I hadn’t read any of Fred Clark’s posts in a while, I suppose for some reason I can’t get his blog to work in Feedly. So just now on a lark I checked in.
I also appreciate his telling how it feels to move into a new place in the center of town and you can walk to “a supermarket within walking distance, and a half-dozen coffee shops, four pizza places, and more restaurants and bars than I’d manage to visit over the next 15 years of living there.” Yes, urban life is Wonderful. Especially if you’re a walker. And especially so when it seems you are welcomed to it with a street fair right outside your front door.
I really need to figure out how to get his posts to show up in Feedly.
[Update…] This time I tried I got the link to Slacktivist added to My Websites easily. I have no idea what the problem was before.
The Christian Post describes it as a conference to address “…how Christians should react to the ongoing battle between those framing the homosexual lifestyle debate as a civil rights issue and those supporting what they believe to be biblical moral values, including traditional marriage…” Oh…is that what it’s all about is it? Guess who was invited…
And guess who wasn’t…
As the Christian Post would have you see it, the conference attracted “plenty of fireworks” mostly on “social media”. But Theocrat In Chief and Baptist Pope in Waiting Richard Land stood firm…
“The gay community is never going to find the Evangelical response satisfactory because we’re not going to accept their behavior.”
Their behavior. Their behavior. Their behavior. Still can’t see the people for the homosexuals can you Richard. And you never will. But is that “the Evangelical response” or is it simply the knee jerk dance of the irredeemable bigot? You lost this fight decades ago Richard. Those voices outside the doors Richard…do you hear the people sing…?
Back before there was a commercially open Internet…back in the stone knives and bear skins days of DOS PCs, 800 baud Modems and dial up BBS systems, I saw the world change right before my eyes. Before home computers had powerful multi-tasking operating systems, back when 640k of system ram was considered more than most people would ever need or use, little computer bulletin board systems sprang up everywhere. At first, they just connected the people in their local dialing area. Then in the mid 1980s some of them banded together into an amateur computer network called FidoNet. Back in those days I was on a local BBS system that had a gay Fidonet echomail board called Gaylink. It had participating BBS systems on it all over the world. I had an uncle back then who was a HAM radio operator. He kept trying to interest me in taking up the hobby, telling me about all the people all over the world he was able to communicate with via shortwave radio. And I kept trying to tell him about all the people all over the world I was communicating with via FidoNet. The world was changing before my eyes. Still, as a young gay man, I knew there were things that would never change. And then they did.
Gaylink was mostly a social forum. We chatted about this and that…a little politics, a little dishing. It never really got very serious. One day a message from a BBS in the Netherlands appeared. It was short and to the point:
I’m 14 years old. I think I might be gay but I’m not sure. How did you know about yourself? What was it like?
And from literally all over the world this kid began getting coming out stories. Not the one where you come out to family and friends. The one where you come out to yourself.
Some of them were painful to read. Some were hopeful. Some were amazingly nonchalant. There were folks whose parents disowned them. There were others whose parents completely accepted them. Some people struggled for years with it. Others seemed to have always known and accepted it. There was romance. There was heartbreak. I sat down and for the first time ever, really thought about my own experience coming to terms with my sexual orientation and wrote it down for this kid and the whole world to see. And I could sense that something…wonderful…was happening.
It went on for two weeks. We never heard a peep from the kid throughout that entire time. And the stories, from all over the world, from people in all walks of life, just kept coming and coming. We all began talking to each other, seeing common threads in our lives that we all had, which set us apart from the heterosexual majority. Seeing those things that made each of us unique and at the same time those things we all seemed to share, no matter where we lived, no matter what culture we were raised in. Then the kid spoke up one last time:
Thank you. You’ve all given me a lot to think about.
That was it. We never heard another word from him. Maybe we gave him what he needed to accept himself. Maybe he was just confused about his own awakening sexuality, and what it meant to be homosexual. At that age, who knows? Maybe he wasn’t what he represented himself to be. That was as easy then as it is now. But as I watched that event unfold I realized that there had to also be hundreds of others, maybe even thousands, all over the world, generation upon generation, watching that conversation, hungry for those same answers to that kid’s question. And I saw it then, what this new technology could do for us as a people. We no longer had to see ourselves through heterosexual eyes.
Now look at this again…
But they have their voices now. And they will use them. We will speak our truths to the world, and we will be heard. Weep for the old days Richard Land, when you could tell us lies about ourselves from the pulpit you were thumping and we believed them because yours was the only voice we could hear. They are gone. You kept gay voices out of your conference, but you couldn’t silence them outside of it. And that is the reality bigots like you have had to deal with for decades now, since all there was for an online social space were the first primitive personal computers and some modems. Your song and dance took place, fittingly, at the Opryland Hotel. An actual conference was held in the virtual street outside. You can keep gay voices out of your church. You can keep them out of your theology. But you can’t keep them in the closet. Not anymore.
