The G Spot

The search for Sarah Palin's "gay friend"

By Kathy G.

The hands-down lamest excuse of Americans attempting to deny accusations of prejudice has long been: "But, some of my best friends are (black/Latino/gay/fill-in-the-blank)."

In the flurry of news stories that first started coming out about Sarah Palin following John McCain's choice of her as his running mate, it was repeated several times that Palin had a lot of gay friends. Book banner, creationism advocate, global warming denier, foe of gay marriage, fan of forced childbirth for 12-year old rape victims -- hey, Palin may be all those things, but don't you for a minute believe that our Sarah is a religious extremist and a narrow-minded bigot. Why -- she has gay friends! The tidbit about the gay friends seems to have been put out there to make Sarah seem not only "tolerant" but also kinda cool -- as if her friends' gay fabulousness would rub off on her somehow. When it came to teh gays, Palin was a veritable Kathy Griffin -- or so we were supposed to believe.

There's only one problem with this image: in reality, Palin doesn't seem to have any gay friends:

Several news outlets have reported Palin's assertion, made during the gubernatorial campaign, that she "has gay friends." Finding these individuals has been difficult. "We don't know anything about that friend," says Marsha Buck, president of the Anchorage-based gay rights group Alaskans Together for Equality. "If that friend or those friends are Alaskans, we don't know anything about them. We're wondering maybe if it's a friend who lives in the lower 48."

All is not lost, however. Sex advice columnist and certified homosexual Dan Savage has heroically stepped into the breach. He has generously offered to become Sarah Palin's official Gay Friend. Here he is auditioning for the role.

And hey, if that running-for-vice-president thing doesn't work out so well, Sarah Palin's Search for a Gay Friend could be the wacky premise of a reality TV show, now couldn't it?

Dykes to watch out for

By Kathy G.

Ellen and Portia's wedding                           Rachel Maddow

A few days ago, when I heard the glad tidings about the wedding of Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, I didn't think anyone could possibly exceed them in their lesbian fabulousness -- not this week, anyway. But then I heard the even happier news that Rachel Maddow was getting her own show on MSNBC. In spite of the fact that she's a woman, yet not a blonde! And a lesbian!! And a liberal, no less!!! Halle-fucking-lujah!

This is change I can believe in. :-)

Congratulations all around to Ellen, Portia, and Rachel, for having the courage to simply be who they are. I don't think any of them have any idea how many people they have helped, and will continue to help, by being out and proud. To take just one example:  what do you think the chances are that Rachel Maddow would have her own show, if Ellen DeGeneres hadn't already proven you could be an out lesbian and host a wildly successful talk show? (And remember, Rosie O'Donnell didn't come out until her show was in its last weeks).  I'm not saying that, sans Ellen, Rachel would never have had her own show. But Ellen sure didn't hurt.

And speaking of Dykes to Watch Out For (you do know it's the best comic strip around, right? And that its creator, Alison Bechdel, wrote Fun Home, an extraordinary graphic memoir that you must read now if you haven't already?) -- you can take this quiz to find out which Dyke to Watch Out For you are. I scored as Mo:

You are Mo, a guilt-ridden, kindhearted liberal who doesn't relax enough.

Sounds about right.

Things that make you go "hmmm . . ."

By Kathy G.

Paul Campos, whose guest blogging on Lawyers, Guns and Money has been so good that I hope it  becomes a permanent gig, and who has written brilliant stuff about the overhyped obesity "crisis,"* has a great post up today on the song that John McCain, of all people, has identified as his all-time favorite, Abba's "Dancing Queen" (otherwise known as The Gayest Song Ever):

Do we not see, in McCain's extraordinary revelation that he loves Dancing Queen (note his third-favorite song is the equally revelatory Abba opus Take A Chance On Me) a kind of confession? Some might claim it is irresponsible to speculate in this manner. To the contrary, it is irresponsible not to.

