antimeria

I’m not an emotional person (see #5), and in general, things don’t get to me. But I lost it when Andrew Sullivan linked to a National Review post by Heather MacDonald on gay marriage, which bemoaned the “institutionalized severing of biology from parenthood”:

Orphans and abandoned children are raised by non-biological adoptive parents… But these arrangements were considered outliers to the normal practice of conceiving and raising children, forced on the parties by sad necessity.

As most people reading this know, I’m adopted (see #4), and although I’ve had a sometimes-contentious relationship with my parents, they are two of the most caring and devoted people I know. Their faith was one of the major reasons they wanted to adopt, and they would be devastated if someone told them their act of love a “second-best solution.” MacDonald’s dismissal of loving parents because they don’t conform to her vision of a “traditional family” is one of the most despicable, hurtful things I’ve ever read–and it’s worse because I’m sure she thinks she’s being perfectly reasonable.

In my last post, I wrote that to modern-day conservatives, “Outliers are to be homogenized or destroyed.” I think I need to go farther and put the stamp on it: conservatives see nothing wrong with denying outliers and nonconformists their very humanity in the name of getting their way.

It goes without saying that the rest of her post is pure drivel, so full of half-baked claims not even worth addressing that I hesitated to link it. And of course, any self-respecting conservative commentator needs an astounding lack of self-awareness (bold mine):

The facile libertarian argument that gay marriage is a trivial matter that affects only the parties involved is astoundingly blind to the complexity of human institutions and to the web of sometimes imperceptible meanings and practices that compose them.

Heather MacDonald, go fuck yourself with a pineapple, and pray to your god that I never see you on the street.

Last week, Rush Limbaugh judged the Miss America pageant (In related news, that’s still around), and being that he’s Rush Limbaugh, people have been accusing him of being sexist. So he went on Fox and Friends (where else?) to defend himself. Naturally, it went off without a hitch:

“I’m a huge supporter of women. What I’m not a supporter of is liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose, and feminism has led women astray. I love women. I don’t know where all this got started. I love the women’s movement — especially when walking behind it. This idea that I don’t like women is absurd. This is Miss America. And if there’s a Mr. America out there, it’s me.”

Bold mine. Beyond being pretty funny, this is a pretty perfect illustration of one of the biggest problems I have with conservatism as it exists in the United States today: the utter lack of self-awareness, introspection, humility, or curiosity, which breeds a reflexive hostility to anything novel. To them, opposition and outliers are to be homogenized or destroyed, not understood and engaged with.

HT: Andrew Sullivan

The Nexus One is getting multitouch starting today.

HT: Engadget

Update: the Android Wordpress app is available now, too! As of now (3:47PM), fewer than 50 other people have downloaded it.

HT: Phandroid

• For Tony, a Wired article about Internet addiction in China. I’ve read a bit about this phenomenon in Korea, and have wondered if it’s a legitimate concern, or if it’s just the fact that 43% of China’s 1.3 billion citizens are under 29–a cohort which outnumbers the entire United States population.
• For Scott, a blog about clouds. Update: link broken, server problems.
• For just about everyone else, the Voltaggio brothers’ website is definitely drool-worthy. They also have a bunch of Youtube videos.

HT: Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein

I realize I haven’t actually written much about music lately, but here’s a list of concerts I’m excited for:

1. Dan Deacon at Ottobar
2. Cymbals Eat Guitars at Rock n Roll Hotel
3. Miike Snow and Delorean (mostly Delorean) at 9:30 Club
4. Gang Gang Dance at Ottobar
5. Japandroids and Love is All at Rock n Roll Hotel