Welcome to your Monday open thread. Did you have a nice weekend? I certainly did. I went to see the last Harry Potter movie (*sniffle sniffle* Snape) and I’m picking out my birthday couch. So much excitement!
Business Insider has an interesting column from last week called “IT’S OFFICIAL: The Whole World Thinks Republicans Are Dangerous Maniacs Threatening Everyone.” Here’s a taste:
Yes, the rest of the world is watching this embarrassing debt ceiling nonsense, and it is growing dismayed.
Der Spiegel has a roundup of commentary in German newspapers about the fight, and the universal message is this:
The US is holding the entire world hostage, and it’s the Republicans that are playing with fire.
Hard to accuse the Germans (who are no fans of fiscal profligacy) of being motivated by politics, or of having some inherent reason to attack Republicans. This is just the reality of what they’re doing.
One thing I don’t look forward to this week is more of this debt ceiling nonsense. Just raise the frickin’ thing already. It’s not hard.
Ben is troubled by your signing of a 14-point pro-marriage pledge at the request of the Family Leader, an Iowa social conservative group. It’s not only the part about black kids being better off under slavery than they are today that caught his eye. (Yes, he knows that language was dropped after you signed the pledge.) It’s the verbiage about sexuality being a choice.
You signed a document that challenges the belief that sexuality is predetermined. The Family Leader pledge laments that marriage is “debased” by, among other things, an “antiscientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that nonheterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible, and akin to innate traits like race, gender, and eye color.”
See, my friend and former intern Ben is gay. And he never made any such choice.
Your thinking is nothing new and it runs in your family.
In 2004, at the National Education Leadership Conference, you said of the gay lifestyle: “It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It’s anything but gay.”
Then there’s your husband, Marcus, who obtained his Ph.D. by virtue of a correspondence course. He runs a mental-health clinic but, according to Politico, is not registered with any of the three state boards that certify mental health practitioners. (Minnesota is one of the only states in which you can practice mental health without a license.) Last year, when asked during a radio interview about parenting homosexual children, he said:
“We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road. That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps. . .”
This is why Republicans seem doomed in the long run. They are out-of-step with younger people.