Pride Month

When I was in high school, back in the Paleolithic, there were no gay kids. Oh, there were guys who were suspiciously well groomed with an interest in hairdressing and theater, and there were girls who were suspiciously into big dogs and pickups and landscaping and sports, but gay people lived elsewhere, not in our small city in the South.

Then they graduated high school and moved to the big city and let their freak flags fly. Because it turns out that ostracizing gay people and making it hard or even illegal to be gay doesn’t result in fewer gay people. It just results in closeted miserable gay people. The elders in our community back then in the Paleolithic thought that keeping gay away from the kids would make kids not-gay. Instead it just made for miserable closeted gay kids, some of whom ended up ending themselves.

Things are so much healthier for gay kids today. We need to keep it that way. Because back then, not all gay kids survived. And for that matter, that is still true in some families today.

— Badtux the “the gay agenda is live kids” Penguin

Read Full Post »

The Pentagon reminds people that it doesn’t take orders from a Twitter account.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff say that there is a procedure to follow for policy changes, and whatever drivel spews out on a Twitter account isn’t part of that process. Until the Secretary of Defense receives an executive order, in writing, directing him to change the military’s policies regarding transgender people, and until the Secretary of Defense issues policy guidance to the various military branches, and that policy guidance is in turn passed down the chain of commands as orders, the current status quo stands.

Secretary of Defense “Mad Dog” Mattis is, of course, on vacation this week. We’ll see whether Mattis gets such an executive order after he gets back from vacation….

– Badtux the “WTF?” Penguin

Read Full Post »

So an F-35 decries the amount of spending on transgender troops

F-35 fighter in its natural habitat

Which, it turns out, is a huge amount:

“They spend how much on transgender medical services? $8.4 million? My God that’s like four screws and a couple of bolts on my ejection seat,” the F-35 told reporters, in between sips of cognac during its lunch break. “I’m so glad Trump is ending this disgraceful waste of military spending.”

Yeppers, Teh Donald fucked over his queer supporters today, banning transgender troops because of “tremendous healthcare costs”. Which, as the F-35 above points out, is such a huge amount that it could pay for four screws and a couple of bolts on a F-35’s ejection seat.

So much for the notion that Trump wasn’t going to govern as a right-wing religious zealot…

– Badtux the “Wow, what a stupid excuse!” Penguin

Read Full Post »

So, uhm, what have you been browsing, Benny?

Reminder: targeted ads served by third-party ad providers serve ads based upon your browser history. So let’s look at this guy’s tweet….

Benny Johnson is a right-wing pundit who pushes baseless alt-right conspiracy theories in various right-wing publications.

So, uhm, Benny, about your browsing history… is there something you aren’t telling us?

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Read Full Post »

Oh yay, another tighty rightie drops his tighty whities and waves his teeny weenie in a public restroom

This time it’s in Kentucky. This glorious example of Republican hypocrisy is named David Narramore, 54, of Whitesburg, Kentucky. His mistake: he crossed the state line into Johnson City, Tennessee (gosh, how appropriate a name!) and waved his teeny weenie at… uhm… a male loss prevention officer in the next stall. Who promptly took him to the loss prevention office and called the cops. Then when the cops showed up, this glorious example of law abiding citizen resisted arrest and had to be tasered and, when that didn’t work, he got his ass beaten down by the cops until they got his tighty whitey self locked, stuffed, and booked.

Sheesh. Are there any of these anti-gay crusader types who ain’t gayer than the gay mayor of Gaytown?!

– Badtux the Baffled Penguin

Read Full Post »

OMG! Gay french fries!

Bay Area McDonald’s will serve large orders of French fries in limited-edition rainbow boxes for Pride Month, June 2017. (Photo courtesy of McDonald’s of the Greater Bay Area)

Yep, that’s what the preacher who got upset about Starbucks cups is upset about now. McDonalds french fries are gay!

Uhm…. say whuh? I mean, do these french fries copulate with each other or something? How do you sex a french fry to know they’re doing the nasty with the same sex, anyhow? They don’t have any externally visible genitalia!

Then he says that maybe McDonalds should serve some Christian french fries. Uhm. They’re french fries. They’re food. Food doesn’t have a religion. You eat it, you don’t worship it. (Though I must admit that some of the food I’ve eaten over the years has been worthy of worship, thinking about some places in the French QUarter that I ate in over the decades, then a New Mexican place in South Phoenix…). Since when do fried potatoes have a religion? Is this dude dotty or something? (Answer: Yes.)

Meanwhile, the gay wedding cake case is going to the Supreme Court. The baker’s argument is that, apparently, a cake is speech. Say wha? I could have sworn that a cake was food! Since when is a food speech? Something you do with a food might be speech — for example, throwing a lemon pie at a piñata of Donald Trump. But a food itself? It’s just food. Something you eat for nourishment (or at least enjoyment). Duh.

I mean, what’s the difference between a gay wedding cake and just a plain old wedding cake? I guess a gay wedding cake is fabulous, sure. But it’s a cake. It doesn’t do any mano a mano sexual acts with other cakes, because, like, it lacks arms, and legs, and external genitalia, and reproductive organs, and …. So gay cake sex must be boring as hell. They just lay on each other waiting to be eaten? WTF?

Man, these tighty whitey righties could have chosen anything on the universe to get upset about — war, famine, poverty, Remy Ma beating Nicki Minaj at the BET Awards– but they chose food? For realz? Man. You couldn’t make this up. If I wrote this as part of a novel, the editor would return it right back to me saying “too unrealistic, nobody could be so small-minded as to get upset by food items.”

Yet there they are.

Food.

What a thing to get upset by. Sheesh!

