My brother Carl wandered by and noted that he had listened to a bit of Rush Limbaugh Tuesday, for the sake of fun, and learned Rush was taking credit for the argument that marriage isn’t about affirming one’s love for another person, it’s about having children. Apparently others on the right side of the pool are making the same argument and Rush wants us to know he thought of it first.

I suggested that elderly couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry, by this token, and that single women should lose the right to marry as soon as they hit menopause. Carl told me to be quiet. Someone might hear me and run with the idea!

In a mood, I did some web searching and came up with this fun thing from a while ago by a heterosexual guy in Vermont. It actually is a fun thing, and it’s called Civil Unions Destroyed My Marriage.

You may already be familiar with this, but here is one of my favorite (harsh) parody sites, BettyBowers.com. Betty Bowers is a Christian fundamentalist (I was going to say a caricature of a Christian fundamentalist, but I’m not so sure there’s actually any exaggeration going on) with a lot to say on a lot of issues. The site always makes me happy….

For instance, Is Fabulous President George W. Bush a Fabulous Homosexual? analyzes the evidence! I had been whining about the word “fabulous” before, but they take it to a whole new level. Betty and co. even designed a protest letter.

So, Larry Flynt is going to run for governor of California, is he?

I find this funny because:

1. I’d LOVE to see cheap-labor conservative Issa’s face if his bid to oust Gray Davis led to Flynt coming into power…ha! ha!

and

2. I’ll be far away in Michigan the day of the election, celebrating my birthday and pretending I don’t know any of you weird Californians.

Oooh, Deb’s going to love this one: Defeat the right in three minutes.

Be sure to read it all the way through. The argument may seem oversimplified, but it provides a lever to achieve some really astute observations. The author’s weblog takes the discussion further.

If you’ve ever found it difficult to understand the behavior of Cheap-Labor Conservatives (and I have), this may just shed some light.

OK, who can explain to me why a poster of a man breastfeeding at work would be controversial? I just can’t see it.

Let’s tick off the elements:
A man in a suit with his chest exposed. If this was a problem, most Guess ads would be banned.
A man holding his child. Can’t even imagine a problem there.
A man with his child on his chest. I’ve seen that in Sears catalogs, for cryin’ out loud.
A baby in a diaper. Um, yeah.
An office. Uh-huh.

I got it. It must be the poster of Lucy Lawless’ legs on the wall.

Seriously, though, the real reason it was pulled was the same reason it was made: it makes people think about the double-standard we still have. If men needed to breastfeed at work, do you think there’d be any problem?