Dennis Prager may look just like Herman Munster but he lacks the endearing charm of the original.

How dare they make us look at our words, deeds and attitudes and consider the possibility that they don’t have the effect we think they do! Work around us, dammit!

Free your mind, and your hate will follow.

Bigotry against bigotry is still bigotry.

And hatred in the pursuit of love is still, er, lurverly.

OK, I live in the Bay Area and I see a fair number of lawn signs for and against Prop 8. Sometimes these signs get disappeared. I found a pair of presumably purloined For-Prop-8 lawn signs on the street. They said (swear to gawd):

Yes on Proposition 8 = Less Government”

Words fail me. I leave the punchline as an exercise for the reader.

“But marriage is actually a privilege that society bestows on whom it chooses. ”

Wait, thought it was a mandate from God in order for us to make babies?
Someone’s getting his Talking Point flash cards jumbled up.

I have neither seen nor heard any hatred of gays expressed by proponents of Proposition 8. Not in my private life, not in my e-mail, not from callers on my radio show.

I didn’t hear it because it’s not there, and it’s not there because I didn’t hear it. And even if I did hear it, it still wouldn’t be there, so I couldn’t have heard it. Which proves that it isn’t there. And that I didn’t hear it.

But Snorghagen, if someone hated teh gays and nobody heard it, would it still be hate?

i think prop 8 has a good chance of passing, only because the advertising for anti-prop 8 is so frickin’ lame.

the pro-prop 8 ads, while quite inflammatory and misleading, are quite eye-grabbing and emotionally engaging. granted, it’s the wrong emotions, but they do what ads should do: make the viewer engaged.

the pro-prop 8 ads are lame, uninspiring and unengaging. and recent polls have suggested that the pro-8 ads are having the desired effect.

whereas a majority of californians opposed prop 8 a month ago, now the pro-prop vote is ahead by a nose.

sorry, forgot to include link: prop 8 supporters ahead by a nose

i am not happy w/this turn of events, but boy, i can sure see why (i live in la). the anti-prop 8 ads are boring and laughable.

to be brutally honest, after i saw one ad which has an elderly couple discussing why their gay daughter should have the right to be married, i honestly thought the old lady was a man in drag, and i wondered what the hell that had to do with anything.

the anti-prop 8 campaign is as confused as john mccain’s campaign. i fear it will pass.

“separate is inherently unequal”. damnable supreme court justices, always poking their hoity toity noses in where us Real Americans don’t want ’em. Did I mention that we don’t want ’em? but not because Real Americans are bigoted, ’cause we aren’t. We’re Real!
(somehow, i think #8 will lose. i know it looks now like its going to pass, but I still get the feeling its going to lose.)

Wouldn’t it be disgusting if the country as a whole had a burst of sanity and California went crazy? But then, we did elect Reagan before anyone else did. And still they call us liberal. Hah!

As a happily married straight guy, I just don’t get what all the fuss is about. How is allowing same sex marriage, which would only be exercised by a fraction of gays, who themselves make up maybe 5% or so of the population, going to destroy my marriage?

What will end up happening is what always happens. Gays will finally get the right to marry after years of resistance and obstruction, and the dire apocalypse predicted by its opponents will not materialize. Years from now, after society has become accustomed to it, people will look back on the struggle to legalize it and wonder what the big deal was.

THE IRS SUX!!!

VOTE NO ON 8!

I don’t like the IRS, that’s why I’m voting NO on prop 8.

What will end up happening is what always happens is already happening.

All they need to do is look around. Hell, Ellen DeGeneres got married. So far no swarms of locusts or anything. Christ.

