IGF's own Jonathan Rauch is featured in yet another newspaper
story from the heartland about the Pink Pistols, local gay gun
groups that Jonathan has championed. This time up, it's a
March 8 report in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which tells
us:
"Despite the argument that gun ownership will deter gay bashing, some gay shooters said it can be hard to be out of the closet as a gun owner in a gay community where the most vocal voices tend to be liberal and ambivalence toward guns may be higher than in society as a whole. -- At a recent meeting of the group, other gay shooters agreed that guns can be the self-defense measure that dare not speak its name.
No surprise here, since no one ever said going against the grain
was easy. Significantly, however, the story notes:
For the gun community, a nontraditional group like Pink Pistols can break down the stigma of firearm advocates as right-wing, angry, white males dressed in camouflage fatigues...
Translation: Gay support is a positive for gun-owners' image. Talk about coalitions!
Ad Attack.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is continuing
its efforts to intimidate advertisers into dropping their spots on
CNBC's new "Savage Nation" talkshow, hosted by bombastic radio
personality Michael Savage, as recounted in this
press statement. Meanwhile, writing in the New York Post, Adam
Buckman comments:
Savage"didn't make any obscene gestures, jump up and down, foam at the mouth, or expel hot steam from his ears. I expected to see all of that and more, judging from the hysteria. "
I haven't caught it, but the show airs on Saturdays from 5-6pm. Catch it if you want to make up your own mind, while you can.
Holocaust Denial.
Believe it or not, anti-gay Republicans can sometimes be so
ludicrous that they embarrass at least some of their fellow GOPers,
as described in this look at Minnesota state Rep. Aaron Linder,
from the
Minneapolis Star Tribune. Linder triggered a storm of
controversy when, among other things, he expressed the view that
gays were not victims of the Nazis, and instead were themselves
Nazis:
"I'm not convinced that they were persecuted," [Linder] said, suggesting that the main gay participants in the Holocaust were Nazi concentration camp guards. That contention, he added, is laid out in a book called "The Pink Swastika," which he hasn't read but is trying to lay his hands on.
Responded GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty, "I oppose any efforts to
rewrite history to exclude homosexuals or any other minority group
that suffered as victims of the Holocaust."
--Stephen H. Miller