Is Elaine Donnelly for real?

She's the president of a group that opposes gays in the military, and blessed us all with her own bizarre fantasies at a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing about Don't Ask Don't Tell. As Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report put it: "The way to win the DADT debate --hand the other side a microphone."

Highlights, as reported by Dana Milbank:

She warned of "transgenders in the military." She warned that lesbians would take pictures of people in the shower. She spoke ominously of gays spreading "HIV positivity" through the ranks.

"We're talking about real consequences for real people," Donnelly proclaimed. Her written statement added warnings about "inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community," the prospects of "forcible sodomy" and "exotic forms of sexual expression," and the case of "a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault" a fellow soldier.

There's a screenplay in here somewhere. But don't worry, Elaine--there's still plenty of old-fashioned, red-blooded heterosexual harassment and assault going on in the military!

Antigravitas congratulates Captain Sulu on his marriage

George Takei is the coolest.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, I mean, Iowa

In Iowa, Mitt Romney has launched a campaign to, in the words of Chris Cillizza, "redefine former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) as too liberal for the voters of Iowa."

He has a shot. Conservatives like Bob Novak are already pointing to Huckabee's relatively liberal record on fiscal policy, and the new Romney ad campaign highlights some of Huckabee's positions on immigration as governor.

But what I think is really interesting about this ad is how it hides the threats to Romney's social-conservative credentials in plain sight. The ad points to conservative positions on abortion and gay marriage as two points of similarity between Romney and Huckabee, sweeping under the rug Romney's flip-flopping on choice and previous opposition to constitutional gay marriage bans for Massachusetts and for the U.S.

Welcoming Virginia's fleeing gays

It should be no surprise that some gay Virginians are fleeing to the District. Virginia's state legislature passed an anti-civil-unions law in 2004, and there's an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment up for a vote this November.

But the Richmond-based Family Foundation, which supports such legislative action, is sad. Sad, I tell you! Its executive director says that getting gays out of Virginia is not the goal, and reassures everyone that the proposed amendment "wouldn't add restrictions on gays but would simply underscore the ways their relationships are already restricted." (WP)

It's so frustrating when one's efforts to perpetuate social injustice are portrayed as efforts to create new social injustice.