The continued reference to Mary Cheney by the Dems

an interesting aside, in 2002 several republican members of congress suggested (strongly) that public funding of Sesame Street was problematic because (I'm not making this up) the sesame street program in south africa (funded entirely by South Africa, introduced a muppet character with AIDS (never shown in the US because it was totally a South African produced program)

The Republican gospel on gay marriage

It's no secret that the Republican Party has been working for some time now to court America's black voters, once considered a reliable pillar of the Democrat's base. At Karl Rove's behest, the Bush administration has been forging alliances with prominent black evangelicals and the communities they represent, using the issue of gay marriage to get in the door. In a meeting organized this week by the Traditional Values Coalition, a far-right lobbying group with ties to the White House, 70 evangelical clergy sat down to draw up a "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," chief among which was opposition to gay marriage, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The right-wing Heritage Foundation, presumably an ally in the cause, has its own take on the matter. According to the L.A. Times, at the end of February Heritage will cosponsor a gathering of black conservatives in Washington designed to counter dominance of the "America-hating black liberal leadership" and to focus African American voters on moral issues.

As columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote recently, the GOP is banking on conservative attitudes about gay marriage among blacks to help grow its constituency in key swing states from the 2004 election, including Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin. In the past Bush has awarded large sums to black churches through his faith-based program, to help the Republican Party court black voters in general.

But too much focus on the fight over gay marriage might also start to work against the GOP, especially if other key issues fall by the wayside. At a meeting of black Baptist denominations last weekend in Nashville, gay marriage was far down on a long list of priorities that included education, health care, the job market and other pressing issues.

"While African-Americans have expressed certain sentiments that reflect opposition to an expansion of the gay homosexual agenda, there is still much more concern about bread-and-butter issues in terms of the public agenda that they would like to see their churches pursue," said Rev. R. Drew Smith, a Baptist minister who directs the Public Influences of African American Churches project at Morehouse College in Atlanta, according to the Chicago Tribune.

At one point Rev. Jesse Jackson addressed the delegates, who represent 15 million Americans. According to the Tribune report, he warned delegates to watch out for political trickery. Thousands of hands shot into the air when Jackson talked of a higher minimum wage, stable Social Security, affirmative action and an end to the war in Iraq, though no hands went up when he asked how many churches had blessed a same-sex union.

"How did that get in the middle of our agenda?" Jackson asked. "That's called a wolf in sheep's clothing. Beware."
-- Julia Scott

Fair and buxom

You can't make this stuff up.

This afternoon on Fox News, Neil Cavuto spent a good chunk of time interviewing Focus on the Family's James Dobson. They talked about Dobson's efforts to fight abortion, they talked about the great SpongeBob controversy -- when you hear the words "tolerance and diversity," Dobson said, you've got to ask "what's behind it?" [blatham as editor note: clearly, commies and buttfukkers]-- and then they talked about the awful influence that TV is having on our kids. Dobson said that popular culture is "at war" with moms and dads all over the country. Cavuto clucked clucked right along with him, saying he was worried about what his kids see on TV and didn't know what he could do about.

Minutes later, Cavuto was on to another story: A fawning live interview with two large-breasted women, dressed only in their underwear, who will be appearing in Sunday's pay-per-view "Lingerie Bowl."

"While causing harm to no one"

Here's more on today's New York Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. The court ruled that the New York's city clerk may no longer deny marriage licenses to gay couples. The decision, which is available here, won't take effect for 30 days, leaving time for an appeal to be filed before the city clerk would have to begin allowing gay marriages.

In her decision (PDF available here), Judge Doris Ling-Cohan begins with "Romeo and Juliet," travels through the sorry history of this nation's anti-miscegenation laws, and ends up at the same place the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did last year. "Permitting plaintiffs to marry would confer innumerable tangible and intangible benefits for them and their children while causing harm to no one," Ling-Cohan wrote.

Ling-Cohan seemed to take aim directly at George Bush's argument that the issue of marriage should be left to legislators rather than "activist judges." She said "this same legislature deference" argument was used to fight the abolishment of laws that prohibited inter-racial marriage. Ling-Cohan rejected the argument in the case before her, saying that courts have both the jurisdiction and an obligation to rule when state laws violate state constitutions.

Then, in words the Christian right would like except for where they lead, Ling-Cohan explained that marriage is "without a doubt, the cornerstone of the family and our civilization."

"As marriage constitutes the most intimate of relationship," she wrote, "the decision of when and whom to marry is highly personal, involving complex reasons which vary from person to person. Thus, the decision to marry should rest primarily in the hands of the individual, with little government interference."

Ling-Cohan's solution, offered up in words that must sound like fingernails on the blackboard for the "family values" crowd: Henceforth, the words "husband," "wife," "groom" and "bride" in New York's Domestic Relations law "shall be construed to mean 'spouse,' and all personal pronouns . . . shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women."

I got a reply from the local PBS affiliate saying they won't show it. So now I get to continue this with the local PBS affiliate -- with a tiny hope of maybe accomplishing something! (Tiny, but...) Thanks for the practice, guys. :-)

an interesting aside, in 2002 several republican members of congress suggested (strongly) that public funding of Sesame Street was problematic because (I'm not making this up) the sesame street program in south africa (funded entirely by South Africa, introduced a muppet character with AIDS (never shown in the US because it was totally a South African produced program)

As I did not know anything about the South Africa Sesame Street incident, I educated myself after reading numerous references both from those who want this to be something sinister and from those who are reporting it as it was intended. The letter was written in response to MEDIA reports that it would be aired in the USA.

Good grief. We're funding PBS in South Africa?