The biggest problem is that people are going to believe him. I’ve seen boards where (seemingly educated) people were making fun of the recent protests all over the country, with the logic that “why are they protesting outside of California? You think they’d be smart enough to protest where there are laws against them” and when presented with the statement that 30 states have already passed amendments and all but a handful have passed laws, responded with “I didn’t know that. I don’t really follow this stuff. How was I supposed to know?”  Even our local news covered (at least they did) the protests as purely against Prop 8. Not a word about equality.

HUCKABEE: But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge.

I dare him to say that to the family of Matthew Shepherd.

So, apparently, a minority can have the same rights as everyone else only after they’ve reached level X of institutionalized beatings, mass arrests, group punishment, and deaths?  Gee whiz, thanks for clarifying that, Huck.

A lot of people try to learn form their mistakes, not endlessly repeat them.

Shorter Gov. Huckabee:
God it was fun kicking the crap out of the niggers and makin’ ‘em crawl to get their rights.  Les’ doit to the homasexuals as well!
Yeah, nothing like a white, Christian southerner telling folks how much they have to suffer to get their civil rights.  These folks have gone beyond parody; they’ve made cognitive dissonance seem normal.

At an intellectually angry level, I hate the complete paradox in his statement:  “People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, ... But that’s not really the issue ... [W]e’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights.”  No, civil marriage is a civil right, period, end of story.  That’s why the right has gone to such lengths to conflate civil marriage and religious marriage.  Nobody will be able to force a homosexual union on a religious institution, and most-to-all gays don’t want to.  I’d be willing to bet good money right now that most of the religious folks who oppose gay marriage don’t have an adequate grasp of the fact that civil marriage and religious marriage are separate things and the access to and performance of one does not mandate a right to another. 

Leaving aside the fact that Behar called him out and he didn’t have a real answer to the fact that segregation was also a (biblically-mandated, remember?) institution, “redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights” is code language for “civil rights stop when and where religious mandates say they do”.  We know it, he knows it, he just doesn’t have the stones to say so.

By his own definition, we should have an Equal Rights Amendment by now.  I think women have suffered enough, don’t you?

Can we ask him where he stands on that?

“Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

“Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone.”

“Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself.”

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

The message of Jesus of Nazareth was one of radical egalitarianism. That every human being is made in the image of the divine, is worthy of dignity and respect. That we are all equal before divine law, and that we should do on earth as it is in heaven.

One of my favourite churches in downtown Toronto always puts up this message for Pride Week:

“God delighteth in diversity.” (Aquinas)

That’s really odd;  I posted a comment slightly critical of the whole “NiceGuys” obsession on this website, and it appears that from certain IP’s I get an error message that “This site is currently unavailable.”

But the site is not unavailable.  It’s just not possible that grownups would block someone for such.

In the 50’s and 60’s people like Huckabee were saying that the blacks didn’t deserve civil rights, because X, Y, and Z conditions weren’t et (or better yet, “whaddya mean, black people already have rights!”).  Whatever.  Same shit, different day.

Page 9: “I am an heiress to the Almighty Eternal Creator, and I am fully God and fully human.”

That’s some delicious, Grade-A crazy right there. Other gems are scattered throughout. Someone out there can probably tell us exactly which disorder psychiatry would tag Ms. D.Q. Mariette Do-Nguyen with.

whoops! response went to wrong post… sorry!

Andrew!  A Fellow Torontonian Pandagonian!
Weeeeeeeiiiirrrrrdddd.
seeker6079 littledamnedatsymbol gmail dot com

Seeker:

Ex-pat, I’m afraid. My wife’s career has taken us to Belfast, NI. And if anyone imagines the fundies in North America are bad, they ought to come visit 17th century Europe sometime:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/first-minister-peter-robinson-backs-wifes-view-that-gays-are-an-abomination-14023693.html

He had the unmitigated gall to say that exactly how many days before the ****ing Day of Remembrance. That’s it, I’m dragging him to Syracuse, shoving his face into the dirt and pointing out how it’s on his god damn head. He and his ilk have been killing us for how many years and he gets to pretend like the worst a gay person has had is a broken nail?

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

A good journalist would have been better prepared than Behar to point out his direct error on Prop 8.  But this is the View where feelings and adopted talking points reign.  Also, I believed all significant gay rights could be achieved through private contract until somebody pointed out how many (at least hundreds) instances in the Federal Code where benefits or rights were granted to “spouses”.  Maybe somebody who has that at his or her quick disposal could send it to Huck.

