I’m inclined to agree with this:

Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said Democratic presidential nominee Kerry was “not wise” to refer to the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney during the answer to a question about homosexuality during a presidential debate Wednesday night.

But he said Republicans “who are expressing outrage at the debate comments really have been outrageous themselves.”

“The reality is the type of outrage that is being expressed by some Republicans should be expressed at themselves. They’ve decided to use gay families as wedge issues across America in swing states — that is truly outrageous.” …

“The big story in this election is that Karl Rove has decided to strategically use gay and lesbian Americans in a number of swing states,” Guerriero said. Rove is Bush’s chief political strategist.

“The same people who are feigning outrage about what happened in the debate should speak out against that type of political gamesmanship,” Guerriero added.

So they should. But in the mean time, Kerry should apologize for offending the Cheneys, to show that he can admit his mistakes (unlike certain other presidential candidates I could mention) and prove that he’s the bigger man — and, hopefully, put this issue to rest after one more news cycle. (No way does talking about gay rights for days on end, this close to the election, help him in Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, etc.)

As anyone who watched the debates last night should remember (that includes you Brendan, you Irish lush!), Kerry pontificated about the status of Mary Cheney as a lesbo, saying, “If you were to talk to Dick Cheney’s daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she’s being who she was, she’s being who she was born as.”

I have to agree with Lynne Cheney’s response:
“What a cheap and tawdry political trick.”

I might hate the way the Bush administration feels about gays, but I absolutely do not agree with Kerry (and Edwards) co-opting the sexuality of their opponents daughter for their own political purposes. Going after a man’s child is unacceptable. I don’t care if she’s 40. That’s irrelevant to me.

Kerry took a big fat step down in my book with that comment.

Here at BrendanLoy.com, we’re all about the lesbian action, provided of course that it’s family-friendly. And, well, what could possibly be more family-friendly than Alan Keyes’s daughter wearing an anti-Bush pin and kissing her rainbow-clad girlfriend in a picture that the young Ms. Keyes posted on her very own blog?

The picture’s worth a thousand words… but here are some words, anyway:

my parents and I were seriously not getting along and so we needed some time off from each other; the idea was that after a year of being a wonderful good helping-the-poor type person they would once again like me and therefore be willing to pay for my college. I’m not so sure that part of it will work; despite the fact that I’m all about working for global justice THEY don’t care about that, THEY only care that I am an evil dyke. And even if I am a charitable dyke I am still a dyke who KISSES GIRLS and especially with the gay marriage thing going on now that’s at the front of their minds.

You may recall that, not long ago, the esteemed U.S. Senate candidate from Maryland Illinois bashed Mary Cheney, the vice president’s daughter, for being a lesbian and, thus, a “selfish hedonist.” In consideration of which, you gotta feel for poor Maya Keyes. It must be rough having Alan as her dad.

Of course, it’s possible, I suppose, that this is all some sort of elaborate hoax — albeit a hoax far more convincing than the one that snookered Dan Rather. But I don’t think so. Here’s photo evidence the lesbian photographed above is indeed Alan Keyes’s daughter:

Sure looks like the same girl. And it seems like there would have to be an awful lot of conspirators involved, if this were a conspiracy.

I found out about this from Fark, which found out about it from Chillinois, which found out about it from Modern Vertebrate. Now it’s all over Daily Kos, Politics1 and Wonkette (who would “totally do her”), and it seems destined to continue percolating through the blogosphere and the wider web world in the coming hours and days.

Both of the above photos of Maya and her girlfriend reportedly came originally from Maya’s blog, as did the “dyke” commentary above, although they have since been yanked offline. The blog is still there, but somewhat more sanitized, I guess.

A Daily Kos contributor addresses the thorny issue of whether it’s kosher to “out” a 19-year-old who happens to be the daughter of an asshole:

Lost in all this talk of Maya Keyes and her privacy is a simple fact. Assuming that this story is legitimate, then Maya Keyes posted onto a publicly accessible part of the net a photo of herself kissing another girl. Assuming that this story is legimiate, Maya Keyes made multiple blog posts referencing her own homosexuality. The posts were in an obscure but still publically accessible corner of the net; the notion that anybody’s privacy is being violated here is off base.

