The religious right has yet another -totally- valid complaint against the godless capitalist market and its heathen ways - Hallmark has begun marketing wedding cards for homosexuals!

(Cue gasps of horror and disgust - or, if you’re like me, murmurs of “So?” or “And…?”)

The Family Policy Network has put together a petition asking Hallmark to withdraw all products that “celebrate, condone or otherwise encourage” teh gay. Petitioners are threatening to do their worst to Hallmark - a boycott!

This could mean serious trouble for the card giant. After all, One petitioner claims to make up 99% of all Hallmark revenue:

John in La Mesa, CA writes, “I will NOT buy from your store until this practice stops. 1% vs. 99%. Looks like a smart business move to me. I don’t think so!”

Oh, ho, ho! You’re in deep shit now, Hallmark!

And oh, snap! A gold crown customer has joined the boycott:

Kathy in Cobb, CA writes, “As a weekly gold crown customer in Montgomery Village Santa Rosa Ca I will no longer support you due to the current stand you have taken.”

As one petitioner notes, Ford’s loss of sales has nothing to do with the downward spiral of the American economy or the gas crunch - it’s the wrath of every Christian in America!

Sven in Herald, CA writes, “I’ll be sure to take my business elsewhere… I doubt you’ll be able to withstand the boycott of millions of Christians. Ask Ford how it’s doing.”

These Christians mean serious business. It’s a good thing that there’s nothing more important going on right now, like, say, a worldwide economic crisis. Or mass genocide abroad. Or a looming environmental disaster.

They have the proof: All gay men are identical faceless aliens.

This website - dubbed “Gay Answers” - is something else. The main notion presented is that anyone who doesn’t want heterosexual sex is no better than a racist. Confused yet? It gets worse.

Claim: Gay men are inherently misogynistic, anti-diversity sexists.

Try to wrap your mind around this one:

Most gay folks don’t feel hate towards the opposite sex. However, when it comes to ‘love’, homosexuality causes an otherwise loving person to always exclude equal treatment of the complementary gender simply because that person is different. This is why gay marriage is called same-sex, not diverse-sex. In fact, gays claim to have a genetic (preconceived) orientation for their own gender superior to the diverse gender.This is no better than a white person always preferring whites above blacks.

Riiiight. Because we all know that lust overrides every sort of love a person can feel, and that if you’re not willing to go to bed with everyone you meet for one reason or another, you’re being a discriminatory bastard.

I’m going to say right now that I love and am loved by people of many different gender identities and sexual orientations. Some of the friends I’ve made through my university’s LGBT organization have become my family away from home. College life has its ups and downs, and I don’t know how any of us would have made it through some of these rough patches unscathed had it not been for the unconditional support of our friends.

On the other hand, I’ve had my share of straight men who’ve been willing to say just about anything for the better part of a week in an attempt to get me in bed. We talk a little, maybe go on a date or two, and when they realize that I’m not really looking for a purely sexual relationship and won’t fall flutter-eyed at their charisma, they’re off after the next woman. According to “Gay Answers,” these men are the diversity-seeking progressives, and I’m just the unrelenting bigot.

Ironically, if the website’s statement somehow had any basis in reality, the obvious conclusion would be that the only way to avoid being a self-devoted bigot would be to become bisexual. Don’t hold your breath on that one.

Claim: Any woman who becomes a surrogate for a male couple is being relegated to the status of second-class citizen because… well, just because.

To support this, they provide the single most blatantly propagandistic (and over-hyphenated) monologue I have ever seen:

“…If our all-male-dominated same-sex union wants a child, we contract a woman as a second-class womb-donor or nanny to serve us, then our unproductive same-sex union collects the marriage tax benefits while the woman who bore our child gets nothing but what we give her. This is what we call equality… Equality for sex-segregated all-male-dominated public civil-marriage.”

If you’ve read any of my posts, you know that I spend the majority of my time tackling women’s rights issues. I have never been given any reason whatsoever to believe that surrogacy infringes on women’s rights when the women involved are emotionally and financially stable, informed, and willing. In my opinion, willfully using your body to help another person (through surrogacy, egg/sperm donation, organ donation, and so on) is a highly respectable decision. There is nothing inherently misogynistic about forming a fair, mutually agreed-to contract with a competent woman (unless, of course, you believe that there isn’t such a thing as a competent woman).

