dashPunk

Time to get active!

(via Cele|bitchy)

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There is a movement to get all GLBT people to take December 10th off, and spend it volunteering in a way to make an impact against the hate and homophobia that swept the elections.

The worldwide media attention surrounding our massive grassweb efforts for gay rights has been tremendous. Join the Impact was a HUGE success and will continue to thrive because of our efforts.

We’ve reacted to anti-gay ballot initiatives in California, Arizona Florida, and Arkansas with anger, with resolve, and with courage. NOW, it’s time to show America and the world how we love.

Gay people and our allies are compassionate, sensitive, caring, mobilized, and programmed for success. A day without gays would be tragic because it would be a day without love.

On December 10, 2008 the gay community will take a historic stance against hatred by donating love to a variety of different causes.

On December 10, you are encouraged not to call in sick to work. You are encouraged to call in “gay”–and donate your time to service!

December 10, 2008 is International Human Rights Day. CLICK HERE to join us, and search or add to the list of human rights organizations that need our help RIGHT NOW (Day without a Gay).

Hmmm… It is an interesting idea, but I don’t think it is the best idea to call in. Maybe just take the day off if you want to be involved.

For me, I think it would be best if I should up for work, and posted about equal rights that day. Spread the word. Besides, I know my readers are allies or in the community.

How do you think we should protest and raise awareness?

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My anger and heartbreak prevents me from talking about this yet.  Thank you, Keith, and thank you to everyone who sent me copy of this.

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Op-Ed from Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese

You can’t take this away from me: Proposition 8 broke our hearts, but it did not end our fight.

Like many in our movement, I found myself in Southern California last weekend.  There, I had the opportunity to speak with a man who said that Proposition 8 completely changed the way he saw his own neighborhood.  Every “Yes on 8” sign was a slap. For this man, for me, for the 18,000 couples who married in California, to LGBT people and the people who love us, its passage was worse than a slap in the face.  It was nothing short of heartbreaking.

But it is not the end.  Fifty-two percent of the voters of California voted to deny us our equality on Tuesday, but they did not vote our families or the power of our love out of existence; they did not vote us away.

As free and equal human beings, we were born with the right to equal families.  The courts did not give us this right—they simply recognized it.  And although California has ceased to grant us marriage licenses, our rights are not subject to anyone’s approval.  We will keep fighting for them. They are as real and as enduring as the love that moves us to form families in the first place.   There are many roads to marriage equality, and no single roadblock will prevent us from ultimately getting there.

And yet there is no denying, as we pick ourselves up after losing this most recent, hard-fought battle, that we’ve been injured, many of us by neighbors who claim to respect us. We see them in the supermarkets, on the sidewalk, and think “how could you?”

By the same token, we know that we are moving in the right direction.  In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 22 by a margin of 61.4% to 38.6%.  On Tuesday, fully 48% of Californians rejected Proposition 8. It wasn’t enough, but it was a massive shift.  Nationally, although two other anti-marriage ballot measures won, Connecticut defeated an effort to hold a constitutional convention ending marriage, New York’s state legislature gained the seats necessary to consider a marriage law, and FMA architect Marilyn Musgrave lost her seat in Congress.  We also elected a president who supports protecting the entire community from discrimination and who opposes discriminatory amendments.

Yet on Proposition 8 we lost at the ballot box, and I think that says something about this middle place where we find ourselves at this moment. In 2003, twelve states still had sodomy laws on the books, and only one state had civil unions.  Four years ago, marriage was used to rile up a right-wing base, and we were branded as a bigger threat than terrorism.  In 2008, most people know that we are not a threat.  Proposition 8 did not result from a popular groundswell of opposition to our rights, but was the work of a small core of people who fought to get it on the ballot.  The anti-LGBT message didn’t rally people to the polls, but unfortunately when people got to the polls, too many of them had no problem with hurting us.  Faced with an economy in turmoil and two wars, most Californians didn’t choose the culture war.  But faced with the question—brought to them by a small cadre of anti-LGBT hardliners – of whether our families should be treated differently from theirs, too many said yes.

But even before we do the hard work of deconstructing this campaign and readying for the future, it’s clear to me that our continuing mandate is to show our neighbors who we are.

Justice Lewis Powell was the swing vote in Bowers, the case that upheld Georgia’s sodomy law and that was reversed by Lawrence v. Texas five years ago.  When Bowers was pending, Powell told one of his clerks “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a homosexual.”  Ironically, that clerk was gay, and had never come out to the Justice.  A decade later, Powell admitted his vote to uphold Georgia’s sodomy law was a mistake.

