Sotto's March of Shame Goes On and On

Shamed Senator Vicente Sotto, of the Nationalist People's Coalition, keeps digging his hole of ignorance deeper and deeper.

Senator, it's time to put the shovel down.

We all saw him recently crying in the Senate during his passionate attack on the "big, bad" RH Bill (which has been proposed for more than a decade now), in which he used out-dated "facts" and was caught red-handed plagiarizing the intellectual property of no less than five bloggers.  He then crassly dared the bloggers whose writings he pirated, to sue him.  But that wasn't enough it seems.

It's no secret that Sotto is a Roman Catholic right-winger when it comes to social issues.

He's loud and proud in his opposition to women's right to make reproductive health decisions for themselves...

Whooped by His Own Logic

Brian Brown and NOM:  Bat shit crazy

In the U.S. recently there was a low-key "dinner table debate" on marriage equality between one Mr. Brian Brown (President of the homophobic National Organization for Marriage) and one Mr. Dan Savage (a vocal advocate of equality... and of sanity in general).

I can give you the insta-rundown:  Brian rambled on, jumping about illogically most of the time, covering all the old über conservative talking points.  You know:  "Gay people can't have kids, ergo they can't be allowed to marry; gay people marrying will lead to child abuse and destruction of the family; polygamy will come next and then men will marry horses."  Genius.

Dan did a superb job of presenting the case for equal marriage, as well as shooting holes in the traditional religious counter-arguments.  Dan Savage clearly won the debate because he was, well, logical, accurate, and sane.  You can watch the discussion here if you like.

What was most telling to me, and where Brian Brown unequivocally went down in flames and lost the debate, was when he stumbled over his own logic.

APA Removes Transgenderism as 'Mental Illness'

Finally.  2012 marks the year when the APA (the American Psychiatric Association) has officially replaced the term "Gender Identity Disorder" with "Gender Dysphoria."  This means transgender is no longer categorized as a mental illness.

The U.S. now joins Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, the Scandinavian countries, and several others that have already changed their official policies.

The change will have an impact in legal cases and legislation, and is being hailed as a huge step forward for trans rights not just in the states, but potentially in other countries as well.  For better or worse it cannot be denied that America is influential; this includes its medical associations, whose policies do have an influence on the policies of medical associations in other (less progressive) countries.

Noah, Lotsa Water, an Angry God, Gay Guys, and Ignorant Pastors

Gotta admit, the whole rainbow thing is pretty gay.

You learn something new everyday.  Turns out not only did gay people cause the utter collapse of Ancient Greece and Rome, but they also brought about the biblical "Great Flood" of Noah's day.

As if the earth needed any more insanity and fact-twisting from our good friends on the Religious Right, a conservative pastor in Alabama USA (arguably the most conservative state in the union), is claiming that same-sex marriage was the true cause of the Great Flood described in Genesis.

On the radio station American Family Radio, the broadcasting arm of the American Family Association (WTF?), Aaron Fruh, pastor of Knollwood Assembly of God Church in Mobile, AL, went on a rant against marriage equality, saying:

"Find any society in human history that ever tried that experiment [i.e. same-sex marriage] and lived to tell about it; they've all been destroyed."