I won’t quote from it lest I be accused later of selective editing. Go read it for yourself, the blogger is obviously distraught over the sudden tidal wave of anger being directed at the company for putting a man at the top who gave a thousand bucks to support Proposition 8. On the other hand, you’d think from reading his links that all the happy gays and gay friendly people at Mozilla have no problems at all with a guy who dropped a grand to cut off the ring fingers of gay couples in California.
“Mozilla’s new CEO this week expressed “sorrow” for having caused pain by making a donation in support of California’s Prop. 8, which sought to ban gay marriage. And while he made an “active commitment to equality,” Brendan Eich did not elaborate on his beliefs regarding gay marriage and the LBGT community…”
A thousand bucks might have seemed chump change to this guy but it’s still serious money, and it shows a serious commitment to a belief that homosexuals are at best damaged goods that don’t actually love and aren’t fully human. There is no argument about protecting the institution of marriage as being about one man and one woman that does not have as its bedrock the image of The Homosexual as some sort of defiling pornographic cesspool flung into a sacred ground. Marriage is about love and family…homosexuals are degenerates that just have sex, molest children and spread disease. That was what Proposition 8 was about from beginning to end. It was an attack, not just on the right of same sex couples to marry, but on the humanity of gay people. It was a multi-million dollar hammer brought down against the very idea that there could possibly be anything sacred about the feelings of love and devotion gay couples feel, waged by people who think we are a cancer on human existence. And Eich bought a thousand dollar share in that campaign.
But at Mozilla according to this blogger, what they’re having is a discussion about freedom of speech verses equality. That’s the argument the religious right wants everyone to have and it’s exactly the wrong argument to be having. You can give your product away but throw your character into the gutter and you’ll be years cleaning it back up. And this man still doesn’t seem to think he did anything wrong.
That’s the problem here. If they’re having a discussion about rights at Mozilla they’re having the wrong discussion.They should be talking about character. That PC Magazine article says that he expressed “sorrow” and did not elaborate on his beliefs regarding same sex marriage and LGBT people. Tell you what…read His Own Words and then tell me with a straight face that this man has any regrets about what he and countless others did to their gay neighbors in California. Everything is sickeningly there in plain sight, to anyone who has fought this battle:
…the donation does not in itself constitute evidence of animosity. Those asserting this are not providing a reasoned argument, rather they are labeling dissenters to cast them out of polite society. To such assertions, I can only respond: “no”.
Hahahahaha… Where have I heard that before? You’re just calling me a hateful bigot because I disagree with you! No Brandan, ‘bigot’ is a perfectly good old fashioned English word and it means something. And something else that has some meaning is you declaring you won’t discuss your involvement with Proposition 8 at the same time you’re bellyaching about having a rational discussion. Actually Brandan they had that rational discussion at the trial and David Boies said it best when he said that the witness stand is a lonely place to lie. But it’s not the only lonely place and you are not a mere dissenter. Freedom of speech is one thing. A thousand dollars to a campaign to cut people’s ring fingers off isn’t mere speech. But let it be said the speech you dropped a grand on is bad enough. That money went to ads that played the Gays Are Coming For Your Children card! Living with the lies you paid a thousand bucks for come home to roost is another lonely place. You could renounce them, but it seems you won’t, and that makes them your lies too.
Lies are a kind of speech, yes. Hate mongering is a kind of speech, yes. But what kind of speech, and what kind of person utters it? If they are having a free speech verses equal rights discussion at Mozilla they are having the wrong discussion.
Eventually, This Is Going To Blow Up In Their Faces
To: “MBUSA Customer Support” (support@mbusa.com)
From: Bruce Garrett
Date: 09/24/2013 09:27 AM
I was just looking at the new model E250 Bluetec diesel, and checking the specs to see if it would run on biodiesel greater than B5. I see it won’t. So it seems Daimler is not responding to the increasing proliferation of higher than B5 diesel in the U.S. Are your dealers telling their customers who buy your diesel vehicles that there are parts of the U.S. now where they may not be able to find fuel for their cars? I see there in the fine print on the spec page that you are warning people not to use biodiesel greater than B5, but are you warning people that such fuels are almost all they can find in some states now? And that problem is getting worse.
Do you understand the problem here? I bought my 2012 E350 Bluetec because I wanted a Mercedes diesel since I was a teenager, for their longevity and fuel economy. I wanted a car I could explore the country with. Now it seems I have a car that I can’t drive in some parts of the country and which will someday not be drivable at all.
…and Lo and Behold, I get a reply almost immediately!
To: Bruce Garrett
From: Robyn L. – MBUSA Customer Support
Date: 09/24/2013 10:38 AM
Dear Mr. Garrett:
Thank you for your email to Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC.
That is correct Mercedes-Benz only recommends B5 or less Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel. Nevertheless, your feedback is sincerely appreciated and duly noted.
We appreciate the opportunity to respond.
Sincerely,
Robin L.
Mercedes-Benz USA
(800) 367-6372
At some point, probably in the not too distant future given the rate at which B15-B20 is starting to proliferate, lawyers for a lot of angry people who bought some very, very expensive automobiles they can’t drive in large swaths of the country anymore, are going to be asking Daimler why they didn’t tell anyone who bought their diesel motor cars that there were so many places they wouldn’t be able to drive them before they took their money.
