Gay Bashing: It's All the Rage

On Saturday, we wrote about the wing-nut, bi-coastal hate-fest where hundreds of homophobes were gathering to show their unity and determination to keep you and your family from enjoying the same legal rights and protections that are granted to heterosexual citizens.

We wouldn’t need give these numbskulls an ounce of our energy if they were not successful luring all Republican -- and many Democratic -- presidential candidates to their side of the marriage equality issue.

And what exactly is their side? According to Scott Lively, co-founder of the group Watchmen on the Walls:

“We view homosexuals like we view alcoholics: unfortunate people trapped in a bad lifestyle. Like alcoholics, they should have the right, if they reject therapy, to enjoy privacy in their own homes. But they should not be allowed to publicly recruit others to their lifestyle. Pubic advocacy of homosexuality should be, like public drunkenness, culturally discouraged to minimize its impact on society.”

Crazy as it sounds, these hate-based fringe groups continue to hold sway over what lawmakers do and say.

Just yesterday, Tony Perkins, who heads up the anti-gay group American Family Association (AFA), announced that he had a private meeting with Rudy Giuliani who promised – as president -- he would support an amendment to the US Constitution to ban equal marriage rights for same-sex couples.

And recently, Barack Obama revealed that he would be touring South Carolina with the “notorious gay basher, gospel singer Donnie McClurkin.”

According to author and political analyst, Earl Ofari Hutchenson:

“The Grammy winning black gospel singer's last effort on the political scene was his song and shill for Bush's reelection at the Republican National Convention in 2004. Obama has hitched his string to McClurkin's high flying gay bash kite in part out of religious belief (he purports to be somewhat of an evangelical), in bigger part because he's falling further and further behind Hillary Clinton with the black vote in South Carolina and everywhere else, and in the biggest part of all because he hopes that what worked for Bush's reelection will work for him.”

Everyone knows that gay-bashing is the easiest way to score points with bigots of every color. Opposing rights for LGBTQ families is a cheap shot. Maintaining a system of separate and unequal access to civil rights hurts the whole society.

This group of wing-nuts is actually made up of many smaller, separate groups of political and religious intolerance. While they are able to coalesce around their shared hatred for you and me, if given the slightest chance to turn on each other for their differences, rest assured, they will!

That is why all of us, the gay, the lesbian, the bisexual, the transgendered, the transsexual, queer, questioning and our allies, must stand together for the rights of each other instead of letting lawmakers give rights to some, but not all of us – as in the recent draft of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) which excludes transgendered people from its umbrella of protection.

Shake Shake Shake Your Bow-Tie

What do these two men have in common? Apparently, more than just their choice of neck-wear.

Pictured on the bottom right, 19-year-old Philip Anderton Cooney, the son of former Bush aide and American Petroleum Institute oil lobbyist Phil Cooney, recently arrested for gay bashing in Washington DC.

In the top photo is 38 year old Tucker Carlson, host of MSNBC's Tucker with Tucker Carlson show, 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, admitted that while in high school, he and another friend bashed a gay man who “bothered” him in a men’s room in Washington DC.

Could this be a copy-cat hate crime?

Carlson is a public figure and very likely a cultural icon for impressionable young White, wealthy conservative males like Cooney. Perhaps Cooney saw the show where Carlson described committing violence toward a so-called "gay" man and realized he might like to try it too. After all, in the video, you can see that the other White, straight, wealthy men thought Carlson's story was funny. It stands to reason then that a young man who relates to a celebrity like Carlson would want to emulate him. Happens all the time.

Unfortunately for Cooney, times have changed -- at least in some areas -- and laws were passed to punish those who would single out a person for violence based on his or her sexual orientation.

No wonder Carlson and his ilk rail against hate crimes legislation -- calling them "special rights." In their minds, queers have no sense of humor and are generally whiny party poopers who are spoiling all the fun.

It seems they prefer to have the opportunity to lash out violently against LGBTQ people whenever the mood strikes.

Yesterday, we asked that readers of this blog to send an email to Carlson demanding that – on the air – he explain the discrepancy between his calls for non-violence from Black teens in Jena Louisiana and his own violent crime against a supposedly gay man!

This guy has had it made in the shade his entire life. It would be great to see him squirm and take some semblance of responsibility for using his bully pulpit to make outrageous and inaccurate statements about gay people and our "agenda."

We must stop Carlson and his gang of bow-tie wearing thugs before another privileged, wealthy, White-male, conservative/predator sets out on a hunt for fresh gay red meat.

The Internet offers a great way to GO VIRAL by calling Carlson out for the hypocrite that he is! After you send your email, post a comment below to let us know what you said.

Pass this on to all of your friends and supporters and ask them to do the same.

Maybe you'll be saving your own ass -- or possibly ours.