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!

Still Dreaming...

In 1963, at a rally following a civil rights march on Washington DC, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The organizer of that 1963 rally was Bayard Rustin, a gay man and friend of MLK.

Yesterday, in Jena Louisiana, LGBTQ leaders again joined with the Black Community to stand against racial inequality, hatred and oppression. We wholeheartedly support that action and oppose race-based discrimination of any kind.

Although many Black leaders refuse to stand up for our rights for what they claim are religious and moral reasons, we know that those who oppress Blacks use the same reasoning to justify oppressing and discriminating against the LGBTQ Community.

All discrimination is based on fear of the unknown. That fear is easily manipulated by those who stand to gain power and money from exploiting "difference" and encouraging hatred.

Even though some Blacks, some Hispanics, some Muslims and some Jews feel obligated to climb on to the homophobic bandwagon and join the gay-bashing bunch, we understand that they do so out of ignorance.

Nevertheless, we will continue to oppose inequality and injustice wherever we see it because, as a very wise man once said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Thus, like King, we long for a world where all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion or sexual orientation, are treated as whole and equal human beings. That day will come only when people realize we are not all that different from one another.

Next month, on October 11, we will celebrate National Coming Out Day.

This day is our opportunity to introduce our true selves to our friends, co-workers and family. By coming out and being proud of who we are and who we love, our lives become irrefutable evidence that hate-mongers are lying about our community and our agenda.

Out in the open -- in the light of day -- they will be outed as bigots as more and more people see that we pose no threat, no harm to anyone.

And remember, even though it may feel as though we are not supported by Civil Rights leaders, that too, is a lie since many prominent Blacks have had the courage to speak out for our rights.

Just as we speak out for theirs.