The problem with Shane Gillis

Saturday Night Live recently announced three new cast additions. One of them was a comic named Shane Gillis.

Unfortunately for SNL, Gillis has an extensive history of making ugly, derogatory remarks about Asian Americans, among others. Vulture's Megh Wright goes into more detail about that history and includes links to some of the material.

I only had the stomach to listen to the first of the items Wright cited, an excerpt from a podcast Gillis co-hosted. It's ugly. What is worse news for Gillis is that it's not funny. That's not a rebuke, that's an observation.

Gillis and his co-host obviously got their rocks off mocking a culture different from their own. That's the kind of humor that appeals to young boys, and by "young" I mean under the age of twelve. The rest of us outgrew it when we learned to be decent human beings.

Gillis and his ilk will dismiss my complaint as "political correctness". I've written about that twice before. Once was in a request to Rep. Mike Bost not to use the term "Orientals". In that request I noted, "... 'political correctness' is a term seemingly used only by those uninterested in the principle at its heart: civility — common courtesy".

The other mention was in a discussion of the racist massacre at a South Caroline church in June 2015. I digressed slightly from that topic to rebuke comedians who were then complaining that political correctness was shackling them, making them afraid to rake risks.

There has been a minor fuss raised by some comedians of late, railing against so-called "political correctness" and its supposedly deleterious effects on their standup routines. I almost blogged about it, but I thought Jerry Seinfeld's idiotic whining didn't deserve any more attention than it had already gotten. My feeling was and is, if you as a comedian can't figure out how to make people laugh without visiting tired stereotypes, maybe it's time to find a new job.

The impulse that keeps an audience from laughing when a comic makes an easy joke based on a dumb stereotype is the same impulse that keeps us from succumbing to the mindless contempt for somebody else based on irrelevant characteristics like race. It's a sense that tells us, "This ain't right". It's a moral compass. It's a conscience.

Gillis falls squarely into the camp of comedians who ought to find other work.

I say that because he pretended to apologize:

“I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.”

Bullshit, Shane. You're not happy to apologize to anybody and you sure as hell haven't apologized to anybody. You're pissed that your old material — some of which is only as "old" as 2018 — has resurfaced with such a vengeance, and you're worried that the blowback could cost you your new gig.

I don't know how to reach someone as defiantly close-minded as Gillis. I only know that his wide-ranging and simpleminded contempt for others, including gays and women as well as Asian Americans (and likely Asians generally), can't be written off as a necessary rough edge for comedy. That's a lazy excuse put forward by people who don't give a shit about denigrating people who are already targets of bigotry.

SNL, I don't give a shit if you fire Gillis. I really don't: I don't watch. What would give me a little hope would be if executive producer Lorne Michaels promised to take Gillis in hand and teach him to be a better person.

Not your job, Mr. Michaels? Perhaps not. In that case, then, you'll be judged by the company you keep and hire. We'll just have to accept that you don't mind, perhaps even endorse, Gillis' deep contempt for others and his penchant for punching down.

Honestly, I don't want to turn Gillis into a pariah who can't get work because of his crummy past behavior. I want Gillis to become a better human being who understands exactly why the rest of us condemn what he currently thinks, or pretends to think, is just "edgy" comedy. I want him to turn his life around and help to undo the harm he has done.

[UPDATE: I guess Lorne Michaels wasn't interested in taking on the challenge. Gillis is out.]

Pence is mistaken — as usual

The Vox piece is headlined, "Pence tells graduating Christans to be ready for attacks on their faith".

In his remarks, he warned students of the attacks they’d face just for being religious. Often, he said, they’d be asked to not only tolerate but also endorse values that go against their beliefs. He added that those who tout tolerance are often the least tolerant of traditional Christian values.

What traditional Christian values might trigger such intolerance?

Karen Pence, who sat in the crowd during the speech, received “harsh attacks” in January after she returned to teach art at a Christian school that bans LGBTQ teachers and students, Pence said in his speech. He characterized the incident as an “un-American” attack on Christian education and vowed to protect the First Amendment, which upholds freedom of religion.

Mike Pence is okay with Christians who will not tolerate the presence of LGBTQ teachers or students. He is not okay with those who object to that intolerance of LGBTQ people.

And what's the justification for calling the latter "un-American"?

Why, the fact that freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution.

Now, I thoroughly approve of the First Amendment's prohibition against the government supporting or opposing religion. However, I have deep misgivings about how far freedom of religion has been taken.

Too many religious adherents would like that freedom to extend further than it should: they celebrate idiocies like Indiana's stupendously misguided 2015 legislation prohibiting state and local laws that "substantially burden" people following their religious beliefs. Such laws provide cover for anything that a believer claims is required by his religion — including a religious business owner denying service to whomever he likes. Hello, colossally wrongheaded Hobby Lobby decision (which I've discussed at some length elsewhere: see the above link for the citations).

