It’s a very sad day for Florida Rep. Mark Foley. Yesterday, when I wrote of this, I had wondered afterwards if I were being fair to him. I have to resist the urge like a lot of other people to condemn someone simply because I don’t like their politics. In after thought, I felt that maybe I had been unfair to the Representative from Florida. Now, I was right about the whole thing. I feel bad for his family, and for the boy involved.

I also understand that this has absolutely nothing to do with the gender of his victim, who happens to be male. I say this because there are people out there who will immediately assume that Rep. Foley is a homosexual, which he apparently is because he approached a teenager who happened to be male. Those same people will make the huge jump in judgment that it is just further ammunition to label homosexuals as pedophiles, despite the fact that child molestation is carried out mostly by heterosexuals.

But I don’t even want to lower myself to that argument. The real truth is, child molestation has nothing what so ever to do with the sexual orientation of those involved. I know the people who dislike gays don’t want to admit that, but the facts and research will support what I am saying. What Rep. Foley did, he did out of power. He had power over the boy because of his position; as an adult and as a member of Congress. No doubt had the boy played along with this, he would have been offered something in Washington as a “reward” if you will, for helping the Representative out.

The thing that I find really distasteful in all of this the hypocrisy of this Representative. ABC News summed it up pretty well.

Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation came just hours after ABC News questioned the congressman about a series of sexually explicit instant messages involving congressional pages, high school students who are under 18 years of age.

In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

He crusaded for tough laws against those who used the Internet for sexual exploitation of children.

“They’re sick people; they need mental health counseling,” Foley said.

But, according to several former congressional pages, the congressman used the Internet to engage in sexually explicit exchanges. [...]

Federal authorities say such messages could result in Foley’s prosecution, under some of the same laws he helped to enact.

“Adds up to soliciting underage children for sex,” said Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent and now an ABC News consultant. “And what it amounts to is serious both state and federal violations that could potentially get you a number of years.” (source) - Highlighting my own.

“They’re sick people; they need mental health counseling.” - Rep. Mark Foley

Well Mr. Foley, I guess you were talking about yourself.

If you would like to read the private exchange that he had between the teenager involved, and himself, click on the link below. Be warned, the contents are sexually explicit.

View message exchange.

A Massachusetts judge ruled Sept. 29 that same-sex couples from Rhode Island can “marry” in the Bay State, handing homosexual activists a significant victory and likely sparking a movement for a law or constitutional amendment in Rhode Island banning “gay marriage.”

In a nine-page ruling Superior Court Justice Thomas E. Connolly noted that Rhode Island has no constitutional amendment, statute or court ruling expressly banning “gay marriage.” His decision may be the biggest legal win yet for homosexual activists in their effort to spread “marriages” from Massachusetts to other states. It is not known, though, whether Rhode Island will recognize the licenses. (source)

This won’t effect Connecticut because my state defines marriage as “one man, one woman”, but it will be interesting to see how Rhode Island responds to this. They will either try to get something into their constitution, which is a very lengthy process, or the legislature may try to put something in place for civil unions. My guess would be civil unions, given that they are a more progressive state. Or they may surprise me and just let it go. I suppose they could also become the second state to allow gay couples to marry, although I really don’t see that happening.

See, I’m not investing much emotional baggage into this topic anymore (yes, I’m proud of myself for that). I just think that right now, there are more important things facing our country. But, this news was interesting.

Oh, and speaking of interesting....

WASHINGTON — Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., resigned from Congress on Friday, effective immediately, in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.

“I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent,” he said in a statement issued by his office.

The two-sentence statement did not refer to the e-mails and gave no reason for Foley’s abrupt decision to abandon a flourishing career in Congress.

Foley, 52, had been a shoo-in for a new term until the e-mail correspondence surfaced in recent days. [...]

Foley, who represents an area around Palm Beach County, e-mailed the page in August 2005. The page had worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., and Foley asked him how he was doing after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday. The congressman also asked the boy to send a photo of himself, according to excerpts of the e-mails that were originally released by ABC News. [...]

“he’s such a nice guy”, Foley wrote about the other boy, “acts much older than his age...and hes in really great shape...i am just finished riding my bike on a 25 mile journey now heading to the gym...whats school like for you this year?”

In other e-mails, Foley wrote, “I am back in Florida now...its nice here...been raining today...it sounds like you will have some fun over the next few weeks...how old are you now?” and “how are you weathering the hurricane...are you safe...send me an email pic of you as well.” (source - FOX News)

Yes, that’s right, I used FOX News as the source! I got a certain amount of satisfaction from sourcing the right-wing rag on some dirt from one of their own.

The story itself is creepy. And why would he be asking a teenage boy for his photo anyway? I suppose right now the Republicans are trying to figure out how to weave this story. I’m sure they will come up with something like trying to make it look like Foley was an in-the-closet homosexual who preyed on children, or that the otherwise upstanding straight man was seduced by the evil gay agenda. Believe me, nothing would surprise me. Who knows how they will play it. And, in all fairness, Foley is innocent until proven guilty. I just think there must be more to this story because of his abrupt resignation.

And here’s a bit of irony, right from his website:

As a founder and co-chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, Mark has been instrumental in the development and passage of legislation designed to protect our children.

He authored legislation that became law -- the Volunteers for Children Act -- that gives volunteer organizations that work with children, such as scouting and sports groups, access to FBI fingerprint-based background checks to ensure that they are not inadvertently hiring child molesters.

He has also cosponsored legislation toughening the penalties levied at those who hurt children and, most recently, has joined forces with the Administration and Congress to fight child predators. His Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, which has passed both the House and Senate, will overhaul the way we track and monitor predatory pedophiles. He has also introduced and cosponsored legislation designed to eliminate child pornography and exploitive child modeling web sites. (source)

Don’t expect that website to be online much longer.

09/30/2006 - Follow-up To Florida Rep. Mark Foley Scandal

The ability to forgive others for their misdeeds in life is ultimately a discovery of yourself and your character.

We all have situations in life that we wished, in hindsight, we had handled differently. But there is no going back in time. The best we can do is to move forward and try to learn from life’s sometimes harsh lessons. If we can do that, we will grow as people. If we are unable to do that, we only deceive ourselves and, in one way or another, either lie it away, or try to dilute the offense by summing it up as one “youthful indiscretion” after another. Which course you decide defines your character.

Which brings me to the following writings that I came across recently.

I have never once seen a happy homosexual. This is not to say there aren’t any; I simply haven’t seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet. All the homosexuals I’ve seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life.

Why is the pop music of today so bad? Because it is communist to the very core. It’s turning the children of America into sissies and preying on the minds of every American, making them weaker and weaker. And how about this humanoid (I’d hesitate to say person, and I would never use the word MAN) Boy George. It wears girl’s clothes and puts on makeup. When I hear it sing, ’Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,’ I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs.’

When I first arrived at Bowdoin in the fall of 1980 the leftists were in complete control. To be sure the freedom lovers outnumbered the statists but they had been cowed into submission by the liberals.