I could sell Spirit now and maybe just break even on the car loan. Then where would I be? Without a car and no down payment that could get me another Mercedes for a long, long time. Besides, I can’t sell a car in good conscience that I know is going to be worthless later on. Or I could try to work a trade-in deal that would have me paying through the nose for less car than I have now.
Or…I could keep the car…it is an excellent car…my dream come true car…and be a trouble maker…
I should start writing some letters to my congress critters…and see which consumer protection agencies would benefit most from knowing that Daimler is withholding some arguably important information from its customers at the point of sale…
Q: How Can You Tell When A Homophobic Bigot Is Lying…?
Answer: Their mouth is moving. This, from Joe. My. God…
Yesterday we enjoyed the evisceration of anti-gay NC Sen. James Forrester at the hands of Michelangelo Signorile, who got rather incredulous at Forrester’s lack of HIV knowledge, especially considering that Forrester claims to be a Fellow with the esteemed American College of Preventive Medicine. As it turns out, THAT WAS A FUCKING LIE.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. The quick answer to your questions is that Dr. Forrester is not, and never has been, a member of ACPM (much less a Fellow, which is our highest designation of membership). However, this is troubling to us, too, that he’s apparently claiming to be a Fellow of ACPM, and we would like to know where Dr. Forrester is making these proclamations so that we can approach him and demand that he cease falsely using ACPM credentials in his campaign or wherever else he’s using it. If you can point us to some places where he’s using those credentials, we’d be most appreciative. Many thanks.
This you may recall, is the Upstanding All-American Heterosexual Christian Pillar Of His Community…
…who introduced the current anti same-sex marriage amendment in the North Carolina Senate, and whose rational for doing that was in part, his longstanding work as a physician and Fellow at the American College of Preventive Medicine dealing with the medical problems of homosexuals.
When all is said and done, the only problem I have with bigots who live in their own alternate reality is they can’t actually go live there, they have to keep inflicting their fantasy world on the rest of us in the reality based community. That said, it is occasionally sweet to watch reality bite them in the ass from time to time. I stopped waiting long ago, for any of them to learn anything from the experience. I just bask in the schadenfreude. Can you at least take that little tin North Carolina Flag lapel pin off your jacket while you’re looking your fellow senators in the face and lying through your teeth? Try to be respectful of your state flag man.
Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding won plaudits Monday from gay activists for backing out of an agreement to argue to uphold the federal ban on gay marriage. But a day later the reviews were a bit more bruising in the legal community.
Top lawyers and law professors, with some notable exceptions, called it an embarrassing blunder by the prestigious firm or a betrayal of a client and legal principles. Others think King & Spalding, whose clients include General Electric and Coca-Cola, may have backed out because the firm fears the fallout from leading an anti-gay legal fight.
You say that like it’s a bad thing…
King & Spalding’s announcement it would not represent congressional House Republicans in their quest to defend court challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the subsequent decision of Paul Clement, the lawyer in the case, to quit the firm and take it elsewhere was the talk Tuesday among Yale University Law School faculty, said Lawrence Fox, a Yale professor and expert in legal ethics. DOMA defines marriage “for federal tax, Social Security and other purposes” as only a union between a man and a woman.
“We really go down a bad road if we say law firms can’t take on (controversial) matters or people will assume you have those views,” said Fox. “I’m going to walk into my class today and I’m going to use this. I’m tearing up my lesson plan … to talk about this case.”
The nice thing about working in an ivory tower is what you do doesn’t have to have any relationship to the world outside. Tenure. It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who have to live there, in the world of the commoners, it’s only they who remember the panic that set in back in 1993 when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples could not constitutionally be denied the right to marry. It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who remember how the party of Lincoln and Fred Phelps pushed through congress the Defense Of Marriage Act to protect American heterosexuals from the damaging effects of having to live in a world where the sordid, brief and barren sexual assignations of homosexuals had the same legal standing as their noble unions of male and female. It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who remember how the man who stood in front of them and said “I have a vision for America and you’re part of it” signed that bill into law in the dead of night, somewhat less then three years after he folded on his promise to let gay servicemen serve openly and with dignity. It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who watched as the new republican majority in congress, elected on campaign pledges of jobs, set about immediately to work reassuring their base that the meager gains gay Americans had made while the democrats were in control would not stand, and that they would be steadfast in opposing president Obama’s plan to impose The Gay Agenda on America.
It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who read the steady stream of news reports of same-sex couples beaten down and destroyed by this nation’s abject capitulation to bigotry, month after month, year after year.
A gay Long Island couple who have played by the immigration rules for more than a decade are stuck in a Catch-22 that could tear them apart just when they need each other most.
New Yorker Edwin Blesch, 70 and his South African husband, Tim Smulian, 65, have been spending six months on Long Island and six months abroad to comply with Smulian’s tourist visa.
But Blesch, who has HIV, suffered several mini-strokes and other complications and is now unable to travel safely.
