Today in Talking Points: Special Valentine’s Day edition

A special Valentine’s Day edition of Today in Talking Points:

• Washington state Governor Christine Gregoire signed marriage equality into law on Monday. The Evergreen State is the seventh to recognize and allow gay marriage.
• The Washington Secretary of State’s Office has revised its designation of the ballot referendum against marriage equality after mistakenly assigning it a number already used.
• Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum faced protests as he denounced Washington’s marriage equality law during an appearance in Tacoma.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is next up in the gay marriage debate. He intends to veto a bill establishing gay marriage in the Garden State, despite public opinion in favor.
• Abbie Goldberg and Katherine A. Kuvalanka published an article on marriage equality for the Journal of Marriage and Family. Much of the February issue of JMF is dedicated to considering marriage.
• Columnist and poet Michael Kindt considers one of the studies published in the February JMF, about marriage and cohabitation.
• What is more romantic on Valentine’s Day than rape? Well, okay, that might seem a bit crude, but FOX News commentator Liz Trotta is suffering the slings and arrows of politics and general decency after arguing that women entering the military should expect to be sexually assaulted.
• Meanwhile, in Uganda, one Simon Lokodo, the Minister for Ethics and Integrity, raided a gay rights workshop in Entebbe. Workshop organizer Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera reportedly escaped the raid and is still at large. Ugandan MPs are once again trying to increase legal penalties for being homosexual, though the death penalty is expected to be dropped from the bill.
• Two Catholic priests in Colombia are dead after allegedly hiring their own hitmen. Reports suggest one of the priests had contracted HIV, but relatives insist that the murders were part of an armed roberry, and Frs. Richard Piffano and Rafael Reatiga were not involved in a homosexual relationship.

Ken Hutcherson: The face of bigotry

The “Prayer Warrior”, Pastor Ken Hutcherson, testified before the Washington state House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Monday, in opposition to marriage equality. The video is making its way around the internet, so here is a transcript:

I am Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church; I’ve been a pastor for quite some time—been black for a lot longer than that. I was born and raised in Alabama, where blacks and whites didn’t get along very well, and I tried to be one of the main reasons they didn’t. I was extremely discriminatory toward whites. The only reason I played football, so I could hurt white people legally.

The problem is that you guys keep throwing up to us that this is a civil rights issue. There’s nothing civil rights about this. Nothing. It is not protected by the Constitution. And you’re throwing up in front of us over and over again that you should not allow the people to vote for this because it’s just not right for a civil rights issue. Well, you’re trying to make it a civil rights issue, but it isn’t. It’s not protected by the Constitution. The reason why the civil rights for me was taken to the Congress and not the people was because it was protected by the Constitution. So the people did not have a right to go against the Constitution unless the people voted to change the Constitution.

And it hasn’t been changed yet.

It is so important for you to understand that what you are asking me to do as an African-American, is accept what you’re going through because you’re uncomfortable. Not because you’re persecuted. Not because you’re hung in great numbers simply because of your color. I was born black. I am black. Gonna die black. And even Michael Jackson couldn’t get out of being black. So you gotta understand when you try to throw those things at me it does not hit. Does not hit at all. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of disturbing and very upsetting.

Upsetting because, you know, you talk about love, you talk about wanting that family and everything else, and you talk about the children. You know what? I got half-black kids. They’re worse than all-black kids, ’cause they’re discriminated against just as much. And you have passed laws that make sure if there’s any black in any kid, they’re considered African American even though I got married to the whitest white woman in the world.

So let’s do what’s right for kids. I would never bring my kids into a situation—if I love my kids—how you have berated your kids in front for emotional response—and Representative Pedersen, you are the worst. You brought four kids in here, and they was devastated. Hopefully they was devastated because they was in here, and not because they act that way all the time. But yet still it isn’t about the children. It isn’t about marriage. It is about you. And it is about you wanting your way, and you’ll use whatever and whoever you can to get it.

So I think this board should be absolutely ashamed of how you’re allowing kids to be used for an adult reason.

Thank you very much.

Obviously, there are some issues one might pick with Hutcherson’s argument, but this man is the face and voice of the heterosupremacist movement in the Evergreen State, so it’s probably best to just let him speak for himself.

The obvious question: What is an ‘honest rape’?

Sometimes it’s the little things. Like Ron Paul’s recent appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight:

MORGAN: Here’s the dilemma, and it’s one I put to Rick Santorum very recently. I was surprised by his answer, although I sort of understood from his belief point of view that he would come up with this.

But it’s a dilemma that I am going to put to you. You have two daughters. You have many granddaughters. If one of them was raped—and I accept it’s a very unlikely thing to happen. But if they were, would you honestly look at them in the eye and say they had to have that child if they were impregnated?

PAUL: No. If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room. I would give them a shot of estrogen or give them—

MORGAN: You would allow them to abort the baby?

PAUL: It is absolutely in limbo, because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards, there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, well, I was raped and I’m seven months pregnant and I don’t want to have anything to do with it, it’s a little bit different story.

But somebody arriving in an emergency room saying, I have just been raped and there is no chemical—there’s no medical and there’s no legal evidence of a pregnancy—

MORGAN: Life doesn’t begin at conception?

PAUL: Life does begin at conception.

So a question arises, and perhaps someone can help me out, here: What is an “honest rape”?

Anyone?

Please?