by Mark Oppenheimer, Salon.com
If like me, you have wondered how anyone can make a career out of hatred toward those who haven’t done anything wrong or can say things that are both patently false and rooted in some kind of phobia (xena, homo, otherwise) then I would suggest reading this profile of Maggie Gallagher.
She runs NOM, the poorly named National Organization for Marriage, and she has made it her life’s work to keep marriage between one man and one woman. Gallagher argues for this type of “traditional marriage” for the sake of the children (won’t you think of the children?) arguing that children do best when raised by a mother and a father, a belief maybe she holds because she raised her son as a single mother for the first many years of her life. Obviously, the man+woman=good, happy children equation has been repeatedly shown to not be a cure all for society’s problems.
Something else Mag-Mags hates is feminism and gender equality. I mean she really loathes it. Maybe because, as a conservative woman, she has probably not been around a lot of men who embody that gender equality that makes life easier and because she can’t have it and doesn’t understand how it exists, hate on it she must. This is also how Oppenheimer characterize’s her thoughts on such issues:
Because men are so different, society developed norms to pressure men to take responsibility they might wish to avoid. The naive hope of the women’s movement, that gender roles could wither away, has only tangled ladies’ stockings in a hopeless knot: Without marriage norms, and the sex norms that go with them, men can get away with anything — all the sex they want, and no more of the housework than before.
Of course this isn’t true but Maggie Gallagher doesn’t care about truth but rather how she has been wronged by the world and how she can make others suffer like her.
It’s a long read but worth it.
This is silly because
1) No one with a basic grasp on the election actually thinks Newt will win the presidency, especially liberals
2) I, a progressive/liberal, am tickled (opposite of annoyed, btw) by folks that think Newt is a worthy candidate. At least two affairs, a moon base by his second term?, thinks it would be a good idea to subpoena judges to explain their decisions (which is what I thought the really long decisions they write up were for…), and so on and so on.
3) The longer the republican primary drags on the more money is spent by Republicans bashing one another and exposing the other candidates’ hypocrisies and weaknesses instead of on Obama.
I wish SP would just fade away, back to Alaska. She has nothing particularly interesting to contribute to any discussion.
by Joan Walsh, Salon.com
Murray’s book is intended to highlight a values gap. He identifies what he calls the “founding virtues” of America – industriousness, religious practice, honesty and marriage – and finds the new white lower class lacking in all four. Meanwhile, at the very top of society, he says, adherence to those virtues persists, and it’s working very well.
Obviously, I think this is pretty laughable and Walsh repeatedly points out the numerous and ginormous holes in his argument(s). I’d read the book in its entirety but there are too many great books out there to read instead of reading one that would only be a lengthy critical thinking and fallacy-finding exercise.
Subheadline: The rights wants to use the “slippery slope” of polyamory to discredit gay marriage. Here’s how to stop them.
I personally don’t take issue with polyamory. What consenting adults want to do with other consenting adults in their private lives is none of my business. But I also realize a lot of people do seem to care about such things and are using this lifestyle (I’m not sure that’s the word for it) to make an argument against giving gays* their equal right to marriage. Here is an article to combating this tactic (because you know just point out that the slipper-slope argument is a fallacy isn’t enough to convince them.)
*I don’t mean to lump everybody into the same group. Like “the gays” but I’m doing it here for simplicity’s sake. Forgive me?
A person’s exterior is at once a “petty” thing and a primary one. It affects how the world treats her and how she chooses to respond in kind. And that McCarthy can be an Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated, magazine cover-gracing, full-blown star without shrinking down to Keira Knightley proportions represents a consciousness shift not just in the culture at large, but in a business that associates success with being built like Jennifer Aniston. The nomination of McCarthy suggests that maybe the movies are finally acknowledging that human beings come in different sizes. (The fact that Rebel Wilson gets to be the bride in the forthcoming “Bachelorette” is an encouraging sign.) And though we’ll have to wait until Feb. 26 to learn if Melissa McCarthy will take home an Academy Award, her uncompromising rise to A-list status already makes her not just a winner, but, beautifully, a big one.
Emphasis Mine. I really hope that is the direction things are going to go in.