Smulian is his primary caregiver – but has no way to stay here permanently.
It’s unclear what will happen to the couples already profiled by major news sources, like Monica Alcota and Cristina Ojeda. The one thing that is clear is that this is a sad day for binational same-sex couples, and for everyone who values America’s tradition of being a place where people can come from anywhere in the world to make a home. Like so many other things, that seems to be a privilege reserved for straight people.
It’s only those tiresome homosexuals who remember their names…names like Laurel Hester. Not law professors in ivory towers.
Here is a law firm that proudly touted its support for gay Americans in their struggle for equality. Suddenly it is, in a very high profile way, part of the republican party’s DOMA circus. Suddenly every attorney, every clerk, every secretary, every intern working for this law firm is under a gag order…not simply to refrain from speaking about the case, but never to breath so much as a word against DOMA. Imagine that instead of Teh Gay this case was about defending a congressional ban on Jewish ownership of businesses. How many eyebrows would be raised when a law firm that touted its opposition to antisemitism, suddenly took on the congressional defense of that law, and gagged its partners and staff from ever speaking a word against the segregation of Jews? Who would complain when the law firm withdrew and the jackass antisemitic partner who dragged them into that despicable case left to pursue it on his own, that the Jews had gone too far?
But conscience, and a sense of basic human decency wanders in a lot of people, even now, when it comes to the persecution of gay Americans. Suddenly persecuting minorities becomes some abstract thing, less important, less real, then the right of republicans to conduct a great circus show of defending marriage against the forces of Obama and Satan, and demonize a segment of America for votes. The constant rain of gay blood on the streets isn’t even on their moral radar…
HRC is right to fight vigorously to overturn DOMA, which deprives gays and lesbians of many of the rights enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts. But it sullies itself and its cause by resorting to bullying tactics.
On February 22, around 11:00 p.m., Shortell was walking home to his apartment on Kent Avenue and North Fourth Street, a walk that never felt unsafe to him before, when he was brutally attacked by a group of four teenagers. The details were fuzzy after that and as a result of the incident, Shortell suffered a fractured chin and nose; eye sockets and cheekbones, requiring ten hours of immediate surgery, several days in the hospital, and a month of recovery since.
Bullying tactics? Bullying tactics? Here’s the problem: the scapegoats aren’t taking it anymore. They’re fighting back. Where is the outrage in the corporate news media…the comfortable McMansion in the rich white suburbs corporate news media? Once again, it’s directed at gay Americans. For standing up for their human dignity. For defending themselves against hate. For fighting back. Republicans inciting hatred for votes is just Business As Usual. Gays asking businesses to walk the walk not just talk the talk on civil rights is front page news! How dare they. Don’t they know their place anymore? What is this world coming to, when even homosexuals demand to be treated with respect? Who told the them they had a right not to be bullied? It certainly wasn’t us.
Images From A Sideshow Running Away With The Circus…(continued)
Here’s some shots of the counter-demonstrators…
As I said previously, the main contingent of the counter-demonstrators came in two waves shortly after the NOM rally began. But even as NOM was setting up there were a handful of individuals there on the sidewalk near them, quietly speaking their truths. And among these was Mel White and his companions from Soulforce. I saw Mel occasionally walk over to some of the NOM folks and chat with them for a while. What was said between them I have no idea: much as I would have like to have snapped some photos of those conversations, I kept my distance. At 56 going on 57, I have a very negative opinion of the possibility of changing minds, let alone hearts of any of these True Believers. But I deeply respect anyone who still believes in their heart that it can be done. So I stay out of it. This is why I am not a professional news photographer. The spirit of Weegee laughs at my deference to the better angels.
More and more I am seeing at these demonstrations, young heterosexual couples who see this struggle as their own too. And it is. Only on its face is this a fight about homosexuality. Look closer. It’s a fight over the right to love and be loved, waged by the power hungry war mongering human gutter, that throughout history has viewed the power of love as the essential enemy to be smashed wherever it exists. The gay rights struggle is the lover’s struggle.
There were also lots of individual folks bearing simple statements in support of the right to love. Sometimes you thought you saw another lonely heart, determined to stand up for what in their own lives is yet to be…
As I said, the main force of counter-demonstrators came in two waves. The first was peaceful and positive. The second wave were a tad angrier. And…louder. They were quickly asked/ordered to move further down the plaza, away from the NOM event.
I understand this anger perfectly well. And I am not going to sit here and pontificate that this sort of demonstration is counter-productive. The other side turns us into scarecrows they can safely fear at a distance, and defeat with bar stool valor and junk food religion. They need to see that we are as human as they; and there is nothing less surprising on this earth then the sight of humans who have been attacked getting angry, and fighting back. When people are denied the dream of love, when that ability to love another, and accept their love in return is gutted out of them, what is left?
I have have said often, that the one who fights this fight and doesn’t put their head down on the pillow every night, just a little bit angrier then the night before, just a little more angry then they thought it was humanly possible to be angry, isn’t really paying attention. But it is oh-so easy for anger to become hate. And hate will kill your soul.
