Yesterday, as I was driving home, I was listening to the Michelangelo Signorile show on Sirius OutQ.  He was playing a radio clip that was particularly chilling.  It was James Dobson of Focus On Homosexuality The Family choking up for his listeners as he told them how God wanted him to drop everything and lead a "prayer" vigil in California to ban same-sex marriage.  Right Wing Watch has more…

Dobson Chokes Up Explaining God Wants Him in California to Save Marriage

James Dobson dedicated his radio program today to explaining his sudden decision, which we mentioned earlier, to go to California this weekend to join Lou Engel, Tony Perkins and others for a massive "The Call" rally of prayer and fasting in the name of saving "traditional marriage."

In the clip below, Dobson has just explained that he received a letter from Rev. Jim Garlow, one of the leading organizers of the "yes on 8" movement pleading with Dobson to attend and, after reading it, felt God’s hand on his back telling him to attend "The Call."  Dobson chokes up explaining that despite having been on the go for weeks and being exhausted, he knew God wanted him there.  Dobson had to call his son to tell him he couldn’t babysit for his grandson this weekend as planned and his son Ryan then confirmed that God wanted him in California instead.  Dobson could barely keep it together when he explained that "the Lord must be involved in this" and then hands over the program to Garlow, who also gets choked up and speaks of their level of spiritual desperation and their constant "crying out to God" to save California because they are "watching the destruction of Western civilization."

You can listen to the clip there.  I heard it on the Signorile show, and listening to it I just knew it was going to drive the kook pews to open their wallets up in droves.  All the little old ladies who believe Dobson when he tells them that gay people are the tools of Satan and that same sex marriage will allow homosexuals to molest children in public schools will open their fixed income pocketbooks and give, and give and give.  And thus the smear campaign being waged now in California will get a new infusion of cash, allowing them to wash one final media tidal wave of lies over every television in the state, scaring people into believing every filthy lie they can get away with about their gay neighbors.

Behold the destruction of Western Civilization…

The Face of Proposition 8

I was on my way home from the Lakeshore district when I encountered this group of supporters of Prop 8. After turning my vidphone on, I was screamed at, physically intimidated and eventually attacked by one of the more aggressive sign-wavers.

…

I asked the most aggressive woman (who was not underage) "are you afraid to be online?" She answered, "oh, no, they already videotaped me, but these kids don’t want to be online, cause they’re [unintelligible] loaded on a sexual perv profile and [unclear] look at my little cousins." Fair enough. I’m all for protecting the innocent. (Not that there’s anything particularly innocent about shouting hate speech in public.)

"Go away, Nasty Nasty. Nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty."

The woman continued to poke at my face with her sign and call me "nasty." Genuinely disturbed by the complete lack of rational behavior I’d seen up to this point, wanting to look into her face and possibly connect on some level with her as a fellow human being, I pulled a corner of the sign down away from my eyes and asked "why are you calling me nasty?"

That’s when she attacked, clawing, grabbing and then shoving. I didn’t fight back; she was much bigger than me. Calling me a "nasty fucker" and threatening to kick my ass, she pried my phone out of my hand and tried to break it in half while her friends egged her on.

Please note that I never touched or threatened her in any way (unless you want to consider my pulling the edge of her sign out of eye-poking territory a threatening gesture).

As she grabbed at my phone, I stood there stunned, not really sure what to do. One of the counter-protesters (the woman who you see saying "No on Prop 8" towards the beginning of this clip) quickly intervened and calmed the attacking woman down enough that I felt safe enough to try to take my phone back. After a second or two of grappling, she let go and went back to screaming at cars from a lawn chair near the side of the road.

(Big love and gratitude to the kindly counter-protester who pleaded for calm. I don’t think my phone would have survived without you!)

I stood there for another minute or two, checking the phone’s applications for damage. One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered "fuck you, dyke."

Even though I wasn’t hurt besides a small scratch on my hand, and my phone was okay, being attacked definitely shook me up. I was a bit tearful. Call me naive, but I never thought I’d actually be in physical danger just for shooting footage of their activity and pulling the edge of a person’s sign out of my eyes. Verbal insults, sure. But attacked by an anti-gay activist? In one of the most queer-friendly neighborhoods in the bay area? Yikes.

The man holding the "Vote No" sign noticed that I was in tears and approached me. We hugged to a chorus of jeers, exchanged some reassuring words, and I turned to leave. Someone called after me: "keep crying, and keep walking."…

(Emphasis mine…) You can see the video of the incident at the link above.  When Dobson says god wants him to go to California, this is the flock to whom he will preach, that they are the salt of the earth, defending it from unspeakable evil…  One of the other sign-wavers, a teenage boy standing nearby, leaned over and whispered "fuck you, dyke"… "…keep crying, and keep walking."

This is what Dobson and his congregation are doing to California.  This is what they have been doing to America for decades now. Dividing us against one another, so they can carve their own personal kingdoms out of the shattered pieces.

