Bigotry, the new jobs plan.

Here in my home state of Tennessee we have a republican controlled house, a republican controlled senate, and a republican governor. When all of this came about in 2010 we were told by all of these republicans that they would focus on creating jobs for Tennesseans. So what have they done to get their fellow Tennesseans back to work? At first glance, nothing. But on closer inspection I think I have figured out how our law makers are trying to reduce unemployment in Tennessee.

There have been several bills introduced by our legislators that have received national attention. Last year my hometown of Nashville passed an ordinance stating that any company doing contract work for the city must have an anti-discrimination policy that includes gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons. The state legislator quickly responded by passing a law that made it illegal for a city or a county to institue any laws offering legal protections in the workplace for members of the LGBT community. They also tried to pass a bill making it illegal to even mention homosexuality in Tennessee schools from the 1st through the 9th grades. This bill passed the senate but failed in the house. Never fear it is being brought back for our members of the house to vote on again this session along with a bill to amend the state's anti-bullying statute so that you can verbally harass anyone you want as long as your religion says they are bad people.

Of course these pieces of legislation don't go far enough to reduce Tennessee's unemployment rate and so we have a newly introduced bill that will force transgender persons to use public restrooms that correlate to the gender listed on their birth certificates. Are you starting to see how Tennessee's elected officials are working to reduce unemployment?

First off we will gain numerous jobs by hiring the huge number of police officers we will need to check individuals birth certificates as they enter public restrooms. This will obviously help to bring down our unemployment rate. Above and beyond this you have to remember that the unemployment rate is stated as a percentage of the population. If you can lower your states population you should be able to reduce the unemployment rate as well. By instituting a series of laws that make it very obvious that the state of Tennessee hates the LGBT community, and if it wasn't for that pesky Lawrence v. Texas US Supreme Court ruling they would probably pass a law to throw us all in jail or string us up in public executions, they are hoping that all of the LGBTers out there will pack up and move out of the state. If you are gay and unemployed then your moving to another state will reduce the unemployment rate here. If you are transgender and currently employed your leaving the state will allow a good, God fearing straight person who is unemployed to fill your position further reducing our unemployment rate. What about people moving into Tennessee to fill all of these vacated jobs though? Well lets face it, when the rest of the country sees how crazy and bigoted and hateful we are in this state very few people will want to move here so we should be able to achieve a net gain in jobs.

I know, this all sounds a bit crazy, but our elected officials stated they were going to focus on job creation and so this is the only explanation I can come up with for their actions. Well I can come up with one other explanation but I won't say what it is. I mean my mother might wind up reading this.

Rick Santorum and the wonder of believing your own spin...

Today Rick Santorum was in Concord, New Hampshire speaking to a group of college students. The event was a town hall meeting and so members of the audience were allowed to ask questions of Mr. Santorum. It was an interesting view into the workings of his mind.

Mr. Santorum was asked how two men or two women getting married affected him personally, a question which he never answered. He instead wound up on a rhetorical path that at first glance might seem rather interesting, that is until you realize where this path leads. Mr. Santorum asked the students, if they are OK with two men getting married were they OK with three men getting married. This swift switch from gay marriage to the unrelated question of polygamy is a common tactic among those who are opposed to gay marriage, as they see it if you start letting 2 men get married then you have to let everyone get married no matter how the relationship is structured and who it includes. This is a completely ridiculous argument but I rarely hear people explain why it is so ridiculous.

If allowing two men or two women to get married means that you automatically have to allow polygamy then polygamy must already be legal in the US. You see, if allowing two men to join in marriage raises the question of, if two men why not three men then you have to ask, if a man and woman can get married then why not a man and two women? Obviously if you allow heterosexual couples to get married then you have opened the door for heterosexual polygamy. To carry the Christian conservative's argument all the way out I suppose you would have to ask, if a man and woman can get married then why not a man and a female dog? Don't forget that Rick Santorum has compared gay sex to bestiality before and so it is only fair to use the same arguments he does. Also Mr. Santorum, in his argument, stressed that heterosexual marriage is special because it leads to procreation. Guess what heterosexual polygamy leads to procreation too. Seems that Mr. Santorum is pretty good at arguing for the form of "traditional" marriage most represented in the Bible, one man and many women.

Yes, heterosexual polygamy must be permissible in the US because heterosexual marriage is legal in the US, at least that's what the right wing Christians seem to believe. Of course polygamy isn't legal in the US, we have laws preventing more than two individuals from entering into legal marriage. Read that again carefully. We have laws to prevent more than TWO people from entering into legal marriage. Polygamy laws are not about gender, they are about numbers. Gay marriage is about gender, not about numbers.

For once and for all these two arguments are not related and if you hear anyone making the comparison between gay marriage and polygamy ask them why they support heterosexual plural marriages. You might not get a good answer out of them though, after all they must have failed math since they can't tell the difference between numbers and genitals.

The Iowa Caucuses

Well they were interesting... sort of. I think the big lesson to take from the caucuses is just how divided the GOP is right now. Normally the Republican presidential nominee is pretty much locked up before the anything happens in Iowa, but this year there is some uncertainty. I think that's a really great thing as it could keep more of the candidates in the race longer and allow voters to form stronger attachments to the candidates they support. This, of course, could make it harder for them to support a candidate in the general election if their candidate doesn't win the primaries, but hey, if there is one thing you can say about Republicans it's that they don't like to compromise, and darn-it they shouldn't have to compromise in a presidential election either.

So here is my suggestion to all of my Republican friends. If you don't like the Republican who gets the nomination, simply get your favorite candidate to run as an independent. If they won't just write them in when the general election comes around. This way you don't have to compromise and not only will you be able to say NO! to Obama but you can say NO! to what ever waffling, wishey washy, soft on communism, gay loving, tax and spend Republican gets the nomination. Or maybe you should just say NO! to the whole mess of them and stay home and not vote at all, that will show em!