I say let’s get those pinkos out of the music business and replace them with some tough conservatives.

The individual who composed those writings is none other than Cranston, Rhode Island Mayor Stephen P. Laffey (pictured left). The writings were anonymously submitted to The Providence Journal. Laffey confirmed being the author, but states that whoever sent the material to The Journal was desperately trying to smear him in the days leading up to the September 12th primary in an attempt to win the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. He lost to incumbent Senator Lincoln D. Chafee, a more moderate Republican, who supports full marriage rights for gay partners. Laffey opposes marriage equality for gays, but supports civil unions.

My first reaction to his writings was anger, immediately followed by a nasty-gram to the Mayor. You see, the Mayor himself does not have an official email address. I checked. I went to leave my message with his secretary, who does have an email address. I suppose with all the bad publicity with him being an apparent in-the-closet gay basher and all, they were getting hate mail left and right and decided to pull the email address. Or perhaps, I’m just being overly dramatic and he never had one to begin with. At any rate, after I composed it, I deleted it without sending it. Why, you ask?

You see, I’ve done the same thing in my life that Mayor Laffey has. In college, I’ve said things to people that I’m not proud of. If I could face those people today, I would say that I’m sorry. And yes, I’d actually mean it. If I could take back some insensitive remarks that I once made to an acquaintance of mine, I would. We were over for dinner, and I told a joke that used Polish People as the brunt of the joke. As it turns out, the person I told the joke to was of Polish heritage. It was an embarrassment for me and was awkward. I never apologized at the time, because I didn’t know what to say. I was in my twenty’s and didn’t handle it as gracefully as I would like to think I would handle it today. In fact, today, it wouldn’t happen. Over the years, I’ve tried to think how that must have made him feel inside. I made a joke, and he laughed at the joke. But isn’t that the same as someone cracking a gay joke in front of me without knowing I’m gay? I laugh to put on a good face. And when I leave, I take a piece of pain with me. I could have called the person on the crude joke, but I took the high ground and gracefully laughed at the joke, at my expense. Just as my friend did. But it’s hard for me to think that I didn’t in some way hurt him inside.

Then college student Laffey talked about breaking the ribs of a gay man (too close to home for me), and then said years later that they thought it was “funny”. And that is what sent me over the top and caused me to compose a rather scathing email to his secretary, that was deleted. A few others had similar takes to mine.

“My immediate reaction to Laffey’s comments, even though they were made long ago, is the same queasy feeling I got when I heard Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks,” said Dennis Byrnes, who lives in Cranston. “This is his core he was speaking from, his value system. He is a rabid bigot and it’s about time he was exposed. He even stoops to using his family’s misfortunes for his own political gain in his TV advertising. What more do rational people need to see about this man to know he is one twisted guy?”

“He should seek reconciliation with the gay community,” said Brummer. “From what I can see from the attack campaign he is running on Chafee, it is pretty evident that his beat people up mentality has not left him. Rather than showing us why he would be a good candidate, he uses passive violence in his campaign ads to show us why Chafee isn’t. I think that says his animosity toward other people hasn’t changed. He should apologize to the gay community and he should denounce violence against us.”

“Laffey’s disingenuous attempt to minimize the articles as ‘sophomoric political satire’ insults the intelligence of Rhode Island voters,” said Karen Izzo, the head of one of the state’s PFLAG chapters. (source)

And this from another angry writer on Laffey’s past writings...

Explaining his writings, Laffey said this weekend, “We were just having fun. We thought it was funny.”

Funny. Hmm. You know, I’d buy that, except I just don’t see any joke. Not even a bad joke. Not even a cruel joke. It’s just a hateful, bigoted comment. Where’s the humor in that?

Please, I’d like one of Stephen Laffey’s supporters to come on here and explain what exactly about the passage above is funny. Come on and tell me where the joke is.

The fact that Stephen Laffey still believes that comments like these are “fun” and “funny” shows that the problem isn’t just in the past. This isn’t matter of College Republican hijinks. It’s about a Republican candidate for high political office who thinks that it’s fun to insult people.

Stephen Laffey still has the obsession with hateful cruelty that he had back when he was in college. Maybe that attitude makes him a popular candidate with Republican voters, but it makes him unfit to be a United States Senator. (source)

So, we have Mayor Stephen Laffey who, years ago, said some pretty unsympathetic things towards gay people. Today, he dismisses those writings as an attempt to smear him during the campaign. He further dismisses them by stating that those statements do not represent his views, “No. Not now, nor then, or ever . . .”.

Then why write them? Why dismiss them as nothing more than “sophomoric political satire”?

Laffey further states, “Do I regret writing some of these things? Sure. But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.” Some of the things?

Would it also be “funny” if Mayor Laffey were on the receiving end of a gay bashing? That is the part of me that wants to say, “That would be a lesson to him of what we actually go through.” But that of course, is not the answer. The truth is, he hasn’t said anything worse than many other Republicans and Right-Wing hate mongers. Does that make it right? No. But that’s reality.

This is my big problem with Mayor Laffey. He dismisses his past actions and doesn’t make himself accountable for them. He excuses them away because he was young and dumb at the time, with phrases like “sophomoric political satire”, and, “But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.” The difference between me and him is the realization that I understand that behind every single joke that is made at the expense of someone else, is TRUTH. He doesn’t understand that and is willing to dismiss it. This is the test of his character. The truth is, there was some truth to these writings being his beliefs. If that wasn’t the case, they never would have been written. The truth is that whenever you make a joke that disguises hatred in a more palatable form, the fact remains, there is hatred behind that joke. You can talk this away all day long, but it doesn’t change that fact.

If he were genuinely sorry about his past deeds, he does have at his disposal the means to make this right. If I were him, I would personally organize a meeting with the GLBT community, look them in the eye, and tell them, “I was wrong, and I am so sorry for the hurt that I have caused this community. I am also ashamed of my past remarks and what I have put my friends and loved ones through.” If he did that (and he meant it), all would be forgiven, and he could move on, because that act would speak volumes to the content of his character. To my knowledge, Mayor Laffey has not done this. But he can let us know (or not) if he has. I’m sending his secretary a link to this writing, just in case he would like to add anything that I’ve left out.

We all make mistakes. I’m willing to rectify mine, wherever I can. I embrace my mistakes, however painful that may be, and try to learn from them. That is how we grow. Why make another mistake by sending him an angry email, when his words have already done so much?

The ability to forgive others for their misdeeds in life is ultimately a discovery of yourself and your character. That’s true. I can forgive Mayor Laffey for his past deeds, but only after he asks for that forgiveness. It’s his call. It’s a test of his character.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that Mayor Laffey’s older brother was a gay man who abused drugs and later died from AIDS. Mayor Laffey should certainly know better. With a gay brother who was dealing with AIDS, he doesn’t even have the excuse of being ignorant to gay issues.

