I answered the door of my home in San Francisco this morning, and a man smiled at me from my porch. "I'm here from Yes on Proposition 8," he said. That's the evil-spirited California proposition to amend our state constitution to strip same sex couples of the right to marry legally in the state, which we currently have.
I smiled back at him, and said, "Oh, well then I hope you go to hell. Now get the fuck off my property." (I really did say that. I have witnesses.) And then I slammed the door.
Well, we just had a very interesting visit that fired me up a bit. We're a gay couple who are about to get married soon, so the two visitors that knocked on our door this morning were more than a little caught off guard when I opened the door with my Obama shirt on & things got interesting...
A brief rundown of the story that you may not have read in the MSM.
Almost all links will probably be considered "not work safe" by many readers and probably blocked by work filters because, as we all know, gay = porno.
The story begins with an article in OUT magazine about the very popular gay male hook up site Manhunt (believe me, you probably don’t want to click on that )
WGLB is a weekly diary addressing issues of importance to the GLBT community. This week, there are two posters: KentuckyKat and KKats Love. The topic du jour is workplace discrimination. Join us over the jump for a quick intro regarding why we chose this topic and our take on the issues at hand.
This guy, Florida State Representative Darryl Rouson (D-St. Petersburg), has been sending mailers to constituents with a picture of him and Senator Obama. On one occasion (see picture below), he has even claimed to offering advice to the Senator.
Mr. Rouson is also the same man who was captured making homophobic comments on a video which has recently surfaced.
His Democratic Primary opponent, Charles McKenzie, endorsed by the Stonewall Democrats of Pinellas County and Equality Florida, needs our help. http://www.mckenzie2008.com is his web site. More info is below the fold.
Florida State Representative Darryl Rouson has been caught making homophobic comments in a video posted on YouTube. He represents a gerrymandered district with a 3.5 to 1 Democratic voter registration advantage and switched from Republican to Democrat just to run for a seat in a recent special election.
His opponent in the August 26th primary is the second-place finisher in the special election, Rev. Charles McKenzie. (The third-place finisher who received 26% of the vote has endorsed McKenzie.) Although many black ministers are not progressive on gay issues, McKenzie has been endorsed by the Pinellas Stonewall Democrats and Equality Florida PAC. You can view his web site at http://www.mckenzie2008.com and his online contribution link is http://www.mckenzie2008.com/...
"If Martin Luther King hadn't been so uppity, he wouldn't have been shot."
"If you hadn't dressed like a bitch, you wouldn't have been raped."
"When that faggot came on to me, I panicked and had to knife him."
"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. We have sort of become a nation of whiners." - former Senator Phil Gramm
It's an old but effective way to keep the oppressed in their place - blame them for the oppression, and especially for any conflict that arises out of their attempts to challenge the status quo.
The Christian church certainly does plenty of victim blaming - the Catholic hierarchy blamed the survivors of clergy sexual abuse for causing the scandal, and now Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, blames American Episcopalians for the pending schism in the Anglican Communion.
Portions XPosted 8/3/2008 11:23 AM PDT on MyDesert.com
According to one of my activist friends, a former deacon of a religious extremist church in Utah, who attends an evangelical megachurch in the Coachella Valley in order to monitor its adherence to the tax code as it applies to its tax exempt status, churches across America today began '100 Days of Prayer' against Marriage Equality and cajolled their members and attendees to vote in favor of Proposition 8 and defeat gay marriage at the polls in November.
Welcome to WGLB TV NEWS, the weekly round-up of analysis of LGBT news and meet-up for Queer and Queer-Friendly Kossacks. This week, hosted by dirkster42, instead of news, you get autobiography.
As one of the resident theologians on Daily Kos (please also wave to Mahanoy and Zoskie!), religion is the issue that I engage here most passionately. Of course, many Queer folk have vexed or even horrific experiences with religion. And there’s no denying that the strongest voices in the pushback against our full participation in society are religiously motivated. So, why in the world would someone gay bother with religion, much less choose to become a professional theologian? Join me on the flip.
I had hoped this was a one time anomaly of clouded judgment brought on by strong emotion, but unfortunately I've begun to notice a pattern.
Let me start from the beginning: It began last year over the ENDA (Employment Non Discrimination Act) debate. Congressman Barney Frank introduced a GLBT version of ENDA, but it was realized that the votes were not there to pass it with the T's included. So a GLB bill was introduced and Tammy Baldwin submitted a Trans-bill amendment which was later pulled because of the lack of support.
