Even 5-inch Deep Sea Squid Do It!

From the featured Science story in the Times:

A five-and-a-half-inch deep-sea squid that lives a solitary life up to half a mile down in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean is the latest addition to the hundreds of species that are known to engage in same-sex sex.

So, so then Gay Marriage just has to make sense, doncha see?! The next six paragraphs continue to discuss same-sex activity of some sort in nature. Not until the seventh paragraph do we find a description of this squid's "same-sex sex" - the males simply fire off sperm in the direction of the nearest squid that might pass by, in the hope that in the deep-sea's blackness it might catch a female. Yep, that's it - no Brokeback Mountain romanticism after all. Then, at the end of the article, the writer has the nerve to pooh-pooh any anthropomorphism that might appear in the less responsible press.

Dr. Hoving was prepared for attention to the same-sex behavior and was ready for people to conflate squid and human behavior and announce the discovery of gay squid. He fended off that notion, reiterating that the squid has no discernible sexual orientation, and that a tentacled invertebrate that shoots sperm into its mate’s flesh really has nothing to do with human behavior.

Of course not - who would ever dream of making such a connection - wink, wink.

Does the Times Editorial Staff Owe Glenn Beck a Collective Apology?

Tumult of Arab Spring Prompts Worries in Washington

While the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring created new opportunities for American diplomacy, the tumult has also presented the United States with challenges — and worst-case scenarios — that would have once been almost unimaginable.

--unless of course you're a ranting lunatic like, say, Glenn Beck --

What if the Palestinians’ quest for recognition of a state at the United Nations, despite American pleas otherwise, lands Israel in the International Criminal Court, fuels deeper resentment of the United States, or touches off a new convulsion of violence in the West Bank and Gaza?

Gee, yeah, what if - but who could have foreseen that?

Crises like the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador in Turkey, the storming of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and protests outside the one in Amman, Jordan, have compounded a sense of urgency and forced the Obama administration to reassess some of this country’s fundamental assumptions, and to do so on the fly.

Like the fundamental assumption that a stable government, internationally recognized, that has been in power for decades, is presumed to be the legitimate representative of that country? Oh that's right, that assumption was already thrown out the window back in February. Yes, an apology would be appropriate.

The Bullying Pulpit

How do you bring about radical social change in a democracy? At the ballot box? Hah! Never happen - after all, the very people whose lives you want to throw into disarray are the very votes you'd need. Take your case to the courts until you get to the Supremes where you win a huge landmark decision overthrowing the old order? That's so 70's - what with the current makeup of the SCOTUS.

No, the best way is to set up a mega-righteous advocacy group that looks for vulnerable bastions of the very thing you're trying to overthrow - and sue the poor suckers for some vague civil-rights violations. We don't need no steenking SCOTUS - we'll just sue the bastards in federal court for hefty damages, dare the cash-strapped entity (and what public entity isn't cash strapped right now?) to fight back, and then ultimately settle. What's the settlement - multi-millions of dollars for the victims? Not a chance. It's a consent decree where you - the neanderthals - agree to throw out all your democratically sanctioned, old-world policies and agree to set up a formidable bureaucratic juggernaut mandated to overthrow all those crusty, traditional ways you so pathetically cherish.

The Times had an article today which highlighted a school district which - as it mentioned several times - is in Michelle Bachmann's congressional district that does not sufficiently genuflect to homosexual identity. To be precise, the article discusses a lawsuit alleging that "school officials have failed to stop relentless antigay bullying and that a district policy requiring teachers to remain “neutral” on issues of sexual orientation has fostered oppressive silence and a corrosive stigma." The charge is that homosexual students are being bullied and the school is not properly addressing this. How many students are part of this lawsuit? Six. How many students are in the Anoka school district being sued? 40,000. So these 6 students must be getting bullied really hard to justify hiring a lawyer to sue the district, right? As I'm sure you've guessed, no.

The lawsuit was brought in July on behalf of six current and former students by the Southern Poverty Law Center and by the National Center for Lesbian Rights. It charges that district staff members, when they witnessed or heard reports of antigay harassment, tended to “ignore, minimize, dismiss, or in some instances, to blame the victim for the other students’ abusive behavior.”

So what's the problem?

Through it all, conservative Christian groups have demanded that the schools avoid any descriptions of homosexuality or same-sex marriage as normal, warning against any surrender to what they say is the “homosexual agenda” of recruiting youngsters to an “unhealthy and abnormal lifestyle.”

How bad are things?

One of the plaintiffs, Kyle Rooker, 14, has not declared his sexual orientation but was perceived by classmates as gay, he said, in part because he likes to wear glittery scarves and belt out Lady Gaga songs.

Has it really gotten to this - where a kid can't be mocked for wearing glittery scarves and belting out Lady Gaga songs? Can there be no more obvious sign of America's doom - that a 14 year old boy who wears glittery scarves and belts out Lady Gaga songs gets to sue in federal court for being mocked?

But of course it has nothing to do with any student's ordeal - Bachmann's conservative district is being targeted, their Christian viewpoint is anathema, and six(6!) students out of 40,000 were enlisted to front the suit. The article notes that Ms. Bachmann "did not respond to requests to comment for this article" - and why should she? Even a President Bachmann wouldn't be able to mount a defense. (If I were President, I would put the full force of the Justice Department against the SPLC at every occasion (in this case in defense of the first amendment), potentially bankrupting them. Ah, dreams.)