To be fair (my tragic character flaw) to Huck his comment about hoses and Lewis seemed to mean that the oppression of POC was much worse than it has been for homosexuals. I don’t think he meant you have to be abused in order to earn rights.  The Mathew Shepard point is a good counter.  Maybe I’m swayed by his congeniality, but I see him as bent and wrong more that evil and hateful.

I hope Barbara Walters is making a shitpot of money from this show.  She’s done good work as a journalist (I like her celebrity interviews much less) and she’s allowed to coast now as far as I am concerned.

Separate, but equal.
The only people who might need their heads cracked are the wingnuts.

Everytime he opens his mouth, I imagine Naomi Watts hissing “FUCKABEES!” and running off wearing a bonnet and overalls, mouth full of blueberries.

It’s my happy place.

The very people who voted for Barack Obama in California…also voted to sustain traditional marriage.

Like it or not, that is a very true statement. By the Associated Press exit poll, 70% of blacks who voted in CA voted*for* Prop 8 and 74% of black women voted *for* prop 8.

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1378391.html

So, where is the rage at the blacks? Why hasn’t this been discussed?

PC, that’s why. This privileged group is innoculated from any criticism from the left, even though they are a big part of why Prop 8 passed.

Look in the mirror

@ MiddleageLiberal

This was the candidate that supported special camps for gays because of AIDS. He’s both/and.

I direct the house bigot Bob Z. to this post:

Simulation Techniques: Prop 8, Acts of Omission, Racial Scapegoating

Yes, math does matter.

Using a number of simulation techniques, I’ve calculated that even given the proportions estimated by the CNN Exit Poll (10% black electorate, 70% vote yes), Prop 8 would have passed with or without the black vote. I’ve posted a blog about this on my blog space and will present the results with updated numbers here.

As of 11/17/08 2:45pm, California Prop 8 Votes Are
Yes: 6,322,732
No:  5,796,637

Extrapolating CNN Exit Poll Proportions:
Total Black Votes:  1,211,937
Black Yes:  848,356
Black No :  363,581

Simulation #1: Blacks Do Not Vote (i.e., 1963 Civil Rights, with 2008 Social Attitudes)

CA Yes:  5,474,376 50.2%  Prop 8 Passes
CA No: 5,433,056 49.8%

Simulation #2: Blacks Vote 1 to 1 (i.e., 50/50 split)

CA Yes:  6,080,345 50.2%  Prop 8 Passes
CA No:  6,039,024 49.8%

Simulation #3: Blacks Vote as Progressively as Other Racial/Ethnic Groups (i.e., Whites/Asians: 49% Yes)

CA Yes:  6,068,225 50.1%  Prop 8 Passes
CA No:  6,051,144 49.9%

Thus, in all three simulations, Prop 8 would have passed, admittedly by a smaller proportion. Nonetheless, the numbers are the numbers. Blacks cannot be blamed, statistically speaking, for the passage of Prop 8 even given all of the extrapolations that statisticians are known to make caveats about (i.e., sampling size, representativeness of sample, research design only captures does voting ON Election Day).

What Proportion of Blacks Would Have Needed To Vote Yes in Order for Prop 8 to be Rejected?

Simulation #4: Prop 8 is Rejected with 50.1% of Californians Voting Yes.

CA Yes:  6,047,565   47.3% of Blacks Vote Yes
CA NO:  6,071,804   52.7% of Blacks Vote No   Prop 8 rejected

Conclusion: Given that no other racial/ethnic group’s rejection of Prop 8 even came close to these figures and that black liberalism has been contested since the Reconstruction era (think DuBois vs Washington struggle), I find that it is not plausible to blame blacks for the passage of Prop 8 by statistics alone.

Go read the rest.

Like it or not, that is a very true statement. By the Associated Press exit poll, 70% of blacks who voted in CA voted*for* Prop 8 and 74% of black women voted *for* prop 8.

Since black voters are about 10% of the registered voters in California, they did not affect the outcome as Pam posted above.

Maybe the reason we’re not talking about it is that it never happened except inside your head as you desperately flail around for someone to take the blame off of bigots like yourself.

You know, I don’t think even Huckabee believes that diarrhea he’s spewing from his mouth.  Or rather, I don’t think he gives a damn.  He doesn’t care about African Americans, and no amount of suffering could convince him that homosexuals have “earned” their civil rights.  This is a ploy. 

Huckabee and his ilk have been working very long and hard to separate gay rights from civil rights - and they’ve taken particular care to target blacks as they do so, implying that gays are “hijacking” the heritage of the civil rights struggle.  That’s what he’s doing here. 