Why haven’t we developed a workable vote-swap system yet? I live in a state as reliably blue as Cali, so I’d be willing to give up my vote here in order to vote against 8 in a state I don’t live in. Come on. Why not?

let me be clear (to borrow a obamanym):

fucking mormon shitbags are coming into my state with their shitty haircuts and magic underpants and faux-friendly-but-really-freakish grins and their holier-than-thou attitudes and they are TRYING TO FUCK OUR SHIT UP.

i will pass along to this board the same message i passed along, in person, to a group (maybe 8, maybe 10) of mormon pro-prop 8 “missionaries” who were foolish enough to knock on the door of my friend’s house in sacramento while i was there last week: “listen, boys, your founder joe smith was a pedophile racist genocidal rapist who, when not sodomizing one of his 100s of wives, was known to cornhole young boys. ‘s true. and i’m pretty sure you idiots who believe the bullshit spewed by your mormon elders are IN NO FUCKING POSITION TO LECTURE ANYONE ON MORALITY. you are all followers of one of the stupidest belief systems on earth. i mean, there are yanomami indians somewhere who are sure the world came from the pineal gland of a frog and they are FAR LESS SHITHEELISH than any of you grease-free fuckbags. so take your lying and your deep contempt for MY country–one that i’m sure you asshats would secede from if only The Taliban were interested–and go the fuck back to provo before i fucking shove a steel pole through all of you like a fucking shishkabob.”

now, the last part was said at a rather elevated level of volume as they were quite literally running away (brave sir fucking robin indeed). motherfuckers. come the fuck back here i’m not finished with any of you.

goddamnit.

I’m sorry (not really), but this…

…the largest state in America

about California, is just silly. I thought TEXAS was the largest state, right after ALASKA. Maybe he meant it’s the largest state in terms of pirates or other Bog-fearing folk.

Bad Pranger! BAD!!

and I should learn to close html tags…

I don’t like Big Religion sticking extra words in MY state constitution just to hate on my gay friends and colleagues. There’s like thousands of species of gay animals, it’s a part of basic biology that there exist gay people and straight people and most people are somewhere towards one end or the other but as Mark Renton says in Trainspotting, (from memory with a Google assist) “if you ask me, it’s all about aesthetics, and fuck-all to do with morality. It’s all about who you fancy.”

No, no, stackozone. Much more forceful that way. I bet he’s scared now.

Homosexual behavior in animals.

. But marriage is actually a privilege that society bestows on whom it chooses.

Based on? When society “chooses” to bestow privileges on some of her citizens and not on others, based on no ratinal criteria whatsoever – that’s still discrimination and bigotry (which incidentally, the Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent from happening)

i.e. Driving is a privilege – not a right. So it’s totally fair to deny that privilege to black guys.

Surely the Prager photograph up there at the top deserves the “Eyes Migrating in Manner of Halibut” caption.

All they need to do is look around. Hell, Ellen DeGeneres got married. So far no swarms of locusts or anything. Christ.

The world-wide economic meltdown can be tied to this single event.

Don’t be fooled – we’re just waiting for the right moment!

Funny thing, Prager dropped this turd in the clownhall – thus:

While there are a few sick individuals who hate gay people, I have neither seen nor heard any hatred of gays expressed by proponents of Proposition 8. Not in my private life, not in my e-mail, not from callers on my radio show.

Hmmm. Well I guess he doesn’t read the comments on his own postings:

For example the word “Gay” is no longer useful in polite conversation between normal people, by that I mean people who do not have a certain birth defect.

or

Who exactly is the “we” you speak of that want everything peachy for the H@mos, and who says that we dont have a right to hate one of the most incideous mental disorders to plague the world. Homosexuality is a deviant.pathetic desease that should be wiped off the face of the earth. They are infesting our schools,sexually abusing our children,fornicating like sick animals in our public areas and are actively trying to destroy the very fabric of civilization. I, for one will not sit back and quietly allow this to happen.

fucking mormon shitbags are coming into my state with their shitty haircuts and magic underpants and faux-friendly-but-really-freakish grins and their holier-than-thou attitudes and they are TRYING TO FUCK OUR SHIT UP.

I am very sorry to hear that – I know how annoying having that sort around can be, and they do seem to save the worst for export. At least they’ve given up on coming to my house because they know that my family, hopeless heathens to a man, have been living here for 70 years now.

The way Grandpa used to handle them was not unlike how you did.

To be fair, there actually are some intelligent comments on that thread. I wonder why they read Prager.

But generally the tone is:
“Oh, our poor First Amendment rights are being stifled! We need to be able to exercise freedom of religion. It’s against the constitution to prevent us from being bigoted assholes. Also, freedom of speech can only be preserved by denying gays the right to call themselves married.”

(Gays are) fornicating like sick animals in our public areas and are actively trying to destroy the very fabric of civilization.