This is the lover’s struggle. When all you have left in it is anger, you are done for. It is for love that we fight. Every moment you can put anger aside and remember that, you defeat hate.
TRANSCRIPT: Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers", the far-right goofballs who claim Obama wasn’t really born in Hawaii and therefore the job goes to the runner-up, Miss California Carrie Prejean.
And you know there is nothing you can do to convince these people, you can hand them in person the original birth certificate with the placenta, and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background, and they still would not believe it.
"Hey birthers, wanna hear my theory? My theory was that Obama was born in America and you were born with the umbilical cord around your neck. I don’t know what his mother was doing when she was pregnant, but I’m pretty sure your mom was drinking."
Oh, I kid the birthers, there’s one thing that makes me think they could be right. We’re Americans, of course we’re gonna hire an illegal alien to clean-up.
I’m joking, of course. And laughing it off has also been the reaction from Democratic leaders so far. Proving that Democrats never learn. But if you don’t immediately kill errant bulls**t, no matter how ridiculous it can’t grow and thrive like crabgrass or Cirque du Soleil. This birther stuff might be a deluded right-wing obsession, but so was Whitewater and look where that ended up: "What are they gonna do, keep expanding the case until they impeach the President over a blowjob?"
Yes.
I’m telling you that in America there is no idea so patently absurd that it can’t catch on. Have you ever met a Mormon?
Or, more recently, we had the Swift Boat allegations against John Kerry, making him, a genuine war hero, a coward in a race against the guy who never left Texas. It was so stupid Kerry refused to even discuss it and we all know how well that worked out.
Well, you may ask, how something as inane as Whitewater or Swift Boats or the birther-thing gains traction? Well I’ll tell you how, the same way that the story of Elton John almost dying from ingesting too much of Rod Stewart’s sperm gained traction in my high school, dummies talking to other dummies.
It’s just easier now because of the internet. And because our mainstream media does such a lousy job of talking truth to stupid.
Lou Dobbs said recently, "People are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate." Yes, the same people who want to know where the Sun goes at night and where to put the stamp on their e-mail. And Lou, you’re their new king.
Which is why it is so important that we, the few, the proud, the reality based, attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This is not a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It’s sentient beings versus the lizard people.
And it is to the lizard people that I offer this deal, I will show you President Obama’s birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin’s high school diploma.
…because our mainstream media does such a lousy job of talking truth to stupid. Yes. Because they’re not allowed to by their corporate masters. See what happened to Keith Olbermann.
If You Understand Nothing Else Understand This: Those Days Are Over
Dan Savage puts his finger on what’s so utterly dumbfounding about the Rainbow Lounge raid…
…The police burst into that bar as if it were still 1968, the year before the NYPD’s raid on the Stonewall Inn, as if the old rules were still in force. They assumed that the other men at Rainbow Lounge that night—the men who witnessed four officers assaulting Chad Gibson—would disappear into the night, grateful that they got out of the Rainbow Lounge without getting assaulted and arrested too. The police didn’t expect the other gay men men at the Rainbow Lounge to talk to the media—or to organize a protest outside Fort Worth’s city hall. The police didn’t even seem to realize that there were men taking pictures with their cell phones during the raid. It’s as if the police in Fort Worth didn’t know what decade this is.
Message From A Stonewall Adult, To A Post-Stonewall Kid…
The day after the homos rioted in Greenwich Village, the New York newspapers barely mentioned it. But that was par for the course back in the 60s. I was a fifteen year old kid when it happened, growing up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C., and didn’t hear about the riots until I was well into my own coming out to myself process in 1971. By then, the scruffy, angry, younger gay liberation front was rudely elbowing aside an older generation of more genteel suit and tie activists, who had tried with painfully little to show for it, to work within the system for change.
You’d have thought the gay civil rights movement had begun on the street in front of the Stonewall Inn. It didn’t. In the lightning flash of the Stonewall riots we lost sight for a while of how much courage it would have taken to picket for gay rights in front of the White House, as activist Frank Kameny and members of the Mattachine Society of Washington did on April 17, 1965. Kameny was rightfully honored recently at a White House ceremony, and received an official apology for being fired in 1957 from his position as an astronomer for the Army map service. People think the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s were all about ferreting out communists in government and industy. But homosexuals were just as much, if not more of a target then. We need to remember the staggering courage it took for those early pioneers in the struggle to come forward, and push back against the hate. But we also need to remember this…
A prominent Stonewall myth holds that the riots were an uprising by the gay community against decades of oppression. This would be true if the “gay community” consisted of Stonewall patrons. The bar’s regulars, though, were mostly teenagers from Queens, Long Island and New Jersey, with a few young drag queens and homeless youths who squatted in abandoned tenements on the Lower East Side.
I was there on the Saturday and Sunday nights when the Village’s established gay community, having heard about the incidents of Friday night, rushed back from vacation rentals on Fire Island and elsewhere. Although several older activists participated in the riots, most stood on the edges and watched.
