The Religious Right Wants Meat (Updated):
There's a reason that you have to kill a dog that's tasted human blood. Once it gets that taste in its palate, it becomes hungrier and hungrier for more of that chewy meat, that tangy blood, that human flesh. So there's precious few options. You can try to keep it locked away, deny it what it so deeply desires, hope it'll go back to being the nice little weimariner it always was. And you can believe it, and perhaps it would be true, that one day you'll have a happy chappy again. But that's a lie until it gets that scent of a cut, a nosebleed, a tampon. Then you learn, as we so often do, whether on the shores of Florida canals or in the sprawl of California exurbs, just where you really are on the food chain. You're better off just putting that fucker down. Don't believe it? Lock yourself in a room with a big dog without food for a few days. The only advice that'll help you is "Don't fall asleep."

Oh, how Karl Rove thought he had placated the beast of the religious right. How he thought that John Roberts and Samuel Alito would be all they needed to keep them loyally licking his hand, bringing him his slippers, all the while as he watched them gleefully jam their muzzles into the crotches of his enemies and rip their nutsacks off. Now, Rove has learned: once you feed it, it will want more.

See, while, sure, the religous right is pissed about Bush's "approach" to immigration, they can't make that the focus, because, you know, from the perspective of wackoid Jeeezus-lovin' PACs, you piss off the Hispanic community, you are pissing away mucho dinero. So, not only are they expressing disappointment with the immigration "plan" Bush wants, but they are extra-ultra-special pissed off about the lack of movement on (and, indeed, the possible loss of) the marriage amendment as an issue.

The Family Research Council's Tony "Ironically the Same Name as a Gay Actor Who Died of AIDS" Perkins said on the Today Show yesterday about the White House, "They've got to follow through on promises that were made in the 2004 election cycle, which so far they have not done very much in that area." Yes, you might think a pair of Dobson-approved Supreme Court justices would be more than enough, but when Churchy wanna get paid, you better pay Churchy large or Churchy's gonna break you knees, motherfucker. That's what Perkins said to Bill O'Reilly yesterday over on Fox "News" regarding the President: "I think there's a great risk to him and to the Republican Party if they do not advance these issues that were central to the 2004 campaign. It motivated the value voters, marriage being chief among them." Or, in other words, Churchy's gonna whack the shit out of you with a big ol' Bible.

The Family Research Council (motto: "Making sure you forget that Jesus gave a shit about the poor and weak") and Perkins, in his Washington Update, said about Bush's immigration speech: "I should also point out that the President has not given a prime-time address on the marriage amendment. It's not that we are demanding this, but when the First Lady is disparaging the issue and when the Vice President lets stand unrebutted Mary Cheney's claims, we think some demonstration of Presidential leadership is warranted--and overdue." And that's why Tony Perkins received an honorary doctorate from Jerry Falwell at the same commencement where John McCain spoke.

As Americablog pointed out, the Christian press turned viscerally on Laura Bush for saying (what she was told to say) that the gay marriage amendment ought not be a campaign issue. Leaving aside that, really, and c'mon, Laura Bush's thoughts on anything carry as much weight as flea shit, the ol' Agape Press quoted the Pennsylvania American Family Association's Diane Gramley: "[P]oliticians should stand up for marriage and should support the marriage amendments and voice their support for the marriage amendments during this campaign." On the AFAP's own website, Gramley goes on a bit more frothily, "The federal Marriage Protection Amendment is not discriminatory. Our proposed Pennsylvania Marriage Protection Amendment is not discriminatory. People want to protect traditional marriage and any individual running for public office would be well-advised to make marriage amendments a campaign issue." It's a little like saying that placing the military at the border is not militarization or that fucking a passed out sorority girl isn't rape. Just 'cause you say it...

Some things happen at a velocity that leaves you breathless. The woodpecker tapping away on that bug-filled branch. The way storms grow out of nowhere over Kansas sunflower fields. Elevator sex with Helen Thomas at the Watergate on a misty August night in 1986. And now the rapid descent into mutually assured destruction going on within the right wing. As the crazed religious right ironically eats its own tail over the marriage amendment, it's being attacked by the crazed secular right, like George Will. Karl Rove's gotta be lookin' around at all the wreckage being lain by the unchained beast and thinking, "Oh, shit."

It's so much fuckin' fun, it's hard to know who's the monkey and who's the bears. (Keep sending in those analogies, though. The best'll be posted tomorrow.)

Update: And meat they shall get.