Good morning, everybody. I’m drinking my coffee, listening to some Hot Recordz and glancing through my Google Reader and what do I find? Oh it’s one of the wingnuttiest writers, Ed Whelan, from one of America’s saddest websites, getting his panties in a wad over the fact that there are gay lawyers at the Justice Department, presumably being gay throughout the entire workday and even at lunch, and even working on cases that involve discrimination, and thus mucking up the wingnut’s sadly tenuous sense of security and warmth:
One of the attorneys on the DOJ brief is Aaron D. Schuham…A reader passes along that Schuham’s same-sex partner is (or, at least as of the 2009 White House Easter Egg Roll, was) Chris Anders, federal policy director for the ACLU’s LGBT Rights project.
Another of the attorneys on the DOJ brief is Sharon M. McGowan. As another reader calls to my attention, McGowan was also a staffer on the ACLU’s LGBT Rights project, and the New York Times announced last year her same-sex marriage to the Family Equality Council’s “federal lobbyist on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender family issues.”
Run away, it’s GAYS! Perhaps realizing what a sissy he sounded like in the above section, Ed quickly added at the end:
I will note that Schuham and McGowan are only two of seven DOJ attorneys on the brief—and apparently the two most junior—so I don’t want to overstate their possible influence. That said, I’ll also note…
Blah blah blah blah blah. Mission accomplished. The National Review readers who are most likely to lose their marbles over gays being anywhere at any time [likely, Ed’s fellow writers, Kathryn Lopez and Maggie Gallagher] had already received the ‘fraidy message: teh gayz are a-comin’ to git yer!
The case in question involves a religious school and whether or not they are exempted from anti-discrimination laws. Adam Serwer asks the relevant questions:
What does this have to do with the merits of the case? Unclear, except that gay people, wanting all those special rights and whatnot, don’t really belong in a case involving a religious organization, since gay rights infringe on the rights of religious people to discriminate against gays, even though that’s not what the case is about. It’s about a teacher who claims she was fired because of her narcolepsy, and whether or not the so-called “ministerial exception” to federal anti-discrimination laws applies in this context. But you let gays near religious freedom cases, and pretty soon they’ll be…something terrible.
Something so terrible that we can’t even imagine it, much less talk about it. And we all know about the dangers of the homo-narcoleptic movement in this country. Or at least Ed Whelan knows about them. You’re getting very, very sleepy, Ed!
Adam, with the conclusions:
Part of Whelan’s problem is that since both Schuham and McGowan have backgrounds in civil rights law, they have no business um, working on civil rights cases.
Heh, yeah, that’s part of what passes on “thinking” for right wing morons these days. More conclusions:
But Whelan’s bigger problem, judging by his value-added, is that only straight people should be allowed near the law, lest it get all gayified. In April Whelan complained that the judge in the California Prop 8 case, Vaughn Walker, should have recused himself because he was in a same-sex relationship and so he stood to benefit directly from overturning the law. Of course by the logic of anti-gay rights advocates like Whelan, a straight judge trying to preserve his “traditional marriage” would also benefit directly, and should also recuse themselves. But since the latter wouldn’t have “trumped” the right of conservatives like Whelan to define and limit the civil rights of same-sex couples that wouldn’t have been so terrible.
Yep! Which brings us back to the headline of my piece! Heterosexual Conservative Christian Supremacists are so convinced of their own stupid lies, the ones they have been telling themselves for generations, at bedtime and on Sunday mornings, about how they and only they are the normal, real Americans, and how the rest of us are somehow lesser, that they view it as self-evident that only they should be the arbiters of what’s fair and just in this country. Of course, as the rest of society passes them by leaps and bounds in almost every area [but let’s start with shoe-tying ability], their only psychological choice is to double down on the lies, if only in their own heads. So it is that they become more and more hysterical at the prospect of people who are different from them possibly having a real say in how things go in ‘Murka, and they forget to use their euphemisms, openly arguing for their own supremacist beliefs.
It’s weird and kinda sad to look at.
Now, the question is whether Ed Whelan actually believes this stuff or not. Meh, who knows? Thers brought up an important point last night, which we should always remember when we’re dealing with wingnuts of the National Review variety:
But please let’s not forget that the reason we have wingnuts is that wingnuttery is a heavily subsidized industry. Thar’s gold in that thar dumb. NRO is paid for propaganda, not a free market success. Townhall etc.
‘Zactly. As I said above, mission accomplished. There are still sadly those in our midst for whom the message, “It’s bees, bees, everywhere! GAYS, GAYS, EVERYWHERE!,” resonates, and folks like Ed are more than willing to take home a paycheck for the purpose of scaring them.
[h/t John Cole]