Answer me this, Mike Pence: why is your religious intolerance of non-heterosexuals just fine and dandy, but my thorough dislike and condemnation of bigoted Christians like you not okay? Why is the latter, in fact, positively un-American in your eyes?

Let me help you. The reason you can throw around the loaded expression "un-American" is that the Founders were wary of religious oppression by the government. They did not, however, mean to let the likes of you oppress others in the name of your religion. Your characterizing of criticism of your faith as "un-American" is nothing more or less than a grotesque misreading of the First Amendment.

In fact, the harm your wife suffered from criticism does not compare to the harm inflicted by you and your LGBTQ-hating ilk on a still-marginalized minority, harm inflicted by laws like the aforementioned 2015 one you tried to enact when you were governor of Indiana. You tried to elevate the privileges of religious adherents above that of everyone else. Talk about "un-American"!

You are so blinkered by your faith that you can't see your hypocrisy.

You also are so hung up on writ that you have lost sight of the fundamental decency that religion is supposed to inculcate. You dare to condemn people you don't know based on what they do with other consenting adults in the privacy of their bedrooms?

You're telling the world you think non-heterosexuals are evil: that is, after all, the only excuse your wife's school can have for banning them. I can guarantee you, though, that that school has employed, and admitted as students, people whose hearts are less pure than some of those it has refused to employ or to admit as students over the years. That's just the way life is. Being heterosexual doesn't make you purer, hard as it is for you to see that, Mike.

This post will not change your mind, Mike, I know that. You will continue to fear and loathe non-heterosexuals for as long as you draw breath.

However, you need to know that those of us not in the thrall of religious blindness see through your literally holier-than-thou bullshit.

Don't try waving the Constitution at us and bleating that loathing and reviling your bigotry is "un-American".

The rest of us are upholding this country's ideals by rejecting your intolerant principles.

Is inciting violence an impeachable offense?

So, Dear Leader, in the space of a day, has gone back to scolding the rest of us for ignoring violence allegedly perpetrated in Charlottesville by the so-called "alt-left". He insisted that many among those participating in the protest were quietly and peacefully protesting the removal of Robert E. Lee's statue, and then chidingly wondered where the statue-removing would end — would George Washington and Thomas Jefferson be next?

All this is catnip to the alt-right, of course, because it attempts to distract all of us from the primary issue: those protesting in support of Robert E. Lee were, whether they knew it or not, supporting white supremacy.

Lee was a white supremacist. You might not like that, but it's the truth. He defended slavery as an improvement over the living conditions of blacks in Africa. He participated in an insurrection against the federal government to defend the peculiar institution, and he never fully reconciled himself to losing the war. He treated his own slaves harshly before and during the war, and soft-pedaled brutality against blacks committed by students while he was president of a college after the war.

But what does all this have to do with Dear Leader?

I very much doubt Trump knows diddly about Robert E. Lee's true feelings toward blacks, or about the real origin of the Civil War being the South's insistence on keeping and expanding slavery. He therefore is like a lot of other people in this country who find the argument that Lee and other Confederates were romantic, doomed figures representing an honorable sort of heritage for today's (white) Southerners plausible.

But you know something? It's his fucking job to know the truth about Lee and the Confederacy. It's his fucking job to understand how corrosive white supremacy is to this country. It's HIS FUCKING JOB to know that people shouting the horrendously ugly things the protesters shouted must be reviled.

To unite the country, as Dear Leader frequently claims is his aim, you have to know what is beyond the pale. Here's a free clue, Donnie: white supremacy and neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism are BEYOND THE FUCKING PALE.

So fucking what if there were a handful of hopelessly naive "good" people in that protest? They were not the majority of protesters! The majority of the protesters were full-on, enthusiastic bigots who would love nothing better than to take away the civil rights of non-whites and anyone else they perceive to be threatening them.

Dear Leader's appalling press conference today at Trump Tower was, as somebody (maybe a lot of somebodys) said, a moral failure. To attempt to excuse white supremacists is the mark of someone with abso-fucking-lutely no sense of right and wrong. Actually he wasn't excusing white supremacists: he was and is encouraging them.

Not too long ago Dear Leader also encouraged police to treat suspects roughly after they've been arrested. In short, Dear Leader has a history of encouraging violence.

Does fomenting violence constitute a high crime and misdemeanor for which a president might be impeached?

Ultimately this is a political decision that must be made by members of Congress — particularly Republican members of Congress, given their majority in both legislative houses.

So, ladies and gentlemen of Congress, how do you feel about the President of the United States excusing white supremacists who committed homicidal violence?

Ball's in your court, Congress. The non-white supremacists and non-neo-Nazis among us are waiting to see where you stand.

Think about where we are

I had mentally tuned out Charlottesville and the attendant furor over Dear Leader's flaccid initial response. Then a CNN panelist this morning said something that gave me pause.

"I mean, Nazis! Right?"

