Poor Little Rich Boy

After yesterday’s post entitled Give the Underdogs a Bone, we received several comments accusing us of wanting “special rights” for LGBTQ people.

Needless to say, most of the negative comments were from “straight” White men.

The Constitution and every one of our original civil and criminal laws, including the tax code, were written with the purpose and intention of benefiting and protecting the rights and privileges of White, wealthy Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied men.

Every citizen who is NOT White, wealthy, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied or male – which is most of us – have had to scratch and claw our way under the umbrella of legal rights, benefits and protections – many of which are paid for by our tax dollars.

There are a couple of ways to accomplished this:

1. We can use our literal majority (there are more of us than them) to forcibly take our share by revolting, rioting, looting and terrorizing, or
2. We could petition the Government, vote, lobby, protest, and do everything within the law to try to try force those with power to share it.
   

We always choose option 2., with varying degrees of success!

Either way, whichever method we use to fight against power and privilege, we seem to rile up folks who are offended by our audacity -- how dare we even try to achieve equality!

Apparently, to them -- whether violent or non-violent -- we are a threat.

Speaking of White, wealthy, Christian, “heterosexual” men, we heard MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson say something extremely hypocritical on his show last week and we wanted to call him out on it (no pun intended – OK, we intended a pun).

But first, a bit of background on Carlson, who grew up steeped in wealth and privilege:

“[Carlson] is a son of Richard Warner Carlson, a former banker, Los Angeles local news anchor, U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles, director of the U.S. Information Agency, and president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. His mother is the former Patricia Caroline Swanson. He has one sibling, Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson. Carlson's maternal grandmother, Roberta Fulbright Swanson, was a sister of U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, while his Swedish immigrant great-grandfather Carl A. Carlson founded Swanson, the frozen-foods conglomerate.
Carlson attended St. George's School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. After graduation, he majored in history at the private liberal arts Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, but did not receive a degree."

A right-wing conservative (he says he is a Libertarian but his words belie that claim), Carlson often can be heard railing against the evils of “big” Government programs that purport to help the poor. He decries what he calls “special rights” for minorities – especially the poor, women, Blacks and gays.

Carlson, age 38, has his own hour-long talk show on MSNBC - a job we are sure he earned by working harder than any of the other millions of journalism students who put themselves through college and managed to graduate!

Each weekday, Carlson has access to a megaphone which he uses to broadcast his opinion -- no doubt based on his vast worldly experience -- to millions of viewers.

But we digress. Back to the point of this post…

On Wednesday, September 26, Carlson and guests were discussing the case of the Jena Six (6 Black Louisiana teens arrested for attempted murder after beating up a White teen because a noose was hung in a tree at the school all of the boys attend).

Carlson was upset over the fact that thousands of civil rights marchers had gathered in Jena to protest the disparity of treatment toward these Black boys who were charged with attempted murder for a school-yard fight and where one had already been tried, convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison. The jury was all White as were the judge and prosecutor in the case.

Carlson just couldn’t wrap his little wealthy, privileged, White male mind around the reason people were protesting:

“Here‘s a very simple question. Which is—I think hanging a noose is... disgusting. However is that worse than violence? People are acting like that‘s worse than violence. Violence is always the worst thing, is it not?”

Interesting to hear Carlson opine that violence is never called for – no matter the provocation.

Especially given that only a few months ago, he admitted that while in high school, he and another friend bashed a gay man who “bothered” him in a men’s room in Georgetown.

Watch:



Please email Carlson and demand that – on the air – he explain the discrepancy between his calls for a non-violent reaction to a race-based hate crime and his own violent reaction to a proposition by a gay (according to Carlson) man!

Let’s make this post GO VIRAL! Add your own comment, pass it on to everyone you know and ask them to do the same!

We know you can do it! Help us make Carlson explain himself!

Give the Underdogs a Bone

We live in a Country where it is perfectly legal for a woman to leave $12,000.000 to her dog while the LGBTQ Community is forced to sit under the table to beg for even the smallest scrap of rights and protections.

Hard to believe that -- in 2007 -- our State and Federal Governments remain entrenched in bigotry and ignorance.

This attitude is not only demeaning, it is infuriating.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 60-39 to end the debate on the Matthew Shepard Act, which expands federal hate crimes laws to include violence based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender, disability, and other factors.

The House already passed the Act, as a stand alone bill, last Spring.

WAIT! Don't get too excited about getting tossed a bone -- just yet.

What passed yesterday was only an amendment to a defense authorization -- a.k.a Pentagon spending bill and THAT bill has not yet passed the Senate!

And even if the bill DOES pass the Senate with the Hate Crimes Act attached to it, Bush may veto the whole thing anyway.