Sources used
Laffey penned anti-gay columns in college
Republican Laffey Says Anti-Gay Slurs Were Just a Joke
GLBT community responds to Senate candidate’s anti-gay past

“Ye though I say unto you, they shall raise up the least among them to the highest post and he shall appear as a monkee. The sheep shall follow and the lies shall flow like water from the sea. They shall believe his deceptions and follow him unto war with the wrong nation. And Cheney will shoot a guy in the face too.”

Lobotomy 9:11

Is anyone else becoming annoyed with all this “research” on why gay men are, well, gay? And have you ever wondered why no one is trying to find out why lesbians are, well, lesbian?

I mean, if I were trying to put importance on it, I would lump it in with all the other unimportant things people think about under the label “Who gives a damn?” Honestly, I really do not care about why I am gay or where it came from. I have more important issues on my mind, such as dealing with the reality of my life now without worrying about something that I have no control over (or should care about); why I am gay. Do straight people go around asking themselves, “Why am I straight?” No, of course not, and they shouldn’t.

So why are so many people obsessed with this? Since it keeps coming up in “scientific research” all the time, let’s break it down a bit.

One of the great mysteries of human sexuality is what causes some men to be gay.

Couldn’t the exact same thing be said about heterosexuals? Why are we so obsessed with this? If I were a gay geneticist, I guess I could delve into why straight men are straight, but what would honestly be the point? Unless, of course, I was looking for a way to “correct” the “mutation” (not normal) for future generations to come. If that isn’t your objective, then why waste your time?

Scientists have rejected earlier notions that homosexuality is a mental illness. The thinking now is that sexual orientation is determined by roughly 40 percent genetic factors and 60 percent environmental factors.

And now researchers at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute are hoping to identify one or more genes that help determine sexual orientation.

Again, who cares? I have a pretty good idea that I was born gay. I remember knowing I was gay when I was 6 years old. Back then, we weren’t as savvy with labels as we are today. I didn’t know what “gay” meant (other than “happy”). I just knew that “gay” was a word used in show tunes a lot. I also knew deep inside that I was different. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to put it into words if I were asked about it at that age. So, in all honesty, I cannot tell you if I was born that way, or if something extraordinary happened to me between the ages of 0 to 6 years old. I can only tell you that nothing in my memory would indicate that my childhood up to that point was anything other than normal.

I lost my father when I was six years old, and that was of course traumatic for me, as it would be for any child that age. But then again, many kids that age or younger go through the same thing, and they turn out heterosexual. My brother, for example, was much more traumatized by my father’s death, being four years older than me, and he is heterosexual, as is my sister.

But some gays are wary. They fear discovering gay genes could lead to efforts to “cure” homosexuality, or to prenatal tests for gay genes.

Researchers say that’s not their intent.

Researchers are in no position to make any claims on how their research will be applied in the future. So their good intentions are worthless. It’s the condition of mankind. We will do anything to justify the end if it works to our advantage, just like today we are talking about different degrees of torture that is “acceptable”. What they are really saying is, “How much torture (we prefer to call it ’coercion’) can we put on someone, and still walk away with warm fuzzy feelings (public opinion will accept) inside?” Once we determine that, then we can deal with making the law do what we want it to do to allow us to do that, by bending the rules of the Geneva Convention a bit. It’s easy, since we no longer care what other people in the world think of the United States.

With this research, I could see laws being put on books to force “known homosexuals” to “register” with their state. I can later see that registry being used to round up these individuals to make them straight. Sound crazy? Well, it’s happened before, and it can happen again. This is why we are wary of this kind of research.

First the radial religious right in this country wanted to “defend marriage” so they passed amendments to stop gays from getting marriage. But that wasn’t enough. They also went on to ban gays from having civil unions or domestic partnerships. But that wasn’t enough. They also went on to say that anything that resembles marriage cannot have any rights or privileges in law given to it. That effects a lot of unmarried straight folks as well, but they are willing to live with that as long as gays don’t reap the benefits.

That being said, how much of a reach do you really think it is to say that this research on human sexuality won’t be used to “help” us poor homosexuals who want to change, but we don’t know we want to change?

Homosexuality tends to run in families. While 2 percent to 4 percent of all men are gay, 8 percent to 12 percent of brothers of gay men are gay. [...]

Possible environmental factors include family upbringing, exposure to certain hormones during pregnancy and having older brothers. (source)

Again, who cares? What difference does this all make? None, as far as I can see. I guess we will see in 20-30 years if these statements will turn out to be laughable or not, or if they will turn into something less laughable - human experiments. Why is the gay community so wary of this? Because, it’s happened before.

If you really want to look at something that’s going to bit us in the ass, and soon, you might want to look at this.

Global warming at 12,000-year high

“If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about 3 million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today,” Hansen said. (source)

Kent and I went out to Mashapaug Pond in Connnecticut a couple of weeks ago to "collect mushrooms" (for us, that means taking photos). It's one of my favorite spots to go.

TRENTON, New Jersey Once publicly opposed to gay marriage, former New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey now says he spoke out against the idea as a way to keep his homosexuality hidden. “I did not want to be identified as being gay, and it was the safe place to be,” McGreevey said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press. “I wanted to embrace the antagonist. I wanted to be against it. That’s the absurdity.” [...]

Aside from his hiring of Cipel, McGreevey’s admission about his position on gay marriage appears to be the most glaring example of his then-covert sexual identity affecting his political decision-making.

“I was proud to be against gay marriage because that’s where I thought a majority of New Jerseyans were,” McGreevey said. “That’s successful politics.”

In the AP interview, the former governor said he now supports same-sex unions. (source)

Actually, I saw the interview with McGreevey on Oprah. He stated that he now fully supports gay marriage and nothing less, not even civil unions. I suppose that since it’s now known that he is gay, he really has nothing to lose anymore. So why not go all out for something that he now wants for himself, since he is now involved with a man he is interested in marrying?

McGreevey states, “I was proud to be against gay marriage because that’s where I thought a majority of New Jerseyans were. That’s successful politics.”

That’s a lie. McGreevey was proud to be against gay marriage because by endorsing marriage equality for gay couples, he was afraid that people would put two and two together and come up with four. He stated exactly that on Oprah.

The whole thing is testing my tolerance for people who care nothing for other people other than themselves. I can forgive people for past misdeeds. But what McGreevey did actually hurt people, using the power of his office to do so. I don’t know if you can just dismiss that by saying, “...I was an oppressed homosexual... I hated myself.... I didn’t think that the life is was living was ‘Godly’ (his word)...”. He went on to say that if he hadn’t been under threat of blackmail from some fling that he hired to be on his staff, he probably never would have had the courage to come out.

These are things he said in the interview. It made me sick to watch it. I can understand what the closet can do to people. That’s why I left it when I could. But never once did I inflict harm on others to hide what I am. This is the difference between people like me and McGreevey. I’m sure I disappointed people when they found out I was gay. I certainly lost friends and I suffered physical abuse because of it. But I’m the one who has had to deal with all the issues with being gay, not them. And I did, and now I’m in a much better place for it.