Many told me they were put off by the way the younger gays were taunting the police — forming chorus lines and singing, “We are the Stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls!” Many of the older gay men lived largely closeted lives, had careers to protect and years of experience with discrimination. They believed the younger generation’s behavior would lead to even more oppression…
And thus the phrase "militant homosexuals" entered the vernacular. But all it takes to become a Militant Homosexual is to simply believe there is nothing wrong with you and behave accordingly. There is nothing unusual about people getting angry when they are mistreated. There is nothing remarkable about people fighting back when their basic human rights are denied them. There is nothing less surprising then to witness lovers protecting and defending the sacred ground between them. Especially young lovers. When someone utters the phrase "militant homosexuals", what you should be hearing is: I Can’t See The People For The Homosexuals.
The older generation had grown up in a time when homosexuality was almost universally regarded as a dirty secret, a filthy perversion, the less spoken of the better. As new studies began to show that we were a natural part of the human family after all, that generation began, very courageously, to take that message to the public. See…we’re just like you after all… And so we are, the ordinary among us and the exotic both. But you can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.
As long as the rest of society could look the other way while our lives were drowned in a sea of prejudice and hate, we would never make any progress. As long as the rest of society could ignore the toll prejudice was taking on our lives, that prejudice would keep doing its work on us. That night in June of 1969, the frustration of the young and outcast simply boiled over. And the rest of us saw something we had never seen before: gay people, angry gay people, fighting back. And it lit a fire in us. And we would never be the same. Because a few street kids and drag queens simply had enough, that one night, that one time.
There are times when it’s wise to listen to what the older generation has to say. We’ve been there…we took the hits…we saw it all with our own eyes. But never…Never…let someone old enough to have achieved some measure of success, and made a good and comfortable life for themselves, tell You what you have to put up with.
What’s significant about this is that Hanks is seen as the same sort of American Everyman character actor that Jimmy Stewart once was.
“The truth is this takes place in Utah, the truth is these people are some bizarre offshoot of the Mormon Church, and the truth is a lot of Mormons gave a lot of money to the church to make Prop-8 happen,” he told Tarts. “There are a lot of people who feel that is un-American and I am one of them. I do not like to see any discrimination codified on any piece of paper, any of the 50 states in America, but here’s what happens now. A little bit of light can be shed and people can see who’s responsible and that can motivate the next go around of our self correcting constitution and hopefully we can move forward instead of backwards. So lets have faith in not only the American, but Californian constitutional process.”
This, I can see from the other Google news headlines, has the kook pews up in arms.
Actor Tom Hanks went after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their support of California’s Proposition 8 while talking to Fox News. Today, the Church responded.
…
Church spokesman Scott Trotter issued a one-sentence statement today in response to Hanks’ comments. It reads: "Expressing an opinion in a free and democratic society is as American as it gets."
So cutting off your neighbor’s ring finger amounts to expressing an opinion. See how easy it is to live without a conscience? You don’t have to give a shit about anything or anyone. You can rip apart your neighbor’s marriage. You can brutalize children for profit. The lives of other people don’t matter. Only your quest for Godhood matters. Who cares how many lives you destroy, when at the end of it all you get to be a God?
The Jonah Goldberg complains that things are getting ugly. No…not that cutting the ring fingers off of devoted couples is an ugly thing to do…but that those couples are fighting back is ugly…
Did you catch the political ad in which two Jews ring the doorbell of a nice, working-class family? They barge in and rifle through the wife’s purse and then the man’s wallet for any cash. Cackling, they smash the daughter’s piggy bank and pinch every penny. "We need it for the Wall Street bailout!" they exclaim.
No? Maybe you saw the one with the two swarthy Muslims who knock on the door of a nice Jewish family and then blow themselves up?
No? Well, then surely you saw the TV ad in which two smarmy Mormon missionaries knock on the door of an attractive lesbian couple. "Hi, we’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" says the blond one with a toothy smile. "We’re here to take away your rights." The Mormon zealots yank the couple’s wedding rings from their fingers and then tear up their marriage license.
As the thugs leave, one says to the other, "That was too easy." His smirking comrade replies, "Yeah, what should we ban next?" The voice-over implores viewers: "Say no to a church taking over your government."
Obviously, the first two ads are fictional because no one would dare run such anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim attacks.
The third ad, however, was real. It was broadcast throughout California on election day as part of the effort to rally opposition to Proposition 8, the initiative that successfully repealed the right to same-sex marriage in the state.
What was the reaction to the ad? Widespread condemnation? Scorn? Rebuke? Tepid criticism?
Nope.
This newspaper, a principled opponent of Proposition 8, ran an editorial saying that the "hard-hitting ad" was too little, too late.
Look at this. Just look at it. Goldberg is saying that to call the Mormon church’s campaign against same-sex couples for what it is, is comparable to spreading the antisemitic lies that greedy Jews are controlling the world’s financial markets. And as for calling Muslems terrorists, just what the hell did Goldberg think was going on among his pals at in the kook pews after 9-11?
