Tammy Lynn Michaels heads for the back of the bus

Saw this yesterday ...

... and threw up in my mouth a little.

But, hey ... Rick apparently really liked Melissa's last album.  In the Etheridge/Michaels household, that apparently goes a long, long way.

"There are two kinds of people in this world -- the kind who separate the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't."  -- Gloria Steinem

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by: red7eric @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 18:11:46 PM CST

France already does it this way

Some forty years ago I was stationed in France as a member of the US Army.  One of my responsibilities was to handle the paper work for military members of the site who wished to marry in France.  All marriages had/must be performed by a non-religious member of the the government.  It might be a mayor, a designated clerk or a higher office.  This was the official contract of marriage.  A religious ceremony is not required nor recognized as a legal joining.  But many couples do go before a priest to have that civil contract blessed and celebrated by the congregation.  This blessing does not confer the rights of marriage; only the civil action does that.  This separates the religious from the actions of the state.

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by: TomaHawk @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 18:18:31 PM CST

And yet they don't even give gay couples anywhere near the same rights as they do married couples in France.

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by: Zeke @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 20:50:07 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Baseball Cap vs. Yamaka

I read the Tammy Lynn post.
My reaction?
Oy Vey!
Anything less than equality is bupkes.

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by: midge @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 18:29:29 PM CST

Such rank ignorance..

Yamaka is not spelled like that-it's yarmulke. Also, she sounds like a 15 year old girl-not a WOMAN. Jesus. With this kind of representation, who needs enemies?  

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by: Mindyinlongbeach @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 18:47:58 PM CST

[ Parent ]

She's a dope

1) A yarmulkah (or yarmulkeh) is not a hat.  It's not basically the same thing.  It's not remotely the same thing.  

2) A yarmulkah is not holy, neither is a menorah.

3) You don't have to be religious to wear a yarmulkah.

4) And since when does a yarmulkah or menorah belong to people who go to church on Sundays?

She displays as much ignorance of Judaism as she does ignorance of clear thinking. She can't think straight, she can't construct a logical argument.  She's a nudnick. Somebody's grandmother should take her aside and say, "Sweetheart, you want to make comparisons, make them with something you know a little bit about, why don't you?  Try maybe your own religion and leave other people's alone."  

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

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by: Lev Raphael @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 20:20:54 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I was hoping that you'd weigh in on this, Lev.

by the way, a singer named Anne Feeney has a great song called "Defenders of Marriage" available on amazon.
Well worth the 99 cents as is her "Days of the Theocracy"

Ought to be played at LGBT events...

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 21:54:31 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Lev, do you think that we could scrape money together

and bribe the LGBT band to play "The Internationale" at the inaugural?
Might be fun to see the reaction.....

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 22:01:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

How about an intervention

Let's hire a group to do a Spelling Intervention with Tammy.

And then send her on a Jewish retreat somewhere.

Somewhere far away.

Where they don't have internet access or even WiFi.

Girlfriend, step away from the blog!!!!

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

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by: Lev Raphael @ Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 06:25:06 AM CST

[ Parent ]

We could do a chant-in

Let's go to Tammy's house and sing:

Yamaka, yamaka, fly away home
Tell Tammy Lynn to leave words alone!

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

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by: Lev Raphael @ Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 06:32:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Unfortunately...

...there are always members of oppressed groups willing to take the oppressor's side. LGBT collaborators tend to be wealthy and well connected, with their money and connections buy them a version of "equality" and "rights" denied to the rest of us. This fight won't be won by the likes Melissa Etheridge, Tammy Lynn Michaels or their Log Cabinette soulmates. It will be won by those of us at the bottom who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by taking on the status quo.

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by: johnbinpt @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 19:20:58 PM CST

You hit the nail on the head

The collaborators tend to have enough money to basically buy their equality, or simply leave to somewhere else if it gets bad enough.

The rest of us have to actually fight for our rights and our money. Tammy and Melissa need a head check and a nice CTRL-ALT-DEL to the brain.

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by: ElsieElsie @ Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 13:03:18 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Yeesh!

I was a bit chagrined to see Tammy Lynn Michael's take on this issue.  "Call my hat a YAMAKA"??  First of all, what a childish reaction to a serious topic! What you "call" it is not the point. What the head covering represents is the point.  But since Ms. Michael couldn't even be bothered to spell the name of the garment correctly, I shouldn't expect her to be thinking much about what the yarmulke actually represents.    

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by: worldharmony @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 19:29:16 PM CST

Tammy's spelling is BYOOTIEFULLL

Aw yeah.

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by: dewdrop_world @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 19:30:52 PM CST

The Christian reich has to come up with a better argument

A LEGAL argument isn't queers touching the word marriage makes me have the icks, and my religion doesn't approve.

F*CK THAT
You're feeling icky, and your church, have ZERO say in Constitutional Rights of others, who don't believe your beliefs, and aren't compelled to believe those beliefs.

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 19:37:25 PM CST

Add my "oy vey" to the pile

Thanks to TEJTM for this great post and to Lev for his great commentary on Tammy's offensive misuse of Judaism.  

It's amazing to me how much some people don't know.  Not only does this woman need her own copy of Judaism for Dummies, she must also get and read a copy of the recently released Commission report from New Jersey that definitely puts to rest the mythology that civil unions are just another name for marriage.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  

I have no use for either civil unions or Rick Warren.  And it appears that rock stars and actresses shouldn't quit their day jobs any time soon.

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by: ctrizzo @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 20:44:17 PM CST

Too right!

