As you may have heard, pioneering lady astronaut Sally Ride died of cancer yesterday. Because gays could not legally marry in the state Ride, a lesbian, resided in, Ride’s longtime partner will get screwed a bit, and whoever runs the Mountain Goats Twitter account took offense when gay marriage opponent Mitt Romney decided to praise her.
Your move, Bane Capital. You’re not going to let some unwashed hipster p*ssies in a folk band do your boy like that, are you?
(HT: Pleated Jeans. Pic via Mountain Goats website)
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Even if Ride had lived in a state with marriage equality (and were married), her partner would be ineligible to receive benefits thanks to DOMA. It’s amazing how the “States Rights” party prevents the states from having the right to make choices that they don’t agree with.
Ahhh, thanks for pointing that out, Jacktion.
Shut up, Jack. You handsome scoundrel.
Romney’s stance on gay marriage is effectively the same as Obama’s- both would leave the decision up to the states. Ironic that The Mountain Goats conveniently choose to overlook their own guy’s hypocrisy in their crusade to demean Romney.
Publicly supports != publicly oppose.
Their stances are different. Their *policies* are the same-ish, although Obama’s administration has done things that Romney’s would never do, such as overturning DADT and making the DoJ stop defending DOMA in court (I believe they left the door open for republican legislators to fill that role, though).
John Darnielle runs their twitter. Despite his own denial of the fact, John Darnielle is the Mountain Goats.
As Jacktion mentioned, DOMA is the law that prevent’s partner benefits. DOMA was passed a bi-partisan majority in both chambers and signed by President Clinton. Joe Biden is likely the only person in the November presidential campaign who had a vote on the bill, and he voted FOR DOMA. As repellent as he might be, Romney had nothing to do with this. I am slightly embarrassed by the number of liberals whose kneejerk hatred of Romney cause them to post things that don’t even make sense.
Biden did vote for DOMA, but to be fair, that vote was 16 years ago — time enough to change one’s mind on the issue. I haven’t read up on it all, but it seems like the only thing Biden opposes about gay marriage is using the word “marriage.”
Stated opposition to something while running for president is certainly equal or greater than having voted for it in the past. Moreover, your argument fails because the point of the tweet was point out the hypocrisy of Romney’s tweet.
Finally, even if Obama had done the same thing, it’s little defense to say – “well, he did it too.” You’re still an asshole, even if you can point out other assholes.
I have kneejerk hatred towards Romney because he’s a completely transparent asshat.
To be fair, Mitt Romney is not…nor has he ever been…in any position to influence who gets federal benefits. If we want to criticize someone for failure to act on that, we should criticize President Obama. He could issue an executive order immediately which would provide federal benefits to the surviving spouse of anyone in a gay marriage. And if he didn’t have the gumption to do that, then back when the Democrats had complete control of congress, he could have at least gotten one of his fellow Democrats to introduce a bill providing federal benefits to a surviving gay spouse. But he did nothing.
Rather unfair and downright hypocritical to criticize someone for something he’s had no control over, while saying absolutely nothing about the person who DOES control it. That’s “despicable and grotesque”, don’t you think?
“Because gays could not legally marry in the state Ride, a lesbian, resided in, Ride’s longtime partner will get screwed a bit, and whoever runs the Mountain Goats Twitter account took offense when gay marriage opponent Mitt Romney decided to praise her.”
I really want to focus on the issue at hand, but this awkward comma usage is super distracting!