But Mormon’s really did spend millions, and made the critical difference in organizing the vote on Proposition H8. This isn’t a lie, it’s a matter of record. Although exactly how much money and manpower the Mormons put into it is still being dragged out of them by California authorities. That ad Goldberg calls ugly, was simply calling the Mormon’s attack on loving, devoted couples for what it was in meaning and in fact: an invasion of their homes, their lives, that destroyed their Marriages. That is literally what it was.
But Goldberg doesn’t see it that way. In his twisted moral sewer, it isn’t the Mormons who were the aggressors here, but the same sex couples who’s only crime was to be in love…
It’s often lost on gay-rights groups that they and their allies are the aggressors in the culture war. Indeed, they admit to being the "forces of change" and the "agents of progress." They proudly want to rewrite tradition and overturn laws. But whenever they’re challenged democratically and peaceably, they instantly complain of being victims of entrenched bigots, even as they adopt the very tactics they abhor.
Here’s what I tried to post in the comments to his column at the LA Times…
Tell Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., who had to wait outside the hospital doors while his beloved partner Robert Lee Daniel, died at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center that he is the aggressor in the culture war. Tell Janice Langbehn, who had the hospital door shut in her face while her partner Lisa Marie Pond died of a stroke in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars. Tell Sam Beaumont, who was evicted from the ranch he shared with Earl Meadows, his partner of decades, by Meadow’s cousins, and then sued for backrent on top of that for back rent, that he’s the aggressor in the culture wars. Tell all the loving, devoted cross-national couples who cannot marry their loved ones, and have to wave goodbye to them as their visas expire, that they’re the aggressors in the culture wars. Tell Sharon Bottoms, whose son was taken from her because she is a lesbian, that she’s the aggressor in the culture wars.
Then look at yourself in a mirror, and ask the knuckle dragging lout you’re staring at what kind of person cuts the ring fingers off of devoted, loving couples, and then has the nerve to call Them aggressors?
…but the Times limits comments to 650 characters, so I had to whittle that down a tad. It’s pending "approval".
Goldberg and his smarmy kind need to understand one thing if they understand nothing else…the days when we passively accept having our home lives torn to bits by gutter crawling bigots like him and then being spit on for good measure, are over. No more Mr. Nice Gay. Welcome to the morning after. I’ll be your server today. My name is Fuck You.
Here’s what I don’t get about California and the recent Proposition 8 vote: Why all the commotion over yet another passage of yet another marriage amendment?
This was the 30th time a state has placed either a constitutional amendment proposal or its equivalent on its ballot, and the 30th time the amendment has passed.
Thirty straight wins is formidable. It’s downright Globetrotter-esque. The New England Patriots didn’t even go 30-0.
Nice. Tens of thousands of loving, devoted couples have just been forcibly divorced, care of the tens of millions of dollars the Mormon church shoveled into California’s ballot initiative process, and this prize Mormon lout is comparing that trauma to a sports game. I guess part of the process of becoming a god involves laughing at the humanity of those mere mortals who just happen to be your neighbors in this life too…
To: Lee Benson (benson@desnews.com), The Mormon Times.
Subject: Sore Losers
Sore losers Mr. Benson? The thousands of loving, devoted same sex couples who’ve just had their ring fingers cut off by your church are sore losers are they? Well…I reckon. But count on more sore losers to come. Sore losers like Richard Raddon, who just lost his job at the Los Angles Film Festival after his donation of 1500 dollars came to light. And Scott Eckern, who lost his job at the California Musical Theater when his donation of a thousand dollars came to light. Sore losers like Marjorie Christoffersen, owner of the El Coyote in Los Angles, who has lost customers and the respect of her neighborhood when her donation came to light. Sore losers. Election day has come and gone, and the votes have all been counted, and still the ranks of sore losers grow. And grow. And grow. We were supposed to just go away now weren’t we? Because it couldn’t possibly matter to us that our ring fingers had just been cut off. Because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.
Eckern and Raddon, and all the sore losers still to come got exactly what they asked for, exactly what they worked so righteously to achieve. A world without love, without sympathy, without kindness and trust. A world where love grovels before the mob, and the human heart is something anyone can spit on if they have enough votes. Your church spent millions to tell our neighbors, our co-workers, our parents and children, our brothers and sisters, our families and our friends, that their gay and lesbian companions in this life were invading their schools to molest their children, imprison their clergymen, and destroy western civilization. And now we’re sore losers too. Well…I guess if we can be destroyers of western civilization, we can be that too without too much additional burden.
Sore losers? Okay. Fine. Whatever. And you…may you spend every second of the rest of your life watching victory laugh in your face. You reached for the poison. Now drink it.
Get Your Deeply Held Religious Beliefs Off My Back
Of course, while I was away in a private little world where everyone gets along, the fallout from Proposition H8 continued in full force. As it should. A lot of people are claiming they have a duty to strip gay people of their civil rights because their religion tells them to. But they had another duty, as Americans, to stand up for liberty and justice for all. We have seen time and again in this KulturKrieg, how religion is used as a wedge, to separate Americans from one another, for the benefit of the haters of the American dream. Charles De Gaulle once said Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first. That applies to Christian nationalism as well.
