While everyone else is playing their April Fool’s pranks, I thought I’d spend the afternoon talking about death threats. Because I sure do know how to party, dawg.

First up is an article from Towleroad that I was linked to over the Twitter. (It’s the CB radio of today’s youth. Srsly guys.)

It seems Rep. Michael Lawlor and Sen. Andrew McDonald, co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee in Connecticut, had scheduled a public hearing on a bill that would have reorganized funding for the Catholic Church. It was a kinda dumb and really unconstitutional bill that has since been withdrawn. Problem is that in the middle of the public outcry, middle school math teacher Timothy Kane sent an email to the two openly gay Connecticut lawmakers. Here’s the message, with emphasis added.

Hey McDonald and Lawlor, your your bill has NO shot at passing tomorrow, and you’re cowards for canceling the public hearing. Gay marriage is a farce, as are your careers and your support of the twisted, despicable act that is homosexuality. The first amendment outlaws this bill, and if needed, the US Supreme court would overwhelmingly outlaw SB 1098. You better hope that myself and other Catholics don’t find out where you live cause there’s hell to pay for your attack on the Church. Fuck off. God hates gay sex.

Of course, Timothy Kane has been arrested, arraigned, and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation and anger management training. But as Mr. Towle points out, he still has a job. At a middle school. Teaching children. Between death threats.

I won't be commenting on the obvious.

Not everybody was as happy for Mr. Nalley as I was, though. A pretty-doggone-right-wing blogger posted about the nuptuals and the response was fairly predictable. Two comments stood out to me, though. Keep in mind that these comments were anonymously submitted on a post with Mr. Nalley’s name, picture, work location, and his planned whereabouts for next weekend.

A screencap of the entire post with comments can be found here. The threats are gone from the live post, but the anonymous commenters are presumably still out there. Hopefully the FBI and the web hosting company (You better believe I contacted them both.) will be able to track them down.

These two cases are connected through the threats against someone’s life in part because of homophobia/heterosexism, but also in another way. Both the perpetrator in the first case and the victim in the second are math teachers in the same age group and grade level.

Now. Based on the information provided here, which of the two do you think makes school boards and administrators squirm the most?

For what it’s worth, another example of the problem we face.