Queer Atlas shrugged

I was just thinking about my earlier post about Washington Post conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin.

As you'll recall, President Obama has invoked his legal right to refuse to defend DOMA in the courts.  The President then invoked a provision of law that permits the House of Representatives to defend such cases when the President demurs.  GOP House Speaker John Boehner, carrying forward the party's tradition of never passing up an opportunity to bash a minority, hired a former Bush administration lawyer, Paul Clement to represent Boehner in defending the odious law.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the gay-bashing.  To put it in terms a conservative can understand, queer Atlas shrugged.  America's LGBT community and our allies refused to take bigotry for an answer.  We rose up and spoke out against Clement's law firm, King & Spalding, and the firm relented, dropping the case and Clement along with it.

And that made the Post's blogger, and her conservative friends, very mad.  And their anger is understandable.  I imagine white southerners were equally infuriated when African-Americans refused to sit at the back of the bus, or move away from the Woolworth's counter.  It must be terribly frustrating when you can no longer get away with subjugating an entire class of Americans simply to appease your hateful bigoted heart.

Your party, Jennifer, has an intolerance problem.  You have for decades.  Oh, sure, you guys like to trot out peripheral Republicans who have no real power anymore, like Laura Bush or Dick Cheney or Ken Mehlman - Republicans who are now pro-gay on a given issue, but who refused to lift a finger to help us when they were in office - and you think that's going to make us buy the lie that your party is somehow over its fetish with hating gays (and blacks and women and Latinos and everyone else who isn't white, male, rich and over the age of 60).  But you guys just can't control, yourself, Jennifer.  And that's why John Boehner just had to jump at the chance to bash my people one more time by defending DOMA in the courts.

Well, Jennifer, as President Obama and the Democrats learned over the past two years, and your party is waking up to the fact only now, we're simply not going to put up with your crap any more.  Our community is no longer going to play a rigged game by your rules, when you gave up on the rules long ago.

We're supposed to give you a chance to make your case in court when we made our case for marriage in California, and won fair and square, so you folks went to the people, told them we were child molesters, and took our legal victory away.  Really?  How was that respecting the right of the people to defend themselves in court, Jennifer?  You people did the same thing in Iowa after we went to court and won our civil right to marry, only to see the judges removed from office by your people, in a blatant effort to chill every judge in the country from ever siding with a gay plaintiff again.

Some respect for the courts there too, Jennifer.

Your side only respects the rule of law when the law is on your side.  Otherwise, you're like every other bully: You embrace the brute force of public prejudice to impose your bigoted small-minded opinions on people like me who have never done you any harm.  That is, until now.

Queer Atlas just shrugged, Jennifer.  I suggest you get used to it.