Right wingers’ only successes this fall came in getting anti-gay ballot measures passed, so some - like Huckabee - seem to have decided that anti-gay bigotry is where the future of the GOP lies.  Perhaps they hope to split the coalition that elected Obama by driving a wedge between gays and African Americans; maybe they even hope that they can win over some AAs by playing on anti-gay bigotry (hey, appealing to bigotry is their stock-in-trade - they have to at least try it!).  It makes the outreach efforts Pam suggests that much more important.

Not to mention that there actually has been a lot of discussion about the effect that the black vote had on Prop 8.  The accusation that Bob Z threw out was that there was no rage against them for PC reasons, which is bullshit whether or not they were actually responsible for its passage.

There was a LOT of discussion, including more than one thread here on this site. What didn’t happen, at least here, was a complete refusal to actually look at facts, nor a willingness to stop at blame for blame’s sake.

The anger directed at, for example, the Mormon Church has a lot more factual basis.

Gotta love projection. Says a lot about Bob Z. No argument is settled on its merits, just on gut feelings. Explains how resistant his homophobia is to logic.

I dunno, do you love the bonnet? Can you deal with my infinite nature?

Since black voters are about 10% of the registered voters in California, they did not affect the outcome as Pam posted above.

I don’t even live in California so I couldn’t have affected the outcome and yet, you rail against me and not those blacks who voted YES on prop 8.

Why do they get a pass for their ‘bigotry’? They’re BLACK…that’s why

Support of Prop 8 is not the sole identifying mark of a bigot, Bob. You may not live in California, but you’ve certainly proven yourself to be a bigot over and over here, in a multitude of ways.

Bob, do you have reading comprehension problems?  As was already posted, “blacks” were not responsible for Prop 8 passing.  The ones who voted for it share some of the blame, but at the end of the day, their votes would not have been enough to pass it or fail it.

Churches, on the other hand did effect the outcome.

Why do they get a pass for their ‘bigotry’? They’re BLACK…that’s why

God, you’re a tedious little misanthrope.

1.  They haven’t got “a pass”.  It has been well debated in the liberal blogsphere, including on this site, where there was a very early thread on it.

2.  As noted by others this is an both/all/and blog.  If there are multiple reasons for an event occurring then those multiple reasons will be canvassed.  Regarding “Prop H8” the Mormons have come in for criticism for their massive efforts too, and this particular thread canvasses the outlook of evangelical Protestants.  About the only Fault group which hasn’t been addressed yet is the leadership of the anti-8 campaign, which seems, on the surface, to have absorbed all incompetent strategists that used to run all Dem election campaigns.

3.  Nobody but nobody on this blog is going to be so paralytically stupid as to miss the fact that your screaming at us to start screaming at the blacks is just the most recent—and one of the most pathetic, useless and transparent—efforts to get different progressive constituencies to claw at each other’s throats rather than those of the people who are actually responsible for the problem.

Face it, BobZ.  Even if we take your political views out of the equation you’re a bit of a self-aggrandizing cockroach crawling around in the banquet of honest debate.

Once upon a time, a black person was offered a job that Bob Z wanted.

Bob Z got angry.

Bob Z decided to hate all black people.

Bob Z then found the internets.

The end.

FiveThirtyEight.com’s Prop 8 Myths.

deep6, you forgot ‘Bob Z decided to hate all gay people” and “Bob Z thought, wouldn’t it be way cool if black people and gay people could fight!”.

By the way, Bob Z isn’t anywhere near as funny as Angry Bob.

Bob Z then discovered gay black people and BRAINSPLODED.

...I’m a sucker for happy endings.

:-D Excellent suggestions!

Poor Bob.  Somebody didn’t get enough hugs.

So, apparently, a minority can have the same rights as everyone else only after they’ve reached level X of institutionalized beatings, mass arrests, group punishment, and deaths?  Gee whiz, thanks for clarifying that, Huck.

I’m coming around to the opinion that the social conservative mindset really does work this way.  People who aren’t straight white Christian men have to prove special worthiness, preferably by suffering a lot, to earn human rights.  In this worldview, African-Americans didn’t get civil rights in the ‘60s because their cause was just and they fought for it; they got civil rights because they let cops beat them up until they had earned those rights.

You can even get liberal folks to think in this mindset by framing it the right way—for example, by trying to pit gays against African-Americans in a pointless “who’s gotten more beatdowns” contest.

...efforts to get different progressive constituencies to claw at each other’s throats rather than those of the people who are actually responsible for the problem.

This line of ‘logic’ reminds me of the lady in NY who refused to blame the perp that killed her son even though he pulled the trigger. No, it was CORPORATIONS!!!!

And in like fashion, you refuse to blame those who pulled the levers.

It was stupid then….and it’s stupid now.