Freedom of religion doesn’t mean you’re free to impose your religious beliefs on others. Freedom of religion means even the heathens in the church across the street have rights too. Freedom of religion means that even the people your religion brands as pariahs have rights too. Freedom of religion means we are all equals in the eyes of the law. That is how the religious outcasts of Europe once conceived of the American land they fled to, when their own beliefs were being persecuted back in the old countries. A nation of religious non-conformists, dissidents, and outcasts, cannot hold together when one group demands that its "deeply held religious beliefs" have the force of law over others. The haters of America are well aware of this.
You can be a Mormon when you pray in a Mormon church. You can be a Catholic when you pray in a Catholic church. You can be a Baptist when you pray in a Baptist church. When you walk into a voting booth, you must be an American. The American prayer is for liberty and justice for All, or America simply cannot be anymore. If that offends your deeply held religious beliefs, find another country. Because what you want to live in is a theocracy, not a democracy. You can be a Christian, or a Mormon, first, before anything else, anywhere and everywhere but in the voting booth. In the voting booth, you must be an American first.
When Are Your "Privately Held Religious Beliefs" Not So Private Anymore?
Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Nov 26 at 10:44 AM
When you donate $1500 to a political campaign to strip other people — people who are not your co-religionists — of their civil rights. Richard Raddon is, or was, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival. All hell broke loose after it emerged that Raddon, who is Mormon, had donated $1500 to the "Yes on 8" campaign. The LA Times:
After Raddon’s contribution was made public online, Film Independent was swamped with criticism from "No on 8" supporters both inside and outside the organization. Within days, Raddon offered to step down as festival director, but the board, which includes Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, Lionsgate President Tom Ortenberg and Fox Searchlight President Peter Rice, gave him a unanimous vote of confidence.
Yet, the anti-Raddon bile continued to bubble in the blogosphere, and according to one Film Independent board member, "No on 8" supporters also berated Raddon personally via phone calls and e-mails. The recriminations ultimately proved too much, and when Raddon offered to resign again, this time the board accepted.
Raddon released a statement that said, in part, "I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion or sexual orientation, are entitled to equal rights." Except for when they’re not — and Raddon also believes that the religious should wield a veto over other peoples’ civil rights. He goes on to whine about being a "devout and faithful Mormon," and about how his contribution to "Yes on 8" was a "private matter." Uh… no. A donation to a political campaign is a public matter; and civil marriage rights for same-sex couples did not infringe upon the religious freedom of Mormons, devout or otherwise.
Bill Condon, the gay guy who directed Dreamgirls, attempted to get Raddon’s back: "Someone has lost his job and possibly his livelihood because of privately held religious beliefs."
No. No. No. Raddon lost his job due to criticism of his public political actions, not his private religious beliefs, and his public political actions were a part of the public record. If Raddon wanted to go to church and pray his little heart out against same-sex marriage, or proselytize on street corners against gay marriage, or counsel gay men to leave their husbands and marry nice Mormon girls instead, that could be viewed as an expression of his "privately held religious beliefs." Instead he helped fund a political campaign to strip a vulnerable minority group of its civil rights.
"Millions of Californians definitely lost their civil rights," says John Aravosis. "But I’m not hearing a lot of concern about any of those victims, only sympathy for their attacker. When you use the power of the state to rip away my civil rights, and force me to live by your ‘values,’ you are no longer practicing your religion. You’re practicing politics."
In the wake of Prop 8 millions of gays and lesbians all over the country have decided that we’re no longer going to play by the old rules. We’re not going to let people kick our teeth down our throats and then run and hide behind "Nothing personal — just my private religious beliefs!" That game’s over.
That game’s over. When you advocate for this or that as a matter of law you are not practicing religion…you are practicing politics. And when you attempt to use the laws all Americans must live by, to bash your neighbor and elevate yourself, you are not a patriot but a nationalist.
This is the second time I have seen in the news since Proposition H8 passed, a Mormon who while working side by side with other gay people, first in the theater, and now in films, gave serious money to cut their ring fingers off. One-thousand, five hundred dollars is not pocket change. You just don’t give that kind of money to something like this, simply because your church tells you to donate. That’s the kind of money you give, when you really, really want the measure to pass. This was not simply religious obedience on his part. He was serious about it. That money became a knife in the back of every gay person he knows, every gay person he ever worked with, every gay person whose creative talent and energy gave him the means to earn a living.
What you have to understand about this fight, is that it isn’t about marriage. It’s about love. Gay people, must not be allowed to love and be loved in return. They must not be allowed to have that intimate other in their lives, that companion of the heart to walk through the years with, side-by-side, soul to soul. To allow us to marry is to aknowledge that homosexuals love, and that cannot be. But when you take the possibility of love away from someone, what is left? What is left, to council peace, compassion and sympathy when rage fills the empty space where love once lived?
Do they really think, at long last, that we are not human? What Raddon got was precisely what he asked for. A world without love, without compassion, without sympathy, without peace. Congratulations Richard. Mission Accomplished.
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