She was expressing her incredulity that Dear Leader had been incapable (up to that time) of condemning the white supremacist-originated violence that led to the death of one woman and injuries to a score of others. And really, she brought me back to reality.

I've gotten so accustomed to writing off Donnie as a cancerous abcess on the body politic that I needed to be reminded of how aberrant he and his followers really are.

Do we really have a U.S. president who requires two days of nonstop condemnation on all sides before he'll appear before the camera to deliver a cautious, minimalist condemnation without any real conviction? (We know what Donnie looks and sounds like when his blood is up, as when he's pissed at so-called "fake news", and his address to the nation this morning sounded anything but convincing. He sounded like a schoolboy delivering an oral report that bores him.)

To express the panelist's thought a little more fully:

Do we really have a president whose first, instinctive response ISN'T to condemn neo-Nazis and racists?

Really?

[UPDATE: Not three days of condemnation, but two days.]

Deciding who is human

Missouri state representative Rick Brattin doesn't think homosexuals are human.

"When you look at the tenets of religion, of the Bible, of the Quran, of other religions, there is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being," Brattin told the House floor.

Brattin also advocates teaching creationism and has advocated for the idea of "legitimate rape". To say he's hopelessly in the thrall of the most fundamentalist strain of Christianity is to say the sky is blue.

Rick, there's a distinction between being a self-righteous, small-minded, judgmental cretin and just being a human being, too. I think there are verses in your Holy Bible that talk about that. Maybe you should read them and think about who you are.

Religion and hatred

I don't hold many absolute beliefs. I'm temperamentally unable to avoid seeing the other person's point of view, most of the time.

I do, though, have one absolute belief that is particularly relevant right now:

No true religion teaches that it's okay to hate whole groups of people.

Looking at the wide swath of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, most of these faiths' adherents would deny that hatred is at the heart of their religion. However, each of these faiths has numerous sects that do make hatred a core principle. Some hate non-adherents, some hate taboo violators, aka "sinners". Such hatred isn't merely accepted, it's considered virtuous. Such hatred can even be a justification for violence.

These sects are an abomination.

Religion is supposed to be a guide to ethical living. How is it ethical to hate whole groups of people you don't know? How is it ethical to classify whole groups of people you don't know as, essentially, sub-human?

The Orlando mass murderer has gotten many commentators tangled up in the confused but toxic stew of his supposed religious beliefs and personal prejudices. One thing is tragically clear, though: he got it into his messed-up head that his religion was eminently okay with his hating gay people.

The Orlando mass murderer was very likely mentally ill. That doesn't let his religion, or religion in general, off the hook, though.

The message "God hates gays" is a depressingly prevalent one, espoused by hundreds if not thousands of religious leaders at the local and national level. It's a trope that transcends the Christian/Muslim divide, and for all I know is present in fundamentalist Jewish and Hindu sects, too. This message of hatred, broadcast by a thousand voices from all sides (including his father's), sank into the Orlando mass murderer's unstable mind. Eventually he acted on it.

The thing is, he wasn't the first and he won't be the last deeply troubled person to glom onto hatred as an organizing principle for his life.

It's long past time for you so-called religious leaders who spew this garbage to own up to your role in creating men like the Orlando mass murderer. You have a moral responsibility for the fallout of your relentless drumbeat of hatred.

A religion that promotes hatred of others as a virtue isn't a religion: it's heresy. People who spread such heresy incite time bombs like the Orlando mass murderer. The incitement, the drumbeat of hatred, has to stop.

Debasing the concept of anti-Semitism

Can you debase the concept of anti-Semitism? Israel's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked proved you can:

“In the past, we saw European leaders speaking against the Jews. Now, we see them speaking against Israel. It is the same anti-Semitism of blood libels, spreading lies, distorting reality and brainwashing people into hating Israel and the Jews,” Shaked told the Washington Post. “Today, it is not politically correct to be anti-Semitic but being anti-Israeli is acceptable. People who have such anti-Semitic views should not be allowed to hold central leadership positions.”

You brazenly equate criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism, Minister Shaked. That's despicable.

(I was tempted to add, "You are despicable", but that would have been the same mistake Minister Shaked made, turning a legitimate criticism of a person's action and speech into an ad hominem attack on the person.)

Minister Shaked, you have the crust to call legitimate criticism of Israel's heavyhanded and violent policies anti-Semitic? Your attitude removes the possibility of separating the nation, its leaders and its citizens: you conflate them all. That encourages genuine anti-Semitism! That's so asinine, so fatuously shortsighted, I wonder if your thinking is impaired. Are you high?

Minister, you should be ashamed of yourself for debasing the concept of anti-Semitism.

A plea to Donald Trump's supporters

In case you somehow missed it, Donald Trump called for keeping Muslims from entering the U.S. He wouldn't make an exception for anybody, including U.S. citizens.

To Trump supporters everywhere: I'm asking you — no, I'm begging you — to stop for a moment.

I'm not asking you to put yourself in the shoes of a Muslim, because you might not have any idea what that's like. I certainly don't.

