The UK is slowly making its way towards allowing consensual marriage between adults, no matter who those adults happen to be. This is a good thing. Without qualifiers. It is just good. The current state of things can be simply summed up as “unjust” — or, to put it into British Political Terms, “not fair”.

But as the slow march towards equality continues, people continue to out themselves as bigots. That’s OK. Bigots are a part of life, and so long as bigots are increasingly marginalized, and bigotry continues to be less acceptable, they can serve as a barometer of our progress.

But sometimes the bigots are not inconsequential voices. Sometimes they are members of parliament; people who author, debate, and/or vote on laws. Bigoted MPs are not good. And some of them are saying things that truly piss me right the fuck off.

For instance, there was this article on the BBC, in which Defence Secretary Phil Hammond says:

There is a real sense of anger among many people who are married that any government thinks it has the ability to change the definition of an institution like marriage.

This anti-gay-marriage argument is one of the most common, and it is absolutely infuriating.

First, Hammond cannot even manage to make it for himself. He feels the need to disassociate with it, and claim it on the behalf of “many people”. So the whole thing begins with a bit of doublespeak, so that he can distance himself from the opinion when people call him out as a homophobe. Good politics, perhaps, but cowardly.

Secondly, it implies that the value that (some) people see in their marriage does not have to do with their partner, love, family, or commitment. It has to do with privilege. It states “I value my marriage because my ability to be in it makes me feel superior to other people.” Instead of a simple, straightforward dislike of people who are different, it is a belief that societal institutions that disenfranchise a segment of the population are good, right, and moral.

That, to me, is far more horrific.

Finally, I’m married. And I have never felt entirely comfortable being part of an institution which continues to enshrine inequality. I’m part of a “many people who are married” as well. Only, unlike Hammond’s “many”, mine believe that our marriages will gain meaning by being inclusive. My membership in the married club will be made all the better once the club is no longer exclusionary.

Today, the BBC published another story, of course. We can probably expect to see these every day between now and the first gay marriage in Britain. And each of them will feature Conservative politicians expressing their homophobia couched in terms that are meant to hide it.

And bravo to the Conservative politicians pushing this through despite this opposition. It can’t be easy for them.

Fox News is infamous for its hardline rightwing spin on the news, and its unthinking (and often bigoted) populist approach generates reactions (in this corner of the Internet) that fall in various locations on a scale featuring the values of bewildered, apoplectic and amused, in a black humour kind of way. We do not often mention Fox here at the Big Bad Blog, but in those few instances we have not had nice things to say.

Andrew Napolitano is Fox’s legal correspondent. He is a former judge, former TV Show judge, former Fox radio host, and Glenn Beck’s fill in for those days on which Beck is too teary-eyed to sit in front of the cameras. Napolitano is the author of books with titles such as The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land. In short, it is not hard to see why he gets to comment on the law for Fox News.

Given all this, we would expect that Fox’s coverage of the recent striking down of Proposition Eight as unconstitutional to get labelled as the actions of an “activist judge”, and to hear the usual rhetoric. Instead, this is the coverage we receive:

Yes, Fox News still has plenty of people who (literally) shout things like “activist judge” and “marriage is between a man and a woman” from the television sets of the world. But we should applaud this small step forwards in which their legal analyst thinks this is a sound decision, and seems to intimate that he considers it a good decision, and the news anchor interviewing him — Shepard Smith — likens it to the denial of interracial marriage in the 1960s (which he describes as “stupid”).

So bravo, Fox News. You have put together an intelligent and open-minded four minutes of news analysis.

Now go do it again.

Tired of rock-paper-scissors? Is it too simplistic? Is it time to upgrade?

If so, the Morning Coffee presents to you Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie. Enjoy!

(Because we apparently cannot get enough of pigs in Wellies. This pig is named Cinders and is owned by the Keebles. There is a second photo in the Daily Mail.)

Will the Democrats become the dominant political force in Texas? Maybe not in the current election cycle, but it’s hard to see how a political party that has decided it will ban pornography, oral sex, gay marriage, sodomy and strip clubs if elected can win elections. Who, after all, dislikes blowjobs?

I’m always surprised when I see articles (like this one which express the opinion that women’s (or girl’s) sports are soft or docile. Such opinions can only be formed by people who have never watched women’s (or girl’s) sports.