And, please, let’s not pretend that women haven’t been used by men largely for their reproductive capacity throughout the entire history of the known world. SO overdone.

Claim: By nature, heterosexuals cannot be sexist or misogynistic.

This one is a little more subtle, but given the struggle women have put up over hundreds of years to only just recently gain basic civil rights in many parts of the world, I find it pretty damn offensive. You may also pick up on the “parts fit” and “it’s all about the babies” rhetoric:

Men and women are complementary by natural design, being uniquely qualified since the beginning of time, in every way psychologically, spiritually and biologically to be synergistically united together in love. Both sexes are required equally in order to create a complete family. This is true from any scientific, religious or evolutionary perspective. However, nature never gave any qualifications or significant purpose to same-sex.

First off, no individual is “in every way psychologically, spiritually, and biologically” qualified for ANYTHING based only on the sexual organs they possess. There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that, and individuals are far too diverse to lump them into any group based on sex alone.

Second, a “complete” family does not necessarily include children, and heterosexual lovers are not the only ones who can acquire or raise kids. Nor are they always capable of doing so. Adoption and surrogacy are nothing new, and scientific advances continue to give couples of all types more and more options. As a side note, a well-rounded person will have loved ones of both sexes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they must be parents or lovers.

Third - and this is a big one - no type of relationship is “required” to give equal consideration to all involved. For thousands of years heterosexual relationships have been dominated by males, and until recently women weren’t treated much better than livestock. Their input counted for little to nothing. Is this the “natural design” of the “equal” relationship? I think not.

And finally, nature gave human beings plenty of reasons to engage in sex aside from reproduction. Virtually everyone, no matter how far to the right they may be, eventually has sex with the hope or assurance that a pregnancy won’t result. Sex can be a deeply intimate bonding experience, and it can also just be a lot of fun.

For any anti-gay conservatives who might be reading this: If you’re going to keep your bigoted views, at the very least don’t try to promote them under the charade that you’re pro-diversity or give a shit about liberating women. It’s as pathetic as it is despicable.

For all the proud American flags and boisterous bumper stickers, I don’t think the religious right gets it.

Like when they suggest that marrying someone of the same sex is tantamount to marrying a corpse or animal.

Or when they insist that allowing terminally ill patients the option of choosing their own death is the same as government-sponsored genocide of “unworthy” groups.

Or, for that matter, when they suggest that the life of a zygote, embryo, or fetus with no conscious brain activity is equal to that of a sentient woman.

Someone, please tell me - where is the disconnect here? Why does consent mean absolutely nothing to these people? Why is human will and pursuit of happiness absolutely valueless?

How can anyone be so thick as to suggest that marriage is anything less than a deep commitment and a legal union, one that anyone in their right mind would recognize cannot be consented to by lifeless bodies and/or animals? Honestly. It’s a whole new realm of stupid. Even the most dimwitted of the Republican tribe should be able to comprehend that when you take one “I do,” out of a marriage, you don’t have one.

Advocating for the right to choose life and death on our own terms is about as far from advocating murder or genocide as you can get. And hey, even the occasional freeper gets it:

Freeper 1:

You have always had the ability to make that decision - if you really want to head out of here, you can breathe into a plastic bag that’s over your head, swim too far out to be able to return, shoot yourself, OD on any number of drugs.

Freeper 2:

You can do all of those things with a healthy body. The miserably dying who would want to end their pain often can’t do anything but lay in bed crapping themselves and pressing the morphine button harder.

For those who can do it themselves, brains and hair all over the wall and a closed casket funeral aren’t a very kind thing to do to their friends and survivors.

You certainly have a point with the slippery slope from choice to die to obligation to die, but as far as I’m concerned the obligation to suffer is worse.

What breaks my heart most of all is the Catholic stance against Amnesty International’s new policy advocating abortion access for rape victims in regions like Darfur.

One survivor’s testimonial:

“After six days some of the girls were released. But the others, as young as eight years old were kept there. Five to six men would rape us in rounds, one after the other for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this, he disowned me.”

Another woman -

“Women will not tell you easily if they have been raped. In our culture, it is a shame. Women hide this in their hearts so that men don’t hear about it.”

