General: November 2007 Archives

Oddly, Obama threw a premature haymaker but it wasn’t aimed at Clinton. The target was the GLBT community. Obama’s wild swing involved having four abrasively anti-gay gospel singers represent his campaign on his “Embrace the Courage” gospel music tour in South Carolina. The gay-bashing headliners included Reverends Donnie McClurkin and Hezekiah Walker, Pentecostal pastor of Brooklyn mega-church, the Love Fellowship Tabernacle and Mary Mary (a sister act duo).

The Mary Mary sisters compare gays to murderers and prostitutes. In an interview with Vibe magazine, one of the singers said, “They [Gays] have issues and need somebody to encourage them like everybody else - just like the murderer, just like the one full of pride, just like the prostitute.” [...]

Obama justifies his embrace of the evangelicals saying he’s “reaching out to people he doesn’t agree with.” Responding to a controversy he should have or did anticipated - Obama mentioned the black community’s “problem with homophobia.” Yet after the tour when asked why the campaign would seemingly reject gay voters for far-right leaning blacks a campaign insider replied, “We got what we needed to get out of it.” (source)

I had this hope of voting for Obama. I say “had” because he’s lost my vote, and he was going to be my vote for President, at least in this point of the game. And it really does seem to be a game to these people, doesn’t it? In 2004 it was all about the so-called gay marriage threat. At least they aren’t being quite to blatant about that anymore - so far. But I really thought that Obama was above this kind of sleaze. Turns out, he’s just like the rest of them.

I’m sorry, but if you hang around people who compare me to a murderer and a prostitute, and you say nothing about that, then you implicitly agree with them. And if that’s really how Obama feels about me, he can go screw himself. Like the article summed up about Obama’s campaign...

Are they consistent in their message and actions? Do they pander from group to group? Do they pit one group of people against another group? At this point the answers for Obama appear to be no, yes and yes.

The truth is, I heard about this a week ago when all of this was coming out. I started to become wary of him then, but was trying to keep an open mind. But what he has done is really no different from what President Bush did in 2004 when he told the religious nut cases that there would be gay marriage everywhere if he were not elected. And after the election, there wasn’t any further mention of gay marriage. Not a word, except from the religious right who were left wondering why he lied to them. Go figure. Bush lied? Shocking.

As Obama’s campaign insider replied, “We got what we needed to get out of it.” Yeah, just like George Bush.

Are they all this way?

So now, I guess I’ll take a stronger look at Hillary. I’ll be watching the debates tonight. I don’t even watch the Republican debates. I know that I have no place in the America that any of them are hoping for, other than being a hair dresser or a decorator. That’s what they want our place to be. The Republicans would like us all to go back to the good old days when people went to church regularly, families were happy (outwardly at least), where “gay” really did mean “happy”, the sun was always shining, the clouds always had a silver lining, and gay people were bashed left and right with the police doing a lot of the bashing and the general public asking, “What’s wrong with that?” Happy times!

Here’s the bigger question: If they are all liars, who will say and do anything for a vote, who do you vote for?

TOLEDOANS have nothing to fear and everything to hope for in the modest ordinance that goes before City Council tomorrow to allow gay people to publicly register a “domestic partnership” in the city.

The registry, conceived by Councilman Joe McNamara, cannot be equated with gay marriage, nor is it in any way a slap at conventional marriage. Simply put, it is an opportunity for local gay couples to have their relationships recognized in a manner that has been accepted by a growing number of progressive communities around the country. At least seven states already provide for domestic partnerships, and many companies provide benefits for same-sex partners. [...]

What it will do, we believe, is give gay couples the comfort of acceptance and help promote Toledo as an inclusive community, a place that accepts anyone and everyone willing to work hard and make the city a progressive community in the most noble sense of the word.

Undoubtedly there will be those who feel the ordinance is tantamount to a declaration of gay marriage by another name, but the measure does not prescribe any direct benefits or legal rights. Partners who are 18 or older, not married to anyone else, and are not blood relatives would receive a certificate from the city that adds at least a token of legitimacy to their relationship.

A feeling of acceptance by others is among the most powerful of human emotions and we believe a domestic partnership registry would be a force for establishing Toledo as a place where everyone is accepted for who they are... (source)

Enough already!! They may “believe a domestic partnership registry would be a force for establishing Toledo as a place where everyone is accepted for who they are”, but it isn’t. If they really wanted a place for gay couples to feel accepted for who they are, perhaps they shouldn’t have passed the state amendment against marriage, civil unions, or anything that approximates marriage. This ship has already sailed. Toledo, your state has made that decision for you. Now learn to live with that. If you are really a “progressive” city that wants to show your acceptance, then start making your energies work in a progressive way. Start by lobbying your state legislators to overturn the amendment.

I’m sure you have many gay couples living within your city and they will stay because they have family or jobs there that they can’t afford to be away from. But I would have to think long and hard before moving to a place that offered me a “domestic partnership” that did nothing for us legally. It’s like saying, “Even though we are treating you like crap, maybe this will make you feel not quite so bad about it... even though we are going to keep treating you like crap.”