I'm asking you to put yourself in the shoes of your grandparents. Or your great-grandparents. Or your friend's father or mother.

You don't have to be Japanese to see that what we did to Japanese-American civilians (and to a lesser extent, to German-American and Italian-American civilians) at the outset of World War II was a cruel and unjustified punishment of innocent people.

You don't have to be Irish or Italian or Chinese to appreciate how badly these groups were treated at various times in our nation's history.

You don't have to be Catholic or Jewish to see how irrational bigotry harmed innocent adherents to these religions.

I guarantee you that if you aren't a first- or second-generation American yourself, your ancestors who were experienced bigotry and calumny at the hands of suspicious "already-heres" who didn't take kindly to the new people arriving on these shores.

The vast majority of Muslims live peaceful lives in the U.S. They're as horrified by terrorist attacks as the rest of us are.

"But they espouse hate!" Some of them do. But then, so do some Christians. There are Christian leaders who call for killing gays. The latter aren't just fringe figures, either: they're politically significant enough that three Republican presidential candidates paid them a visit.

Should we vent our frustration and anger at these hateful people by visiting vengeance on all Christians?

I'm asking you, supporters of Donald Trump, to take a few moments to calm down. Think what tarring whole ethnic and religious groups with a broad brush has done in the past, very likely to one or more of your own ancestors.

This country is a marvelous experiment in getting people of a thousand different cultures to live in relative harmony. It has been a rocky road at times. We bump against one another and piss one another off on a regular basis, it seems. But we share a commitment to making it work. Really. We do. One of the more eloquent testaments to the strength of that commitment is the example of the 442nd Infantry Regiment from World War II: even after the racist and vindictive treatment of their parents, these American-born men of Japanese ethnic ancestry believed enough in American ideals to lay their lives on the line for them.

But ours is a fragile experiment. The threat isn't from ISIS or Russia or China or anybody else. It's from a strain of thought that seeks to atomize us, to divide us, to pit us one against another on the basis of race, religion, or some other factor. ISIS can't destroy us — but we can.

And Donald Trump's rhetoric points the way.

So again, I'm asking you supporters of Donald Trump to pause, and put yourself in the shoes of The Other. Your ancestors were The Other at some point.

Trump isn't going to listen to me. He might listen to you, though.

Tell him he's playing right into ISIS' hands. Tell him we need to win the war of ideas as well as the shooting war. Tell him that "shutting down" entry by Muslims would confirm the worst suspicions of people around the world about Americans. It would be a betrayal of our principles from which it would take us generations to recover.

Please. Tell him.

Is it piety or hatred?

Now that Kim Davis is in jail for defying a federal court's order to do her job (or, in the alternative, to let her deputies do the job for her), the Rowan County (Kentucky) clerk's office is issuing marriage licenses again. Hey, great! The system managed to bypass an obstruction.

Well, maybe not.

Davis, through her Liberty Counsel lawyer, says the licenses issued in her absence are invalid.

"They are not being issued under the authority of the Rowan County clerk's office. They are not worth the paper that they are written on," said attorney Mat Staver after meeting with Davis in the Carter County jail in Grayson.

He claims that only Davis has the authority to issue a marriage license. The Rowan County Attorney, Cecil Watkins, has said that deputy clerks don't need their boss' approval to issue a marriage license.

I suspect we won't know who's right until somebody files suit and the Kentucky Supreme Court eventually rules one way or the other.

This prompts a bigger question, though: exactly how does Davis suggest that Kentucky resolve the tension between her beliefs and settled law?

Frankly, I don't see how we can accommodate the unbelievably stringent notion of what I call "transitive sin" with human law, period.

Davis objects to standard legislative accommodations of objecting religious believers. She won't allow her deputies to do the physical work of issuing documents because they still require her signature, and even if the signature were imprinted by a machine it would, in her eyes, still reflect her endorsement of a sinful act. This level of belief can't be satisfied by legalistic fig leaves that exempt the believer from physically participating in the act: it considers standing aside and letting the action take place to be tantamount to complicity. (Last year I mentioned a piece about the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have a similarly strict view of what constitutes "participation" in a sinful act.) Since the sinfulness can't be avoided by permitting an intermediary to do the dirty work, I call this view of sin and action as "transitive".

This is a pretty expansive idea of moral responsibility. Moreover, the lengths to which she has gone to satisfy her beliefs call into question her sincerity on a different matter.

Davis claims she has no problem if same-sex couples seek their license in another county. Yet how does this absolve Davis in her own eyes?

The obvious answer is, Davis' legal authority doesn't extend to a different county. But how much does Davis respect legal authority? Not much, as far as a federal judge's order is concerned. Why does she respect the legality of county boundaries but not a judge's order aimed specifically at her? Why should one carry weight with her but not the other?