Why, you ask, would Bush veto a bill that gives the Pentagon the money it needs to continue to wage his immoral war?

Because he is a mean spirited, rich-kid bully whose been handed everything he could ever want in life and then some -- but still loves nothing more than to use his position to deny others he deems as unworthy.

And you, my dear queer, are the unworthiest of the unworthy.

If by chance the bill does pass and Bush does sign it, our struggle will have moved one step closer toward equality.

But -- as we were reminded yesterday by our dear friend, Ruthie Berman, "we've still got a million miles to go."

Postscript: In the saddest of ironies, Larry Craig, the self-hating, on the down-low, closeted gay Repugnican Senator from Idaho, stuck it to us one more time when he voted against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. Ugh.

Senate Set to Vote TODAY on Matthew Shepard (hate crimes) Bill

Cloture vote on Senate hate crimes bill is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. EST TODAY

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) announced yesterday that the cloture vote on the hate crimes legislation is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. this morning.

If we win the required 60 votes, then the Senate will proceed to consideration of the Kennedy-Smith hate crimes amendment.

Please call or email your Senator NOW and ask them to vote in favor of the bill!

The Matthew Shepard Act

The Matthew Shepard Act -- which when passed will (among other things) expand the existing hate crimes law to "authorize the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute certain bias-motivated crimes based on the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability."

Current law only includes race, color, religion or national origin.

The Act passed in the House last May and since then has been languishing in the Senate. If it passes in both houses, President Bush has threatened a veto.

This proposed legislation has created another opportunity for the religious right to bash the so-called "homosexual agenda." It also proves that they have no intention to ever give the LGBTQ Community access to even the most humane and fundamental legal protection -- the right to be free from violence for being who we are.

Whenever someone argues that it is merely the equal marriage issue that riles up the wing-nuts, tell them about Rod Parsley, the evangelical mega-church preacher whose book, Silent No More, sells three for $10 in the front lobby of Hope Christian's 3,000-member church. A chapter entitled "The Unhappy Gay Agenda" argues that gay people are much given to depression and deviance, including their "substantially higher participation in sadomasochism, fisting, bestiality, ingestion of feces, orgies … obscene phone calls … shoplifting, and tax cheating."

"Homosexuality is not just sick," writes Parsley, "it is sin."

And Bishop Harry Jackson of Maryland's Hope Christian Church who recently wrote:

"The gay community, with the help of the liberal media, has worked strategically on a P.R. campaign to make Americans comfortable with homosexuality. From the slightly effeminate male assistant to the first gay marriage ceremony on television, American audiences have watched homosexual themes creep into their lives."

Clearly, these "Christian" men and their disciples of hate don't want to extend to you the right to be free from violence.

According to Princeton University Professor Cornell West, these preachers have been "inundating the media and faith communities with the message that this legislation will allow police to storm into worship services and arrest clergy if they speak against being gay. They make the incendiary allegation that the bill will create "thought crimes" by punishing people for thinking ill of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.

The truth is that the Matthew Shepard Act protects all First Amendment rights. And, although that is a given, this bill goes out of its way to protect the free speech of ministers. Those pastors who wish to continue condemning and dehumanizing the gay community will be free to do so.

The hate crimes bill provides resources for the investigation of violent actions - not beliefs, thoughts, or words. The proposed federal statute does not punish nor prohibit free expression of one's religious beliefs. As University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone recently concluded, "The argument of the pastors that the proposed legislation in any way threatens their right to preach their version of the Gospel is, to be frank, ridiculous."

Despite the ridiculousness of their claims, the powerful and cash-rich antigay lobby continues to mold opinion against this legislation with fear and falsehoods. Leaders like Jackson have used provocative "thought crime" arguments to obscure the truth that, according to the FBI, 1,017 people were the targets of violent crimes in 2005 because of their sexual orientation.

Their rhetoric steals attention away from the stories of gay couples being viciously beaten for holding each other's hand in public or a flight attendant sought out to be heinously murdered simply because he was gay.

These preachers don't care to hear the thousands of stories of lives and communities scarred by antigay violence. And, conveniently, those who bring up the reality that the Matthew Shepard Act is a constitutional and important means to prevent antigay violence are labeled by these clergy as "anti-Christian." The good intentions of this legislation have been greeted by malice by these manipulators of fact.

The efforts of antigay preachers and their supporters is not the way to create the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a "Beloved Community" - where we all strive to treat each other with respect and compassion.

The way to start building such a community is to listen to the words of Gordon Smith, the Republican senator from Oregon who is cosponsoring the Matthew Shepard Act. Before his fellow senators, Smith declared, "I believe that the moral imperative that underpins hate crimes legislation is simply this, and it comes from sacred writ: that when people are being stoned in the public square, we ought to come to their rescue."