Perhaps that is what McGreevey is trying to get too. But listening to him talk about how he was putting gays down for being a threat to marriage, all the while thinking to himself (he said) that he should be among the gays knowing that he was one.... well, I turned the damn TV off. It was too much for me. It only goes to show you that, gay or straight, a politician these days would sell their own mother for a few votes.

Shameless. I don’t forgive McGreevey for what he did while in office, but I do hope that he comes to a place of peace in his life. And ironically, if his state of New Jersey rules that gay couples can marry, a ruling that is expected in the near future, the governor who was so against gays being able to marry, just might be able to get married himself.

And another opinion....

Where we stand: New Jerseyans should remember that it was the former governor's terrible appointments and mountain of scandals that drove him from office, not his homosexuality.

When James E. McGreevey was elected governor of New Jersey in 2001, he promised to end "business as usual" in Trenton. He said he'd clean up state government and make it more ethical.

In that task, our former governor failed miserably and completely. His administration was so scandal-plagued and devoid of ethical standards that by the time McGreevey left office less than three years into his four-year term, he had given new meaning to the term "business as usual."

And that's something no New Jerseyan should forget as McGreevey makes the talk show rounds to promote his new book, The Confession.

Yes, it was shocking when McGreevey famously admitted during his resignation speech that he was a "gay American."

Scandals

But that surprising confession wasn't the true reason why McGreevey left office in disgrace. He quit because the scandals involving him and those close to him were at an apex and his ability to govern, even with a state Senate and Assembly controlled by his party, had been compromised and was probably beyond repair. (source)

It’s important to remember history and the way things used to be for our community. This happened just three years after I was born. The arrest of this man actually ruined his life.

As for Wally Pegelow, who denied any involvement with his 1957 accusers, the felony conviction haunted him for the rest of his life. He was forbidden to see his wife, according to his family, and told that his father-in-law had the marriage annulled.

The Army discharged him for bad conduct, a ruling he sought to have reversed in 1965 so that he could serve in Vietnam. As late as 1990, Pegelow appealed to the Army to no avail to let him serve with the National Guard in Operation Desert Storm.

“I am now 54 years old. Over the years since my discharge, I have always tried to be the best person that I could be,” wrote Pegelow, who had twice remarried and had three daughters. “All I am asking is, would you please let me hold my head up a little higher?”

Pegelow died of lung cancer in 2002, according to his third wife, who now lives in Darlington, S.C.

In the 45 years following his imprisonment for a crime against nature, widow Rita Pegelow said her husband never registered to vote, for fear of being told that he was ineligible, and never applied for a job where he had to list his felony conviction, for fear of being turned down. And after the one brief, furtive jailhouse visit arranged by his former mother-in-law, he never saw his son again. (source)

"Don’t trust anything that bleeds for 7 days and doesn’t die."

Once Bob Ney was the Mayor of Capitol Hill, wielding his influence as chairman of the House Administration committee to assign parking spaces and order French fries to be renamed “freedom fries” in the House cafeteria. Now, he’ll be trading cigarettes for extra cans of Pringles in prison. It’s an American tragedy, don’t you think?

I don’t mean to be melodramatic, it’s just that I’m reeling from the stunning news of Ney’s guilty plea to fraud and conspiracy in the Abramoff scandal. Next thing you know, we’ll find out he wears a toupee. He’s admitting to taking about 170 thousand dollars worth of goodies from Abramoff and his associates. Who could have seen that coming? After all, for more than a year he denied any wrongdoing. “I was duped,” he said, and we believed him, didn’t we? Even when we read emails like this one:

“Just met with Ney! We’re f’ing gold! He’s going to do Tigua...”

---Jack Abramoff, March 2002

So another one bites the dust. I suppose I shouldn’t make light of Ney’s problems and issues. It’s just that I have a low tolerance for those who throw stones at glass houses (using election-year politics for the gain of their own party), when they too live in a glass house. The only way you can throw stones at others is to live in a house made of brick (no corruption). And from what I’ve seen in recent months, more and more in the Bush Administration just don’t meet that test.

It bothers me a lot when a politician is an advocate of a federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay couples from marriage to “defend marriage”, when he/she are on their third marriage.

It bothers me when a politician is against abortion, except when they get caught with their pants down (no pun intended) and find out that, for political reasons, they seek out an abortion and try like hell to keep it a secret.

So it’s hard for me not to get that evil grin when I read that yet another corrupt politician gets zapped for getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

But I think things are changing. After all, it doesn’t look like Bush will be able to pull off creating an exception for the United States to the Geneva Convention.

“Time is running out,” Mr Bush told a news conference at the White House. “Congress needs to act wisely and promptly.” He went on to warn that their refusal to endorse White House proposals to redefine compliance with sections of the Geneva Convention prohibiting torture would weaken America in its “war on terror”.

“I believe that it is vital that our folks on the front line have the tools that are necessary to protect the American people,” Mr Bush said. “The reason they need those tools is because the enemy wants to attack us again.”

Senator John McCain, who spent five years as a prisoner in the Vietnam War, and the other Republican rebels argue that loosening the standard on the Geneva Convention would put US soldiers at greater risk of mistreatment if captured.

Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, has added his prestige to their cause. In a letter to Mr McCain, Mr Powell said the White House proposals would create doubts about the “moral basis” of the war on terror.

But Mr Bush showed little patience for that argument.

“It is unacceptable to think that any kind of comparison (exists) between the behaviour of the United States of America and the Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve their objective,” he said. (source)

OH REALLY?

What about our treatment of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib? What about the people who were MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD by our own troops around Baghdad and Mahmudiyah?

BAGHDAD, June 30 -- The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that American soldiers raped and killed a woman and killed three of her family members in a town south of Baghdad, then reported the incident as an insurgent attack, a military official said Friday.

The alleged crimes occurred in March in the insurgent hotbed of Mahmudiyah. The four soldiers involved, from the 502nd Infantry Regiment, attempted to burn the family’s home to the ground and blamed insurgents for the carnage, according to a military official familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was providing details not released publicly. [...]

In June, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were charged with murder and other crimes related to the shooting death of a crippled man in Hamdaniya, west of Baghdad. Residents there said the soldiers planted a rifle and a shovel near the victim’s body to make it look as if he had been burying roadside bombs.

Later in June, three soldiers were charged with murdering three Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody and threatening to kill another soldier who saw the incident. And last week, two Pennsylvania National Guardsmen were charged with murder in the shooting death of an unarmed man in the western city of Ramadi and with trying to cover up the crime.

At least 14 U.S. service members have been convicted of crimes related to the deaths of Iraqi civilians or detainees, according to the Associated Press. (source)

The President may feel that it is “unacceptable to think that any kind of comparison (exists) between the behaviour of the United States of America and the Islamic extremists”, but I doubt the families of the innocent Iraqi’s killed at the hands of our troops will see the subtlety.

And just so I make myself clear on this before I get a lot of hate mail for dissing our troops, I should say that I support our troops, to the extent that they are trying to do an impossible job - restore and maintain order when they have been re-deployed time and time and time again to the point of exhaustion, without an adequate number of soldiers in Iraq to achieve that task, and for trying to follow orders when there is no plan in place to accomplish anything. And for that, the blame goes right back to the President of the United States and the Congress who nodded time and time again (until now when his poll numbers are pathetic) to endorse his failed policies.