Then there's the spiritual aspect of the matter. If she is so concerned with not enabling sin, how can she be okay telling same-sex couples they can get a marriage license in the next county? How are her hands clean in that case? She enabled them to commit the sin of same-sex marriage!

If you sincerely believe that the least little contact makes you complicit in a sin, I don't see how you can be virtuous in the modern world. I also don't see how you can believe in freedom of belief for anyone else if you're inclined to constrain what other people can do if their actions impinge on your "web" of possible complicity.

The legal rule of thumb for how far any given "freedom" can extend is, it has to be reined in when it impinges on someone else. In other words, "Your freedom to stretch ends at my nose". How can Davis' expansive version of "religious freedom" fit that legal rule of thumb?

I don't think it can.

The claimed injury to Davis' freedom of worship is so vaguely expansive, the "penumbra" of what might impinge on her religious belief can't be defined in the law. Common-sense, reasonable accommodations for religious belief have not sufficed for her. I doubt any accommodation is possible.

When your "personal" belief extends so far that you won't let others do your work, you've crossed a line. We can't and shouldn't accommodate you, because you are imposing your belief on others.

By the way, the strength of her belief in this particular sin strongly suggests that what really motivates her is a deep animus toward homosexuals. That, too, can be "protected" under the rubric of religious belief, but it's a much less trendy sentiment.

Oh, and those like the tiresome Mike Huckabee who are crying "Religious intolerance!" and "Christian persecution!" to the rafters are simply trying to raise money. Davis was jailed because she refused to do her job. You jokers are amplifying hostility toward yourselves and your coreligionists by being too goddamned greedy to secure power for yourselves. Worried about a more secular world? If that happens, you will bear much responsibility because you will have discredited genuine spiritualism with your whining and bigotry. So I'm actually doing you a favor by telling you to fuck off.

Someone explain fact vs. fiction to Rush Limbaugh

Here's why Rush Limbaugh thinks Idris Elba can't play James Bond:

“James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming. He was white and Scottish. Period. That is who James Bond is, was.”

...

Limbaugh went on to compare the casting to the idea of George Clooney and Kate Hudson starring as Barack and Michelle Obama in a presidential biopic.

Rush? Buddy?

Barack and Michelle Obama are real people.

James Bond is fictional. That means he's make-believe.

Not real.

For some fictional characters, like Huckleberry Finn or Othello, race matters. A lot. For others, not so much.

In the "not so much" category we can include characters whose main attributes are saving the world, looking good in formalwear, drinking martinis and bedding any gorgeous woman who crosses their path.

You added, “[T]hat’s not who James Bond is and I know it’s racist to probably point this out.”

"James Bond" is whoever the movie producer says he is. You can push back by urging your audience not to watch the movie, but if you want more of a say, you'll have to buy the rights to the character.

You did get one thing right, though: your attitude is racist. You're batting .500, better than usual for you. Then again, racism is kind of your thing.

I think Elba would be wasted on a Bond film: he's a terrific actor who deserves top-notch scripts, and Bond films aren't exactly Shakespearian. As a terrific actor, though, Elba's entitled to do a movie for the payday now and again. I doubt The Wire or Luther have made him so rich that he can afford to turn up his nose at a blockbuster. So I hope he does get to play Bond, and makes a nice chunk of change out of the deal. It would be icing on the cake, of course, if Rush's head exploded as a result, but in the spirit of the season I'll refrain from hoping too much for that. (Though speaking of the season, I have to ask: Rush, you do realize that given the time and place, Jesus Christ almost certainly was a brown or black man? ... Oh my, do I hear splattering?....)

This is why atheists are resentful

There are still bans on atheists serving in government in seven states. The U.S. Supreme Court declared such bans to be unconstitutional in 1961. Secularists are looking to remove the language from the states' constitutions.

Not everyone is on board with the effort.

Christopher B. Shank, the Republican minority whip in the Maryland Senate, said that while he believed in pluralism, “I think what they want is an affirmation that the people of the state of Maryland don’t care about the Christian faith, and that is a little offensive.”

There is an enormous blind spot in many people's minds that allows them to equate secularism with hostility to Christianity. Shank has that blind spot in spades. Moreover, he misses the point that the government of Maryland cannot speak for the people of Maryland on the question of whether those people "care about the Christian faith". Do you understand the First Amendment, Mr. Shank? You don't sound like you do.

Removing the patently unConstitutional language from the offending states' constitutions would say nothing about people's attitude toward Christianity (or any other faith, not that Shank appears to have thought about that, either). It would say that faith and government shouldn't be entangled. That's no more — and no less — than we should all expect.

Like the fatuous resistance to removing the ill-considered phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, the resistance to cleaning up the unenforceable and discriminatory language from state constitutions is rooted in nothing more than reflexive and thoughtless prejudice against atheists (and secularists generally).

It's disgraceful that the ridiculously easy and necessary cleanup remains undone after more than half a century.

Enough inexcusable excuses. Enough stalling. In fact, just plain enough. Enough.