Behold their righteousness…

Ken Mettler, a politically conservative activist and member of the Kern High School District Board of Trustees, was caught on video kicking and punching a protester at a Friday night demonstration against Proposition 8.

Mettler said the following day that he was only defending himself.

"I was assaulted," Mettler said. "A fellow threw a punch at me. He missed, and I did hit him."

The incident was recorded by another protester. The video shows Mettler taking signs which originally read "Yes on 8" but had been altered to read "No on 8."

And…surprise, surprise…the video tells a somewhat different tale…

Here is the America of their dreams…a place where high school trustees beat the crap out of dissenters and then lie through their teeth about it afterward.  Tell me that the kids in this man’s schools won’t take a cue from this, that it’s okay to beat the crap out of their gay and lesbian peers.  Tell me he wouldn’t want them to take that cue.  Tell me Dobson wouldn’t want them to take that cue.  Homosexuals are destroying Western civilization.  That means it’s okay to shove that terrified gay kid’s face into his locker, like they’ve been wanting to do for weeks now…

So…what are you going to do about it?  I know…I know…you’re going to vote for Obama.  You’re going to work like hell to keep McCain and especially Palin out of the White House.  You are going to help get better democrats elected, so this country doesn’t have to endure another year, let alone four, let alone eight, of rule by the kook wing of the republican party.  Fine.  Good.  Wonderful.  Really.  But…can you spare a few dollars in the fight for the right to love?   Because that’s what this fight is about, in its starkest terms.  This is about hate that cannot bear the sight of decent, wholehearted human love, and urgently wants to snuff it out.

This nation has a lot of work ahead of it, healing the wounds from decades of republican hate mongering for votes.  Making gay and lesbian people second class citizens, cutting the ring fingers off of devoted, loving couples, only prolongs the bitterness.  It could last for decades.  Do you want to see hundreds of loving couples forcibly divorced?  Do you want to see thousands more denied the right to marry.  Do you think another two or three decades of this…

Is going to help America heal its wounds?  What kind of America do you want.  This one…

Or this one…

I’m in for another $500 dollars.  That makes $1,500 I’ve given to this fight and it will take me months to pay it off, win or loose.  But I can live with that, so long as I know I gave it everything I had, cut to the bone, so that love could have a chance in this poor angry world.

I’m not asking you to cut to the bone.  I’m not asking you for hundreds, let alone thousands.  Can you spare 20?  10?  5?  It’s easy.  Just go to the No On 8 site and give.  Anything.  Anything at all.  The polls all say it is close.  We can win this.  We can.  But we have to give the people fighting on the front lines of this something to keep their ads going.  The other side is going to spend millions in the next few days to  dump an tidalwave of hate mongering over California.  The polls all say that when our side gets its message out in equal force, we win. 

They have the Mormon church, which has given anywhere from 40 to 70 (!) percent of the money for the Proposition 8 campaign.  They have Pope Ratzinger’s Catholic church.  The have James Dobson, and the protestant religious right.  They have their own array of right wing billionaires.  They have Fox news.  What do we have?  We have a dream.  An ages old dream of freedom and justice.   For all.  Where Americans can live together in peace.  Where love is not spat upon, but nurtured and cherished.   Where hate does not rule.

I know this fight is an uphill struggle.  I know how much it can soul-weary a person, how deeply it can wound.  Hate takes its toll on all of us.  I still vividly remember sitting in my eighth grade sex ed class, hearing our gym teachers tell me and everyone I knew in that school, that homosexuals mutilate the bodies of people they have sex with, and then, usually, kill them.   I have no idea how many of my classmates from back then still believe that.  But I suspect even now some of them still do.  And some of those who still believe it, are themselves gay, and they have loathed themselves all their lives. 

And that is why, win or loose on the night on November 4th, I know where my name will be written… 

BARBARA GARRETT $100  CERRITOS       CA  90703  ST FRANCIS HOSP               Support

BRAD GARRETT    $500  SAN JOSE       CA  95133  APPLIED SIGNAL TECHNOLOGY     Support

BRETT GARRETT   $250  REDWOOD CITY   CA  94061  SAME NAME                     Oppose

BRETT GARRETT   $100  REDWOOD CITY   CA  94061  YOHOSTCOM                     Oppose

BRUCE GARRETT   $500  BALTIMORE      MD  21211  SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INST  Oppose

BRUCE GARRETT   $500  BALTIMORE      MD  21211  SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INST  Oppose

DAVID GARRETT   $100  WALNUT CREEK   CA  94597  SELF-EMPLOYED                 Oppose

DAVID GARRETT DDS  $1,000  LA CANADA CA  91011  DAVID P GARRETT DDS	      Support

So I be written in the Book of Love,
I Do not care about that Book above.
Erase my name, or write it, as you please..
So I be written in the Book of Love. 

Will you write yours there with mine?  You have the power to tell the heart-wounded, young and old, that they do not have to hate themselves…that they never had to hate themselves…that love is possible to them. Please donate to No On 8.  Write your name in the book of love.