Oklahoma, NOT OK

Republicans in Oklahoma are showing that, like the rest of the Republican Party, they are taking their cues from the racists who brought us the strategy of massive resistance during the civil rights movement.

 Of course, the new civil rights movement is for marriage equality and equal treatment and dignity in general, and the dead-enders don't like it one bit. They especially don't like that the federal courts are ordering them to stop discriminating, so in Oklahoma they're resurrecting a favored tactic from the Jim Crow days.

You know that a couple of weeks ago a federal court found Oklahoma's marriage equality ban to be unconstitutional, but you might not have heard that the legislature has been trying to decide what to do about it.

For their solution they are looking to the ideas of the old South, when cities under pressure to integrate their public schools closed the public schools entirely, creating what were colloquially known as seg academies, private schools with the ability to keep discriminating. Or, if the city was told it had to integrate its swimming pools it would just close down the public schools.

Bingo, problem solved, no race mixing allowed.

What's the marriage equivalent? Pure simplicity, really. Just abolish marriage.

No, really, I'm not kidding. Watch this:

I'm thinking they may not have thought this whole thing through, though. For instance, lots of people like being married. In addition, lots of people, even straight couples, like the tax and other benefits that being married brings.
I don't think this is going anywhere, but if you want to have a clue to their mindset this is a good place to start. 

Support Our Troops! (Some of them, anyway)

The states of Oklahoma and Texas have revived one of the beloved traditions of the Civil Rights Movement in the sunny South: the segregation academy.

Back in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's many southern states responded to court integration orders by simply closing the offending institutions. If ordered to integrate their municipal swimming pools they closed the pools so that their beautiful white babies wouldn't have to play and swim with black children. Ordered to integrate their schools, they closed the public schools and established so-called private "academies", colloquially known as seg academies, to skirt the legal effect of the court orders while continuing to deny educational opportunity to their black citizens. 

Now we hear, in the wake of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that some of the southern states are taking a lesson from their segregationist forbears.

Back then the enemy was racial desegregation, this year it's equal treatment for same sex couples.

OKLAHOMA CITY —- Oklahoma will stop processing all military spouse benefit applications at state-owned National Guard facilities rather than begin accepting the applications from same-sex spouses, Gov. Mary Fallin said Wednesday.

Fallin went on to recall the principles of "massive resistance" that was the rallying cry of southern racists in years gone by. "The decision reached today allows the National Guard to obey Oklahoma law without violating federal rules or policies. It protects the integrity of our state constitution and sends a message to the federal government that they cannot simply ignore our laws or the will of the people."

 Other states in the proud Southern tradition who are refusing to provide same-sex benefits for their National Guard members include Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia.  

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks and our military response you can't go a day without seeing one more jingoistic appeal to "support out troops", and this sentiment seems to be strongest in the hyper-militarized Deep South. 

One can't help thinking that it's ironic that these are the states that are in the forefront of denying benefits to the troops.