The coming "gay marriage witch hunt"

There's something weirdly fascinating about the contradictions in the deeply conservative world view.

There's a long-standing meme, for instance, that "liberals" are in favor of victimhood status for everyone but Protestant white males. The conservative rejoinder is to jeer at liberals' purported bleeding hearts, dripping with guilt.

That's why it is extremely funny to hear about the coming gay-marriage witch hunt. The article quotes Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:

“This New McCarthyism demands, ‘Do you now think or have you ever thought that marriage should remain the union of a man and a woman?’ Answer incorrectly, and watch your career be taken from you and your reputation smeared on a thousand websites.”

I sense a mighty wind in the offing ...

Many of these fears burst out into the open earlier this year when Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, was run out of his position after it was revealed that he had donated money to the anti-gay marriage cause in California. Although some supporters of gay rights even thought the Eich affair was handled poorly, it sent a signal “that you have to be politically correct if you want to attain a higher position,” said Warner Todd Huston, a conservative activist and writer.

“That is the fear, that traditional American values are being criminalized as opposed to simply being out of fashion,” he said.

There it is: we have achieved "overblown"!

There's no criminalization of so-called traditional American values. There's ostracism, but being a social outcast isn't a criminal offense.

Calling out Huston's absurd overreaching isn't terribly productive, though. It's small ball. Conservative hypocrisy and self-pity — now that's a big, fat, ripe target.

Is the "traditional American values" crowd really going to play the victim card? This is the same bunch that declared homosexuality a mental disorder, non-heterosexuals to be evil, and passed laws criminalizing homosexual behavior in the states. Most of those laws are no longer functioning, but not because the ones who demanded them had a change of heart: it took courts with a healthy respect for the Constitution to strike them down. Outside the law, non-heterosexuals suffer beatings and killings merely for being who they are. It must be quite gratifying to the merciful God the traditional American values cohort worships that the lessons of His Holy Writ are used to justify that violence.

Non-heterosexuals have had plenty of experience being victimized in the name of "traditional American values". The proponents of those values will have to undergo a hell of a lot more than opprobrium to merit being called "victims" themselves. When you find marauding bands of non-heteros randomly curbing Christian fundamentalists, give us a call.

Yo, Tony, you're worried about your reputation being "smeared on a thousand websites"? What, as opposed to smearing thousands or millions of your countrymen — your fellow human beings — as mental defectives and moral obscenities? You think being called a bigot comes anywhere close to being called a depraved monster?

You and your protesting compatriots have some nerve. You call yourselves principled and righteous and arrogate the privilege of judging who is and isn't fit to be part of polite society, then you cry foul when the rest of us decide you're wrong and repudiate your condemnatory ways. Please, spare us your plaints.

Maybe from now on you'll actually take to heart the admonition, "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

Stoning is not "pro-life"

I did a double take when I read the headline: "Oklahoma Candidate Says Gays Should Be Stoned".

Oklahoma state house candidate Scott Esk wrote on Facebook last summer that gay people are “worthy of death” and should be stoned, later claiming that violence against gays is “in the old testament under a law that came directly from God.”

The average bigot is content to hate and to scorn. It takes somebody special to want to kill the despised group. (Actually doing that is called genocide, by the way. Lots of examples in history books. Curiously, the perpetrators aren't widely admired.)

That you call it a duty of your religion is a nice touch, Scott. You make Christianity sound pretty damned appealing. I'm sorry, I meant appalling.

Oh, and since you're citing the Old Testament, I assume you keep kosher and have multiple wives?

Esk describes himself as “100% pro-life” and “100% Traditional Family Values” on his campaign website and says, “I look forward to applying Biblical principles to Oklahoma law.”

Leave aside for the moment the large number of inconsistencies among Biblical edicts. Just consider these two ideas:

"I'm pro-life." "Gays should be killed."

Does anything strike you as, er, contradictory about those statements, Scott?

No?

Really?

I suppose gays don't count as "human beings", so that pesky commandment about not killing can be finessed on a technicality. Still, you have to have a pretty narrow definition of "life" to call yourself "100% pro-life" while being in favor of stoning Teh Gays, who, after all, look very much like "people" to the rest of us.

Yeah, yeah, I know, "pro-life" is all about the unborn kiddies. Well, what if homosexuality has a biological cause? What if it's possible one day to ascertain sexual orientation in utero? Will Scott be in the hospital, rocks in hand, ready to throw the second the umbilical is cut? Or will he even wait for the kid to be born? After all, it's not like the kid will be human. Why wait? Easier to do the deed when the fetus fits in the palm of your hand. Just cut it out of Mom's belly and get it over with. That'll leave the rest of the day free to do more of God's work.

Esk is pushing murder as a "family value". I'm sure Christ is proud.

Or pissed.

Brendan Eich and tolerance

William Saletan's commentary on the Brendan Eich episode was "billboarded" elsewhere on Slate as, "The Excuses for Purging Brendan Eich are the Old Excuses for Firing Gays".