Sorta like how, if my dad were running for political office on a platform of criminalizing mental illness, and someone said “But your son is A.D.D.,” I wouldn’t be able to claim that my privacy rights had been violated, since I chose to write about that issue on my publicly accessible website.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this develops. Hopefully without too much psychological trauma for Maya.

For the record, Maya, if you’re reading this, we here at BrendanLoy.com think it’s cool to be who you are, and to declare it loudly and proudly, even if it pisses your father off. (Okay, okay, especially because it pisses your father off. :)

UPDATE: From the official Keyes website, via bloggers Selfish Hedonist and ArchPundit:

I suppose it’s possible that she just really likes rainbows. But, well, applying Occam’s Razor… :)

UPDATE UPDATE: Here is, allegedly, Maya’s profile on Gay.com.

This almost makes me believe the story less, because it seems just too cute. But there’s no denying the rainbows in the photo above…

Anyway, the Gay.com profile says her politics are “Way left,” explains under the category “Tattoos” that she has “only a few now, but working on getting my entire back/chest done,” and answers the question “How ‘Out’ are you?” with a definitive “Totally.” Last but not least, the profile reveals that she’s a cunning linguist!

Languages spoken
German, Spanish
I also speak Latin and American Sign Language and can understand French, Dutch and Italian. I am also learning Hebrew and Arabic.

Sorry, but that was just too easy to pass up… :)

P.S. According to the Gay.com profile, she’s 21, not 19.

CORRECTION: According to commenter John, himself a blogger, the Gay.com profile described above is for the girlfriend, Bria, not for Maya. “Maya had a profile, too, but it’s since been taken down,” John says. I have no idea what John’s connection is, if any, to this story, nor whether he knows what he’s talking about. But if true, his statement would explain the age discrepancy.

Yes folks, Brendan has come out of the closet. You knew this day was coming. We all had our suspicions and had seen the hints–the goofy grins, the obsession with gay marriage, the girly-boy voice he uses when he’s in trouble with Becky–but now it’s official. The more recent signs pointing to this event were the Boi From Troy interview, the double entendre about boinking when talking about Boi, and finally, the rainbow that will “be on the top of the homepage for a while”–presumably in celebration of Brendan’s newfound openness about his gayness.

Brendan confirmed this to me on Thursday when I was visiting him while I was in Phoenix for business, and he even tried to come on to me, but I resisted. Nevertheless, he begged me to withhold the news “which has been known to Boi and me [Andrew], but kept secret from our audiences, for over a week.” I agreed, but only on the condition that he let me TEST HIS NEW GUEST BLOGGING FEATURE.

I repeat, this is JUST A TEST.

And no, Brendan’s not really gay; the engagement was real and not just a cover story (and trust me, I know all about cover stories!).

Now that the Federal Marriage Amendment has resoundingly failed in the Senate, Republicans in the House are devising a new strategy to get their way. It involves stripping. Jurisdiction stripping, that is:

Realizing that a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage faces little chance of passing soon, if ever, House Republicans yesterday discussed alternative approaches, including stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over the issue. …

Rep. John Hostettler’s (R-Ind.) “jurisdiction stripping” bill… would bar federal courts from hearing lawsuits related to gay sex and marriage. …

Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told reporters yesterday that he plans to use “jurisdiction stripping” measures to achieve other social policy goals as well.

For example, he will push legislation to stop federal courts from hearing lawsuits related to the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

DeLay said the time is “not quite ripe” to apply the GOP’s new legislative tactics to the issue of abortion.

Let the comment-flaming begin…

Over on BoiFromTroy’s blog, Jim comments, “I am so proud to be an Arizonan right now. It doesn’t happen very often, and I gotta hold on to that feeling whenever it comes around.” Why? Because of what John McCain said today:

“The constitutional amendment we’re debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans. It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.”

“Hells yeah! That’s our senator, baby!” Becky wrote in an e-mail to me this afternoon.

Full text of McCain’s speech here.