Thanks.  It pisses me off that she can lackadaisically assume she knows anything about Jewish culture and construct an argument using examples drawn from it.  Sh'es offensive and comes off as a nitwit imbued with Christian privilege.  She assumes she knows all about Jewish "stuff," when in reality she knows zero.

She is also woefully ignorant of recent political reality.  The New Jersey commission examining the success of civil unions unanimously said they were a failure for obvious reasons: health care workers and employers for the most part haven't been recognizing them where it counts: hospitals and in terms of benefits.  

"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

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by: Lev Raphael @ Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 06:13:09 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Even this Southern Baptist raised Mississippian knows that the word is "YAMULKA"!

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by: Zeke @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 20:52:50 PM CST

oy vey is right

Yarmulke is not a religious name. Yiddish is the mamaloshen, mother tongue, everyday language. Hebrew is used religiously. I have never heard someone who isn't Jewish say kipah, but even that isn't a holy word. Any man who enters a (Conservative or Orthodox) synagogue is asked to put one on as it's considered disrespectful to go without a head covering. Which is diametrically opposed to the symbolism of a baseball cap - it's considered disrespectful to wear one inside or during the national anthem!  

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by: one jewish dyke @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 21:12:04 PM CST

Thanks for bringing this up, and Happy Hannukah

As onejewishdyke points out, many words in Jewish observance have different variants in Yiddish vs. Hebrew.  "Gut shabbes" is Yiddish, "Shabbat shalom" is Hebrew etc.  

And as I said above and elsewhere on The Blend, there's nothing holy about a yarmulkeh.  Our texts are holy to some Jews, but not our kipot.  Tammy, get a clue.  

To call a kipah a hat is as disrespectful as calling it a beanie.  Tammy is as ignorant of Yiddishkeit (Jewish culture) as the woman years ago who saw a lavender eye pillow in my house and asked if it was connected to my religion.  Boy was I dying to make something up, but I was so astonished, I couldn't even make a joke.


"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant."  The Colbert Report

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by: Lev Raphael @ Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 06:22:45 AM CST

[ Parent ]

This "argument" always drives me insane.

First off, Tammy Lynn, learn to spell if you're going to do a blog.  There's a difference between typos and just plain ignorance.  Your computer has some form of spell-check, so use it.  Thanks.

Now: marriage IS the civil union we have.  It's the civil union called "marriage".  It's a license and a contract that is completely under the state's control.

What religions do, if they like you, is throw a symbolic party for your marriage called a "wedding".

If you don't have a religious wedding (by having a non-religious wedding or no wedding at all, just a signing of the license at City Hall, for instance), you're married as long as you get the license from the state.

If you don't have the license from the state, no number of religious weddings will make you married.  Such is the complete powerlessness of religion in marriage.  Because marriage is controlled entirely by the state.

Religion doesn't even entirely control weddings!  They control nothing.  They have no place in this discussion whatsoever.

Plus, some religions DO celebrate same-sex marriages.  So the religious freedom of THOSE religions is trampled upon by the bigots from the religions that don't.

Even if Tammy Lynn weren't so obviously wrong, we now have the proof out of New Jersey that not treating people equally results in not only unequal treatment, but extreme confusion.  And for what?  So that some religions can oppress some people in a country that separates church from state?

Religion doesn't get a place at the marriage table.  Not any.  At all.  It doesn't matter what any religion thinks.  Nobody's marriage is any of their business.

They get to choose who they'll throw a party for, but that's it.  Big deal.  Who wants to go to their parties, anyway?

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by: diablorobotico @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 21:39:29 PM CST

What has changed?

"the problem has always been that while they were separate, they were never equal."
Sidney Kennedy(1896-1971), environmentalist and diarist, 1967

The target has changed, the tactic remains the same.

"The reactionaries never learn and never forget"
also Sideny Kennedy, 1967

I tell you Chica that no greater abomination exists than women denying their spirit of sisterhood and instead becoming the oppressor. -Rebeca, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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by: MauraHennessey @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 21:49:38 PM CST

The "civil unions for all" approach is participation in lies.

Social and civil marriage has been around for much longer than the religious marriages of the sects that the majority of the anti-marriage-equality people belong to.  In other words -- "marriage" was the civil institution first.  Roman Catholics only made marriage a sacrament in the 13th century -- and the Protestants stem from that tradition.  They're the latecomers to the party; if they'd like to keep the civil and religious institutions of marriage distinct, they're perfectly free to change the name of their recent-addition religious ceremony.

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by: M @ Tue Dec 23, 2008 at 22:51:42 PM CST

Tammy Lynn's blog site!

Has Tammy Lynn ever learned to write in complete and readable sentences?

Does she take her blogging clues from Bushie's fractured grammar?

Does intelligent and rational thinking ever penetrate that dizzy skull of hers?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Tammy Lynn sure doesn't have a clue!

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by: wagonjak @ Wed Dec 24, 2008 at 11:32:00 AM CST

Tammy Lynn Michaels

I think Tammy is in every way entitled to have her own blog and post any opinions she believes to be right and okay on that blog. We may not agree with her opinions, and I know that I dont agree with her on everything she says.
But I respect that she has opinions that differ from mine.
I read what Tammy wrote and I think in my humble opinion that bloggers in here, admidst the debacle about the correct usage of certain words, conveniently overlook the fact that Tammy in her blog is attempting to find a way around the word "marriage" in order to gain equal rights for gay couples.
She may not have succeeded but she did try. That does not make her 15 years old, it makes her human. I, for one, hopes she continues to blog because she does have interesting things to say and she certainly made a lot of folks in here sit up and take notice.  :-)

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by: Glorgn @ Thu Dec 25, 2008 at 19:28:14 PM CST