too funny
(if it were not so serious)

I'm calling your bluff, Grist. Many moderate freethinkers, independents, and even conservatives WANT to do something about climate change. Why take a page from the Karl Rove play-book and become sullied by that ... I don't know what your point was but it was disgusting. Fess up, editors!  Gays?

What on freaking Earth does being gay have to do with having a concern for climate change? Let's stay on topic here, puleeze. Booo!
-sam

Onward through the fog

Perkins is the one who is confusing, by making two very different points at once.  Moreover the points are not entirely consistent.

First, he seems to be saying that there are much more pressing issues facing the US, such as the recent validation of same-sex marriage in California and New York, than the futile, baseless issue of climate change.  (His opinions, apparently, not mine.)

But then, he also seems to be saying that the Lieberman-Warner legislation is NOT a non-issue, it very much affects (he says) the wallets of every American tax-payer.  (Cf. the recent, very important post by FF DR on conservatives/GW-denialists successfully framing GW mitigation as an unjustified financial burden on hard-working Americans.)

There is nothing that is not "on topic" in Kate Sheppard's post.  It is totally appropriate for a US-based environmentalist news service to cover a story on how and why certain Americans reject the environmentalist agenda.

What Sam seems to be protesting is the claim, which in fact no one has made, that "You cannot be both an environmentalist and opposed to same-sex marriage," rather along the lines of the PETA spokesman's notorious challenge of last summer, "You cannot be both an environmentalist and a meat-eater," which, as many of us sorrowfully remember, resulted in a great deal of on-line bloodshed and the devouring of human flesh.

I have no intention of making the claim about same-sex marriage at present.  But it can be argued that a truly thoughtful and generous appreciation of Nature, such as one might think environmentalists should naturally cultivate, will of course include a generous acceptance of the friendly, loving, constructive side of human nature, wherever it is found.  See Newsweek's latest back-page essay by the excellent and beloved Anna Quindlen:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/139423.

Powder,
just so we are clear, orthodox Christians (N.B., evangelicals are not "orthodox" in the traditional sense) accept the doctrine of creation: i.e., God is the one who has brought all things in the universe out of nothingness, and who maintains them in existence, himself being uncreated.  But there is absolutely no commitment to a literalist interpretation of the creation narratives at the beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures' Book of Genesis, such as we associate with so-called "Creationists."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

The fossil fuel industry hires people to defend their turf; lets not mistake those hired hands for representatives of the public interest, even they really want to see clean energy developed to stop the slide towards climatic caused economic catastrophe.

Let's concede for the sake of argument that the climatologists are wrong and Perkins is right: CO2 doesn't cause global warming. We scrap taxes on fossil fuels to make energy cheap. In fact, let's give everyone free SUVs. Problem solved.

Except that apparently everyone in China and India wants a car too. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find new oilfields at a rate of 86 Mbbl/day, increasing to 117 Mbbl/day by 2030 (according to EIA projections of oil usage). That's 6.8 cubic kilometres per year, every year, ad infinitum. Off you go, then...

Oh, one more thing: sort out ocean acidification while you're at it. That excess CO2 has to go somewhere, and it appears to be causing some problems under the waves.

If we see the main threat to energy policy reform as people like Perkins, then Rove has won a big one.  More diversion.

Perkins' lunacy actually helps turn swing voters away from the GOP/corporate energy agenda.  They are sick of this nonsense, substituting social issues for pocketbook issues.  Live and let live and let's solve these back breaking economic/energy problems.  That's the swing voter's main political POV.

When Barack asks the classic political question, "Are you better off now than when the GOP took over?".  Rove counters with fear issues.  Fear of social change, fear of terrorism, fear of appeasement,fear especially of the liberal agenda...attacking everything americans hold dear, GASP!

But will that tactic be successful again, in diverting attention from energy policy reform and economic stimulus that can lower energy prices and halt GHG climate disaster.  Jobs and economic recovery and energy independence and GHG cure.  It all goes hand in hand, Barack gets that.

So every time they try to divert the debate, Barack can bring it back to the real issues.  The same tactic he used when attacked in the primary.  Become the change you want to see in the (political) world.

To do this effectively though, Barack needs energy policy that clearly does this, not lobbyist bull shit like the Climate (in)Security Act.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

-.-

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/05/seattle.kiss.ap/index.ht ...

If he's so worried 'bout high energy prices and not gays, then why is he comparing the two?

And why doesn't he spend some of that wealth of his on helping out poor families with energy costs, instead of spending it on advertising and limos?

"What are we supposed to tell our kids, when they ask why two women are kissing?!," cry the outraged, bigoted parents, who probably are embarrassed not least because they have already been feeding the kids the falsehood that men kiss only women, and women kiss only men.  For starters, they might answer along the lines of, "Well, they probably are in love; it is no different than when a man and a woman fall in love, and they like to kiss."

Kids generally start out without prejudices, and ask questions only because they are proto-scientists, and crave accurate information about the world and its contents.  One wishes that parents had more courage to give their kids the information that they deserve.

We might find a connexion here, with the tendency on the part of social conservatives to deny a whole slew of scientific truths, and to go to great pains to suppress them, most disgracefully in the science curricula of public schools.

P.S., two digressionary comments:

1. There is not just a double standard, there is a triple standard.  A hetero-oriented couple, a man and a woman, kissing in public, are not only tolerated but encouraged and admired, much of the time; a lesbian couple, kissing in public, deserve a rebuke, even a bit of a slamming; two gay men, kissing in public, can expect to get lynched.  Which partly explains why lesbians seem to have more impressive cojones than gay men when it comes to affectionate gestures in public.

2. With regard to etiquette and taste, NOT to morality, may I observe that there are kisses, and then again there are kisses.  The length of the lesbian kisses in Seattle came up in passing in the article, but I think it is an important issue.  Prolonged, wide-open-mouthed kisses in public are in bad taste, no matter who the kissers are.  (Al Gore and Tipper may receive a dispensation.)  In the case of the Seattle lesbians, they claim their kisses were brief, and punctuated their garlic-fries-eating episodes (yuck-o-rama!).  My suspicion is, there was little that was principally erotic about their kisses; the kisses were an ironic strategy for dealing with the unspeakable grossness of their snack-food, providing a kind of bonding experience in the face of helplessness.