A U.S. judge appeared sympathetic to a lesbian federal employee's bid to strike down a law denying health-insurance benefits to her spouse, in the first hearing since the Obama administration decided to quit defending the statute.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Via JMG: MINNESOTA: GOP Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch Resigns in Adultery Scandal
Defender of marriage and Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch (R) has resigned her post in disgrace after allegations of an affair with a Senate staffer. Koch, who is is married with one child, was one of the proponents of Minnesota's 2012 anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. [Update below]At a Capitol news conference Friday, Sen. Geoff Michel (R-Edina) said Senate staff recently brought up allegations of an “inappropriate relationship between Majority Leader Koch and a Senate staffer.” "We sit here with a lot of humility, sadness, and shock,” Michel said. Michel said multiple staffers reported allegations to Senate leaders. He said he doesn’t know how long the relationship was going on and legally cannot discuss the name of the Senate staffer involved with Sen. Koch. The Edina senator could only specify that it was “inappropriate” a “conflict of interest” and created an “unstable work environment for staff.” On whether or not the relationship was sexual, Michel said "I think there's only two people who could fully characterize that,” but GOP leaders said they never heard the word “sexual” used when the allegations surfaced.And another anti-gay hypocrite bites the dust! Below is a bit of the May vote to place the anti-gay amendment on the 2012 ballot.
UPDATE: Late this afternoon the media learned that while Koch has stepped down as majority leader, she may continue as a state senator. She did say that she will not seek reelection in 2012. Koch was the first female majority leader of the Minnesota Senate and her tenure was the shortest in its history.Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:
Tricycle Daily Dharma December 17, 2011
True Vision, True Understanding
The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding. |
Friday, December 16, 2011
JMG Asshat Of The Day - Michael Brown
"[Hillary Clinton's] speech, which was hailed by gay activists worldwide, was an exercise in hypocrisy, not to mention an insult to several billion people worldwide. Mrs. Clinton had the audacity to compare religious or cultural objections to homosexual practice to 'the justification offered for violent practices towards women like honor killings, widow burning, or female genital mutilation,' as if the religious and moral objection to men having sex with men is somehow equivalent to the Muslim practice of honor killings or the Hindu practice of burning widows. [snip]"She stated that 'opinions [on homosexuality] are still evolving', just as opinions evolved over time with slavery, and 'what was once justified as sanctioned by God is now properly reviled as an unconscionable violation of human rights.' In other words, if you have an issue with the lewd sexual displays at your city’s gay pride parade, or if you’re not comfortable with a man who dresses as a woman using the ladies bathroom, or if you don’t want to see a kid raised by two lesbians and thereby deprived of having a father, or if you believe that God made men to be with women, then you are the moral equivalent of a slave trader or a slave owner." - Michael Brown, writing for Town Hall.
Via JMG: STUDY: Gay Marriage Improves Health?
A just-published study indicates that gay men who live in states with legalized same-sex marriage may have fewer health problems.
During the 12 months after the 2003 legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, there was a significant decrease in medical care visits, mental health visits and mental health-care costs among gay and bisexual men, compared to the 12 months before the law changed. This led to a 13 percent reduction in health-care visits and a 14 percent reduction in health-care costs. The health benefits were similar for single gay men and those with partners. No reduction was seen in HIV-related health visits by HIV-positive men, which suggests that those in need of HIV/AIDS care continued to use needed health-care services, the researchers said.
Via Huffington: Rosie O'Donnell Sounds Off On David Letterman, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, And More
"I feel super gay!" says Rosie O'Donnell, bursting with pride and attributing it to the fact that she is newly in love, engaged to Michelle Rounds, and also that she is turning 50 -- the "fuck you 50s" -- and is "not going to lay back and take it anymore" when it comes to speaking out against what s...
Via jMG; Kayak.Com Caves To Florida Hate Group
Right Wing Watch reports that the online travel site Kayak has joined Lowe's in caving to the Florida Family Association.Yesterday the company, citing concerns about “specific content” (which it didn’t identify) admitted that it had joined Lowe's in pulling ads from the show. Kayak later posted an explanation of its actions, but instead of simply apologizing and reinstating the ads, Chief Marketing Officer Robert Birge decided to keep digging, claiming that the blame should go to TLC, which “wasn’t upfront about the nature of the show.” Since the complaints from the Florida Family Association are that the show portrays Muslims as ordinary, peaceful Americans, it’s hard to take Birge’s explanation seriously. The name of the show is, after all, “All American Muslim.” What exactly did Birge expect? Did he want more stereotypical anti-Muslim caricatures, like the FFA did? Birge goes on to say that he’d never actually watched the show before, but now that he’s seen it, he insists that, “The show sucks.”
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