How analogue progressives frustrate binary neocons

Analog: any variable signal continuous in both time and amplitude. It differs from a digital signal in that small fluctuations in the signal are meaningful.

Binary: compounded or consisting of or marked by two things or parts.

You know that feeling of resentment that wells up inside when someone enters your space and dumps chores on you?  It breeds a lot of resentment.  That’s how neo-conservatives feel about progressives. Neo-cons hiss and spit when they speak of progressives because progressives try to dump lots of extra work on neo-cons. 

What kind of work, you ask?  The work of actually having to get to know people before judging them.  It’s a lot of work.  No wonder conservatives express such animosity toward progressives!

For the next minute, step inside the collective mind of the neocon . . .

We had to retaliate against Iraqis when people from Saudi Arabia attacked us.  Sometimes you need to show those people who’s in charge.

I check in with conservative talk radio quite often.  In the privacy of my SUV, my radio reminds me that all unmarried mothers are failures.  All welfare recipients are trash, of course.  All drug addicts should be thrown in prison for a lonngg time.  Well, except for Rush.  All immigrants should be kept out of the U.S.A.  Who the hell do they think they are, trying to get what we have. 

Homosexuals?  They are clearly immoral.  Criminals, actually. . . guilty of something.  Do I actually know any gay

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She can’t have the job because … she’s a girl.

A woman was recently elected as the first Episcopal presiding bishop and it's causing quite a ruckus.  As reported by MSNBC, The situation has been complicated by Sunday’s election of Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as the first Episcopal presiding bishop — the first woman ever to lead an Anglican…

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The elephant in the (Hollywood) living room

In the days of the Hollywood studio system, films were classified as “A” or “B” pictures: the former were the studio’s prestige projects, the latter generally shorter and produced cheaply and quickly. Ironically, sometimes “B” pictures are more interesting today because they were less subject to studio control (due to…

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Sophie’s Choice II: Stem Cells in the Balance.

For many months, I knew that something horrible was haunting Sophie.  Finally, one quiet night, she broke down and told me all of the details about that awful dilemma she faced several years before, while she was a prisoner in a concentration camp. Sophie had arrived at the camp with…

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Gay Rights “Not a Civil Rights Issue”?

The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) supplies high school LGBT rights groups around the United States with a wealth of useful information, tools, and event and activity guides. For the last few years, I’ve appreciated the planning guides GLSEN provides as a source of brainstorming and public-relations hints. But looking through a GLSEN binder of open forum topics and public speaking tips recently, I came across an unusual and off-putting suggestion:

“Do NOT compare the LGBT Rights movement to the Civil Rights movement.”

Wait, what? The battle for LGBT rights mirrors the Civil Rights movement in a variety of ways. The reactionary backlash and lack of logic behind opponents’ arguments read exactly the same, complete with desperate biblical references. Take for example this judge’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia, a pre-Civil-Rights case on interracial marriage:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Indeed, and Almighty God also created Adam and Eve, not, as the social conservatives say, Adam and Steve. The slow social acceptance and increase in violent hate crimes look much the same, too. So what differentiates Gay Rights from Civil Rights, again?

Well, nothing really. It just ruffles a lot of (black, evangelical) feathers to make the comparison. Apparently GLSEN doesn’t …

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