– Badtux the Baffled Penguin

Read Full Post »

Pastor Who Said Pulse Victims Got What They Deserved Gets Sentenced To 35 Years For Child Molestation

So the anti-gay pastor who claimed that the gay victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre were responsible for their own deaths because they were gay … is in fact not only gay, but a gay pedophile. Go figure.

Like I always say: Scratch an anti-gay activist, reveal someone who’s gayer than the gay mayor of gaytown. Look: Straight people like me, we just don’t obsess about gay sex night and day like these anti-gay activists. There’s only one kind of person who obsesses about gay sex night and day, and the word to describe that person is… well… not straight, anyhow.

– Badtux the Eye-rolling Penguin

Read Full Post »

Outreach to who, already?

So the criticism is that the Democratic Party hasn’t done proper outreach to: racists, xenophobes, Christian Dominionists who want to impose Biblical law upon non-Christians, bigots who want to stone gays and trans-people to death, and other such deplorables of that sort. At which point I say: Wha?! Frankly, if the Democratic Party had embraced bigots, I would have voted Green Party because I can’t support a party that embraces bigots.

Not to mention that it would have been futile in the first place. Even if the Democrats had reached out to bigots, the Republican Party appears to have a lock on the bigot vote at present, having elected a President who actually was *convicted*, in a court of law, of being a bigot (he was fined major dollars multiple times for refusing to rent his apartments to black couples).

No, what the Democratic Party needs to do outreach to is, well, Democrats. If the same number of Democrats had voted in this election as had voted in 2012, we wouldn’t be talking about President Donald Trump, because the race would not have even been close. Not that it actually was close — Hillary Clinton won by 2.5 million votes, after all, the largest margin of victory-that-is-not-victory ever in American history, giving the lie to the notion that the United States is a democracy because in a democracy the person with the greatest number of votes wins. But the fact that 5 million Democrats stayed home means that what would have been a 7.5 million vote blowout instead turned into a 2.5 million vote win that was a defeat.

So: Democrats need to reach out to Democrats. Leave the racists, xenophobes, Christian Dominionists, bigots, neo-Nazis, and other such deplorables to the Republicans. The notion that Democrats need to reach out to deplorable people is contradicted by the electoral victories of Barack Obama. None of the deplorables voted for Obama, yet he won. Why? He reached out to Democrats. That’s why.

And the Democratic Party, going forward, needs to do the same.

– Badtux the “Fuck the deplorables” Penguin

Read Full Post »

Good riddance to bad rubbish — Judge Roy Moore gone for good.

He has been suspended for the remainder of his term for ordering county clerks to disobey a Federal court order.

The court order was regarding gay marriage — the Federal court ruled that the Supreme Court had legalized gay marriage, so the State of Alabama had to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Judge Moore then issued an order to county probate judges telling them they didn’t need to obey the Federal court order because state judges didn’t need to comply with opinions of the United States SUpreme Court.

That, of course, is utter balderdash — that’s a question that got settled in a little fracas between 1861 and 1865, over 150 years ago. The Court of the Judiciary rightly called foul. At which point Judge Moore and his supporters started whining that the court was in the thrall of gay agenda yada yada yada.

So is it true? I read the final decision of the Court of the Judiciary, which is charged with policing the judiciary. Every single justification put forth for suspending Judge Moore for the remainder of his term (which, essentially, is forever, because he will not be eligible to run again) had nothing to do with gays or gay marriage. Every single legal justification examines specifically whether Judge Moore, in fact, ordered county probate judges to ignore a Federal court order, and whether such an order was legal or authorized by the Alabama Constitution or within his power as a single sitting judge on the Alabama Supreme Court. Furthermore, many of the members of this court don’t even agree with the Supreme Court’s June 2015 ruling legalizing gay marriage. Rather, the question was whether Judge Moore had violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Alabama Supreme Court, as required by the 1901 Alabama Constitution and which he had sworn an oath to obey as part of his oath of office.

Specifically:

• Canon 1, he failed to uphold the integrity of the judiciary,
• Canon 2, he failed to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety by participating in proceedings where he had a conflict of interest,
• Canon 2A, he failed to respect and comply with the law,
• Canon 2B, failed to avoid conduct that brings the judicial office into disrepute,
• Canon 3, he failed to perform the duties of his office impartially,
• Canon 3A(6), he failed to abstain from public comment about a pending proceeding in his court.

Read the opinion for more details. None of that has anything to do with gay marriage. All of it is about Judge Moore engaging in conduct that he’d sworn an oath to not do.

The court has suspended him without pay for the remainder of his term. This means, effectively, forever, because he will not be eligible to run again after his term is over. And to that, I say: Good riddance.

– Badtux the “Goodbye to bad rubbish” Penguin

Read Full Post »

What Would Jesus Drive?

So discussion turned to the important question of the evening, WWJD. That is, What Would Jesus Drive?

The Prius dude said that Jesus would drive a Prius. Of course. A pious Prius driver is pretty darn stereotypical nowadays.

The F-150 driver said that Jesus would drive a Ford F-150. Because you couldn’t fit twelve disciples into a Prius.

The RAM Cummins diesel driver said “pah, Jesus wasn’t gay. He’d drive a *real* truck, a *diesel* truck with a *Cummins* engine, not some gay Ford.”

Then I pointed out that Jesus hung out with twelve guys. Sounded pretty gay to me.

Dead silence.

:).

Meanwhile, back to Donald Trump and his secret plan to defeat ISIS:

The last time a Presidential candidate said he had a secret plan to end a war, it cost 25,000 American lives, the lives of half a million Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, roughly a trillion dollars in today’s money — and we lost anyhow. Yeah, I’m not fond of politicians with secret plans to end wars…

– Badtux the Secret Penguin

Read Full Post »