From an Amnesty International press release (emphasis mine):

Women who have become pregnant as a result of rape are most likely to suffer further abuses of their rights. There is the trauma of the rape itself as well as the difficulties associated with carrying and caring with a child who is the result of violence. In the specific social context of Darfur, in a society where rape is considered a taboo and a shame for the survivor of this violence, the child who is a result of rape will mostly be considered as a child of the “enemy”, a “Janjawid child”. Survivors of rape and their children are most likely to be ostracized by their community and married women most likely to be rejected by their husbands. Women may feel forced to abandon the child who is a result of rape and face another traumatic decision to make.

The communities of the women raped do not seem ready to accept the need to provide their full support for these women and possibly the child who could result from such violation. In group and face-to-face interviews conducted by Amnesty International in May 2004, women and men said that while they would accept raped women back into the community, the child as a potential result of rape would not be accepted. This leads women who have become pregnant as a result of rape to a situation of further ostracism, trauma and abuses of their rights. The lack of medical and psychological care facilities to deal with survivors of rape in the refugee camps in Chad and the many more victims in the IDP settlements in Darfur further compounds this situation.

For many men in the refugee camps the human rights violation of rape seems to directly translate into a humiliation against themselves and the group they belong to.

This is addition to the psychological trauma of carrying a “Janjawid child” as the result of being brutally raped. This is in addition to the dangers of childbirth, many of which are exacerbated in abused rape victims.

The Catholic community doesn’t live in some lovely fantasy world where women and children don’t suffer or die from rape and its consequences. They just don’t care. The message is this: when you become pregnant, your most basic needs become irrelevant.

As Mindelle Jacobs wrote in her comment to the Edmonton Sun, “Zygotes matter. Women don’t.”

They just don’t get it.

One of the facets of pro-life argument that I absolutely CANNOT stand is the idea that we poor, mentally-unstable females must be kept from abortion for our own good. Whenever I hear it, I get the distinct mental image of someone gently stroking a nervous cat before casually offering it a bowl of antifreeze. The pro-life establishment has never been interested in upholding women’s welfare, and when it given the opportunity, it will make every effort to endanger women who would dare go against its wishes.

For example, Tom Minnery (Vice President of Focus on the Family) on the “Partial-Birth Abortion” ban:

“The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling.”

Yes, Minnery applauds the fact that women will be endangered by the legislation his organization fought tooth and nail for. Tell women you have their best interests at heart, then push politics to make their medical care as risky as possible. Groups like Focus on the Family love to point out how dangerous abortion supposedly is, but it’s not every day that they publicly pat themselves on the back for doing their part to make it that way. Fortunately for pro-lifers, they often don’t have to bother with using the political system to force doctors to perform more dangerous procedures. Spreading lies and misinformation about current abortion techniques usually suffices. Rachel at Women’s Health News has a wonderful informative post that debunks the recent pro-life myth that medical abortions induced with RU-486 are killing women “at an alarming rate” and cause infertility and miscarriages.

The plain and simple statistical fact that pro-lifers NEVER admit is that women are exponentially more likely to die from childbirth than from abortion. But while anti-abortion advocates try to use the inherent risks of abortion to criminalize it, pro-choicers trust women to weigh the risks themselves and make their own decisions. None of us will try to limit births simply because they can be dangerous. The idea of it sounds ludicrous, but then, so should the idea of limiting women’s reproductive freedoms for their own good.

According to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s “Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission,” any woman who would have an abortion is batshit insane - or, as he put it, “psychologically impaired.” This comes in response to the question that has been plaguing pro-lifers recently: if abortion is made illegal, what penalties should the women face? Apparently none at all, since we fragile little womenfolk are obviously all emotional wrecks who can’t be held responsible for our own choices. It’s a wonder we can tie our own shoelaces without a man to oversee it, isn’t it?

Question of the Day: How far do you have to stick your head up your own ass before shamelessly classifying “Disagrees with me” as a mental defect?

Via Pandagon.

As far as reproductive rights and information are concerned, I’ve been feeling more and more like women in the USA are being slowly cornered, fed into the cattle chutes, poked with the electric prod, and pushed up to the bullshit troughs.

Take a look at Missouri’s brand new legislation, for example:

[x] People affiliated with abortion providers can no longer teach or supply materials for sex education courses in public schools, even though they are already instructed not to discuss abortion. Planned Parenthood will no longer be allowed to offer schools free materials.

