(Via feministe 2008-05-05.)

From a long post by PortlyDyke at Shakesville on the closet and PDAs (I mean Public Displays of Affection, not Private Defense Associations):

When ABC news did their second social experiment about Public Displays of Affection (PDAs) by having a gay male couple and a lesbian couple kiss and cuddle in public (the first experiment used straight couples), the reactions were varied.

There was the woman who called the cops:

Operator: Birmingham Police operator 9283

Caller: We have a couple of men sitting out on the bench that have been kissing and drooling all over each other for the past hour or so. It’s not against the law, right?

Operator: Not to the best of my knowledge it’s not.

Caller: So there’s no complaint I could make or have?

Operator: I imagine you could complain if you like ma’am. We can always send an officer down there.

And they did . . . . The officer told our couple that the police dispatch received a call because the two of them were making out.

Just don’t do that in public, he told them before leaving the scene.

There was the woman who said:

I would actually want our kids to grow up in a place where they would see various types of people engaging in behaviors that [are] loving.

And then there were the people who took a whole different think of teh childrenz! tack:

I don’t really find it inappropriate, especially during the day when schoolchildren aren’t running around. They might get confused and want an answer for what’s going on, bystander Mary-Kate told us. The majority of the people who spoke about children seemed to echo Mary-Kate’s feelings.

Which means, basically, these folks are fine with Gay PDA — as long as they don’t have to face the uncomfortable, icky business of explaining to their children that not everybody on earth is like mommy and daddy.

. . .

I doubt that most straight, cisgendered people think about, or notice, how frequently they touch their partner in public in ways that are not necessarily sexual (in addition to kissing, cuddling, and the odd bum-squeeze) — ie. holding hands, walking with an arm around the waist, smoothing the other’s hair back out of their eyes — nor do I think that most straight, cisgendered people are probably aware of the fact that when I touch my partner in public, it’s nearly always a considered act.

I don’t obsess about this — as in — it doesn’t eat up my days and nights — and I’m probably about as out as a queer can be in this country — but every single time I take my partner’s hand on the street, or toss my arm over her shoulder or around her waist, hug her goodbye or hello, I do a little, tiny security sweep.

. . .

This friend is the sister I never had. I loved her (and love her still) dearly, and her inability to see how the Measure 8 (which was passed that year) was likely to affect me and my family was incredibly painful to me. I remember weeping in her living room as I tried to explain something that was, to her, completely invisible. I talked to her about how scary it had been to come out publicly after having led a fairly comfortable life as a closeted queer, and she just didn’t seem to get why it should be a big deal at all.

So, I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I’ll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):

Spend an entire week pretending that you’re not a couple. Don’t write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being friends. Refer to yourself only in the singular I, never in the we. When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a friend, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go intentionally into the closet as a couple. For a week.

They took my challenge.

They lasted exactly three days.

My friend returned to me in tears on day four and said: I’m sorry. I had no idea what it is like for you.

— PortlyDyke @ Shakesville (2008-04-29): Take My Arm, My Love

Read the whole thing. It’s a simple point, but it’s important, and powerful, and beautiful.

Here’s Brent Simmons (2008-05-06):

I was on the ground in Indianapolis…

I love it when TV People — newscasters, analysts, politicians — say they were on the ground somewhere.

It's a good and welcome reminder that they normally live in the clouds, in heaven, up with the angels. Not on the ground with us, where things are mysterious and messy.

Gosh they're lucky. Good and lucky.

— Brent Simmons, inessential.com (2008-05-06): On the ground

(Via Stephen Carson 2008-05-06.)

—Dark Wraith @ UnCapitalist Journal (2008-04-27): NYPD Black.

(Link thanks to David Houser.)

See also:

• GT 2008-04-28: Is it just me or is the water in this pot getting a little hotter?
• GT 2008-04-25: We need government cops because private protection forces would be accountable to the powerful and well-connected instead of being accountable to the people.

The stimulus:

Mikhaela B. Reid, The Boiling Point (2007-02-08): Personal Anti-Immigration Wall

The response:

Do you have one for uninsured drunk illegals crashing and killing innocent Americans?

Or how about one of a drophouse packed full of endentured [sic] slaves?

Or of an illegal killing a police officer in a sanctuary city?

How about the fragile desert environment full of trash?

BTW: I love Mexican food. Just hope an illegal with a contagious disease that wasn’t screened at the border doesn’t work at my favorite restaurant. Kinda challenging to draw a cartoon of that.

Seen by searching illegal immigrant.

— 89AKurt, comment at Flickr (2008-02-08)

Just remember: they are not against immigrants. They’re just against illegal immigrants.

(Via Boiling Point Blog 2008-02-09.)

Further reading:

• GT 2007-12-10: Republicans for Parochialism and Ignorance
• GT 2006-03-27: The Conservative Mind (Sin Fronteras edition)

At last: some war-mongering that I can get on board with. A battle-cry that libertarians, anarchists, feminists, and all who value decent and rational conversation can join in, full-throatedly.

Carthago Delenda Est, in English, means, Carthage must be destroyed.

Have a nice day. Peace be with you. Good luck. Best wishes. Good bye. God bless. Good night. Thank you very much. All might be ways to end a talk. But in the days of the Roman Republic, Cato the Elder is said to have uttered that phrase of curse to Carthage, or one similar to it, at the close of every one of his speeches on the floor of the Senate, regardless of the subject matter.

That phrase became the rallying cry of the Punic Wars (like, Remember the Alamo), and Carthage was, utterly destroyed. As Wikipedia reports, Carthage was, ploughed (sic) over and surviving inhabitants sold into slavery.

Well, I'm going to strive to follow in Cato's footsteps.

I'm going to try, as often as I remember, until it's a habit, to close all my blog posts with the phrase, Hardball delenda est.

But my ambitions are more modest than genocide. I merely want to see MSNBC's Hardball booted off the air, with no hope of anything like it in replacement, and Chris Matthews himself standing behind a counter somewhere, wearing a paper hat, and asking those who still line up to see him, Would you like fries with that?

Hardball delenda est.

— Jim Babka @ Positive Liberty (2008-01-19): Delenda Est