Wait a minute. How do you go about fornicating like a sick animal? Do sick animals fornicate at all, or do they leave the fornicating to healthy, robust animals? Destroying the very fabric of civilization sounds like fun, but I wish this guy would give clearer instructions on how to do it.

One of the things that really bothers me about this whole issue is the Wingnut insistence that having Teh Gay is against the Bible so therefore a Very Bad Thing. They’re right, there is a verse in the Old Testament (nothing in the New Testament) that does appear to be anti-gay, but there’s a LOT of stuff in the Old Testament. In fact, in the OT marriage wasn’t “one man one women” it was usually “one man, lot’s o’ women”. If you’re going to say that Teh Gay can’t marry because of the Bible, than I want another wife! Preferably one that can cook (OW, the Lovely & Talented Mrs. Senator Ted just hit me)

To Robert Green: championship level ranting there. A thread win for sure. Personally, when the Holy Rollers, Mormons, and any other serious-looking neatly dressed people come to my door, I tell them I worship Kali as I idly stroke a silken cord and gaze fixedly into the eyes of their leader. Snowflakes on a hot stove don’t disappear any quicker.

Pro Tip: I find this works best if at the same time I imagine eating overcooked lima beans.

But marriage is actually a privilege that society bestows on whom it chooses.
Call me suspicious, but that sounds really menacing, like society could draft me into bestow the privilege of matrimony at any moment, without warning.
Can I get a deferment?

(Gays are) fornicating like sick animals in our public areas
Stopping at intervals to throw up? Covered in open sores? Perhaps the commenter has been watching the wrong kind of p°®n.

Well, we should all bow to the dictates of what polite society considers to be appropriate. After all, marriage in the US has traditionally been between two people of the same race, and should stay that way. Whoops, did I say same race, I meant different sex! We’ll worry about that other thing later.

“Marriage is a privilege bestowed by society”? I imagine many of Dennis’ brethren on the right would reject this view in favor of one that privileges marriage as being holy and a gift from Jesus Manup, may his joo joo bring big cargo.

Why isn’t loony shit like this ever challenged on the grounds that it is an unconstitutional intrusion of religion into the law? Or has it been, and I just haven’t heard about it?

While not applicable to Prager himself, to the Mormon money behind Prop 8 that is trying to change our Constitution, I quote the esteemed Burt Reynolds, from that brilliant masterwork, Sharky’s Machine,

And you wanna know the worst part? You’re from out of state.

Visions of rusty Garden Weasels danced in my head.

fornicating like sick animals in our public areas

Calling Larry Craig. Senator Craig to the White Courtesy Telephone…

actively trying to destroy the very fabric of civilization

I thought they made that out of ripstop or Kevlar or something. Because if a little bufu is really going to fuck your whole shit up, that is one thin veneer of civilization you have there.

Ellen DeGeneres got married. So far no swarms of locusts or anything

We don’t know if it was consummated, so she may not have dropped trou…
sorry.

Mormon money? What kind of money do they use in Deseret? I was under the impression that the unit of currency was the Thew.*
This whole thing must make for bizarre conversations on the doorstep:

“Tell me again why I should vote for Proposition 8. How are gay marriages hurting me, and what business is it of a gaggle of badly-dressed missionaries from Utah?”

“Well, you see, gay marriages are merely the first step on a slippery slope of immorality… the opening of the floodgates of immorality… the bursting of the bulkheads of, ummm…”

“An imperfect storm, as it were?”

“Exactly. If the situation is not set right now, before long, people will be extending the concept of ‘marriage’ in other directions.”

“So it’s basically a question of stopping a tear in the moral fibre, before it develops into a ladder in the moral stocking?”

“You could put it that way. Extremists will demand the repeal of bigamy laws… they will want to allow one man to marry multiple women…”

“Just like old-school Latter-Day Saints?”

“…This merely strengthens my point.”
———————————–
* 1 Gold Thew = 12 Silver Thews.
1 Silver Thew = 8 Bronzed Thews.
Unless I am thinking of Financial Advisors of Gor.

Canada’s had gay marriage for years: no cannibalism, epidemics of public child-raping, rivers turning to blood, worship of bronze idols or even so much as an increase in jaywalking. As is true in every nation that’s legalized same-sex marriage. The net negative impact on society at large is nil. Remind the door-to-door God-Nazis of this non-trivial fact & watch their reaction. Highly entertaining.

