What kind of sick bastard wouldn’t let them buy a puppy?

A kennel owner in Sweden refused to sell a woman a puppy after learning she was gay. To which I say: WTF? The situation has been rectified, since an appeals court in Stockholm has ruled that you can’t be denied canine companionship on the basis of your sexuality, but I find this story very confusing. When I hear about asshole-ish business owners turning away gay customers, I think of America. More specifically, I think of Texas, but that’s neither here nor there. (Please, Texans, don’t go all Walker, Texas Ranger on my ass. I’m a weakling. An admitted weakling. Attacking me would be like attacking Linda Hunt, and only a complete jack-off would attack Linda Hunt.)

What didn’t compute for me when I first read this story is that homophobia exists in Sweden. Which is stupid, I know, because homophobia exists everywhere. (Well, everywhere except in kittens and the hearts of children. Unless the kittens and children belong to Shirley Phelps-Furley. Yes, I said Furley. Because, let’s face it, Mr. Roper was a ‘phobe but Mr. Furley had an IQ of 80, tops, which means his intelligence was roughly equal to Shirley’s.) But c’mon: Sweden.

I’m a big Ingmar Bergman fan, so I was under the impression that Swedes spent all their time in mental anguish over the absence of God, mutilating their genitals with jagged pieces of glass and playing chess, or at least backgammon, with the Grim Reaper to pass the time. And remember all those reviews of Fucking Åmål (better known in English-speaking countries under its sanitized name, Show Me Love) that mentioned it beat Titanic at the Swedish box office when it was first released? I guess the homophobic kennel owner isn’t a Lukas Moodysson fan.

Other reading:

GayWired ran a puff piece on Itty Bitty Titty Committee (which, if you survey its credits on IMDB, kind of looks like the lesbian version of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World) with this sentence that caught my eye:

Lesbian luminaries Guinevere Turner and Jenny Shimizu, along with long-time friends to the gay gals, Clea Duvall and Melanie Lynskey, join a smoking cast of relative newcomers to start the next big feminist movement.

Clea Duvall is a “long-time friend to the gay gals?” I think what Tracy E. Gilchrist and L. A. Vess meant was long-time friend with benefits, no? And, uh, what about Melanie Mayron while we’re at it? Why does she get to fly under the radar?

Finally, can’t get enough of the lurid Seth Tobias story? New York magazine’s Stephen Rodrick has written a very long article about it.