucks!' hilariously claims the NOM that did absolutely nothing
My husband and I go to Starbucks multiple times a week. Andrew is fanatical about making sure we use his gold card, forcing me to take his iPhone with me just about every time I go so that he can earn his points or starts or whatever. What can I say—for a product he enjoys, my husband is a marketer's dream.
This being the case, we get rewards cards all the time. A free drink here, an extra oatmeal there—Starbucks is forever sending us postcards that entitle us to a free something or other. It's kind of a thing.
But leave it to the ever-duplicitous NOM crowd to now look to a mailer that is making the rounds, geared toward bringing customers into the Gold rewards program, and attempt to claim it as a sign of their failing "Dump Starbucks" boycott's supposed strength:
[NOM Blog]
The first thing I would say to NOM is that if Starbucks were to send a $5 gift card to everyone who had signed on to the "Thank Starbucks" counter movement, the company would be mailing out over $3.2 million in gift cards. So let's not make $200k sound like a lot, kids.
But regardless of the numbers, what kind of organization seriously looks to a marketing incentive like this and tries to connect it to its own political cause?! I mean seriously. Isn't that a little big for the britches, even for the paper tiger that is NOM?!
If Starbucks' slate of corporate concerns was a Venti latte, NOM's little boycott would be one half of one sprinkle of the optional cinnamon one might opt to dust on the top. It's cute that they don't know that.
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06/04/2012
Video: Harry Jackson will teach you to say marriage (*for a price)
Last week I let you hear some audio clips from Harry Jackson's recent marriage summit, where speakers railed against "the tactic that Satan has employed" to "destroy the foundational blocks of the family." But now, that earlier audio has been made private so that Harry and his church can instead sell it for a hefty price.
Here's the teaser trailer and pay-to-pray link:
Everyone's gotta find a way to gig, I guess.
Gays' marriages will kill this nation; more reason to have an open bar
"I believe by and large Americans are of the mindset that if I can try and capture the secular mind of the American public it might be something like this: I don’tcare what you do in the privacy of your bedroom, I don’t care who you love or don’t love, but I don’t want to take something that’s s bedrock as marriage for over 5,000 years and put in law that it’s changed. That’s scary, and it’s wrong. And if you like looking at history at all, it is very easy to see the nations in history’s past that have done that kind of thing no longer exist. It is a nation-killing issue."
—American Family Association's Buster Wilson
Only nation-killing? Hell, I remember the Bush years, when world destruction was the more common claim. You're slipping, AFA!
Maine anti-equality update: 'Protect' campaign can now afford mid-priced sedan; one that drives in (R), obvs
The anti-equality advocates running Protect Marriage Maine (NOM, primarily) are now reporting $14,945.60 in contributions, with the majority in the form of unitemized contributions and out-of-state single donors (plus the previously announced Knights of Columbus donation):
Contributions for Protect Marriage Maine [Maine Campaign Finance]
Those unitemized contributions are always particularly interesting. And considering the way the NOM-in-Maine script played out last time, we're going to keep close watch!
Dear anti-LGBT folks with axes to grind: These days, the ax maker is likely pro-gay
It's getting harder and harder for anti-LGBT-minded people to make their points without a pro-equality boost. Note the last line:
Funny, of course, because Starbucks is one of the most pro-gay companies in the country, currently under boycott threats for its pro-marriage-equality stance. So basically this guy is paying a pro-gay Paul to rip into Peter Parker's gay super friends.
I recommend this oppositional voice take a nap for an energy boost. Equality lobbyists have yet to get the sleep industry over to our side (we're working on it).
Book trailer: IF IT'S A CHOICE, MY ZYGOTE CHOSE BALLS: Making Sense of Senseless Controversy by Jeremy Hooper
IF IT'S A CHOICE, MY ZYGOTE CHOSE BALLS: Making Sense of Senseless Controversy by Jeremy Hooper [Amazon]
Yet another 'protect the children' view that cruelly excludes LGBT kids
Catholic writer Emily Stimpson says " all Catholics are morally obligated to oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage.":
To ignore how the changing legal understanding of marriage has influenced the strength of marriage as an institution is to ignore reality. And to think that we can completely untether the legal definition from the traditional definition, severing one of the last links between the two—one man, one woman—and not see the institution of marriage damaged even further is irrational at best. Delusional at worst.
It should, of course, go without saying that if same-sex marriage becomes the law of the land tomorrow, couples who understand and live the truth about marriage won’t wake up and head for the divorce courts. The marriages of those who are well-formed will be fine…for now. But the marriages of their children and grandchildren might not be—the culture having made it that much harder for parents to form their children well.
The same can be said of the marriages of those who already buy into the culture’s definition: Their wrong-headed conception of marriage as something that’s all about transitory and selfish desire will be reinforced by a law which denies that procreation is marriage’s natural and most basic end.
[SOURCE: CatholicVote.org]
What strikes me, time and time again, is how little (read: zero) regard these other-side commentators show for the infinite number of LGBT people who will continue to be born into this world. Stimpson says that a culture with same-sex marriage will make it "that much harder for parents to form their children well." But what about those parents who have gay children? Why do they, the outspoken opponents of gay people's right to marry, think it's perfectly fine to weave expansive arguments and yet never once acknowledge how much harder it is to raise a healthy LGBT kid in a world that continues to tell him or her that he or she is unworthy of this, that, or the other? Moreover, why do so many people who cover this debate let the professionally "pro-family" get away with this anti-intellectual omission? In what other kind of debate is it okay to ignore the deeply affected group?!
Stimpson goes on to deny that there is bigotry attached to the sentiment. But let's get real here—what is this kind of oversight if not an obstinate belief in the superiority of one kind of person and view over another (i.e. the definition of bigotry)? It doesn't necessarily mean that any one person who holds on to such a view is personally-driven by animus, as a whole lot of people have been duped by years of bias. But if those who fight against LGBT people and our rights continue to overlook those of us who are hurt on a daily basis by this continued exclusion, then their already limited legs to stand on are going to become even fewer. And more wobbly.
Video: John Corvino speaks calm rationality to self-victimizing, hostile host
There is no one who argues on behalf of marriage equality who is softer or more respectful in tone than in Professor John Corvino. The man routinely shares a stage with Maggie Gallagher, and even she doesn't play her cherished victim card when with him. When it comes to the victim claims, John leaves his debate opponent very few ins.
Yet in this interview, Canadian broadcaster Michael Coren acts as if Corvino is swinging a massive bully club at the host's face. it's weird, really
Oddly out-of-tune reactions are just more signs that we are winning.