Is there the slightest doubt that, if Barack Obama were to name Dancing Queen as his favorite song, Maureen Dowd, to name but one particularly prominent arbiter of such things, would have found indisputable evidence of barely hidden homoerotic longings in the soul of a man she has characterized as an "anorexic starlet?" The question answers itself.

Heh indeedy. It's yet another example of the double standard the press applies to Obama and McCain (this is another one).

But getting back to Abba -- I agree that "Dancing Queen" probably is the gayest song ever.  However, I'd be interested to know -- what are some others? Off the top of my head, "Over the Rainbow," "Cabaret," "I Will Survive," and of course "YMCA" are strong competitors for that title. But what are some other candidates? Make the case for your nominees in the comments.

*Btw, I would link to an article that Paul wrote about this subject in The New Republic, but maddeningly, their archives are still screwed up, and I couldn't find it.

Tim Kaine for Veep? Hell to the no!

By Kathy G.

I gotta say, I'm with Liss. Although speculation is running amok that Tim Kaine is being very seriously considered for vice president, he would be a piss-poor choice to be Barack Obama's running mate.

In my earlier post on the veepstakes, I ruled Kaine out because of inexperience, and indeed, he has yet to serve out a full term as governor of Virginia. But it turns out there are lots of other good reasons to oppose him as well.

For one thing, I really, really don't want to see anyone on the ticket who is less than 100% committed to choice. Kaine says he is personally pro-life, and that this position is "faith-based." Fine. But he also doesn't seem terribly committed to the principle of women's bodily autonomy. The most he's said is that he'd enforce the law on abortion, but what if the Supreme Court overturns Roe and leaves abortion up to the states? I've looked and I haven't found him saying anything affirmatively pro-choice like "I strongly support a women's right to choose." Or even "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." And his views on abortion have been described as "roughly in line with those of George W. Bush."

In addition, Kaine is on the record as strongly supporting a ban on so-called "partial birth abortions" and strongly favoring government funding for that anti-scientific boondoggle known as "abstinence-only" sex education. And how much of an anti-choice wingnut do you have to be to oppose state funding for stem cell research? Excuse me, but we don't need this bullshit. Women's right to choose is hanging by a thread as it is. I'd hate to see this guy a heartbeat away from the presidency, and I'd also hate, eight years hence, for our party's probable standard bearer (which many veeps eventually become) to have such a crappy record on this core value. Not to mention the fact that, to the extent that winning over the Hillary supporters is a problem (and I don't actually believe it is much of one), selecting a running mate who is so weak on choice is not going to help things.

But wait -- there's even more bad news. Kaine ran a gay-baiting campaign for governor and is awful on GLBT issues. Not only does he oppose gay marriage (which, unfortunately most Democrats do), he opposes civil unions, too. He also supported an anti-gay marriage amendment to Virginia's constitution. And not only did he support the Iraq War, but he was super-hawkish about it as well. In addition, he supported a repeal of the estate tax, reneged on his promise to enact universal pre-K, has a poor record on energy and global warming issues and has said he "strongly" supports anti-union, "right to work" laws.

Kaine also doesn't have many accomplishments as governor, and received terrible reviews for his state of the union response a few years back (I didn't see it, but observers said he seemed visibly nervous and spoke haltingly).

And if all that is not enough to put you off this guy, ponder this: the ever-oleaginous Terry McAuliffe has been heavily touting Kaine for the veep slot.

I could go on, but I think I'll stop here.

If Obama wants to go with a popular red state governor, Kathleen Sebelius, who's been re-elected, has substantial accomplishments (which you can read about here), and is also solidly pro-choice (albeit "personally opposed" to abortion), would be much the better choice. As would Montana's Brian Schweitzer or Arizona's Janet Napolitano. And it should be noted that, unlike Kaine, Sebelius opposed an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution, even though it ended up being approved by 70% of voters in a referendum. (Unfortunately, though, she did support a state law that was on the books albeit not in the constitution which outlawed gay marriage). And unlike Kaine, she has a strong record on the environment.

