Culture Kitchen is always worth a read, and she has been doing a roundup of her favorite responses to the takeover of our country by stupid bigots. Some highlights: 1, 2.
Also, go read Philo's rant on Queer Day. Barney Frank needs some therapy if he thinks the problem is gay people getting rights too quickly.
Hey, it's no secret that Karl Rove has spent the last four years courting the vast untapped evangelical vote, and one of the most effective ways to mobilize that force was to tap into their homophobia. While the giant publicity stunt that happened in California was a great step toward getting gay people the right to marry, it was also a great way to freak out evangelicals, get anti-same sex marriage proposals on state ballots, and mobilize the Christian Right fringe to tip the election in Bush's favor. I just watched a clip on CNN.com in which Jerry Falwell pretty much came out and bragged about it.
Isn't it interesting how politics can make it so that doing what's right and doing what your opposition wants can be exactly the same thing?
But here's the silver lining: The Republican party's rightward movement has given it a huge advantage in the short term, but it's bound to turn off a lot of traditional conservatives. In fact, it already has. While Republican politicians play a lot of lip service to the idea of keeping the government out of everyone's business, a lot of people who vote Republican actually believe that's what the party stands for. And all that pandering to moralistic wackos like Falwell is going to alienate a lot of moderates and "fiscal conservatives."
So who's going to pick up the pieces? Well, the Democratic party has been moving to the center since at least the earliest of the Clinton years, but that has alienated left-leaning voters like you and, to some degree, me. And it doesn't seem as if Kerry really picked up all that many formerly Republican votes (although I admit I have little to no evidence about that). I'm personally hoping to see the Libertarian party gain some momentum so it can embrace a lot of former Republican enthusiasts who don't like the idea of Big Reverend watching them.
Oh, and don't even get me started on pro-Jesus people ignoring the Abu Ghraib photos.
Boy are you right on that last one Barry. Big time. I've spent a lot of time thinking about that in the last few weeks. Magazine pitch coming if I can ever organize my thoughts.