The result is a failed effort in Iraq, along with an estimated 50,000 Iraqi civilians dead (yes we do body counts, despite what General Tommy Franks of US Central Command said: “We don’t do body counts”), and this grim reality....

As the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States approaches, another somber benchmark has just been passed.

The announcement Sunday of four more U.S. military deaths in Iraq raises the death toll to 2,974 for U.S. military service members in Iraq and in what the Bush administration calls the war on terror. The 9/11 attack killed 2,973 people, including Americans and foreign nationals but excluding the terrorists. (source)

Past Presidents have been impeached for lesser crimes than the deeds of our current President.

Geez.... I gotta stop reading this fringe stuff. This is a piece of crap that I read while out in the blogosphere.

The Gay Lobby has been exploiting the tragic death of Matthew Shepherd ever since it occurred that night in Laramie in 1998.

Somehow, the powers that be at Valley High don’t have a problem violating their own profanity and vulgarity policy(page 34). Yes you can bet that my son wouldn’t be allowed to wear his True Story of Jack Schitt T-shirt to school at Valley but if you are “providing a teaching opportunity for diversity and acceptance,” of the Gay Agenda and of course teaching a valuable lesson about “hate crimes” like the one the Gay Lobby’s unintended martyr fell victim to, profanity and vulgarity are perfectly okay.

The truth is that Matthew Shepherd’s death was a brutal killing at the hands of a couple of vile shreds of human debris -- it wasn’t a “hate crime” because there is no such thing. Muddled and confused liberal thinking that presuppose that one person’s death is worth more than another’s because of certain arbitrary characteristics and the circumstances under which they were killed are what gave rise to “hate crime” legislation. Ever hear about the death of a heterosexual white male being branded a “hate crime”? Didn’t think so. But because white male Matthew Shepherd preferred his sex anally with a male, his death is supposed to be worth more than another white male that prefers vaginal sex with a woman. (source)

Let me dissect this a bit, but only a bit. I have to weigh how much energy I want to spend on this.

“The Gay Lobby has been exploiting the tragic death of Matthew Shepherd ever since it occured that night in Laramie in 1998.”

Actually, we (the “Gay Lobby” as you like to put it - why do they always say that - like there are a bunch of gay people down in the lobby or something, or that there actually is such a thing as a lobby with a gay sexual orientation?) finally had had enough of years and years and years of gay bashing that had gone unreported. What happened to Matthew was very common place. These crimes against “queers” were dismissed 98% of the time by people and law enforcement authorities. Matthew’s death was a second Stonewall of sorts; we finally hit the breaking point of hate crimes. There is a big difference in “exploiting” an issue, and taking a stick and drawing a line in the sand saying, “IT STOPS HERE!” Did hate crimes against gays stop with Matthew? Of course not. But what spawned out of that action was an entire network targeting hate crimes. Much of this awareness has also happened with such initiatives as The Larmie Project (which is the point of Mr. Bowers’ disgust), many websites discussing what happened to Matthew, and of course, the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

“But because white male Matthew Shepherd preferred his sex anally with a male, his death is supposed to be worth more than another white male that prefers vaginal sex with a woman.”

A bit hateful, aren’t we Mr. Bowers? Perhaps Steve Bowers should consider joining the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas; you know, the people who run the godhatesfags.com website (I refuse to link to them), used to protest at gay funerals but got tired of that (no press) and started protesting at military funerals because “America is tolerant of homosexuality” (more press)? I’m sure he would fit right in.

And by the way, Matthew’s last name is spelled “Shepard”, not “Shepherd”. Mr. Bowers, you owe him that much to get it right. I won’t even make the point that many straight couples prefer anal sex to “regular” sex. Don’t believe me? Do a little bit of scholarly research and find your own stats on this. Well, ok, I made the point. And why is it even a point that Matthew Shepard was a white male?

“The truth is that Matthew Shepherd’s death was a brutal killing at the hands of a couple of vile shreds of human debris -- it wasn’t a ‘hate crime’ because there is no such thing. Muddled and confused liberal thinking that presuppose that one person’s death is worth more than another’s because of certain arbitrary characteristics and the circumstances under which they were killed are what gave rise to ‘hate crime’ legislation. Ever hear about the death of a heterosexual white male being branded a ‘hate crime’?”

No, I’ve never heard of the death of a heterosexual white male being branded as a “hate crime”. You know why? BECAUSE GAYS DON’T GO AROUND BEATING THE LIFE OUT OF STRAIGHT WHITE MALES WHO HATE US. Maybe we should. I don’t know. Hate is a funny thing. It’s like a sword; it can cut both ways.

“Certainly the story of a 13-year-old anally-raped to death by a couple of sadistic bastards merits at least as much, if not more, attention by people concerned about ‘hate crimes’ than the ‘hate crime’ celebrated with a play intended to shame people into buying into the Gay Agenda. But we all know that it’s not about ‘hate crime’ at all -- it’s about the advancement of the Gay Agenda.”

This is the only valid point Mr. Bowers makes in his entire diatribe. I remember that story. A 13 year old child was raped by two men who were gay. This was several years ago. In my opinion Bowers is right, they were “sadistic bastards” that deserved whatever the law dished out to them. But, was that a “hate crime”? Steve Bowers is right that the story should have received the press it deserved. I heard about it, but it wasn’t out there in our faces like the story of what happened to Matthew, and it should have been.

Hate crimes can happen towards anyone of a given group. They are not about the gay community. The old adage that “all crimes are hate crimes” is crap. What was the impetus of the crime? The impetus of a hate crime is just that; hate. Was the crime motivated by hatred towards the target of the crime? Did the two men target the boy out of hatred, or opportunity? They certainly did despicable violence to him. They were certainly depraved animals with no sense of decency.

Hate crime laws target that impetus - the reason they happen in the first place. And if a group of gay men did go around beating the hell out of straight males - white or black - that too would be a hate crime, because they were targeted because they belonged to a group (white straight males) that the gays hated. This is the point so many people miss.

Is it right to return hate for hate? There was a time that I would have said no. But now, with more of the world doing this, the issue if becoming one of debate. A lot of people have been trying to answer this question for a very long time. It’s a process I believe. Israel seems to have little problem returning hate for hate. Israel has changed. I remember a time when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel that the last resort was war. They’ve had more experience at this sort of thing than me, so perhaps they are right?

As Herman Melville put it, “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

But then what? What do we do after we hate? What do we do with that? Where do we go from there?

In my limited experience on this planet, hate is a pathway to nowhere. There’s nothing you can do with it except, hate more.

I read this thought provoking letter from The Capital Times (Madison, WI), and thought I’d share it with you.

Dear Editor: In her recent guest column, Julaine Appling expertly presented one of the driving arguments of the proponents of the anti homosexual marriage and civil union amendment. That is, if homosexuals are allowed to marry, what’s next? Polygamy? The breakdown of marriage as an institution? Indeed, the question of “what’s next” is a troubling one.