In other FMA news, Andrew Sullivan notes that if the amendment had come to a full vote, instead of dying on a procedural matter, it apparently would have been defeated even more soundly. “Up to a dozen Republicans would have voted against the measure,” Sully writes. (That would be twice as many as voted no on the cloture motion.) “It truly is a humiliation for the anti-gay forces in the GOP. Let’s hope they take this to heart - and leave the states to figure out how to accommodate gay families into American society.”

More FMA stuff in my lunch-break update below.

A return to the old lunch-break-update format today, with a bunch of brief snippets on unrelated (or tangentially related) topics strung together into one chaotic post. Why? Because I feel like it. So here goes… a Spectacular Seven items of interest for y’all…

1. Don’t miss my post below pondering whether John Edwards is an ambulance-chaser.

2. The Federal Marriage Amendment was effectively defeated in the Senate today on a procedural vote. Hooray! Gay marriage opponents fell twelve votes short of the 60 that would have been needed to end debate and force a final vote, losing 50-48. So the amendment is essentially dead (in the Senate, at least) for this session. Andrew Sullivan rejoices: “This is a symbolic but important blow to the agenda of the far right. They have divided their party, and tarnished their reputation for fairness - but the Constitution remains intact and unviolated. That’s one reason to cheer.” The roll call of my senators and potential/future senators: Dodd (D-CT) Nay, Lieberman (D-CT) Nay, McCain (R-AZ) Nay, Kyl (R-AZ) Yea, Bayh (D-IN) Nay, Lugar (R-IN) Yea. Neither Kyl nor Lugar will be getting my vote anytime soon, no matter where I end up registering. Chris, Joe, John and Evan all get kudos. BoiFromTroy has lots of links, and he also points out the roll-call “notables”:

Democrats against Gay Marriage: Byrd (WV), Miller (GA), Nelson (NE)

Republicans against the Amendment: Campbell (CO), Chafee (RI), Collins (ME), McCain (AZ), Snowe (ME), Sununu (NH)

Kerry and Edwards weren’t there for the vote; hence the 50-48 instead of 52-48. They said they would have made the trip if it were an actual up-or-down vote on the bill, but because it was just a procedural thing, they couldn’t be bothered. Personally, I wish they had been there, especially when I read comments like this: “Ah yes, two fierce champions of gay rights! Maybe gays should ’skip the vote’ too when November 2nd rolls around…” But I personally am not going to lose any sleep over it. Running for president is sort of important, and the best thing Kerry and Edwards can possibly do for gay rights is to defeat Bush in November.

3. Speaking of the FMA, Wonkette reports on a “Defend Marriage” press conference yesterday: “Yes, if I was going to have a press conference celebrating the joys of heterosexuality, this is exactly what I’d wear:”

Hehehe. Hey, is that gleam in the eye of Rick Santorum (standing behind the orange-coated Pat Boone) the look of repressed homosexual desire? We insinuate, you decide.

4. Bush flips off a liberal blogger-protester. Well, maybe. “The filmsy photographic evidence for this bird-flipping makes Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a documentary,” writes Wonkette. Heh.

5. Speaking of representations of the f-word, Ralph Nader says a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Melvin Watt (D-NC), yelled at him during a meeting: “You’re just another arrogant white man — telling us what we can do — it’s all about your ego — another f***ing arrogant white man.” Nader is calling this an “obscene racist epithet” and demanding an apology. Opinion Journal’s right-wing “Best of the Web” column, in what is presumably a rarity, agrees with Nader: “There’s no question that Nader is arrogant, and we’re pretty sure he’s a man. But what does his race have to do with anything? We have a dream of a nation in which the Congressional Black Caucus will not judge people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Again, heh. Yeah, that would be nice.

6. Who wants to be a millionaire? This guy! On Jeopardy!

7. Last but not least… basketballer Nick Young, by some accounts the seventh-best high-school player in the country, will play for the USC Trojans this winter. He is described as “a stud small forward with a great frame for a 6′6 player.” Nice. “By the way, if you haven’t noticed, Henry Bibby has seven seniors slated for next year’s team. Look out.”