In short, Barack Obama can do much, much better than Tim Kaine. And I believe he will -- from what I've heard, it's Kaine's people, rather than Obama's, who are floating his name, and that it actually seems like he's unlikely to be chosen.

Netroots Nation round-up

By Kathy G.

I've been meaning to blog a bit about Netroots Nation. I apologize for not getting to it until now, but I didn't get home until last night some other things needed taking care of first.

I'll start with what I didn't like about Netroots Nation:

1. The expense. Bad enough that fuel prices mean that airfare is going through the roof, and the hotel itself cost a pretty penny (with taxes, around $155 per night for a double). But even worse was the $450 registration fee ($375 if you registered early). I'll be damned if I know where that registration fee paid for -- the only "meals" covered were two boxed lunches and one "brunch" consisting of coffee, juice, muffins, and bagels. Registration for a comparable conference, this year's Take Back America, was only $280, and that included most meals. Plus, if you were a student, senior, or low-income person, the TBA fee was reduced to $125 (if I recall correctly). Also, this year regular registration for Blogher cost $350, but for students the fee was only $75.

I know that scholarships were available for Netroots Nation, but still -- that's an awful lot of money, and the only reason my husband and I could afford it is that we're doing reasonably well financially this year. The cost is probably one reason why the conference was so overwhelmingly white -- it was about the whitest left-of-center gathering I've ever attended. And I don't just mean that there were few African-Americans -- Latinos and Asian-Americans were scarce as well. I also noticed that the attendees seemed to skew heavily male.

I think the organizers of next year's conference should make a concerted effort to make the conference more affordable. It hurts the netroots as a movement if its doors are closed to people of modest means, because then, inevitably, our politics will tend to ignore the bread-and-butter economic concerns that are crucial toward building a mass movement.

I've been told that in the past, it was suggested that, instead of holding the conference at a hotel, we could hold it at a university. This is apparently the route other groups go, and it makes a lot of sense to me. First of all, it's cheaper, and secondly, many large universities have adequate facilities, not only for the conference itself, but for lodging (in many colleges, the dorms are otherwise virtually empty during the summer, after all). I was told that the idea of going the university route was shot down because it would be too downscale and wouldn't impress the media muckety-mucks. But I say it's much more important to be inclusive than to give a rat's ass about what the clueless media will think (and face it, they're only going to caricature us as a bunch of dirty fucking hippies anyway).

Why Sam Nunn sucks

By Kathy G.

Although women are only 14% of Army personnel, in 2007, 46% of those discharged under "Don't ask, don't tell" were female, according to a new report.

The misbegotten "don't ask, don't tell" policy was, of course, Sam Nunn's baby. And when Nunn was in the Senate, he reportedly fired two staff members for being gay.

Comically, the Great Mentioner has touted Sammy boy as a possible Democratic veep pick for every election since 1984. And to my astonishment,  after all these years, the flame of the inexplicable yet undying DC insider cult of Sam Nunn burns on, unabated.

There are plenty of Democrats who'd make fine picks as a running mate for Barack Obama, but Sam Nunn as is not one of them. His time -- if there ever was one -- has come and gone. I say, it's time to move on and return Nunn's reanimated corpse to the crypt, where it belongs.

UPDATE: Over at Firedoglake, Teddy has more on why Sam Nunn, along with Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar, would all be exceptionally shitty choices for the veep slot.

The politics of gay marriage

By Kathy G.

When GLBT activists first began pressing for gay marriage, and when in fact many GLBT groups made gay marriage the top priority on their political agenda, I thought it was probably the wrong decision on their part, both strategically and substantively. It's not that I opposed gay marriage -- in fact, I strongly supported it. But I thought that other concerns -- such as the right to be free of discrimination in jobs and housing, and even the right to serve in the military, were more important.