Everything we’ve learned points to one simple fact: people who know us are more likely to support our equality.

In recent years, I’ve been delivering this positive message: tell your story. Share who you are.  And in fact, as our families become more familiar, support for us increases. But make no mistake: I do not think we have to audition for equality.  Rather, I believe that each and every one of us who has been hurt by this hateful ballot measure, and each and every one of us who is still fighting to be equal, has to confront the neighbors who hurt us.  We have to say to the man with the Yes on 8 sign—you disrespected my humanity, and I am not giving you a pass.  I am not giving you a pass for explaining that you tolerate me, while at the same time denying that my family has a right to exist.  I do not give you permission to say you have me as a “gay friend” when you cast a vote against my family, and my rights.

Wherever you are, tell a neighbor what the California Supreme Court so wisely affirmed: that you are equal, you are human, and that being denied equality harms you materially.  Although I, like our whole community, am shaken by Prop 8’s passage, I am not yet ready to believe that anyone who knows us as human beings and understands what is at stake would consciously vote to harm us.

This is not over.  In California, our legal rights have been lost, but our human rights endure, and we will continue to fight for them.

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Gay couples have been marrying in Massachusetts for more than three years, but the battle over same-sex marriage in the only state that allows it is anything but settled (Gay.com).

ugh.. Hmm, should basic human rights be extended to all people?  Hmm, that must be a harder question than I thought because people are still debating it.

I have argued for same gender marriage on multiple occasions, and I honestly do not have the strength to make the arguments again, but I have to talk about it.  O have no choice but to talk about it.

Anytime these debates take place, I feel a soul crushed pain that impacts upon my heart and tries to stop it from beating.  What a dark shadow that extends from these people that want to say that Brian and I are not fully human and do not deserve to be treated equally and fairly.

I abide in a state that has an anti-marriage amendment in its constitution and that makes it illegal for me to have children (that is in the courts).  My life wastes away day by day as I exist in this place where I cannot start a family…

No one should be in this situation.  How can anyone say that I should not have children because I love Brian?  How can they argue that I do not deserve equal rights for the same reason?  This argument exhausts me.  We have a segregationist approved marriage (domestic partnership) in California, but does that have value at all anywhere else?

Fear and hate are easy tools to lead people into doing things that they ordinarily would not do.  I am just tired of being the target of these weak leaders that need to use my community so they do not loose control over their people.

One day, bigotry will be defeated.

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Let the controversy begin, here is what Roseanne Barr said:

“They don’t care about minimum wage. They don’t care about any other group other than their own selves — because, you know, some people say being gay and lesbian is a totally narcissistic thing, and sometimes I wonder. I’ve never heard any of them say anything except for, ‘Accept me ’cause I’m gay (What you said: Was Roseanne right? — Queer Lesbian Gay Opinion — Gay.com).”

ok, Let me start with the obvious rebuttal:

1. The Rachel Maddow Show: I wish Rachel actual talked more about Queer issues, but she is focused on so many liberal causes that she rarely talks about our community.
2. The Michael Signorile Show: Everything, every cause, smart and to the point.

‘Nuff said…

Well, not really. To be honest, I have to kinda agree with Roseanne. While most of the individuals in the community are interested in multiple issues, our advocacy organizations are not very good at expressing our interests.

Queer issues are gender issues. People have issues with the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered community because we challenge the cultures basic concept what it means to me a male or a female. So we should be involved in the feminist movement.

Employment is a major issue. As someone who has in the past been fired for simply being gay, I am a big advocate for employment reforms. But we should not be focused on equal employment for our people alone, we should work with other minority groups to make all our jobs safe, equal, and capable of supporting a family.

School bullying is a horrid really for our community and others and should be a major focus of our community.

Other issues that we need to focus on are the war, infrastructure, and government reform. How often have you heard these issues mentions by the predominate voices of our community?

I know that our community has many of its own challenges, especially from a growing religio-fascist movement that wants to use us as a scapegoat for all of the ills their policies are bringing upon our people, but we need allies, and we need to be more than we are.

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C.E. Dorsett

As I read the news this morning, I thought to myself: I hope and pray that someday soon, I will have no stories of hate, bigotry, or discrimination to blog about. I get worried sometimes that I sound like a broken record, because the same divisive tactics are being used over and again from state to state, and internationally. If you ignore the problem, it only grows. So here we go again:

---

The Ban:

Wisconsin has become the seventh state to place a constitutional amendment banning legal recognition of same-sex couples on the 2006 ballot.