I would propose, however, that the question is being asked of the wrong side. If religious fundamentalists are successful in institutionalizing discrimination against homosexuals, who will be the next group they decide to attack? Who else fails to live up to their standards of moral hygiene? [...]

If we let them force their views on others in this way, how long before the rest of the Levitical laws start to be codified in our legal system? How long before people are no longer allowed to eat shrimp? How long before people are prohibited from planting vegetable gardens? How long before clothes made from more than one type of fabric are banned?

This issue does involve a slippery slope, but it is not the slippery slope the ban advocates would have you believe. It is a slippery slope toward theocracy. It is a slippery slope toward the loss of individual liberty and freedom of conscience. This state must stand against this trend and tell these fundamentalists to mind their own affairs, and leave everyone else alone. Sticking one’s nose into other people’s private lives is not an American value. (source)

To that, all I can say is, “Amen!”

Yesterday was Connecticut Pride. I actually planned to go, but I found myself losing interest in going. Driving to Hartford (no big deal), hunting for a parking place (a bigger deal), walking a few blocks to the celebration (no big deal), and being confronted with many vendors -- a record number this year I’m told -- many of whom only care about money. Well, that’s naive. They all care about money. That’s why they are there.

But somehow, I felt that going to the pride festival was not so important to me this year. Could this be a new phase of my life, or part of growing older? I feel less of a need to validate myself as a gay man than I used to. Is this not a good thing? Does this mean that I am becoming more a part, or at least feel more a part of a society -- a society who has always cast shame and disdain upon people like me? Or, could it be, that I no longer depend one way or the other on the approval of society?

I think it’s a mixture of all of the above. A lot of it has been the mass exposure society has had to gay people and our issues in recent years. I don’t really think the gay community realizes just how much it has come out of the closet in the last three to four years. Most of it deals with a few key issues...

gay marriage certainly. As awful and mean spirited as state constitutional amendments are in not allowing us access to the full citizenship of this country, these hateful amendments have placed a bright spotlight on the biggest issue we face today - inequality. In spite of it all, I honestly do believe, in time, that the people of this country will do what’s right and noble and fair.

the very public spotlight on key military personnel being discharged from the military because they are gay, at a time when we need all the experience we can get

the great majority of gay people are no longer willing to pay the price of being in the closet. It takes too much energy and deprives you of living life. When you have to lie at a company Christmas party about why your “wife” is sick and couldn’t make it, in no small measure, it kills a bit of your soul. When people come out with courage, it changes minds and opinions. It personalizes the attitudes non-gay people have towards gays. This is happening everywhere, even in the military.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I finally no longer see myself as gay first, American second. I think of myself as an American first, then married (state and federal government, like it or not), then gay. The order of how I see myself has changed. Is this not the essence of pride that I no longer feel a great need to go to a celebration where 98% of the people there will be homosexual, just to feel better about myself or to feel acceptance? Doesn’t acceptance come from within?

The only bitter thing left in all of this was the dance that happened after Connecticut Pride. It began at 9:00pm. I understand why they wanted and needed this. After all, even today, we can’t openly show affection towards our partners without risk. The same is true about dancing with your partner. If you think I’m wrong, go to a nice straight establishment with a dance floor, and ask your partner up for a dance. The establishment will, in no short order, ask you both to leave.

We still have so far to go, and it was sad to me that we still have to have our own place to go for dancing and the showing of affection. I suppose this is why we still need gay bars.

But I’ve learned one thing. Acceptance into this society does not mean that you will lose your identity. It means that you have to accept that identity fully. The fact is, many of us deeply hate ourselves. It’s understandable. We were conditioned to hate queers from an early age. So when we discovered we were queer, it was only natural.

I remember, just before we left San Francisco, that straight couples were moving into The Castro, filling the apartments of gay men who had died of AIDS. One day, I’m walking down Castro Street only to be confronted with a young straight couple with a baby carriage. I was angry and remember saying a rather unkind thing about them. What was really going on was the fear of losing my identity and my pride, and the one place at the time that I could be myself, without fear. If you fully accept yourself inside and like who you are, no one can really take that away from you.

Finally, I read an interesting opinion from Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who is on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, who wrote this for the Washington Post. I thought I’d share it with you.

The chief casualty in the struggle over same-sex marriage has been the American constitutional tradition. Liberals and conservatives -- judges and legislators -- bear responsibility for this sad state of affairs.

Twenty states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriages; many more are in the offing. On the ballot this fall in six states will be proposed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Passage of the amendments is all but foreordained, but the first principles of American law will be further endangered. [...]

The Federal Marriage Amendment has helped spread the constitutional fever to the states. State constitutional bans on same-sex marriages vary considerably in their wording, particularly with respect to civil unions. But most would repose in judges the authority to interpret such ambiguous terms as “domestic union,’’ “similar to marriage,’’ “rights, obligations, privileges and immunities of marriage,’’ “incidents of marriage’’ and so forth. Thus the irony: Those who wish to curb activist judges are vesting judges with unprecedented interpretative authority whose constitutional nature makes it all but impervious to legislative change.[...]

It is not wrong for gay citizens to wish to share fully in the life of this country, to partake of its most basic and sacred institution, and to experience the intimacy, bonding and devotion to another that only an institution such as marriage can bring. To embrace this view one need not believe that sexual infidelities will disappear but only that many gay couples will make good on their vows and lead fuller, richer and more productive lives as a result. [...]

It is sad that Virginia, the state of James Madison and John Marshall, will in all likelihood forsake their example of limited constitutionalism this fall. Their message is as clear today as it was at the founding: Leave constitutions alone. (emphasis my own.)

This is from a conversation I overheard while in line at lunch on Friday.

....we all used to go to this bar close to campus when I was in college. Anyway, we would each put a credit card into this fishbowl. Then, one of the credit cards would be drawn from the fishbowl. Whoever was lucky enough to be selected would pay for all the drinks for that night. So, all the drinks for everyone in the bar would be tallied for the night, and the card would be charged for that amount. The card would be charged discretely with the name of the campus bookstore. That way, when the parents got the bill, they would just think that you had to buy books. It’s kind of underhanded I guess.

You think?

I was wondering at the time if he was exaggerating when he said that the drinks for everyone in the bar would be tallied, or just for those in his group. He wasn’t clear on that point. He made it sound like it was for all the patrons of the bar for the evening from the point the card was selected.

At any rate, it’s a hell of a way to treat people who are putting you through college. It left me wondering if this was a common behavior.

Saddam Hussein rejected overtures from al-Qaida and believed Islamic extremists were a threat to his regime, a reverse portrait of an Iraq allied with Osama bin Laden painted by the Bush White House, a Senate panel has found. [...]

The report, released Friday, discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward” al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.

As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, President Bush said people should “imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein” with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and “who had relations with Zarqawi.” [...]

