Fringe Factor: Penn. Health Dept. Says Gays Are Like 12 Year Olds

Pennsylvania: Gay Couples Have the Same Rights as 12-Year-Olds

Here’s a creative and totally (not) legitimate new reason for why gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Pennsylvania’s Department of Health is suing to get the Montgomery County clerk to stop issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples by arguing that gays and lesbians are just like children. And everyone knows children can’t get married! The state filed a brief Wednesday, claiming that gay marriage licenses are invalid and have no standing in court. “Had the clerk issued marriage licenses to 12-year-olds in violation of state law, would anyone seriously contend that each 12-year-old...is entitled to a hearing on the validity of his ‘license’?” read the brief. Even Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, who supports the suit against the Montgomery County clerk, thinks this is ridiculous. Corbett issued a statement Thursday saying, “the analogy chosen in the legal brief filed on August 28 is inappropriate.”

Louisiana: Minorities to Blame for Racism in America

Bobby Jindal has done it! He’s figured out why, in 2013, there is still racism in America--and just in time for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Minorities, Jindal argued in a Politico op-ed, perpetuate racism by not letting go of their heritages and just assimilating already. The Louisiana governor, who himself is an Indian-American, explained that minorities place “far too much emphasis on our ‘separateness,’ our heritage, ethnic background, skin color, etc.” Everyone’s cultural identity is hyphenated. “Asian-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, Indian-Americans, and Native Americans, to name just a few,” he wrote. “Here’s an idea: How about just ‘Americans?’ That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing an undue emphasis on our ‘separateness’ is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.”

Arizona: Recall Heroic Giffords Intern Because He’s Gay

Daniel Hernandez Jr., may be an actual hero but he’s also gay and therefore does not deserve to sit on his local school board. Gabby Giffords’ former intern, who helped save the former congresswoman’s life when she was shot in Tuscon in 2011, is now the subject of a smear campaign to get him kicked off Tuscon’s Sunnyside Unified School District (to which he was elected last year). Hernandez opponents are apparently passing flyers around town alerting people to the dangers of Hernandez’s sexual orientation and his support for gun control. “Put a REAL Man on the Sunnyside Board,” declares one flyer. “Daniel Hernandez is LGBT. We need someone who will support Sports and cares about our kids. We don’t need someone who hates our values. RECALL Daniel Hernandez TODAY.” Another flyer warns, “Daniel Hernandez only cares about one things [sic] taking your guns away.” In response to the recall campaign, Hernandez told The Huffington Post, “I’ve had a target on my back from my fellow board members for a while because I don’t go with the flow, and if something doesn’t sound right or make sense, I call them out on it...It’s disheartening that this is where we are in 2013, that people think it’s okay to put out these kinds of flyers about anybody.”

Alabama: Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” Is Child Pornography

“The Bluest Eye” is a classic American novel about being a young, black girl in Ohio during the Great Depression and touches on such heavy and uncomfortable topics as incest, child molestation, and racism. It’s a book most high schoolers in the U.S. are required to read and Alabama Senator Bill Holtzclaw wants to put a stop to that. Holtzclaw is campaigning to get the Toni Morrison book banned from the new federal Common Core curriculum, calling it “completely objectionable, from language to the content.” Holtzclaw’s crusade against the book seems more like an attempt to make up for not following fellow Republicans’ lead in opposing the controversial Common Core standards in the first place. But regardless of his motive, his mission has picked up some steam. One conservative blog, Polichicks, even went so far as to excerpt some of the more graphic passages from the novel and label them “child pornography,” a term that effectively accuses Morrison’s book of endorsing and promoting the types of lewd and reprehensible acts it so accurately describes. Holtzclaw himself has not—at least not reportedly--used the term “pornography” to describe the book. Still, he’s not only determined to keep the objectionable material off all state reading lists, he’s also said he’d support removing it from school libraries altogether.

New Jersey: Gays Are Not Guys

Cory Booker may not care if people think he’s gay, but his Republican opponent for the Senate thinks that’s “weird” because, personally, he likes being a guy (which, of course, gays aren't?) “Maybe that helps him get the gay vote, by acting ambiguous,” Steve Lonegan told Newsmax this week. Lonegan, the former head of the New Jersey branch of the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, referenced a DuJour magazine interview that revealed the Newark mayor’s guilty pleasure for late-night manicures and pedicures. “It was described as a particular fetish, is how it was described,” said Lonegan. “I have a more particular fetish: I like a good Scotch and a cigar, that’s my fetish.”

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Caitlin Dickson

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