Why would any gay couple move to Toledo or any other place in Ohio that wouldn’t legally recognize their relationship? The answer: they would both have to have great jobs that paid great wages. Otherwise, they would be unable to overcome the complete lack of benefits that anyone, including their employer, was able, or willing, to give them.

The state amendments have been passed. What is done is done. For states or cities to now want to pass these pitiful little feel good laws is stupid and simply cruel. It reminds gay couples once again what we already painfully know: that we are second class citizens - a classification that has been enshrined in your own state constitutions.

Learn to live with your decisions and accept the fact that your citizens collectively managed to pass a very cruel and hurtful amendment to a vary selected and targeted segment of your population.

Get over it. I have. I never write about this issue anymore until I read stuff like this.

I’ll get to stupid people in a minute.... but first a brief update....

We went to the Connecticut Opera Saturday night. We had a great time. We went to the pre-opera dinner, hosted by Max (a very nice, as in really nice, chain here in the Hartford area). Wine flowed freely, with a nice dinner, complete with the conductor visiting and giving a talk on the Hartford connection to the opera we were going to hear that night, Puccini’s Tosca. It turned out to be a very nice product.

For some reason, we were thought to be very high-standing patrons of the opera. At least, we sat at the table where the President of the Board of the Connecticut Opera sat. I actually had a great time. He asked how I got into opera, and I shared my childhood experiences of going to the “dam park” (yeah, just below a dam with a big water spill), putting out my blanket on a sunny Saturday afternoon, turning on my radio, and listening to Live From The Met, where I heard the really big voices of yesteryear, in real time no less!

Why did I do this? To escape my life at the time (and no, I didn’t share that with him). It was kind of like this for me...

I’m in a lot of trouble in the Evangelical community these days because there’s a group of oppressed people that I tend to love. And it’s a group of people that everybody’s upset with these days... But let me just say this. I was in high school. And there was a boy in high school who everybody picked on because we found out he was gay. We mocked him, we ridiculed him—you know what high school kids can do when they find out that somebody’s gay. We humiliated him in every way we could think of. On Fridays when the other boys went into the showers following gym, he would never go in—he was afraid. And when we came out with our wet towels, we whipped them at him and stung his little body.

I wasn’t there the day they took Roger and pushed him into the corner of that tile shower, and as he wrapped himself up like a fetus, five guys urinated all over him. He went home, and that night, went to bed, got up at two o’clock in the morning, went down to the garage, and he hung himself. And I knew I wasn’t a Christian. (source)

Except, of course, I didn’t kill myself over it. It was all timing really. Given six more months, since my terrible secret of me being gay was getting out to the good citizens of Emmett, and starting to circulate through the high school, I suppose I wouldn’t be here writing this today. The timing was that I was a graduating senior. I received my diploma and went off to college to escape my fate at their hands, unlike the boy described above. But I have to tell you, the last two weeks of my school year were a bit scary... watching where I was at... staying in a public place... leaving school late after I was sure everyone had left. You know, today, I don’t really feel anything at all about that. Don’t get me wrong. I do everything I can for gay teens in distress, but I’m finding that there are less and less of them all the time.

As gays meld into the broader population, places like West Hollywood and the Castro district in San Francisco will inevitably lose some of their appeal. As more gays come out in more places, the diversity of homosexual politics and lifestyles will come out with them, and the tolerant will multiply.

For some of the pioneers from the edgy, embattled, ecstatic “good old days,” this may be bittersweet. “But isn’t that what everyone wanted 20 years ago?” Gates asks. “Just to be treated like everyone else?” (source)

I think that’s a good thing. I know some people feel that we are losing our identity, and perhaps we are a bit. I don’t know if you’ve visited The Castro lately, but it’s certainly not what it was 25 years ago. But in the greater scheme of things, what is really happening is that we are finally able to become whole people with out “the gay thing” defining us. For me, that has meant that I’ve become less directly involved with “gay rights”, although I still support many gay rights causes and organizations. It has also made me more interested in all the other things that are waiting out there for me, such as hiking, photography, music, and art. I know they were always there for me, but when you are defined by society by your sexuality alone, that becomes your definition, and your worst fear. Today, in America at least, sexual orientation is becoming more and more a non-issue. Indeed, many of the people who in 2004 were so against gay marriage, are now changing their views, largely because people feel they can be themselves and are coming out more.

So.... back to stupid people. This morning I’m on my way to work. I stop at a stop light just before turning off on the road that eventually leads me to the freeway. At the corner are about six people holding signs that read, “I want lower taxes. I’M VOTING REPUBLICAN!”

I wanted to take a photo, but the light was pour, it was raining like hell (so I kind of felt sorry for them), so I just continued on. But on my way to work, I started thinking about the irony of it all. These people want lower taxes so they are voting Republican?

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The White House brushed off the analysis as “speculation.”

The estimate was the most comprehensive and far-reaching one to date. It factored in costs previously not counted and assumed that large number of forces would remain in the regions. (source)

I guess I’d like to know just who they feel will pay for the $2.4 trillion? We will, through taxes because that’s the only way the federal government has to raise money. So maybe they should have voted Democrat in 2004? Just a thought.

And I also wish the Democrats would “grow some” and, as Nancy Reagan once said, “JUST SAY NO!” to the current administration on spending.