How to Win Equality: Demand Leaders without Bigotry

In an earlier post, "Generation Gay," I said "We need to demand from society to not elect leaders that spout... bigoted beliefs."

The anti-theocracy backlash is beginning to take hold in the Ohio House Democratic primary where the United Auto Workers, the Cleveland Teachers Union and its affiliate, the Ohio Federation of Teachers all withdrew their support for alleged Democrat Bill Ritter when he sent out a direct mail piece bashing his Democratic primary opponent for supporting and being supported by gays.

Harold Wilson, CAP Council chairman. "This is an issue that the Republican Party has been using for the last eight years. What's important in Ohio is jobs and education and health care. We don't discriminate against anyone."

These demands started in the blogosphere and worked their way into the mainstream. By demanding equality from our leaders we are demanding honesty. We need leaders who work and fight for all of our citizens, not just the rich and pious. Fight on, Generation Gay.

To donate to Bill Ritter's primary opponent, Mike Foley, visit [here].

Here's the Deal

Here's the deal.

Public schools will teach for all students, not just yours. Just because your faith in Jesus (or more precisely Peter, the preacher who wrote all those angry letters in the bible) precludes you from accepting or understanding the wide dynamics of human sexuality, society isn't bound to structure itself around the lowest common denominator of your bigotry and blindness.

Public schools have gay students and children of gay parents. Public schools have a responsibility to accept every member of the community and teach to all children in a safe environment. Why is this so difficult for you radical Christian cultists to understand?

Helen Cohen, chairwoman of the Lexington, MA, School Committee, understands [Boston Globe]:

School leaders are bracing for protesters at the high school on Wednesday, when some students will be participating in a ''Day of Silence," an annual national event in which the participants do not talk to one another to sympathize with gays and lesbians.

Lexington is once again facing a conflict over how it should handle making gay and lesbian students or children of gay and lesbian parents comfortable in school.

...school leaders contend they have a duty to create an atmosphere that fosters acceptance of all students and all kinds of families, including those headed by same-sex parents, and those lessons need to begin when students first enter school as kindergartners.

''We know there are some parents who will be uncomfortable with it, but we want to include all families and children in our school district," said Helen Cohen, chairwoman of the Lexington School Committee.

So if you can't accept that the public school you send your child to recognizes the existence and worth of gay students and families, you better pull them out and send them to an all-brainwashed Christian school. That is your right. But you do not have the right to attack gay families and gay students in the schools.

And don't play the "victim" card either. Do not even begin to pretend that you have the right to wear in public classrooms with gay students t-shirts that say "Homosexuality is shameful." You say any attempt to keep hateful messages out of schools is an attack on all Christians. But really, do you want the Christian battle cry to be that radicals weren't allowed the right to blatantly discriminate against children in public schools?

Picketing children at egg rolls?! Wearing hateful t-shirts to schools?! Snatching foster children out of loving parents' hands?! Teaching children they are better off dead than to be who they are?!! Picketing schools because gay students and supporters are refusing your lies? You should be ashamed of yourselves!

I'm sick of sitting around and playing nice. Maybe gay couples should start going to your church Sunday mornings with T-shirts reading "God Loves Fags" or "Unquestioned Faith in Church Leaders Leads to Spiritual Ruin" or "'When you pray, enter into your closet and shut the door' - Jesus, Matthew 6:6." Gays could start making out during communion and take their shirts off to dance during the hymns. After all, this is the stereotype radical Christian leaders want you, their followers, to believe. Why not give it to you in doses of your own medicine? Or maybe, we should just picket your church.

(Hey, really... Why aren't we picketing the churches?)

Here's the deal. Keep your bigotry out of the schools and we'll keep a Gay Pride Parade away from your church, OK?

Homophobia is Wrong

I found this on the web and decided to repost it here. I could not find the original author. I'm not big on memes, but some of these statements are pretty powerful and worth reposting.


I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.

Leno's Gay Laugh Lines Not Welcome on 'Avenue Q'

I can't stand Jay Leno. He is not, nor has he ever been funny. If it weren't for a string of tasteless OJ Simpson/Judge Ito skits he would have tanked right off of the air. But somehow he survived and continues to assault us each night with unfunny "humor," an elitist attitude, and a band leader with an abhorrently annoying sidekick schtick, breaking into a riff to cover an immediate non-reaction after one of Leno's bombed jokes. (At least Carson's, Letterman's, and Conan's bombs were/are handled with comedy, not distraction.)

Jeff Whitty, Creator of Avenue Q, one of the truest punch-in-the-gut commentary comedy musicals to come along in ages, has written a letter to Jay that highlights just what a 'hack' and how gay-baiting Jay Leno is.

NBC should still be ashamed to this day of ever hiring Jay when Johnnie Carson retired. He was never good enough.

When you think of gay people, it's funny. They're funny folks. They wear leather. They like Judy Garland. They like disco music. They're sort of like Stepin Fetchit as channeled by Richard Simmons.

Gay people, to you, are great material.

Mr. Leno, let me share with you my view of gay people:

...I think of a group of people who have undergone a brave act of inventing themselves. Every single out-of-the-closet gay person has had to say, "I am not part of mainstream society." Mr. Leno, that takes bigger balls than stepping out in front of TV-watching America every night. I daresay I suspect it takes bigger balls to come out of the closet than anything you have ever done in your life.

... I caught your show when you had a tired mockery of Brokeback Mountain, involving something about a horse done up in what you consider a "gay" way. Man, that's dated. I turned the television off and felt pretty fucking depressed.

Billy Joel Live At Verizon Center

You have new Picture Mail!

Devlin says hi.

Gays with Guns: I'm all for it

Americans have a long history of having a right to self-defense. I am all for responsible gun ownership. America would not be independent today if country farmers didn't have guns to protect themselves.

"'Being a Pink Pistol means you've decided to take responsibility for your own safety,' (Gwen Patton, international media spokesperson for Pink Pistols) says. 'I'm basically a nice, gentle person. But if they try to harm me or her ... ' She turns toward Leber, her partner. 'I will shoot them.'"

As a law-abiding citizen of DC, however, I am not allowed to own a handgun. By law in DC, only the criminals have guns.

The Mob Is In the Mail

American business has gone from manufacturing goods to shaking down the little guy. Look at this interest rate. And I have good credit! 27.75% and 29.99% base rate. Pay late two months in a row or four times all year? Pay 33.75% or 35.99%. Do loan sharks even get this much?

HIV Criminalization on the Rise

Gay man convicted over HIV transmission

"A gay man has become the first (in the UK) to be convicted of recklessly transmitting HIV..."

As more and more people are surviving with HIV, stories like these will become more common. A case like this recently came down in DC, and an HIV+ gay man in Georgia was convicted and sent to prison for two years, with probation for eight. [Here's a blogger's very interesting risk comparison between HIV sex and drunk driving based on that case.] Criminalizing HIV transmission is a slippery slope that discourages people from being tested, leading to an increasing number of blind transmissions. After all, ignorance is bliss...

This is a dangerous game, and a potential tool for serious oppression.

Clouds Swallow DC

Tree down on u st nw just south of florida