Passed by the state Assembly by 62-31 on Tuesday night, the amendment takes the familiar route of defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, but goes on to outlaw recognition of “any legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals (Gay.com).”

Don’t you just love how it is no longer acceptable among fear- and hate-mongers to just be against same-gender marriage, they have to ban the segregated versions of it too. What do these people have against the family?

---

The Evangelist:

A longtime Presbyterian minister and avowed “lesbian evangelist” faces a church trial Thursday over allegations that she violated church mandates by marrying two lesbian couples (Gay.com).

Now, they are attacking ritual marriage too? Well, guess this destroys their argument that people can at least have the rite even if they don’t have the rights. I hope she is not removed from office. She is doing God’s work.

---

The Fraud:

The Massachusetts attorney general’s office is launching a criminal investigation into whether signatures on an anti-same-sex marriage petition were forged, the Associated Press reported (Gay.com).

They attack the institution of marriage and the clergy who support it, and they will even commit fraud to undo equal rights in Mass. It makes you feel sorry for these people in a way doesn’t it. They are so lost in their own prejudice that they would break the law to see it forced on others. It’s sad, and a little scary.

---

A Note:A certain bow-tied idiot on MSNBC has blogged about how Gay marriage will legalize Polygamy…Why it would not legalize Polyandry as well, I do not know, but he has his knickers in a twist about this. This apples and oranges thing is wearing thin. Plural marriage has a negative emotional and economic impact on those involved. It is a separate issue. [Ugh] If Rachel Maddow were not on his show, I wouldn’t even know it was on.

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C.E. Dorsett

Those who push hate and bigotry found an ally in in Bill “I can misdiagnosis you from a distance, give me a cat” Frist:

The Senate is planning on a vote this year for a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage (Gay.com).

Oooo, they want to get peoples bigotry or lack there of on record so they can use it against them. While they will probably get away with this blatant act of gay baiting, I can only hope they get called out and held accountable for using hate as a political tactic. It is frankly, unconscious able that we allow this to happen in this country.

There is a bright light out there:

Same-sex couples across the United States applied for marriage licenses at their city and county offices Tuesday as part of an annual campaign for marriage equality (Gay.com).

I wish I was in the loop on this. As someone who has a licensed domestic partnership in the state of California, who has found himself living in Missouri dreaming of Massachusetts, I find the confusion in law concerning my personal relationship to be more than confusing… I can only hope that more protests shine a light on these issues.

This is about more than a piece of paper:

Gay marriage and civil partnerships are good for the health of lesbians and gay men, researchers said Tuesday in London (Gay.com).

What else is there to say? Equal Marriage is necessary.

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by C.E. Dorsett

I stole the title from Margaret Cho’s Revolution (DVD/CD), but it really means something to me. I may never have the most popular blog in the world, and I might never sell as many books as Stephen King, but as long as I keep writing I have a voice. I leave some record that I was here. I can document my life, no matter what anyone thinks.

Whether I find a sympathetic eye or not, I spoke up:

A Vote for George W Bush is a Vote Against Me

I don’t care what your reason is, the fact remains the same. This man wants to write discrimination against me into the Federal Constitution. He has threatened to veto any bill that would make terrorism directed at the gay community illegal (Hate Crimes Legislation). He wants maintain the gay community’s second class status by undermining and threatening to veto the workplace anti-discrimination act, that would give me, and those like me the right to not be fired because of my orientation. He calls these things “Special Rights.” They are rights that heterosexual people take for granted.

If you elect him, you get the whole package, including the Loyalty Oaths you have to sign to be in his presence.

More than Just One Man

This is not just about one man, it is about ideology. All Neo-conservatives believe that gay people are not deserving of basic human rights. They believe that no one should ever receive a free education. That is the true story about vouchers. They want to give people money to send their kids to private schools. When enough students have left the public school system, they close it down and take away the voucher. Don’t take my word for it, look at Senegal and Argentina. These are countries that they have already forced to adopt these policies.

They are Fascists

“Fascism, in many respects, is an ideology of negativism: anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Communist, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, etc. As a political and economic system in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism (Wikipedia, Fascism).”

Can you find a better definition of the Neo-cons (see Wikipedia Neoconservatism)? If they are not full out Fascists, they are dangerously close. Too close for my own comfort.

I’m not Being Provocative

I am not trying to be radical or provocative. I have a love for language, and what I see coming from the White House, Congress, and Senate scares me. Very few people have been discussing the dangerous trajectory this Neo-con Republican Party is taking our country. Check the record:

Anti-Liberal

• Self evident.