I find this both laughable and, in a way, a great exposure of the lengths these people will go to in order to get their way. It's laughable, because they got their panties in a twist when the pro-equality side filed a lawsuit to keep it off the ballot, saying that we were trying to take away the right of the people to vote on the issue. And it's a great exposure because their argument boils down to, essentially, that this wording change will make it more likely that people will vote no on Proposition 8. And they really don't like that. They don't like that at all. They want their pristine, pre-May-15th wording back.
I doubt they'll get it. Let's jump to talk about why.
(Correction added in bold; thanks to kaleidoscope for the correction) The title and summary of Proposition 8, which I've heard referred to as "Proposition Hate," has been edited by the California State Attorney General's office to more accurately reflect the effects it would have if approved by the voters.
I'm pretty sure this is going to make it even harder for it to pass, which is great. I can see lawsuits going on either way, though, so we're not out of the woods yet. Come with me after the jump for the former and current wording, and a bit of analysis.
This is a follow-up to a diary I wrote about a hate crime that hit close to home. To read my original diary, click here.
Oklahoma is just one of 17 states in the union that does not provide specific protection in its existing hate crimes laws for GLBT residents who are victimized by even the most obvious of hate crimes.
A man named Robert Stotler who lives with his partner in East Tulsa has seen his home vandalized with swastika-like symbols and threatening, homophobic messages. The first time it happened, the graffiti said "I'll be back." And the person or persons responsible did indeed come back to threaten and destroy.
If this had been the home of a black woman, or a Native American man, or a Jewish family, the police would treat the incident as a hate crime. But because the protection of the laws do not extend to GLBTs, they have no choice but to treat this as though it were just some random act of vandalism.
If you read my previous diary, you can see this was anything but random.
First, a confession: I often frequent news site message boards about some piece of pro-gay news when I'm bored or need something to amuse myself with. It's always a lot of fun to read these boards, because I can watch the logic of the anti-gay posters unravel almost before my eyes. But in reading their accusations and knee-jerk reactions to sober, reflective and logical commentary on issues such as Proposition 8, I've discovered something.
They really do think that people are all exactly alike, and think in exactly the same ways as they do. And if you look at the accusations they make against gays (and non-Christians of various stripes) you'll find that they really do believe that everyone lives in the same kind of paranoid, isolationist, terrified, conformist world that they do. It's really quite frightening to try to think about the world the way they do - and it's no wonder that they are so afraid, angry, and rigid when confronted with social change that doesn't conform to their dogmatic beliefs.
Come with me after the jump for a partial analysis of how fundamentalists, through projection, accuse everyone else of acting just like they do.
Sometimes it’s instructive to revisit recent history to bring an issue into focus.
In February 2004, just 14 days after he became the Mayor, Gavin Newsom announced that the City of San Francisco would start marrying same-sex couples. The news sent shockwaves through California as happy couples lined up to get their marriage licenses. It’s interesting to take a look back at what Newsom had to say at the time.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Sunday he is willing to sacrifice his political career over his belief that denying gay men and lesbians the right to marry "is wrong and inconsistent with the values this country holds dear."
"I think we're on firm legal footing and legal grounds, and certainly I believe very strongly and passionately we're on the right moral ground," Newsom said on CNN's "Late Edition." [...]
That's a great thing to wake up to after Wednesday's disappointment. A new Field Poll (not the one taken in May, but one performed just this past week, from July 8 to July 14) shows that the majority of Californians still oppose Proposition 8, to the tune of 51% against to 42% in favor.
That, friends and neighbors, is great news. To me, it says that the pendulum really is swinging the other way, and that the tide has finally turned. (Gotta love repeatable results!)
Come with me after the jump for a short discussion of the results.
Proposition 8, the hot-button measure to engrave a ban on same-sex marriage into the state constitution, is trailing by nine points, according to a new Field Poll.
More than two-thirds of GOP poll respondents (68 percent) said they would vote for the ban, while 63 percent of Democrats said they would vote "no."
Independents sided with the "no" side even more than Democrats (66 percent).
Taday's New York Times had a story about a hotelier whose donations to an anti-gay marriage campaign spurred a boycott by his gay clientele.
While the case raises some questions whee we need to tread carefully so we avoid charges of hypocrisy; on thorough examination, they are bogus claims and Doug Manchester, the innkeeper in question, is a crybaby.