The “fabric of society” is not wet toilet-paper, no matter how much neocon knuckle-draggers would like to think otherwise. More like a cross between chain-mail & Silly-Putty.

Okay, it may seem like Prager’s arguments make no sense, but when you realize he comes from Bizarro World it all comes together

I do want to mention this, though.

Marriage has never been regarded as a universal human or civil right. Loving and living with anyone one wants to live with are basic human rights. But marriage is actually a privilege that society bestows on whom it chooses.

Lately, your liberal radical types have been pushing the notion that the constitution is not an exhaustive list of rights, and we ought to recognize other rights as well. The right to health care, or housing, or marriage.

Here’s what I don’t get. When conservatives hear about these rights, they just outright deny they exist, and that’s the end of it. It’s incredibly rare to hear an argument against the right to health care that goes beyond “There’s no such thing as a right to health care.” Obviously Dennis doesn’t even try to explain why marriage isn’t a right.

I mean, yeah, in most societies throughout history marriage has been a form of social control rather then a universal right, but most societies in history have also hated the idea of free speech. Or the right to bear arms. Or, really, any right you care to name.

Why don’t these people feel the need to explain themselves? shouldn’t they have a reason why something shouldn’t be a right, rather then just a bald declaration that it shouldn’t?

Maybe he meant it’s the largest state in terms of pirates or other Bog-fearing folk.

Apropos of the bog motif, apparently there’s a genetic sub-group of humans who can curl their tongues up at the sides: I’m told it’s a mutation that allows such humans to suck moisture from the surfaces of peat bogs.

I’d give you a link, but you have no idea of what a google search on “bog sucking gene” throws up. I nearly had a conniption fit.

There was a guy we called “Gene the Bong-Sucker” in college, but that was something different.

Smut, that’s two of your comments in a row that have made me laugh so much I nearly coughed up a hairball.

Alas, I can’t return the favour, but I can offer you this small tribute to your greatness: a song that takes me back to the days of my yoof (I was a big Skyhooks fan as a gel).

Canada’s had gay marriage for years: no cannibalism, epidemics of public child-raping, rivers turning to blood, worship of bronze idols or even so much as an increase in jaywalking.

Yes, but you’re communists, so it doesn’t count.

But seriously, I think the wingers’ veneer of civilization truly is gossamer thin. I am of the opinion that, left to themselves, they would atavise into a full-on Lord of the Flies fear-and-violence-fest in short order. “Neocon” really is giving them too much credit for innovation. It should probably be “australopithicon” or some such.

Hmm, I am a bit partial to bronzes, though.

Here’s what I don’t get. When conservatives hear about these rights, they just outright deny they exist, and that’s the end of it. It’s incredibly rare to hear an argument against the right to health care that goes beyond “There’s no such thing as a right to health care.” Obviously Dennis doesn’t even try to explain why marriage isn’t a right.

That’s a very interesting point. I suppose it all comes down to how you want our society to function. If you’re a glibertarian, you see no problem with homelessness and lack of basic health care. That’s the free market! It’s your right to die in the gutter! And if you’re a homophobic bigot, of course you think only whites straights should be able to partake in the benefits of marriage, because you don’t want to integrate those filthy homos into the delicate fabric of society. Prager’s right/privilege dichotomy is just a nonsensical smokescreen. Even if we accept his premise, he still needs to explain *why* he doesn’t want to extend this privilege to teh gays.

Another one for the time capsule. Prager’s piece has almost perfect symmetry, it’s a kind of wingnut fractal, such a delicate balance of rancid self-absorption and intense lack of self-awareness.

>Free your mind, and your hate will follow.

The kingdom of hatred is within

Yah, Major, I think so. That one tiny letter can make all the difference.

Oh, good Lord. I’m a bog-sucker. Who knew?

[…] looking for comedic gold amidst the boggy stench and howling moors of neocon dementia. Today’s installment is especially good: Mister Leonard Pierce drags the reeds at Townhall and comes up with a classic […]

That one tiny letter can make all the difference.
We’re all blog-suckers?

All bigots deserve a kick in the junk.