In supporting the noble imperatives of the Matthew Shepard Act, we all have the chance to work toward a community that protects and respects the lives and dignity of all citizens instead of bows to falsehoods and bigotry.

Please contact your Senator today and ask that they ignore the hateful rhetoric and do the right thing. Pass the Matthew Shepard Act with a veto proof margin.

Getting Stoned

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Bob Dylan

Yesterday, Iranian President Ahmadinejad proclaimed there are "no homosexuals in Iran."

This may be true since Iranian law is governed by Islamic (Sharia) law -- or God's law as it is written in the Koran.

Since the Koran (like the Old Testament of the Bible) calls for the stoning to death of gays and lesbians – simply for BEING gay or lesbian, it should come as no surprise that Iranian gays and lesbians try to stay invisible.

And, it logically follows that, except for God himself, what is not visible does not exist!

In America, at this writing, LGBTQ people have the right to live. Of course we are still struggling for certain rights – for example, equality -- but we are able to walk around without the expectation of being stoned to death for being out and open.

That being said, it is important that we remain vigilant to the real threat that there IS a very strong movement in the US to shift our form of government from the secular to a Christian Nation governed by Biblical law.

President Bush has even instituted in his administration, a department of Faith Based Communities Initiatives (FBCI) to “level the playing field” so that religious organizations have equal access to Federal funds.

Never mind that the FBCI is in direct conflict with the Constitutional directive to maintain a separation between matters of State and Church.

The founders of our Republic had a good reason for their desire to create a wall between the function of government and religious belief:

“The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and were executed as heretics.”

Today, the LGBTQ Community has good reason to fear the reemergence of a Christian Nation. If you haven’t read the Bible – especially the Old Testament – you may not know what is in store – not just for gays and lesbians – but for all Americans who eat pork, wear clothes made of different cloth, commit adultery, and experience other mundane and everyday happenings.

Ahmadinejad’s words should stand as a reminder that we must not take our role as citizens lightly.

Every one of us has much to lose when we do not act on our rights as citizens.

For decades, Americans have been dumbed-down to such an extent that we do not know and are not even taught, our civic and political history. Most Americans have never read the Constitution and therefore they are unaware of the rights and freedoms that are slipping away.

Those in power do not want us to understand our history. They prefer to “encase and concretize the human mind in an intellectual penitentiary” so that citizens will not know whether or when to rise up.

We are caught in a cycle of sound-bites and catch phrases that allow us to drift ever closer to a theocratic governing system.

We watch American Idol and are willing to lose our rights, liberties and freedoms as long as the government is doing so in an effort to “keep us safe.”

The questions that need to be asked are:

• Do you place a desire to be entertained and feelings of (false) security over liberty and freedom?
  

• If so, are you willing to go back to the stoned-age?

Back to the Future: President Giuliani

I had a sudden realization last night: Rudy Giuliani will be the next President.

Why? Because he, like Bush, is a thug.

Rudy is someone the Repugnican pit-bulls can really sink their teeth into:

• He is great at doublespeak, ignoring his own shortcomings and turning negatives into positives.

• He understands the power of simple, fear provoking sound-bites.

• He will win over the "values voters" by scaring them to death.

• He is a ruthless bully who is not afraid to lie to get what he wants -- power and money.

It seems the fix is in and so I predict Rudy will be the Republican and Hillary the Democratic candidate.

A look into my crystal ball reveals this likely scenario:

• The cabal in charge will "discover and foil a terrorist plot " to attack a US city (or an attack will actually occur), Rove's minions (already set in place during the Bush regime) will set their sites on Hillary and they will attack her with abandon. They will throw out bloody red-meat innuendos and lies to the neo-con sharks to frenzily feed upon.

• Hillary will spend much of her time trying to defend against these un-provable rumors, unable to get her own message out.

• In the meantime, the gang in charge of election-rigging will do their part by purging voter rolls; sending out letters with erroneous information to voters; programming machines to favor the Republican candidates, etc.

• And, the MSM echo machine will obey their orders to repeat rumors and wing-nut talking points until the average person is so confused and the truth is as hard to find as a needle in a thousand haystacks;

In the end, Rudy wins. Perhaps by only a small margin, but enough to make it seem "legitimate."

Later, after all the dust settles, witnesses to all of the above will write tell-all books, make the talk-show rounds, and get rich and famous.

By then, it will be too late to save our Republic.

How do I know all of this?

Easy, it is simply a repeat of what has already happened in the last two Presidential elections...

No magic, no Tarot cards.