Happens all the time. A cretin will be caught, and found guilty, for anti-gay violence and message boards will be filled with calls of prison time where rape is punishment.

Usually the wish is for the culprit to be another jail-mate’s “prison bitch.” These calls for rape as retribution are usually penned by men (hard to imagine women jumping on the bandwagon). Maybe the anonymity of the internets allows us the privilege to type mess we would never say in public. Could be “prison as fantasy” is so ubiquitous in gay male porn that it seeps into our consciousness. I do not know the reason, but hoping a odious human being is raped is a sick wish.

Yes it’s the cheap movie joke, or manufactured fantasy, but sexual assault in prison is no laughing matter. Sort of strange that needs to be said, but I’m tired of reading comments that could have been penned by a standard frat-boy yokel . Considering the number of people in detention centers in the United States (2,310,984 according to Justice Department numbers), it should surprise few that sexual attacks  in prisons are a problem.

Before you tell me it only happens to those who deserve it, remember assaults are reported by people who spend only a night in jail for minor offenses.

“This is something that could happen to a kid who has no priors and who happens to make a mistake,”said Brenda V. Smith, an American University law professor.

No one is asking we turn our care and support from our victims of violence, and there is no contradiction in wanting people punished for grave misdeeds and left safe from attack. However, if  you yell someone needs to be raped for doing grievous wrong, the difference between you and those who stalk is minor at best.

The move has been widely seen as a way to smooth relations between the Obama White House and the LGBT community, and to defuse some of the anger over the DOJ continuing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act as a matter of policy.

Read fuller versions of this story at CitizenLink and Politico.

But did GLBT citizens not expect the extraordinary from this new administration? Wasn’t that the promise made repeatedly during that lengthy primary process?

We’ve seen bold, extraordinary steps from President Barack Obama and his administration on other issues, in other arenas, but last week’s offering to GLBT federal employees was meager, not extraordinary.

The official White House Pride proclamation fell far short of even ordinary — a bland, empty statement from a man known worldwide for eloquent and convincing pronouncements.

And the Justice Department’s recently filed defense of the Defense of Marriage Act? The same old same old — an indefensible defense of an indefensible law that yes, once again compared same-sex marriage to incestuous family relationships.

Same-sex couples can now legally marry in Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, and a number of same-sex couples legally married in California before Proposition 8 was passed and upheld by the state’s high court.

Those couples have access to the same state rights and benefits of married heterosexual couples in their states, but not to the more than 1,000 federal rights and benefits, including, perhaps most importantly, the right to Social Security survivors’ benefits.

This is because the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and allows states to refuse to recognize such marriages from other states.

DOMA states, “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

The Justice Department is strongly defending DOMA against a legal challenge brought by a same-sex couple married in California last July.

Arguments have been made that the couple’s case is weak, that it is not the best suit to advance through the courts and take down DOMA.

Maybe so, but Justice’s intolerable brief defends banning federal benefits for married same-sex couples claiming that to continue to do so is cheaper for the government; that DOMA is a policy of government “neutrality;” that DOMA is consistent with due process and equal protection principles guaranteed in the Constitution.

Justice argues that it is OK to deny federal marriage benefits from gay married couples because heterosexual marriages are “the traditional and uniformly-recognized form of marriage” and that DOMA protects federal taxpayers “in other states to subsidize a form of marriage that their own states do not recognize.” In other words, Justice has interpreted the quest for equal protection as a quest for freebies of some sort.

I’ll remind you that Obama once called DOMA “abhorrent,” a characterization that could be applied to Justice’s brief.

During his presidential campaign, Obama said he would be a fierce advocate of DOMA’s repeal. There is nothing on the record to suggest he has done anything to dump DOMA.

So now, what can we expect from the administration in the next week, when the Justice Department is due to file its response in a suit brought by the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders on behalf of married same-sex couples in Massachusetts?

Sadly, I think we cannot expect anything extraordinary. Sadly, I think we can expect the same old same old discrimination. To quote White House spokesman Shin Inouye: “Until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system.”

Yes I know this story is a bit dated, but I would like to add my two cents (especially considering how I dealt with the topic a few months back). According to a Justice Department investigation Monica Goodling, the DOJ’s former liaison to the White House, did everything she could to make sure the people with the right politics (translation: Republicans) got hired. Those resumes minus Goodling approved ideology were tossed.

Now it would be easy to get all hyperbolic, call this the worst scandal evah, but some perspective is in order. First this is Washington D.C.,  where asking about someone’s politics is as common as dirt; however, Goodling treated the Justice Department like it was a college sorority where the only thing that mattered was fealty to Papa George Bush. Here is a question Goodling asked an  interviewee:

“What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?”

Mmmmm. Isn’t Bush married and why was Goodling trying to hook him up with dates? The fact Goodling made it all about Bush and not about those complicated things like law and justice, says everything we need to know. Like a dull college senior, Goodling could not deal with anyone, or anything, that might question her vision of the world. A rather anti-intellectual stance that should not be near a place where justice is supposed to be  the goal.

Monday’s report singles out the department’s former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren’t Republican or conservative loyalists.

“Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically-based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions,” the report concludes.

In one instance, Justice investigators found that Goodling objected to hiring an assistant prosecutor in Washington because “judging from his resume, he appeared to be a liberal Democrat.”

In another, she rejected an experienced terror prosecutor to work on counter-terror issues at a Justice Department headquarters office “because of his wife’s political affiliations,” the report found.

Goodling’s lawyer John Dowd did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday and other attempts to reach Goodling were unsuccessful.

The federal government makes a distinction between so-called “career” appointees and “political” appointees, and the long-accepted custom has been that career workers are not hired on the basis of political affiliation or allegiance.

The 140-page report does not indicate whether Goodling or former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson could face charges. None of those involved in the discriminatory hiring still work at Justice, meaning they will avoid any department penalties.

However, Justice investigators said that Goodling may lose her license to practice law as a result of the findings.

Gonzales was largely unaware of the hiring decisions by two of his most trusted aides. The report said his aides’ decisions weeded out Democrats and that Goodling also rejected at least one lesbian job applicant.

The report marks the culmination of a yearlong investigation by Justice’s Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the country’s premier law enforcement agency.

The investigation is one of several that examine accusations of White House political meddling within the Justice Department. Those accusations were initially driven by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006 and culminated with Gonzales’ resignation under fire as attorney general last September.

The man who replaced Gonzales, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said he is “of course disturbed” by the findings.

“I have said many times, both to members of the public and to department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career department employees,” Mukasey said in a statement shortly after the report was released Monday morning. “And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the department.”