Bigots who fucking whine because people no longer hesitate the call them bigots deserve two kicks with steel toed Doc. Martens delivered by Vinatieri.

Christ, man the fuck up!

“…out of white-person bubblers.”

Bubblers, eh? You must be from Wisconsin.

Hmmm, voter registration is already destroying the fabric of our nation and now this revelation that Homo Nups are just as destructive? What’s our national fabric made of…tissue paper?

I’ll have to try that on my co-workers: “We’re out of national fabric in the men’s room.”

“We’re out of national fabric in the men’s room.”

Just use The Constitution. Everybody else has been.

Also, for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, Sedaris is funny as hell, as usual. This time re: undecideds.

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

h/t to Cole.

I had no idea I was such a bigot. Please forgive me. Damn my HRC membership, how hateful of me. Sigh….

By Prager’s logic, if we could get every state to pass a law stating that “No person who has written a column for Townhall can ever marry, and all existing marraiges of said persons are hereby considered to be null and void”; he’d be just fine with that.

We’d have no problem with him loving who he wants or living with whom he wants, and we want him to have all the other rights that citizens have; we just want marriage to be between a woman and someone other than Dennis Prager

Jerry Brown? He’s still in California?

That’s some pretty wild-ass Twistin’ you’re doin’ there, Denny!

I have nothing witty to say, except fuck this guy.

D-rn those g-shd-rn judges, always trying to meddle in what society decides should be legal or not! Who do they think they are?

“Loving and living with anyone one wants to live with are basic human rights. ”

Of course, wingnuts were happy to argue THAT wasn’t a right until their beloved sodomy laws were struck down just five years ago. It’s also quite entertaining to see wingnuts arguing for civil unions as a “compromise,” when a few years ago they were squealing that civil unions would destroy marriage.

Muslims got nothing on the intolerance of fundies. Show me an example of muslims shopping this kind of hatred door-to-door.

plus, “grease-free fuckbags is my Favorite Epithet of The week. If RG had included “Tonguejacking his shit-box” in the rant, I would have fainted.

That picture of Dennis Prager looks like Tim Gunn from Project Runw–

Oh.

Muslims got nothing on the intolerance of fundies. Show me an example of muslims shopping this kind of hatred door-to-door.

…

i hate that muslim stuff too, the truth, and i think you are making a perfectly reasonable point. this may be the one area where you and i have strong overlap. i believe that tolerating the intolerant is liberalism’s great weakness. i always have. i try to put myself in the shoes of a young female professional in algeria in 1993–given a choice between a military dictatorship or the islamic brotherhood (whose stated mission at the time was to get rid of the democracy that had given them the right to lead algeria) i would have gone with the dictatorship in those shoes. and i think that is how stark it is, ultimately.

there is no such thing as “peaceful evangelism”–asking me to follow as hate-filled a worldview as mormonism does not constitute “peaceful”. but i agree–in for a penny in for a pound when it comes to calling out puerile fundie religious bullshit.

oh, truth, the stories i could tell you about scientology! i live in hollywood, after all, and work in the movie business. we are THICK with that idiocy around here.

the funny thing is how much overlap there is between scientology and mormonism eschatologically. i think hubbard borrowed liberally (as it were) from joseph smith when he was making his silliness up. although the smith story (“losing” his tablets and so on) is the stupidest of them all.

and i hope, for future reference, that you don’t assume you can mind read people based on a narrow point. it doesn’t make your arguments more cogent if you go on a personal attack against the person with whom you are disagreeing. who knows, they make actually agree with you!

Shorter Twoof: “Look, I found an acorn! Now could you give me my white cane back? Oink!”

The fact is, my friends and I don’t hate homosexuals. Really, we don’t. We hate the sin but love the sinner, just like Jesus said to do. Or maybe that was James Dobson. I get those two mixed up a lot.

Anyway, we don’t hate homosexuals. It’s just that homos (and BTW, it’s not prejudiced to call them that, it just saves wear and tear on my fingertips, and if you think otherwise you have the problem) have this way of…existing. You know what I mean. Their bodies take up space and consume oxygen and reflect light, just like they were normal people or something, and it’s just so annoying.

