First I trash my fellow Texans and then some clarification

The school book battle heats up today, as my wingnut fellow Texans start to push not only for teaching kids that there's no such thing as birth control, but that "family" means "married heterosexual couple" and nothing else.

Board member Terri Leo said Thursday that wording in a sixth-grade Holt health textbook should be changed from "couples, partners and families" to "husband and wife," saying Texas does not recognize same-sex marriages.

Though Holt's high-school books identify marriage as between a "husband and a wife," Leo said neutral wording in the sixth-grade books misleads students.

"The purpose of neutrality is to be inclusive of homosexuals," Leo said.

Everyone got that? Our textbooks already describe marriage in strictly heterosexual terms, but they tacitly admit that couples, partners, and families exist anyway. I can only imagine what Ms Leo thinks of people having friends! Of the same sex! Or the opposite sex!

Using the same logic, I could argue that there's no point in telling kids to wait until marriage to have sex. After all, that's pretty much admitting that it's possible not to wait until marriage which is being inclusive of those who don't. Avoiding inclusiveness seems to be the number one goal. Of course, it looks remarkably like ignoring something you don't like thinking that will make it go away. I wish the Christian right would decide already if they want to ignore us sinners completely and let us go about our business or focus intently on condemning us and our actions every second of the day.

Alright, some clarification. I don't hate Texas or the South and I think all this talk about secession is nonsense. First of all, the notion that political differences are geographic is nonsense. Yes, I linked to the slave/free state map awhile ago, but I think it's safe to say that map isn't the final word on the issue. And yes, I used the term "Southern strategy", but that was Nixon's term, not mine. I call it "race-baiting", and as anyone who likes Archie Bunker can tell you, the Southern strategy worked nicely on Northern whites as well. Liberals and conservatives and all their ilk and spread out nicely around the country, though in different concentrations in different places.

Frankly, the latte-sipping East Coast elitists unnerve me as much as they do my Neanderthal fellows down here. The only difference is that I thought that was pretty much just a stereotype, and now I'm not so sure with all the talk of secession. My fellow Austinite Neal Pollack made me even more nervous about the stereotypes of the heartland getting intensified.

That's why I made that crack in the comments about a guy being from the country Homophobia. There is no place to hide from the wingnuts, people. A nut like Terri Leo may sit on the school board of Texas, but I guarantee someone like her is trying to get on the school board in your state, too. Blue state liberals need to turn to us red state liberals in times like these for solace. We know how to manage under the rule of the right wing. We can help you.

Anyway, the biggest distinction still seems to be urban/rural, not North/South.