Romeo and, um, Romeo

A victory for gay rights this week, in Kansas, believe it or not.

One of the most frustrating cases on the gay rights docket has reached a happy conclusion after several years of court losses. Matthew Limon, now 23, will not have to spend 17 years behind bars for a consensual sexual episode that took place a week after his 18th birthday with another male teenager.

Basically, the law that he was prosecuted under gave special consideration to gay people when the age gap was only a few years, but didn't apply to gays. After Lawrence vs. Texas struck down sodomy laws nationwide, the law pretty much has to treat gays and straights equally.

This is one part I found particularly interesting:

The court used the lowest standard of judicial review, giving the state of Kansas every opportunity to come up with a reasonable explanation for the vast discrepancy between its treatment of gay and straight teens. But the state attorneys failed the test.

So it sounds like the judge responded with the legal equivalent of, "You're kidding me, right?"

That's a pretty good way to end the week. Have a good weekend. Blogging will be light for the next week or so, as I will have to travel for work.

Crazy like a FOX

The national nannies at the Parent's Television Council have just came out with their Top 10 Best and Worst shows on TV. After noting that six of the ten are on FOX, Dave over at Davenetics says:

Anyone else see some irony here? The network news brand that makes the most dough off of the outrage over the loosening of American morals is also the the network most responsible for creating that outrage.

They are making money on both ends.

That means two things.

They are really good at what they do.

And they don’t believe a word of the moralistic hogwash on Fox News.

Rupert Murdoch is the Terrell Owens of media moguldom. You may hate some of his qualities, but the guy gets the ball into the friggin endzone.

He reads Left Behind so you don't have to

I've been reading slactivist lately. It's written by a liberal Christian, in what I think is much more the intent of the whole Christian-religion-thing. The whole "help others and don't be judgmental part" that modern religious fundamentalists forget. That's a religion I could really get into if it didn't have all that belief in the supernatural baggage.

The best part about this blog is that he's going through and reading the atrocious Left Behind, and commenting on it on every page. It's a brilliant idea. He's pointing out how terrible the theology is, how unrealistic the characters are, and just how terribly written the book is. The problem is that this is a terribly long way to respond to a book. He's been doing it since 2002, and has only just gotten up to page 156. The good news is that leaves the rest of us with entertaining reading for a while.

This, I think, the post that made it pretty clear I was going to like this blog.

This approach -- judgement for Thee but not for Me -- also helps to account for the current antigay mania of American evangelicalism. In a couple of Paul's other rants, he includes "sodomites" in his bestiaries of badness. Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, the dubious assumption that Paul misunderstood the story of Sodom, and therefore used this as a synonym for "homosexuals," it doesn't follow that "homosexuals are bad" is the main lesson that heterosexuals should be gleaning from such passages. But if you read such passages looking for any excuse to exempt yourself from the apostle's condemnation, this offers an ideal escape hatch. Preaching against self-love, ingratitude, love of money or love of pleasure can be a two-edged sword. But if you're heterosexual, and you're preaching against homosexuality, then you're safe. You've found the ideal target for self-exempting, self-justifying self-righteousness.

Judgment is for Other People.

Does that remind you of anyone?

At least there is email

I got my old computer working with my backup hard drive. Windows reinstalled. Windows upgraded. Windows rebooted. I don't have all my files yet, but at least I am not email-less.

You can't make this stuff up

Journalists for a major television news organization are ordered to falsify a story. They refuse. They're fired. They sue. They lose.

During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox attorneys did not dispute Akre’s claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story, they simply maintained that it was their right to do so.

FOX News. Raise your hand if you're surprised.

Uh oh

Blogging may be sparse for the near future. My computer is refusing to boot, saying some configuration file is corrupted. Nor will it boot from the CD so I can do a repair installation of Windows. I've been thinking of replacing this machine for a while now; this may be the kick in the pants that gets me to actually do it.

Comment spam

I've started getting spam in the comments, so I've had to turn on the Blogger CAPTCHA. Anonymous comments are still allowed, but if it keeps up then I'll have to turn that off too. Fucking parasitic spammers are a blight on society.