So I’ll make all you homos a deal. If you just teleport yourselves instantly to an alternate universe, where none of my friends and I have to see, hear or think about you ever again, we’ll stop opposing gay marriage. OK?

OK, serious question. If, FSM forbid, this piece of crap manages to pass, isn’t it still subject to being taken back to the CA supreme court as soon as someone contests it?

If hate is a virtue, then love is a sin. Makes perfect sense in Conservative World.

You know, just because the thing I didn’t hear might have been there, that doesn’t mean the thing I might have heard wasn’t necessarily not there … God, my head hurts.

Also, what I find most hilarious about this whole business (in a sad, depressingly hilarious sort of way) is that the main reason this thing might actually pass is because of a massive push by … Mormons. Yes, that’s right, Mormons all up in arms about what they perceive as a threat to “traditional marriage.” Mormons.

You know, the people to whom this is a no-brainer. Because everyone knows that marriage should be defined as between one man and … some other number of women.

Well, in all fairness, it is only the Fundamentalist LDS (FLDS – sounds like a feminine hygiene spray, I know) that still advocate/require polygamy. Though from some of the “regular” Mormons I’ve known, I get the feeling they’d love to head back into that territory if they thought they could get away with it.

string

you are trying to tell me that you know men who have had it in their heads that it would cool to have permanent threesomes?

ummmmmm

no shit?

you are trying to tell me that you know men who have had it in their heads that it would cool to have permanent threesomes?

I think you’re only allowed to do them one at a time.

But marriage is actually a privilege that society bestows on whom it chooses.

Horseshit. Marriage originated (and is still maintained in many quarters) as a contractual arrangement whereby a man acquires a woman legally so that she will have the “privilege” of cleaning his house and bearing his children. These sanctimonious hatebag douche-nozzles as usual are just makin’ shit up in order to obstruct the civil liberties of others. Their blatherings resemble nothing more than they do the same preposterous jackassery that came out of the mouths of racist assholes back in the ’50s and ’60s. On the rocky road to fully realized civil rights for everyone I’m afraid the fucktards will always be with us.

First it was a bill of sale. Then it was a business contract. Then it became a “sacred ritual.”

For example, in my very blue state, there is a “moment of silence” law which mandates quiet reflection before the school day begins. The people that advocated this surely envisioned children with their heads bowed in prayer to Jesus.

You live in a “very blue state” that has no Jews, but has Hindus and Muslims?????

No, wait, I got it, you’re a fucking ANTI-SEMITE!

Troofie: Jew hater.

In one of his novels, Alex Comfort describes officially-sanctioned marriage as “a dog license issued by God or by the state, neither of which entities I recognise”.
I miss Alex Comfort.

What does Q.E.D. stand for? My guess was “Quick (and the) Dead” but “and” doesn’t start with “E”. So I tried to think of suitable words that started with “e” but couldn’t think of ANY words that start with “e”. So I got out my Scrabble Dictionary and checked the “e” section, and there were plenty of words starting with “e”, none over 10 letters. By that time I’d forgotten what I was doing. Ah, wonderful wonderful Vicodin.

Horseshit. Marriage originated (and is still maintained in many quarters) as a contractual arrangement whereby a man acquires a woman legally so that she will have the “privilege” of cleaning his house and bearing his children.

So that’s it. The wingers have a problem with gay marriage because it doesn’t make it clear enough who owns whom. Denny is afraid that if the gays can marry, his wife will start telling him to GB2 the kitchen and make her a sammich. It all makes sense now.

I support an anti-Prop 8 campaign comprised of an infectious jingle plus jaunty conga line! “Separate is not e-QUAL! Separate is not E-qual!!” etc etc.

It worked for “You don’t win friends with salad!”

justme: I think that’s part of it fer sure. Authoritarian wingnuts see the world in black-and-white, either/or terms, and anything that threatens to subvert their all-important lines of demarcation must be squished out of existence. Immediately! The national security of their underwear is at stake! Or something.

Whee! I just wrote a diary on Daily Kos with my response to an email from my bible-beater stepsister that hit on many of the same points. And I went to a “Yes on 8” rally to counter protest, and the people there hit the same points… it’s like they’re coordinated or something. WITH MONEY FROM UTAHAN DEEEEVILS.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/22/113212/31/45/638649