SwimFinsSF

Alabama Chief Justice

GLAAD just posted this this media watch on their site regarding the controversy around Chief Justice Roy Moore and his precious Ten Commandments monument:

Media Ignores Moore’s Anti-Gay Comments

I’m not as adamant about making this issue a gay issue because it really isn’t. It is an issue of separation of church and state as well as an issue of a judge refusing to act within the laws he is sworn to uphold by refusing to comply with a decision handed down by a higher court. Its GLAAD’s job to point out the GLTB issues that the media might miss. That said I was rather shocked by this quote in a case relating to a lesbian attempting to gain custody of her child:

“The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle.”

The man doesn’t just oppose gay adoption and domestic partner laws… He believes EXECUTION is an appropriate punishment for Gay parents. Holy SHIT. Makes ya wonder why he isn’t tarred and feathered for a statement like that but people are up in arms about a statue. Maybe he was just buckin to be removed from the bench and was testing to see what would finally do it?

Maybe they should take away the monument and tattoo the golden rule across the ass hole’s forehead instead.

Sorry.. just amazes me..

On a lighter note

After that last one I had to post something more fun… Was reading Let me get this straight and found reference to this article from the New York Times that made me smile.. Especially this blurb from a predominantly straight suburb..

“Mike and Sue Weinberg were out to dinner when their 6-year-old son, Jack, declared, “Mommy, I’m going to marry you.” When Ms. Weinberg explained that she was already married, Jack persisted, “Then I’ll marry Daddy.”

“You can’t marry Daddy,” Ms. Weinberg said patiently, “He’s a boy.”

“But Mark and Kevin are boys,” replied Jack, logic that his mother could not refute.”

And this one from Boystown:

“Chicago has been been so segmented, and not gay-friendly,” said Desiree Witte, stopping her baby stroller in a tiny park on a quiet side street in Boystown. “It speaks wonders that they would do something like put those pylons up, to say not only is this a gay community, but we’re honoring it.”

Mixed feelings

So first – the bad news:

Suspect Planned Priest’s Killing, DA Says

I’ve got truly mixed feelings about this. I don’t believe vigilante justice is acceptable in any way shape or form… Our system, while not perfect, is pretty damn good and everyone should be presumed innocent until PROVEN guilty. There was a lot of allegations against him but the system needs to determine the validity of the allegations. On top of this it was clearly a hate crime issue (and probably had less to do with justice than it had to do with hate)…

However I have a hard time getting outraged about this hate crime in particular cuz in my book there is a special deep dark place in hell for people who commit crimes of any form against children and for someone who is supposed to be a trusted figure in a sacred institution to do such a thing just makes it that much worse… Children are the most precious and important part of this world and the thought of someone harming them in any way makes my blood boil.

My point? Not sure really… Wouldn’t wish this kind of end on anyone and the homophobe should have book thrown at him for not letting our system determine IF this guy was guilty of his crimes and IF he was THEN choose an appropriate punishment for the crimes… But IF he truly was guilty then I don’t have much sympathy…

( actually wasn’t sure I was even going to post about it cuz I’m not sure I could defend my position either way – but decided to just to put it on the table… Feel a little guilty and weird for not being outraged for the way he died and for the system not protecting him… but I guess thats just how I feel… Maybe this is just a test post on a personal subject rather than a subject I’m looking to debate )

House keeping

True to form for a Saturday morning I’ve done some housekeeping… Most of it not visible but the result is that my side bars are consistant between the archive pages and the main page (thanks to server side includes!)…. I’ve also tidied up whats in the side bars – left one is all Blog navigation stuff (Archives, search, etc) and the right one is stuff more specific to me… I’ve moved my links to other folks’ blogs off onto another page so I can add more stuff and not clutter the main page..

Anyway – point being if anything doesn’t work or is confusing let me know..

In the dark…

This image sparked a great deal of debate on one of our humor lists here at work:

And it was determined by looking at Snopes that the picture was a hoax. If you go to the actual satellite images can be found here. However the funniest picture part of it was this picture:

God I love Fox news. Ya gotta love sloppy use of archive images…

UPDATE: The folks at work picked apart the Fox image and this is what the conclusion was:

There are a couple of problems with this photo. For those to be the world trade center at sunrise, the photo would have to have been shot from the Jersey shore. Since the WTC was effectively on the shore– the world financial center being the only buildings between the shore and the WTC site– that can’t possibly be from Jersey. If that really is the WTC towers, that photo would have to have been taken at Sunset from Brooklyn. But that can’t be either because there is no angle with which you could actually take a photo of Manhattan from Brooklyn with that many buildings to the south.

Furthermore, the two towers completely dominated the south Manhattan skyline. Nothing came close to to the magnitude of the two towers. Notice that the tower on the right has a bulge that ends 3/4s of the way from the top — that makes me think that it is not of the WTC at all. Also, one of the WTC towers had one bloody gigantic antenna on the top. Huge antenna. But not in that photo.

Update 2: Snopes on the Blackout

A Tough Question

This is TOO DAMN FUNNY! (The question says “What is George W. Bush’s First Name”):

A Tough Question