The administration “exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, leading a large majority of Americans to believe -- contrary to the intelligence assessments at the time -- that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attacks,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. (source)

I suppose this is no surprise to most Americans by now. We’ve been hearing more and more that there was no connection between what happened to America on September 11, 2001 and Iraq. I can understand how we could have made some conclusion based on faulty data five years ago. What I find most astounding is that as recently as August 21 of this year, President Bush was still relying on this faulty data as if it’s fact.

It’s hard for me to say anything positive about this. The security of this nation has been seriously compromised because we elected a fool to be our President. Where do we go from here? Well, President Bush has lost all credibility with both parties. Even the Republicans are distancing themselves from him. A Bush endorsement for the Novembers elections is not what these Republicans want. That want nothing from Bush, and both parties are hard pressed to justify the endorsement of this war.

I suppose the lesson to be learned here is the extraordinary power the President of the United States holds, especially with the sweeping powers the Patriot Act affords him, and how that power can be abused. It’s downright scary when you think about it. I’m not sure this nation will ever be able to go back to what we were. Has too much damage been done?

I’m not here to smear the President any longer. Honestly, we are way past that. Every time he opens his mouth, he does that all by himself. We have to try to think of what’s best for the future of our country. We’ve lost so much. We have actually lost much more since the 9/11 attacks, than from the attacks themselves.

I think that’s why I’ve changed a lot of my focus on what I write about. I feel helpless to change anything. I will vote this November, but for what? I don’t know if it will really matter in the long run. I guess I’m just as lost as everyone else. I’m mad as hell at our government because I believe that they deceived us and led us down this path. But now that we are on this path, how do we get off this path? How do we leave Iraq without ending up in a worse place?

I miss the world that I grew up in. A simpler world.

A Ugandan newspaper’s decision to publish the names of alleged homosexual men is a “chilling development”, New York-based Human Rights Watch says.

Last month the Red Pepper paper printed 45 first names and professions or areas of work of alleged homosexual men.

HRW says the move could foreshadow a government crackdown in the country, where homosexuality is illegal.

But an editor at the paper told the BBC that it was not a witch hunt and that no man on the list was identifiable. (source)

Didn’t we do this once before? It was called the Third Reich, where they rounded up people and put them into concentration camps. This is how it all started.

Of course, to be fair, Uganda isn’t the only country doing things like this. After all, just last summer, two teenagers were hanged in Iran just for being homosexual, and since then, there are now “death squads” looking for gays to murder in Iraq. Of course, since the United States is in Iraq, we are doing.... well, nothing to stop them. You see, that’s the new Iraqi government’s decision to have these people killed, or at least stand by while it happens.

So much for democracy.

I received this in my mailbox a few days ago from a friend of mine. I guess I should say, an EX-friend at this point. I was extremely offended by this photo. In the email, she went on to make further fun of people of Arabs heritage, or “towel heads”, as she called them. At first I was shocked. Then, I just got pissed off.

What is so wrong with this photo? If you don’t know, you are just like 70% of the rest of the arrogant-as-hell American population who just don’t get it. We are not going to win this “war on terror” and win the “hearts and minds of the Arab world” by making fun of their lives and their beliefs. And who the hell are we to make a judgment against an entire population of people who have a history many times longer than American History?

We love to tell ourselves that we’ve learned lessons in the past about how persecuting people was wrong. We love to tell the children of this country how slavery was wrong. We love to tell the children of this country that what we did to the American Indian population was wrong. It’s all a bunch of crap because as a nation, we are only saying that to feel good about ourselves. Try selling it to someone else, because I’m not buying it.

If people keep circulating this kind of crap around the Internet, you really have no room to bitch when we get hit again with another “9/11”. You helped to make this happen.

To the Arab-American citizens of this country, this is one American who will apologize for this degrading display upon your people. To the Arab nations, I would hope that you don’t judge us completely on this kind of display. We are not all arrogant, self-righteous bigots who hold ourselves higher than other peoples of the world.

As for my friend, I am now refusing any further email from her. She’s on my block list. I have zero tolerance for this kind of crap.

I took a few photos this weekend. Summer is leaving us and it's starting to feel like Fall at night.

View other photos in this set

Mimi (left) and Maxwell (right) eyeing a bird just out of reach

Maxwell taking a rest

A fading wildflower in front of our home

Last of the fuchsias on the front porch

View other photos in this set

Yet while the issue of protecting gay students and whether GSAs should be recognized roils school districts across the country one Canadian school board is taking a pro-active approach.

The Toronto School Board is launching a major survey of its students this fall to help set a policy to better serve all of its pupils.

Among the 55 questions being asked of students from junior kindergarten to grade 12 is whether they are “lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, queer or two-spirited”. There is also a box to indicate “don’t know”. (source)

I think it’s great that the Toronto School Board is trying to assess how many gay, lesbian, transgendered, and bisexual students that have enrolled in their system. I was a bit shocked that they would use the word “lesbian” in referring to females who are homosexual, then turn around and use the word “queer” in referring to males who are homosexual. I mean, shouldn’t they have used the word “gay”?

More and more gay males are referring to themselves as “queer” these days. Hell, even I have used it to describe myself. When I was beaten in high school, the kids that did that made reference repeatedly to the word “queer” while beating me. It was then a derogatory word used for gay people.

But over the years, we have taken possession of the word “queer”. Speaking for myself, I find it liberating to use it when referring to myself because it takes the stigma away from me. And, in some small way, it feels like I am taking back something that they took away from me so long ago.

Does that make sense?

But, I don’t know if I would use the word “queer” in a high school situation. It would seem to me that some kids would feel that’s a put-down. But then again, times have changed and this generation of gay kids are nothing like the kids I grew up with.

Thank God for that!

I think my flirtation with martini’s is over. I used to really enjoy them. But, with so many things in life, if you over do a good thing, it becomes ordinary. Don’t get me wrong. I never over did the martini thing in the sense of drinking one or two every night. I would have maybe two a week. I’m not a heavy drinker but when I do have a drink, I want to enjoy it.

My favorite martini is from Acqua Oyster Bar in Vernon, Connecticut. It’s called the Blue Goose Martini. It’s made with Grey Goose Vodka, a splash of vermouth, and served absolutely ice cold, accompanied with four large olives, stuffed with fresh blue cheese. For those of you who are gagging because you hate blue cheese - or just the idea of having that in your olives, it really is a treat. You’ll just have to trust me on that one. It used to be my weekly treat to myself to stop by every Thursday after work to treat myself to a Blue Goose martini, with an appetizer (they have wonderful appetizers), and just relax for a bit. But, I’m over that now.

Now, I’m into doing something good for myself every single day. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It can be something that brings joy to myself, or to my body (get your minds out of the gutter!). Today, for my body, I had a spinach salad with no cheese, and no meat. Just assorted vegetables with a red wine vinaigrette. Yes, it was absolutely delicious. And the best part, zero FAT! The dressing was fat free. My body will thank me!

On my way back to work, I checked out the news on XM, only to hear three words from the old wind bag (Bush) talking about something. Like who cares what he has to say? I can’t stand to even hear the man talk anymore. His voice has the appeal to me of.... vomiting. Radio off!!!