Anti-Democratic

• Bush filed the suit to stop the recount in Florida (see Timeline)
• Patriot Act
• Operation Tips
• Tom DeLay, the more you know about him the more that makes sense.

Anti-Egalitarian

• Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, gave special rights to religious organizations in regard to land use and ownership
• Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, which thank God has not passed, would give religious organizations special rights over other tax exempt entities to take political Action.
• Office of Faith Based Initiatives, gives money to charities that violate the Federal Anti-discrimination law, who could have, like Catholic Charities, received money by deciding to follow Federal law, and not practice discrimination or use the money to build churches, or to proselytize.
• The Federal Marriage Amendment, would right discrimination into the constitution to deny a class of citizens their right to marry.
• Support for Racial Profiling

Corporatism

• Bush’s energy policy, written by the energy industry
• Bush’s Clear Sky Initiative

Totalitarianism

• Loyalty Oaths
• Patriot Act

Nationalism

• Have not seen all of the pledges, flags, and God Bless Americas, the party wraps itself in the flag every time they are questioned

Fascists Not Nazis

I am not calling the Neo-cons Nazis! They have been dodging the argument by saying they are not anti-Semitic, and they haven’t killed millions of people. Well of course not! That is not what we are taking about. I am concerned with the Fascistic tendencies of the Neo-cons. I have laid out a calm and rational case for the similarities between the two ideologies.

(sigh) I’m Finished

These are the things that keep me up at night. I am horrified by the direction our country is going. I have to speak up. I have to speak out. Maybe it makes you uncomfortable for me to say what is on my mind… but maybe that is a good thing. I am uncomfortable at what I see happening around me, but I can’t look away. Neither can you. Whether you agree or not, make sure you examine carefully what I have to say. To do otherwise would be a disservice to yourself.

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Reaction to Bush’s Speech

[Thu 9-2-2004 at 10:14 PM CST]

• Extending the frontiers of freedom??  Freedom to pursue your dreams??

Does he really think people are that stupid?  He has done more to eliminate civil liberties and to dash human rights than anyone short of the real dictators, but he has his dreams.  Good grief.

• Frivolous Lawsuits??

What frivolous lawsuits?  O, do you mean the one my father can’t file for being fired after being injured on the job because the republicans have rigged the legal system in such a way that he can’t?  O, please ihr Führer, save those corporations and doctors from any responsibility for any harm they cause.

• Ownership Society, What a crock of lies!!

Okay, ihr Führer, tell me again why poor people should help rich people become richer while taking away the only safety net they have.  I am afraid to say it, but if it wasn’t for social security, I don’t know what my parents would do.  {sigh} I am just to upset to talk about this right now.

• Testing every child with no funding.

What a brilliant idea!  First of all, bulimia is not good for models, and it’s not good for the mind.  Test scores mean nothing.  What is more important is that our students learn to APPLY what they learn.  I can spout off quite a few facts about quite a few things, but if I can’t USE that knowledge it counts for nothing.  Dogs can memorize and repeat tricks on command, but they can’t build a computer.  Applied Knowledge is what we need to find a way to instill in our kids.

• Faith Based BS

As someone who was brutalized physically and psychologically by “Faith Based” institutions, I have to say I don’t think religious labels count for much.  It’s what is in a person’s heart that matters, not what they call themselves.  Having said that, I have to tell you, FAITH BASED CHARITIES COULD ALWAYS GET THE FUNDS, they just couldn’t use it to proselytize or to fund worship services.  If we really want to help people we need to look at RESULTS as much as methods, and only fund constitutional charities that work.

• Protecting Marriage at the cost of Human Dignity

What are you protecting marriage from?  Brian and I have bee together for seven years in a monogamous relationship that we consider a marriage.  You just want to feel special because you can visit Laura if, God forbid, she were hospitalized.  Or maybe you want to make sure Brian can’t inherit if something happened to me.  I don’t know what you think you are protecting.

All you are doing is depriving me of my basic human rights.  Love is love Ihr Führer, accept that.

• Protestors are so cool!!!

They chanted “Bush lied people died!!!”  Bush looks like he did during the now infamous 7 minutes in Fahrenheit 9/11.  He just doesn’t know what to do.  LOL

• The Crosses on the Podium

Read the Bible.  Compare the actions of the Bush administration with what Jesus taught, especially Matthew 5-8, and see if Bush comes close.  You make Jesus weep Mr Bush!  How does that feel?

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