There is a wonderful character on Whoopi Goldberg’s new sitcom–a handyman named Naseem, who identifies himself as a Persian from the Middle East and gets furious when he is mistaken for an Arab. Much of the show’s humor comes from the fact that he sees an obvious distinction that is invisible to everyone else. A recent discussion about gay rights and the transgendered community made me think about Naseem.
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Category Archives: Gay Rights
When Inmates Run the Asylum
Is it just me, or is the whole world being run by lunatics?
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Log Cabin Republicans
A few months ago, I got an email from Toledo, Ohio. Someone in Log Cabin Republicans had read, ‘What?s a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU,’ and wanted me to speak to their chapter. I explained that I would be happy to speak, but that I was no longer Republican.
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Gay Wedgings
Allow me to suggest that the real threat to the Republic is not gay weddings. It is gay wedgings–the use of homophobia to create a partisan "wedge issue." Simply put, a wedge issue is the deliberate politicization of a highly charged emotional conflict over social values, intended to drive a wedge between voters and a particular party or candidate. Gun control,especially in the south,can be a wedge issue. ("Those fancy-pants liberals’ll pry this gun out of my cold dead hands..") Vouchers become a wedge issue when the term is used as code for "let’s get your kids out of those classes where they have to sit alongside black children."
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Dorothy Has Left Kansas
Hellfire Nation, a recent book by political science professor James Morone, examines American history through the lens of moral and religious fervor, and makes a pretty good case for the proposition that America is preoccupied with sin and salvation?often to the detriment of national interest or even common sense. The hysterical backlash against recent progress on gay rights certainly supports his thesis.
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