[x] “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” will receive state-funded grants and are authorized to promote themselves with a public awareness campaign. Last year, an investigation conducted by the U.S. House of Representatives found that 87 percent of the CPCs receiving federal funds provided false or misleading information. Here’s just one example (of dozens*) cited in the report:

Having a baby is a normal process and what it does is fulfills a woman. It is fulfilling one of the roles that she has. Abortion is the exact opposite; she is doing something totally contrary to what her role is. That’s why it has such an emotional impact on women.

[x] Abortion clinics have been reclassified as “ambulatory surgical centers,” which means that several of them will face million-dollar renovations. At least one office may have to quit offering its abortion services even though all of its abortions are induced by medication, not surgically.

Not surprisingly, Missouri is also where I saw the “Embryos are Babies!” billboard that I so shamelessly spoofed.

*Here are a few more quotes from the report:

One center compared the experience of having an abortion to the experience of going to war, analogizing the post-traumatic stress experienced after an abortion to that seen in soldiers after Vietnam, and said that it “is something that anyone who’s had an abortion is sure to suffer from.”

One center told the caller that there is an “extremely high, increased risk of breast cancer” that “can be as much as an 80% increase depending upon how the risk factors fall into place.” A second center stated that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer by 50%. A third center asserted that an abortion elevates the average lifetime risk of breast cancer by 50% and that more abortions increase the risk even more.

Several centers described the risk of abortion-induced infertility as common or high. One told the caller that damage from abortion could lead to “many miscarriages” or to “permanent damage” so “you wouldn’t be able to carry.” This center stated that this is “common” and happens “a lot.”

“Abortion is an act that takes the life of an innocent human child,” said Erik Whittington, American Life League’s youth outreach director. “It is shameful that Christians would rally around the physical needs of the poor and ignore the deaths of untold millions of babies. Abortion is poverty and the number one priority of our day should be its demise.”

Shameful to rally around the “physical needs” of the poor? Wow.

One question that seems obvious to the sane observer is this: Wouldn’t eliminating poverty reduce the need for abortion and drastically improve the lives of millions of born people? Wouldn’t this approach cut abortion at its source - the need for it? Doesn’t it seem blatantly cruel to advocate forced pregnancy over prevention and a boost to the standard of living for all?

Short answer: yes. Long answer:

The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women)

As one commenter at Pandagon noted:

When I volunteered for PP, I saw many women come and go. Most of the poor women that came for abortions scrimped, saved, begged and borrowed to pay for it. Most were willing and wanting to use birth control. Not having a car, not having easy access to the clinics during open hours since they work multiple jobs, not being able to outright buy birth control at a nearby pharmacy- many of them were trying and trying really fucking hard to not get pregnant, but birth control access isn’t EASY for poor women. It can be hard enough for regular women nowadays with asshat pharmacists. You’re basically asking poor people to be PERFECT while giving those that have more access and more ability the right to be imperfect. you’re putting MORE burden on the poor, on those that are most likely to be shafted to access of things like education and birth control and educational opportunities.

By saying that the poor should forgo sex if they can’t afford a child, you’re saying that the poor don’t deserve one of the most important elements of human existence- the need for companionship and intimacy.

So why aren’t they pushing to eliminate poverty?

Because, of course, that takes money. A pregnant woman should be forced through hell and high water if it means she stays pregnant, but the average taxpayer shouldn’t have to pay a dime more to ensure that she has adequate access to birth control, health care, and opportunities to further her education and career. Such is justice for this brand of “Christianity.”

Via Feministe.

I no longer have any optimistic doubt over the blatant maliciousness of most “pro-life” leaders. That’s gone, folks. These people have sunk far beyond a heart two sizes too small and straight into compassion limbo. There’s a rift in the antiabortion crowd forming around the “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban, and it boils down to one simple question:

One group contends that it doesn’t go far enough. After all, when a pregnancy starts to go seriously wrong, many women have access to comprehensive health care - including abortion. When you genuinely believe that any uppity bitch who would dare end her own pregnancy should at least have to stab herself with a coat-hanger to do so, banning just one of the safer procedures seems terribly insufficient.

Carhart is even “more wicked than Roe” because it is “not a ban, but a partial-birth abortion manual” that affirms the legality of late-term abortions “as long as you follow its guidelines,” the ads said.