BoiFromTroy has lots of gay-pride parade pictures from L.A., including this one of himself with Mayor Jim Hahn:

I’m guessing Hahn hasn’t read about Boi’s mayoral preference. :)

Anyway, check out Boi’s homepage. He’s got lots of pride pictures; just keep scrolling. Don’t miss this ironic pic (heh). And here are some gay Trojans. (My only question: Where are the lesbians?)

UPDATE: As long as we’re on the topic of gay-pride parades, check out my pictures from New York’s parades in 2000 and 2003.

Even breeders can have pride!

Right-wing fishermen for gay marriage:

I think gay marriage is kind of like rhinoceroses mating. It don’t affect me much and it ain’t something I necessarily want to watch but I’ll defend their rights to do so.

BrendanLoy.com: Defending marriage from gays and mating rhinoceri since 2002. :)

P.S. Insert your own “horny” joke here.

During my sojourn in Connecticut, the world has not stopped turning, and news has not stopped breaking. But I have been, for the most part, too busy/lazy to post about it. Here, however, is a brief overview of some stories that I should be posting about. :)

Gay marriage in Massachusetts: Today’s the day. But is there really any point in posting about this? You all know where I stand, and I know where all of you (i.e., my regular readers) stand. Blah blah, civil rights, blah blah, judicial activism. Been there, done that. Moving on…

Report says Rummy ordered torture; Pentagon denies it: Full ramifications not immediately clear, since who knows if it’s true? If true, smoking gun. If not true, liberal media bias. Again, we’ve had this debate before. Moving on…

Saddam’s WMD: Poorly constructed sarin-gas artillery round detonates in Iraq; was probably an old Saddam relic. Again, full ramifications not immediately clear. Maybe I’ll have more to say when the fog of war lifts.

Iraqi governing council president killed: Sad, but not as devastating as it might seem, since it’s a monthly rotating presidency anyway. Also, I don’t need to post about it, because CNN Breaking News did so for me.

Michael Moore’s big day: Audience gives anti-Bush documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ the longest standing ovation (20 minutes!) in the history of the Cannes film festival. But are we really surprised? They’re French. Drudge goes nuts. But are we really surprised? He’s Drudge.

NBA, NHL playoffs: Eh. Wake me when it’s the finals. Scratch that; wake me when somebody is one game away from winning the finals.

UPDATE: I will add this, regarding gay marriage, from here in Connecticut:

Connecticut law does not allow for same-sex marriages, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said today. …

Blumenthal said there is nothing in Connecticut law that allows or authorizes marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex couples.

Blumenthal said Connecticut statutes refer to a “bride” and “groom” and a “husband” and “wife” and said these terms are commonly understood to refer to a man and a woman.

He declined to say whether Connecticut can recognize same-sex marriages from out of state.

“An answer would require me to make law, not interpret it,” Blumenthal said.

And non-legislative officeholders would never dream of doing that. :)

Congratulations to all the newly married Massachusetts couples. Blogger John Scalzi has some advice for them. It applies just as well to straights as to gays, and I e-mailed the link to Becky. Some good stuff, there.

Nicholas Kristof: “I’ve argued often that gay marriage should be legal and that conservative Christians should show a tad more divine love for homosexuals. But there’s a corollary. If liberals demand that the Christian right show more tolerance for gays and lesbians, then liberals need to be more respectful of conservative Christians.”

Read the whole thing.

…who is the gayest-seeming Republican of them all? (After clicking the link, scroll down to the “Honorariest Homo Poll” to vote.)

Previous polls: Bush-loving bush-lovers (if you don’t get the joke, nevermind, we’ll tell you when you’re older) and honorary (male) homos.

And for the record, before you get all up in arms, bear in mind that these polls are being run by a gay Republican — BrendanLoy.com’s favorite gay Republican, BoiFromTroy — and “to say that suggesting someone is gay-seeming is homophobic is in itself homophobic.”

A new way to “defend” marriage: ban it.

Today’s lunch-break update begins with some Bush-bashing. And oh, how richly deserved it is!

Our “compassionate,” “uniter” president has officially opened his 2004 campaign — with a series of ads that use images of 9/11 for political gain.

Says Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died at the WTC: “It’s a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people…It is unconscionable.” Says Tom Roger, whose daughter died on Flight 11: “I would be less offended if he showed a picture of himself in front of the Statue of Liberty… But to show the horror of 9/11 in the background, that’s just some advertising agency’s attempt to grab people by the throat.” Throats of America, consider yourself grabbed.