Other than that, I’m looking forward to the long weekend. Cheers!

For all intents and purposes, gay marriage is dead. Activists proclaimed that the Goodrich decision in Massachusetts was the end of the beginning of the struggle for equality, but in retrospect it was the beginning of the end.

Let’s check the standings: 44 states have laws that restrict marriage to the union of one man and one woman. Nineteen states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage — 16 of those enacted since 2003. Six more states have constitutional bans on the November ballot that are expected to pass.

The highest state courts in New York and Washington recently ruled against same-sex couples claiming a right to civil matrimony, and a federal appellate court upheld Nebraska’s gay marriage ban. [...]

Gay leaders demonized opponents of same-sex marriage as hateful bigots and homophobes, completely ignoring the religious and social motivations behind the opposition. The reality is that marriage as the union of one man and one woman is our most basic social institution and deeply rooted in our culture. [...]

Instead of waging efforts to change hearts and minds, gay movement leaders have tried to bludgeon opponents and pursued a strategy where a very small minority would impose its will on a vast majority thought judicial fiat.

While activists relied on the courts for victory, supporters of traditional marriage took the debate to the ballot box and won every single time. A failed strategy appears to have put gay marriage out of reach for a long time to come. (source)

This from Jeff Gannon, former male prostitute escort who was, until his lurid past caught up with him, a member of the White House Press Corp. You remember him - the bald guy who always asked then White House press secretary Scott McClellan the easy questions?

Jeff, as usual in his right-wing mind set, along with many other right wingers, are missing the point on the gay marriage issue. I’ll try, once again, to make THE point of marriage (highlighted in blue).

In the United States, there is civil marriage, and there is religious marriage. When you get married in a church, you are also asking the state to honor that marriage. That is why the minister/pastor/priest MUST always say, “...with the authority vested in me by the state of [insert your state name here], I now pronounce you man and wife.”

I do ask that my state and my federal government honor my civil marriage, if I’m ever allowed to have one. After all, I’m paying for it in my taxes and I assure you, my tax rates are not second class!

These points are so simple to understand that even uneducated people, and even religious people should be able to understand them. I’m not saying that to look down upon them. I know that there are all kinds of people who have not had the opportunity of an education. But these are simple points. And, Jeff Gannon should be able to make these distinctions.

Marriage equality is not dead and it is not going to go away!

The only thing that will make this issue go away is if the state and federal government pass legislation to take away the hundreds of legal rights afforded heterosexual married couples. That should be no problem for all those protesting gay marriage on religious grounds, IF their motives are pure. But if you think I’m bad at bitching about this issue, watch all the straight married folks bitch when those marriage perks are taken away! You will have a revolution on your hands.

We may have lost many battles in the courts, and we may continue to lose. But that is not what is at stake here. This honestly isn’t about winning or losing in the court room. It is not about losing at the ballot box because our rights are put to a popular vote. If that had happened to school integration, there would to this day be states who would still have schools that were for black students and schools for white students.

This battle is ultimately about what America stands for. No judge can make that go away with a ruling. At the end of the day, this nation has citizens that it has legally afforded second class status to. That is spitting in the face of the United States Constitution. That reality shall not perish from the earth.

We will win this. Victory will be ours. It is as inevitable as the persistent droplet of water that eventually breaks through the boulder that is beneath it. I would pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor on it.

Three University of Wisconsin-Madison students challenged the U.S. military’s controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” on Wednesday when they attempted to enlist in the Army even though they said that they are openly gay.

Army recruiters stopped the enlistment process once the students made their sexual orientation clear, WISC-TV reported.

Derek House, a UW-Madison sophomore, said that he comes from a military family and wants to serve, but not if it means keeping his personal life secret. He said his father and brother serve in the military.

“That is a decision I was not willing to make,” House said of hiding his sexual orientation. “I was not willing to step back to my 10th grade year of high school and closet myself. I can’t do that.”

Junior Justin Hager said that he has a friend who was injured in Baghdad, but he wants to serve.

“I’ve been raised with the beliefs that serving in the military is not just an opportunity, but it’s a responsibility and a privilege that all of us citizens should attain,” Hager said. (source)

Merriam-Webster defines “conviction” as, “the act of convincing a person of error or of compelling the admission of a truth”.

The truth. The actions of the brave students (some will undoubtedly try to dismiss their conviction by calling them “gay activists” I’m sure) is the most effective thing that has happened against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to date.

Congress has entertained overturning the stupid policy, although not seriously. If they thought it had a chance in hell of being overturned, they wouldn’t bring it up.

The President supports the policy, as do members of his cabinet. No surprise there.

And if you talk to actual soldiers in Iraq (and I have), they will tell you, “There are plenty of gays in my unit. It’s not a problem. Everyone does their job.” The fact of the matter is, when you are in a dangerous situation such as Iraq, how important do you really think sexual orientation is to these soldiers? Now days, with the young soldiers in place, not a big problem. There are isolated incidents of gay bashing, just as there were problems when African Americans were integrated with the white troops. And, this mirrors society - there are isolated incidents of people getting beaten, and so forth. But, it is against the law to do that in society, and it is against the rules of military conduct to do it in the military. There is no difference.

The act of going to a military recruiter to sign up, and taking the added step of TELLING them that you are gay, a clear violation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, is putting a spot light on this unfair policy. But it’s more than unfair. We, as a nation, are turning down perfectly fine young men and women who want to serve their country at a time when we could really use that help.

I understand why they are doing it. I commend them, their courage, and I support their efforts. It is the vision of the future that we enjoy all the rights and privileges of citizenship. Some of those rights are not always pleasant, but they are essential if we are to be equal with others. We ask for marriage equality, workplace equality, health insurance equality, and all the rest. Well, you aren’t equal unless you are equal in all aspect of society, and the military is part of that.

The angry part of me that sees all the injustices that we face wants to say that if they don’t want us in the military, fine. Let “them” (the straights) go to battle to defend and die for us (straights and gays). Hell, we come out ahead because we aren’t allowed to share in the burden of being a citizen. The same with the American Red Cross. If they don’t want our blood, don’t expect me to be sympathetic when they complain about being short of blood.

But that is honestly short sighted. We can’t give into that depressed sense of hopelessness. And that’s what it is, giving up. Derek House knows that. He’s the one that said about hiding his sexual orientation, “That is a decision I was not willing to make. I was not willing to step back to my 10th grade year of high school and closet myself. I can’t do that.”

Why can’t he do that? For two reasons. Self Respect and Integrity. Isn’t that what the military would want?

I would also urge anyone seeking to do this by challenging Don’t Ask, Don’t tell to really think this through. It’s one thing to do this for a cause of showing how unfair this policy is. But, you should do it with the expectation and hope that you will be admitted to the military. If that should happen, the cause will no longer be the issue. You will be in the military. I mention this because I believe that some who are doing this have not really thought this action through. If you really want to be in the military, I found a guide on what you can expect, should they accept you, when the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is abolished.