Losing your job for being gay is different from losing your job for opposing gay marriage. Unlike homosexuality, opposition to same-sex marriage is a choice, and it directly limits the rights of other people. But the rationales for getting rid of Eich bear a disturbing resemblance to the rationales for getting rid of gay managers and employees. He caused dissension. He made colleagues uncomfortable. He scared off customers. He created a distraction. He didn’t fit.

I don't agree with Eich's position on same-sex marriage (though I still think there was a way to avoid the same-sex marriage fight). From what I've read he hasn't disavowed his views. However, should keeping your job be conditioned on your politics? Shouldn't that really depend on your job performance?

In fact, in a different piece Saletan wrote that Eich had pledged to uphold Mozilla's existing progressive policies. Shouldn't he have been given time to live up to his promise?

Suppose Eich is bigoted against homosexuals. Does that automatically disqualify him from running the company?

We all struggle against our prejudices, or at least we would if we knew what they were, which a lot of us don't. You ought to be very careful before you declare that what a person believes is, on its own, a reason to act. It's what the person does that matters. I relish lambasting Paula Deen not because she's a bigot, but because she ruthlessly takes advantage of her fans. I detest Hobby Lobby's David Green not because of his views, but because he insists that his views trump his employees' legal rights.

Some people claim that Mozilla is a uniquely progressive company, and an avowedly anti-gay bias does disqualify Eich for the job. Maybe so. Maybe the Eich episode will be viewed as the unique reaction of a unique company (and its employees and customers) to the circumstances. I worry, though, that this won't be the view of those who, while they currently oppose same-sex marriage, might have been persuaded over time to shed their doubts and/or fears. Instead, they'll be driven into the arms of the blindly intolerant, lengthening the time it will take to marginalize mindless prejudice.

Attitudes on same-sex marriage — heck, attitudes toward non-heterosexuals generally — have changed more swiftly than most of us could have imagined merely a decade ago. It wouldn't hurt if those of us on the right side of history showed a little generosity of spirit, and forgave some of the less egregious trespasses of our ideological opponents. It's more than a lot of them showed us, but meeting antagonism with more antagonism isn't going to bring them around. And that's what we want, right?

[UPDATE: Conor Friedersdorf is similarly dismayed by the Eich spectacle, but he's more eloquent and covers the ground more thoroughly.]

[EDIT: Removed a spurious "not" that reversed the whole sense of the third sentence in the second-to-last paragraph.]

A&E's message

The A&E Network's hit reality TV series Duck Dynasty was in danger for a time due to paterfamilias Phil Robertson's inflammatory remarks about gays and blacks. A&E suspended him from the show for an "indefinite" period shortly after the remarks hit the news. The rest of the Robertson family swiftly declared they would not participate in the show without him.

A&E caved, announcing that Phil would be back when shooting resumed in the spring. That "time of danger" for the show? Not quite a whole week.

If you care, James Hibberd at Entertainment Weekly explains the business reasons for A&E's backing-down.

In spite of all the heated commentary in the national conversation, the dynamics of this situation owe nothing to the peanut gallery. Everything that has happened is the result of actions by the Robertson clan and the network. Yet we in the peanut gallery will have the last word. Will the TV show remain a big moneymaker for the network, or will the audience fall away out of disgust with Phil?

One way or another, a message will be sent to A&E.

A&E already sent its message to us: money speaks louder than anything else.

(On a separate note, why aren't you Christians who aren't white supremacists and homophobes drowning out Robertson and his defenders with your outrage? They've said their views derive from the Bible and thus are literally holy writ. I don't know of a more obscene and self-serving assault on Christianity than that.)

"Sochi Welcomes Gays"

The headline to the article is, "Russia: Putin Says Sochi Welcomes Gays".

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!

See, Vlad, this is the problem with you ex-KGB types: lacking a sense of humor, you don't know when you're being freaking hilarious.

Hollow assurance

In response to an International Olympic Committee inquiry about its new law banning "propaganda" of what the Russians characterize as "nontraditional sexual relations", Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak assured the IOC that Russia "will comply fully with the Olympic Charter's provision against discrimination of any kind".

The new law

... penalizes anyone who distributes information aimed at persuading minors that "nontraditional" relationships are normal or attractive.

The law applies equally to everyone and "cannot be regarded as discrimination based on sexual orientation," Kozak said.

Of course, what does it mean to "distribute" information? No one seems to know. Russia's government doesn't seem interested in nailing down the details. Convenient, don't you think? That leaves all the room the government needs to apply the law any way it likes.

The IOC was eager to give the Russian government as much credit as possible.

"We have today received strong written reassurances from the Russian government that everyone will be welcome at the games in Sochi regardless of their sexual orientation," [IOC President Jacques] Rogge said in a statement.

But of course, Rogge's statement (and Kozak's too) entirely misses the point.