But the cluster of assholes on the other side of the rift is much more optimistic about the danger to women inherent in this legislation:

Doctors adopted the late-term procedure “out of convenience,” Minnery added. “The old procedure, which is still legal, involves using forceps to pull the baby apart in utero, which means there is greater legal liability and danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus. So we firmly believe there will be fewer later-term abortions as a result of this ruling.”

Kill or mutilate a few women and make them an example to the rest. Tie the doctors’ hands so that they must choose between illegally performing the safest procedure, legally performing a far more dangerous one, or simply leaving desperate women to deal with serious health risks on their own.

And these people call themselves “pro-life.” Disgusting.

Hat tip, Pandagon.

From the picket line to the recovery room and back: pro-life women who acquire abortions for themselves when the need arises and continue to work to deny that right to the rest of us. The hypocrisy is astonishing:

“I have done several abortions on women who have regularly picketed my clinics, including a 16 year old schoolgirl who came back to picket the day after her abortion, about three years ago. During her whole stay at the clinic, we felt that she was not quite right, but there were no real warning bells. She insisted that the abortion was her idea and assured us that all was OK. She went through the procedure very smoothly and was discharged with no problems. A quite routine operation. Next morning she was with her mother and several school mates in front of the clinic with the usual anti posters and chants. It appears that she got the abortion she needed and still displayed the appropriate anti views expected of her by her parents, teachers, and peers.” (Physician, Australia)

“I’ve had several cases over the years in which the anti-abortion patient had rationalized in one way or another that her case was the only exception, but the one that really made an impression was the college senior who was the president of her campus Right-to-Life organization, meaning that she had worked very hard in that organization for several years. As I was completing her procedure, I asked what she planned to do about her high office in the RTL organization. Her response was a wide-eyed, ‘You’re not going to tell them, are you!?’ When assured that I was not, she breathed a sigh of relief, explaining how important that position was to her and how she wouldn’t want this to interfere with it.” (Physician, Texas)

“In 1990, in the Boston area, Operation Rescue and other groups were regularly blockading the clinics, and many of us went every Saturday morning for months to help women and staff get in. As a result, we knew many of the ‘antis’ by face. One morning, a woman who had been a regular ’sidewalk counselor’ went into the clinic with a young woman who looked like she was 16-17, and obviously her daughter. When the mother came out about an hour later, I had to go up and ask her if her daughter’s situation had caused her to change her mind. ‘I don’t expect you to understand my daughter’s situation!’ she angrily replied. The following Saturday, she was back, pleading with women entering the clinic not to ‘murder their babies.‘” (Clinic escort, Massachusetts)

“We too have seen our share of anti-choice women, ones the counselors usually grit their teeth over. Just last week a woman announced loudly enough for all to hear in the recovery room, that she thought abortion should be illegal. Amazingly, this was her second abortion within the last few months, having gotten pregnant again within a month of the first abortion. The nurse handled it by talking about all the carnage that went on before abortion was legalized and how fortunate she was to be receiving safe, professional care. However, this young woman continued to insist it was wrong and should be made illegal. Finally the nurse said, ‘Well, I guess we won’t be seeing you here again, not that you’re not welcome.’ Later on, another patient who had overheard this exchange thanked the nurse for her remarks.” (Clinic Administrator, Alberta)

“My first encounter with this phenomenon came when I was doing a 2-week follow-up at a family planning clinic. The woman’s anti-choice values spoke indirectly through her expression and body language. She told me that she had been offended by the other women in the abortion clinic waiting room because they were using abortion as a form of birth control, but her condom had broken so she had no choice! I had real difficulty not pointing out that she did have a choice, and she had made it! Just like the other women in the waiting room.” (Physician, Ontario)

“I once had a German client who greatly thanked me at the door, leaving after a difficult 22-week abortion. With a gleaming smile, she added: ‘Und doch sind Sie ein Mörderer.’ (‘And you’re still a murderer.’)” (Physician, The Netherlands)

Hat tip, Brad.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Virginia Tech massacre victims and their families. I can’t imagine how difficult a time this is to so many people.

Some people just have no hearts (from pandagon):

WBC to Preach at Funerals of Virginia Tech Dead
WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror — yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is ‘horrified’ by it all. You know nothing of horror — yet. Your true horror is coming. “They shall also gird themselves with sackloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads” (Eze. 7:18).

Why did this happen, you ask? It’s simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.