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.

Yes, that’s a live cow being rolled by a forklift.

Video captured during the investigation of a leading California slaughterhouse shows “downed” cattle (animals too sick or injured to stand) being shocked repeatedly in their rectums, rolled by forklifts, jabbed in the eyes, and shot in the nose with high-intensity water sprays in an attempt to make them stand for inspection.

“These were not rogue employees secretly doing these things,” the investigator said in a telephone interview on the condition of anonymity because he hopes to infiltrate other slaughterhouses. “This is the pen manager and his assistant doing this right in the open.”

In addition to the blatant cruelty of using torture to try to make the animals stand, these efforts pose a serious public health crisis. At least 12 of the 15 documented cases of Mad Cow Disease in North America were reportedly in downed cattle. They have also often been laying in feces, which contributes to the risk of E. coli and salmonella contamination.

And where is this meat going? Why, to the school lunch program, of course:

Over the past five years, Westland has sold about 100 million pounds of frozen beef, valued at $146 million, to the Agriculture Department’s commodities program, which supplies food for school lunches and programs for the needy, according to federal documents.

A little more regulation of the meat industry may be in order, no?

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.

Classy. A Texas church retracts its offer to hold a memorial service for a Navy veteran after discovering that he was, in fact, gay:

It seems incredible that no one at Arlington’s High Point Church saw the obvious: that Cecil Sinclair, a dying 46-year-old Desert Storm veteran awaiting a heart transplant, was gay.

The church had reached out to Sinclair in his illness because his brother was a janitor and a church congregant. While Sinclair was in the hospital, High Point’s audio-visual minister met Sinclair’s life partner. When Sinclair died, church officials knew the Turtle Creek Chorale, a gay men’s chorus, had been asked to sing at the funeral.

But it was only after Sinclair’s obituary ran that Pastor Gary Simons clumsily canceled a memorial service it had offered for Sinclair — the day before it was to take place.

Simons’ leadership was graceless, but High Point is a private institution and is entitled to reject whom it wants to.

As Sinclair’s partner Paul Wagner, a Desert Storm veteran and a member of the armed forces for 16 years, put it, “I have fought for their right to hate me.”

Appalled?

Later, Simons told the Dallas Morning News that the situation was comparable to a congregation member losing a son who was a thief or murderer. High Point might offer a service, Simons said. “But I don’t think the mother would submit photos of her son murdering someone.”

You simply cannot honor a person’s memory if you look upon the life they had with their loved ones with the same disgust normal people would attribute to murder.

“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.

No, really. That’s her headline.

I read this “poor me” or “pregnancy is unbearable” lament from pro-abort women a lot, trying to skew a natural condition into something beyond them.

Whine, whine, whine, that’s all you little girls do! You vomit every morning? You feel like crying every waking moment? Your family turned you away? You’re still a teenager? He forced himself on you? You’re facing serious medical complications? You’re scared, alone, exhausted?

Whore! Slut! Wussy-girl!

(Heartless, much?)

My conclusion? Modern-day feminists have degenerated into frail creatures, the very weaklings that sexists caricature.

But they’re forced to take this position to bolster their claim that abortion is as good as or better an option than pregnancy.

Sounds like a good ol’ fashioned triple dog dare to me! Sure, you may have decided that you don’t want to have kids - but have you ever considered that that makes you a chicken?

Note to self: make sure to tell mom that she’s a pussy for ever suggesting that she had a tough time carrying me. Obviously, motherhood isn’t a thankless enough job yet.

“You can be charged with a hate crime if you make a statement or take an action that inflicts injury or incites a breach of the peace based on a person’s race, creed, gender or perceived sexual orientation.”

- First Assistant McHenry County State’s Attorney Thomas Carroll (Daily Herald)

Two 16-year-old girls have been charged with committing a hate crime after they printed and distributed fliers with a photo of two boys kissing (one of whom was a student at their school) and the statement, “God hates fags.”

Lifesite.net calls it a “nasty prank.” At FreeRepublic.com, rightwingers are ranting about free speech. But somewhere in Illinois, a gay teenager is dealing with the fact that inflammatory fliers featuring an intimate picture of himself are circulating his high school.

The target wasn’t homosexuality itself - this was about one SPECIFIC student (who the girls had been feuding with) and using his sexual orientation to bring as much harm to him as possible. Is there anyone naive enough to think that this little stunt hasn’t comprimised his safety at school?

To many, this is all about free speech and its imminent end. But if this had occured based on the race of a student, would anyone be defending the girls?

And what sort of penalties are the girls facing? (CBS2)

Tom Carroll, first assistant state’s attorney for McHenry County, said penalties for the girls could range from probation to a 30-day sentence in the Kane County Juvenile Detention Facility. If they were convicted, Carroll said, the girls’ records would be cleared at age 18 but those records would remain available to law-enforcement agencies.

Nope, not kidding:

If sex bonds two people, then sexual pleasure without a partner will still powerfully bond you, but the bonding will be to whatever sights and thoughts are present at the time. For some people, the bonding will be to the sight of their own body. If so, it will be this – and possibly the sight of their own gender – that will begin to dominate their passions.

Likewise, looking at yourself in the mirror the wrong way is bound to turn you homo. If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “damn, I look sexy,” you have already begun the transformation. You have been warned!

It gets better:

Then there are those who try to convince themselves they are being godly by masturbating while focusing on spiritual things. If Jesus walked this planet today, would you try to have sex with him? Sexual bonding is exclusively for a husband and wife. Anything else is a perversion. Sexual bonding must not be used to join a person to a relative or a friend or an animal or an object or to the Holy Lord.

And I thought my mind was in the gutter. I can honestly say that I have never, ever fantasized about taking Jesus to bed. Ever.