But hey — equal time! — the Bush Administration is defending the ads. “With all due respect, I just completely disagree, and I believe the vast majority of the American people will as well,” says Karen Hughes. “September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It’s a defining event for the future of our country. … Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11 fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it’s vital that the next president recognize that. … I can understand why some Democrats might not want the American people to remember the great leadership and strength the president and first lady Laura Bush brought to our country in the aftermath of that.”

There are two points I want to make about this, and then I’ll let the inevitable comment-war take it from there. :)

First, any time you have to defend yourself with a sentence that begins “Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but…,” you’re probably in trouble. This applies to blame-America-first liberals, for whom the “but” leads to a statement that translates to “it’s all our fault,” and it applies to cynical, anything-for-a-vote Bushies, for whom the “but” leads to blatant political manipulation of a national tragedy.

The second point is best expressed by Wonkette: “Apparently, the new Bush ads — which use images of Ground Zero — have upset some of the relatives of the victims of 9/11 tragedy, or, as Karen Hughes calls them, ‘Democrats.’”

Remember, the campaign is just getting started, folks. We have eight months of this to look forward to!

UPDATE: In the interest of fairness, I link to this post. There are, of course, two sides to every story. The idea of this sort of ad still makes me feel icky, though.

Oh, but we’re not done for today, oh no. There’s so much more Bush to bash!

Andrew Sullivan has a post on what Bush has achieved with his proposed constitutionalized-bigotry amendment. Unlike Becky, Sully thinks the culture war is working against the GOP this time around:

I’ve been following same-sex marriage developments for fifteen years, and I keep getting surprised. The groundswell of support — in San Francisco, New Mexico, New Paltz, and now Portland, Oregon — has stunned me. What I didn’t anticipate is how empowering this issue has become for gay people and how energizing it has been for their heterosexual peers. We keep seeing straight people under a certain age seeing this as their generation’s civil rights movement. Now we see black legislators in Georgia putting aside religious objections to stop what they recognize as an attack on a small minority by forces of exclusion and intolerance they have been attacked by in the past. Bush’s religious right amendment has also united Democrats behind this issue in ways they never were before. Attacking the amendment is now an applause line in John Kerry’s election speech — and he will get every gay vote and every vote from their families and friends. Meanwhile, key Republicans, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, have come out and opposed this unnecessary meddling with the Constitution. Even the vice-president cannot manage to explicitly endorse such graffiti on the founding document of this country. What the religious right amendment is doing is splitting the Republican coalition and uniting the Democrats. What the religious right did to destroy the Republican party in a state like California, they are now trying to do across the country as a whole. They are not only on the wrong side of history; and on the wrong side of morality; they are putting the Republican party on the losing side of politics. They must and will be stopped.

Sullivan also offers this (not Bush-bashing, but interesting):

Small insight into what the issue of civil marriage for gays is finally achieving. I’ve been speaking on this subject for years and years, but this time, the crowds are enormous. At a small college last night, over 400 showed up, cramming the biggest auditorium available, to listen to the speech and ask questions. Yes, it’s a campus. Yes, it’s the younger generation. But for me at least, it’s thrilling to see the interest and overwhelming support. And the best part of it is that it was organized and sponsored by the College Republicans. It’s a new world.

Is the Brendan Loy theory of Republican evolution beginning to come true? Sure sounds like it…

Finally — back to Bush-bashing, sort of — Robert Novak writes:

The disaffection [with Bush] is such that over the last two weeks, normally loyal Republicans — actually including more than a few members of Congress — are privately talking about political merits in the election of Sen. Kerry. Their reasoning goes like this: There is no way Democrats can win the House or Senate even if Bush loses. If Bush is re-elected, Democrats are likely to win both the House and Senate in a 2006 mid-term rebound. If Kerry wins, Republicans will be able to bounce back with congressional gains in 2006.

Interesting.

I had a little fun with Photoshop (well, Graphic Converter, actually) on the bus ride to work this morning. I couldn’t resist:

Hehe. :)