I also thought that pushing for gay marriage was too radical. Face it, gay marriage is a lot of conservative folks' worst nightmare. Wouldn't it be better to work up to that gradually? To ease people into it by first advocating for less controversial measures, like a statute outlawing job discrimination against GLBT folks? Or by not asking for anything more, for now, than civil unions?

Gay marriage as an issue didn't sit right with me for another reason: it seemed not only too radical but also too conservative. There are radical traditions within the GLBT liberation movements that are sharply critical of marriage for being a conservative, bourgeois, heteronormative institution. I always found those critiques useful, as I did the (similar) feminist anti-marriage critiques. I never entirely embraced the anti-marriage ideology, but I thought there was much truth in the anti-marriage arguments, and much reason, for me and other feminists, to be deeply skeptical of marriage as an institution, and and to view the romanticized portrayals of marriage that saturate our culture with a gimlet eye.

But then two things happened. One is, I got married. Ever since I was in my teens, I was never certain that I wanted marriage for myself, though I knew I wanted to be in a lifelong, committed relationship. And when I got married, I felt some uncertainty as to whether I was doing the right thing. It's not that I doubted for a moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my husband. But I worried a little if marriage would change the nature of our relationship.

I also had some concerns about entering an institution that arbitrarily granted instant social status. Why should getting married make me suddenly more worthy of respect? Why did having a wedding (which I also felt ambivalent about -- had it not been for my husband's wishes, I would just as soon have eloped) instantly make me the center of attention? Weren't all my fabulous single friends just as worthy of celebration and admiration? And what about my gay friends, who were forcibly denied the right to marry? Where was the justice in that?

Btw, I'm not kidding when I say that getting married grants you instant social status. It really does -- if you're a woman, at least. You're no longer condescendingly viewed as the sad, lonely maiden aunt. You're no longer patronized as one of those "terrific" single women who "has it hard" (because of the supposed lack of marriageable men). Oh no no. Once you're married, you're treated as one of society's winners. You've made it, you've snagged the biggest prize there is -- a dude. And just about any dude will do, really.

"Don't let the pansy fool ya!"

By Kathy G.

W.C. Fields

In yet another cringe-inducing moment in this seemingly endless primary campaign (is it over yet? it already seems longer than Berlin Alexanderplatz), the governor of North Carolina used a homophobic slur in a clumsy (and how!) attempt to praise HIllary Clinton. Specifically, Gov. Easley said that Hillary "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy."

I've heard some debate as to whether "pansy" is indeed a homophobic slur. I'm surprised that question is even being debated, because in just about every context I've heard it used in (short of gardening), it's always had a homophobic connotation.

In fact, it appears that "pansy" has been used as a gay signifier going back at least to 1933, as I learned a couple of years ago. As I've mentioned before, I am a huge fan of precode cinema -- that period in Hollywood movies up through the beginning of 1934 when films didn't have to strictly adhere to the production code. The films of that period were able to deal more openly with a variety of topics, including race, premarital and extramarital sex, and sexual orientation.

In one of the films from this period that I've seen, a pansy is clearly code for "gay." The film is International House, a delightfully surreal W.C. Fields comedy from 1933.  Fields' beer-fueled plane, The Spirit of Brooklyn, has just landed in Wu Hu, China. He is greeted by Franklin Pangborn. Pangborn, seen here:

was a great comic character actor who nearly always played a stereotypical prissy gay man. The following dialogue ensues:

FIELDS (to Pangborn): Hey Charlie, where am I?

PANGBORN (in a manner that's friendly bordering on flirtatious): Wu Hu!

FIELDS (removing the flower from his lapel): Don't let the pansy fool ya!

Like many of the rapid-fire double entendres in precode films, it flies by in an instant. But there can be no doubt as to what was meant.

I wonder if wearing a pansy in one's lapel was a gay signifier -- in much the same way that wearing a green carnation signified gayness during the time of Oscar Wilde.

At any rate, whenever I've heard the word "pansy" it has always been used as an insulting term meaning gay or effeminate (or both).

Meanwhile, this election can't end soon enough for me.