It was stupid then….and it’s stupid now.

If you were talking about your own posts then you have, for once, got something correct and coherent.  Otherwise the post quoted above is pretty much standard for you. 

[Ends pointless conversation with troll.]

It Was Stupid Then . . . And It’s Stupid Now:  My Life Story

by Bob Zimmerman

If you need to get cracked upside the head to get your civil rights, how did straight white guys end up with all the rights?

Guy doesn’t understand the origin of the word “faggot”.

Er, I believe it was derived as a derogatory term for an old woman, probably not related to burning at all.  It then got applied to gays comparing them to women.  I wouldn’t rely on that link, if I were you.

Go with the origins of the pink triangle instead.

Call me naive, but I’m kind of disappointed in Huckabee. Every once in a while, I see him interviewed on the Daily Show or elsewhere and he seems like a decent human being, with a sense of humor and everything. And then he comes out with stuff like this.

If you need to get cracked upside the head to get your civil rights, how did straight white guys end up with all the rights?

Cracking each other upside the head until one group ended up on top - after all, most groups came here because they were getting their heads cracked back home.  Some were even sent here forcibly after getting their heads cracked. 

Only the top head-cracking group got the honor of calling themselves “white”.  Heck, I’m Irish and pale as milk (minus the freckles), but back in the day we were called - I hope you’ll pardon the expression - “niggers turned inside out”.  In their turn, African Americans were sometimes called “smoked Irish”. 

But then, when formerly head-cracked groups - like African-Americans and the Irish - looked like they might join together and turn the tables on the head-crackers, the definition of “white” conveniently expanded to include the group that was most similar to the head-crackers, thus giving them a stake in oppressing those who might have been their allies.

That’s what’s going on here.  The definition of “white” may have stretched about as far as it can - let’s face it, the Italians and the Greeks were a stretch as it is - but the head-crackers can still offer honorary “one of us” status if it means keeping at least one group they can legally oppress.

You gey dimmicracks ought to get rite with J*sus or your all goin to heil:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bstewart23/2197661926/

So, um, how did Huckabee ‘earn’ his civil rights?  Just askin…and who gives a flyer what somebody’s unoriginal, second-hand interpretation of fables and a saga are?  Civil rights are secular, marriage is secular.  I guess if they’d asked the question properly, ie:

“Do you believe that equal rights for a minority, as upheld by the Supreme Court of California, should be removed?”

Nobody would answer ‘yes’ to that.  This is all about being punitive to people who don’t fit your bland, cookie-cutter idea of ‘normal’.  In my world, that’s not normal.

Oh, and Zimmerman.  Nice try but no cigar.

(born in TO but now in farm country west of there)

Back in the early Sixties, my uncle, who was gay, was murdered and stuffed into the trunk of his own car by a man he hit on. My mother went through all kinds of hell before he was found. The murderer played the Homosexual Panic card and got off scott-free.

Not oppressed enough? Fuck you, Huckabee. I hope you end up in your own conception of Hell.

Commenters have chosen to personally attack the messanger, but have not refuted the message and that is:

Blacks pulled the levers by an overwhelming majority and yet liberals blame others who did not actually VOTE.

It’s a bitter little pill, isn’t it?

You’re not even reading the other posts in this thread, are you, Bob?  You’re just carrying on your own parallel thread, where our replies match the script in your head, rather than what we’re actually saying.

Seraph,

I’m simply not buying what you all are selling. The responsibility lies with the voter.

This reminds me of all those Democrat Senators that voted for the war and then whined “We wuz fucked”. So either they are stupid or GWB was so brilliant that they had no choice.

It’s all bullshit.

The buck stops with those who vote. It’s their responsibility to understand the facts before they vote and if they don’t vote your way, it’s crap to simply say they were “lied to”.

It’s called personal responsibility.

Bob, what you buy is entirely your business.

A bit of advice, though: this is a written medium.  People can go back and read the whole thread.  If someone has responded to the substance of your post and you simply declare that no one has, then everyone will know that you’re either a liar or a loony or both.  Nor does simply declaring an argument to be “stupid”, without any further elaboration count as an actual refutation.

These things may work okay for you in a spoken argument, or in the circles you’re used to moving in, but trying to use them as tactics here means shooting yourself in the foot.  With a machine gun, in your case.

It’s good to know that just being against homosexual ‘marriage’ and voting for Prop 8, as 70% of the blacks voting in CA did, does not make one a “bigot”.

That’s right. Just look at the apologies above for all of the black people that believe, OVERWHELMINGLY, that homosexual ‘marriage’ should not be.

They’re not bigots.

heh.