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Cecily Strong joke

Matt Staver at the March for Marriage

Ah jeez, the “Adam and Steve” line

Threats of “God’s wrath”

Marco Rubio is going to regret this

Yeah, no abortion isn’t like buying a house

Florida waiting period

Texas abstinence-only

Yeah, no

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Jeff Teague from Planned Parenthood will be on to explain what’s going on in Tennessee. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about same-sex marriage and I’ll have a round-up of some of the more egregious anti-choice laws being passed this session.

Cecily Strong was the comedian for this year’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner and she got in a few jabs about reproductive rights. This was the best one.

• Strong *

This made me go look up all the women who have been comedians for this event. It hasn’t been many: Wanda Sykes, Elayne Boosler, and Paula Poundstone. That’s basically it. Conclusion: More women should be asked to perform at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

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Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether or not same-sex marriage should be treated like a constitutional right across all 50 states. The Court has dealt with the question of same-sex marriage before, but they only considered it within the context of California and punted on the larger question of whether or not it should be the law of the land in every state. But now, the delays are over and we’re finally going to have a decision, one way or another. Most court watchers are confident that the Court will uphold the right to marry someone of your own sex, if only because the arguments against gay marriage laughable and weak. It’s not just that, either. Gay marriage is growing in popularity so fast that, at current rates, it will be a non-issue in the same way interracial marriage is a non-issue within a generation. But of course, people who have staked their entire careers as right-wing demagogues on this issue aren’t going to just roll over. Fundamentalists held a so-called “March for Marriage” at the National Mall the weekend before arguments, and the general tone of the speeches was full-blown hysteria. Matt Staver gave a stomach-turningly disingenuous speech, comparing the fight to deprive gay people of rights with older fights to give Black people their rights, even though that makes no kind of sense at all. Then he called on people to disobey the Court’s decision if they rule in favor of gay rights.

• gay 1 *

In all seriousness, how exactly would this resistance look? How does one not obey this particular law? Not get “gay married”? Uh, well, you don’t have to. Is this some kind of veiled threat to harass and terrorize gay couples in the way abortion providers are harassed and terrorized? I have no idea. It’s probably just a bunch of empty rhetoric, but still, weird.

The March for Marriage also featured some hoary old lines bigots still think are funny.

• gay 2 *

That was Father Johannes Jacobse. I must point out that, by that logic, anyone not named Adam or Eve shouldn’t be allowed to marry, either, if marriage is strictly an Adam-and-Eve thing.

On top of the march, there was also a press conference held by a bunch of anti-gay nuts. The tone continued to be one of sustained hysteria, as epitomized by Bill Jonhson of the American Decency Association. I swear, you cannot make this stuff up.

• gay 3 *

You know they’re getting desperate when they’re left promising supernatural consequences if you don’t do what they want. This particular tactic is especially sleazy because it’s based completely on back rationalizations. By which I mean that bad things are going to happen in the future, but these sleazy mofos are going to claim that the bad things happened because God is punishing us, even though bad things happened in the past prior to the “God punishing us” days. Hurricanes fall on the homobigots and the pro-gay alike, but somehow gays will get blamed for the weather.

But while these D.C. events featured a bunch of bottom feeders, there are still people considered mainstream politicians who were spouting the same hysterical nonsense. Marco Rubio, for instance, bust this out in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

• gay 4 *

He then went off on state’s rights, because the only amendments to the Constitution conservatives seem to know about are the Second and the Tenth, both of which they misread. But there is another amendment, called the 14th, which says explicitly that no state can, quote, “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That’s state, by the way, which means that this “states’ rights” nonsense is explicitly outlawed in the Constitution. Equal protection is straightforward enough, too. Straight people are allowed to marry so, by law, gay people should be allowed to marry, too. There’s a little legal wiggle room there, but the notion that it’s absurd to see strong equality protections in the Constitution is a flat out lie.

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Interview

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State legislatures are in session and that means, these days at least, a depressing and endless amount of anti-choice legislation pouring out of state houses. So here’s a roundup of some of the latest iterations you need to be keeping an eye on. North Carolina is a state that is swiftly heading to swing state status, so anti-choicers there are trying to shove through a bunch of ridiculous anti-choice legislation while they still have the votes to get it done. Which includes one of the longest waiting periods—72 hours—in the country. You will not be surprised to hear that the rhetoric defending this treats women like they are idiots. Such as this justification from state representative Jacqueline Schaeffer.

• abortion 1 *

Uh, no. Real estate waiting periods are not the same, in no small part because they’re often imposed by contract and not law. But more to the point, there’s legitimate reasons that it takes time to finalize a house deal. You can’t tell everything you need to know about a house by looking at it, which is why inspectors have to come in. But whether or not an abortion is a good idea doesn’t require a bunch of external information. It only depends on one thing: whether a woman wants to have a baby right now or not. Since the relevant information is information the woman already possesses, making her wait and endure a bunch of irrelevant lectures is just a harassment technique. Also, those so-called medical waiting procedures? They aren’t there for the purpose of guilt-tripping and putting women in time-out so they can feel bad about their supposedly slutty ways. Most of the time, it’s just about scheduling, not thinking it over. Like when I had surgery, yes, I waited a week between diagnosis and surgery, but only because my doctor only does this surgery a few times a month. If I could have done it sooner, I would have. But the main thing is those waiting periods are not standardized and not imposed by the state, but based on a doctor’s judgment. The very thing antis want to remove from the equation.

Florida imposed a waiting period, too, of 24 hours. It’s the usual cruel, misogynist nonsense.

• abortion 2 *

Forcing women to document their rape is a rather unsubtle way of calling them liars. It’s also there to create the appearance of compassion for rape survivors while functionally imposing the waiting period on them. After all, cobbling together documentation of a rape will probably take more time and be a bigger hassle than just enduring the waiting period. Even if rape victims do have the ability to get the paperwork in order, they’ll probably just opt for the waiting period instead, since it’s less of a hassle.

Meanwhile, Texas is considering a whole new slate of abortion restrictions, because they are single-minded and obsessed. But because anti-choicers aren’t just anti-abortion, they are also, sigh, attacking resources to make contraception available and to prevent STI transmission.

• abortion 3 *

95 percent of Americans have sex before marriage, but because one guy was a virgin until he was 29, we all have to suffer. Anti-choice logic at its finest.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, more anti-gay hysteria edition. I mean, you had to know I have like a million of these clips, right? Todd Starnes on the American Family Radio all but accuses gay people of trying to put conservatives in concentration camps.

• Starnes *

They weren’t sitting there minding their own business. They were selling cakes and when a gay couple came in, they basically said we don’t serve your kind around here. No one is trying to ban Christians from owning businesses or run them out of their homes. We are saying that if you run a business, you benefit from community support in all sorts of ways, from the roads that we collectively provide to get customers to you to the clean water we provide to make your cakes to the trade agreements that help you buy flour and sugar to make cakes. In exchange for all these services we the people provide your business, you in turn have a responsibility to not discriminate. If you do not wish to follow the law, you are free to not own a business. This is not that hard to understand.