There was never a question of gay athletes or spectators not being welcome at the Olympics. Russia could neither have won nor kept the bid to host the games if it had threatened to bar gays. That's a stupid strawman issue designed to distract from the real problem.

The real problem is, Russia is telling visitors (and natives, of course) that they'd better watch what they say. They'd better watch what they wear, too. Anything that could be construed as a message is fair game under the Russian law. For all we know, that could include something as innocuous as an athlete acknowledging a same-sex partner at a press conference.

Russian soil, Russian law. The thing is, those of us who aren't Russians deserve better from the IOC than a transparent evasion of the question at hand. We expect that from the Russian government. We should hold the IOC to a higher standard.

And beyond the Olympics, it behooves anyone who gives a damn about decent treatment of other human beings to consider whether doing business with Russia is moral. Visiting or trading with Russia tells Russians that bigotry is acceptable.

Words matter

Yelena Isinbayeva, a world-class pole vaulter who happens to be Russian, was widely covered in the U.S. press for her remarks following a competition in Moscow recently. She defended Russia's law banning "propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships".

“It’s unrespectful to our country,” she said at a news conference Thursday. “It’s unrespectful to our citizens because we are Russians. Maybe we are different than European people, than other people from different lands. We have our law, which everyone has to respect.”

...

“It’s my opinion also,” she said, adding: “You know, to do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation, because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people. We just live boys with women, and women with boys.”

She added, “It comes from history.”

She apparently was speaking in English, a detail that might be relevant in that she now claims that her remarks might have been "misunderstood".

“English is not my first language and I think I may have been misunderstood when I spoke yesterday. What I wanted to say was that people should respect the laws of other countries particularly when they are guests,” Isinbayeva said in a statement issued through local organizers of the world championships.

“I respect the views of my fellow athletes and let me state in the strongest terms that I am opposed to any discrimination against gay people.”

She wasn't misunderstood. She insisted on respect for host countries' laws: we got that. She simply seems to regret having said more than that.

She might have meant instead that she expressed herself poorly, but I find that difficult to believe. Her earlier statements were unambiguous and conveyed a consistent viewpoint. Her "clarification" seems to me nothing more than a clumsy effort to back-pedal in the face of international disapproval. She certainly didn't disavow her earlier remarks.

If she sincerely had trouble expressing herself, however, perhaps she (and others) should think about just how easily people can be misinterpreted. In particular, they should consider whether what they label "propaganda" might actually be expressions of identity — the voices of those who simply wish to live without lies and without fear. The voices of those who, right now, must live with both, thanks to the laws passed by their fearful and resentful countrymen.

Russians, of all people, ought to understand that you can't force everyone to march to the same tune. Didn't seventy years of brutal state dictatorship make that clear? Or did they learn the wrong lesson — that brutality is okay as long as it doesn't affect them?

The retrograde Russians

The article is "Gays in Russia Find No Haven, Despite Support From the West".

The Russian government strongly objects to characterizing recently passed laws as discriminatory.

Russian officials say the criticism is unfair and inaccurate. In 1993, Russia repealed the Soviet-era law that made gay sex a crime.

“This is not about imposing any kind of sanctions against homosexuality,” Mr. Putin said, defending the propaganda law at a news conference in June. “This is about protecting children.”

He added: “The law does not in any way infringe on the rights of sexual minorities. They are full-fledged members of our society and are not being discriminated against in any way.”

I'd laugh at that unabashedly bald-faced lie were the consequences not so brutal for gays and their straight defenders.

Still, there's a possible upside I don't think anyone has pointed out: the Russians, at long last, might have found common ground with the most extremely fundamentalist elements of the Islamic world. The 88 percent of Russians who support the laws keep spiritual company with the Taliban (among others). That ought to make the average Russian proud.

Russia and the Taliban, boldly marching toward the Middle Ages.

Russian law and order

If I had had any plans to attend the 2014 Olympics in Russia, the remarks by Russia's minister of sports would have derailed them.

Russia’s minister of sports, Vitaly L. Mutko, said on Thursday that foreign athletes traveling to Russia for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi would be expected obey a new Russian law banning “homosexual propaganda” or face criminal prosecution.

...

“No one is forbidding a sportsman with a nontraditional sexual orientation to come to Sochi,” Mutko said. “But if he goes out on the street and starts to propagandize it, then of course he will be held accountable. Even if he’s a sportsman, when he comes to a country, he should respect its laws.”

What it means "to propagandize", of course, is up to Russia's government. You know, the one that nice Mr. Putin runs. That nice Mr. Putin who has thrown his lot in with Russia's homegrown versions of that hatemongering asshole, Fred Phelps. Or, to be fair, that nice Mr. Putin who might be a Russian version of Fred Phelps.

I might be able to obey your silly little law, Mr. Mutko, but I could never respect it. Just as well, then, that I have no plans to visit anytime soon. Russia seems to be happily reverting to its baser instincts. If you have Russian travel plans — well, maybe you ought to rethink them.