Commentary


12
Nov 09

Religious Authority vs. LGBT People

The movement to throw off ancient barbaric views about LGBT people and to include LGBT people at society’s table is a change the conservative priests and religious fundamentalist preachers and institutions have decided to oppose at all costs.

Washington D.C. Catholic Diocese Threatens to Stop All Social Services if Marriage Equality Passeswashingtonpost.com

Why? They believe, and rightly so, that this LGBT Civil Rights Movement is a direct threat to their unquestioned authority and traditional power. How, they ask, can they admit their vilification and dehumanization of lgbt people has been in error all of these .. centuries? Yet that’s what more and more straight lay folk are coming to understand about anti-LGBT religious teachings as LGBT friends and family bear witness to prejudice and injustice. More and more straight lay folk are seeing the anti-gay teaching of their conservative fundamentalist church, priest or preacher as nothing more than ugly supremacist bigotry, fear and ignorance being passed down from generation to generation.


11
Nov 09

No on 1: Those Last Horrible Hours

Photos I took while volunteering for the Maine No on 1 campaign from Oct 1 – Nov 3, 2009. Until those last horrible few hours on Election Day when a majority of voting Mainers (53%) voted away the hard won marriage equality of lgbt folk, the mood was optimistic, hopeful and building toward a celebration. Nothing I had imagined was able to prepare me for the shock and dejection that came after the last of these photos was taken; my camera had quit working an hour or so before I became aware of the polls turning in favor of Yes on 1.

When the full weight of what had happened pushed against me, I scrambled to get out of the Holiday Inn, where a celebration had been expected. But I couldn’t find my ride. As I searched through the confused crowds I noticed a young lady beginning to sob and being comforted by a friend or a might-have-been wife. My phone was dying and all my calls went to voice mail. Finally I borrowed a friend’s phone, found my ride and left the funereal disaster scene for the car where I sat alone listening to quiet music.

After so much effort – years of effort for some – had come abruptly to a dead end, my only thought was, “Now what?”


4
Nov 09

47% of Voting Mainers Support Full Marriage Rights for LGBT Folk

The insidious power of fear, smears and ignorance has snatched marriage equality, once again, from lgbt folk. This time in Maine. 47% of voting Mainers supported marriage equality; not enough to be done with this madness now. But still, 47% is enough to know for certain that marriage equality in Maine and the greater LGBT Civil Rights Movement is only temporarily set back.

Read GLAD Executive Director Lee Swislow’s statement on the overturning of Maine’s marriage equality law: Question 1 Passes in Maine.

Read No on 1 Protect Maine Equalilty campaign manager Jesse Connolly’s statement on the overturning of Maine’s marriage equality law: Dear Supporters…


27
Oct 09

Maine No on 1, Marriage Equality and a Tsunami of LGBT Youth Activism

The most recent poll has Maine’s No on 1 at 53% and Yes on 1 at 42% with Undecided’s at around 6%. Soon, data land, where I volunteer, comes to an end (hurray!) and the final massive Get Out the Vote effort comes to life. Tomorrow I’ll call supportive churches asking for the use of tables and chairs for the GOTV staging locations.

Here comes the wave…

A week from tomorrow night, Maine marriage equality will have cleared its final hurdle or it will be vetoed. Many are watching this ballot initiative in Maine, especially Californians. Will the People take away lgbt marriage equality in yet another state or will Maine be the first to stand for its lgbt citizens, friends, colleagues, parishioners, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters?

Here comes the wave…

Since Harvey Milk began openly calling for gay people to come out and fight for their rights, marriage equality is possibly the most revolutionary, empowering and healing psychological change for lgbt folk, especially youth. Expanding marriage to include rather than exclude gay people is reorienting lgbt youth to expect equality in all aspects of their lives. Think about that. Marriage equality is bringing important rights to same-sex couples and their families, but even more profoundly, it’s feeding a tsunami of lgbt youth power.

Here comes the wave…


30
Jun 09

Everyday Evil Reborn

This commentary was originally posted on May 19th, 2005, but given a very disturbing video taken during LGBT Pride Month this year and given this video’s similarity to many scenes in the photos below, I’m reposting it with the new video at the beginning.

[CAPTION: My friend and I were leaving the Gay Pride Festival in Minneapolis, MN (6/27/09) and came across a group of Somalian kids who asked my friend if he was gay. When he answered "yes", they proceeded to harass him and me with verbal threats and even throwing rocks at my friend at one point.]

hate filled mob[CAPTION: Alex Wilson is kicked by a school integration protester after refusing to run from a mob near Little Rock Central High.]
+ ENLARGE PHOTO

Ignorance and fear are at the heart of evils of all kinds. Two of them are racism and homophobia. Others include sexism and anti-semitism.

First, no one speaks for god and the bible is not the literal truth. Anyone who claims otherwise in the first case is a liar and in the second is a hypocrite.

Third, think of the images of black children walking into a newly desegregated school with men and women protesters all around pointing to passages in the bible. Think of the preachers and leaders just a couple decades ago who denounced interracial marriage as unnatural, immoral and against God’s plan. The phrase some of them used was ‘purity of race’. I would imagine the KKK still use these supremacist ideologies though majorities have finally, finally decided to abandon them. The Supreme Court ruled that banning interracial marriage was unconstitutional only in 1967!

teenage supremacists[CAPTION: Teen-agers storm Baltimore's City Hall in protest against school integration, 1955.]
+ ENLARGE PHOTO

Fourth, majorities now are shamefully making the same mistakes of their ancestors when it comes to NOT evolving their treatment and understanding of a minority section of society. In this case it’s not a race but a sexuality which the majority is refusing to upgrade to full human status.

Look above in these posts and you will find phrases used by those who wish to keep homosexual people defined as subhuman. These phrases can be matched almost word for word to the phrases used by whites opposing full equality for blacks during the african-american civil rights movement. These phrases, just as in the case of racism, are based always on supremacist ideologies. We are superior; they are not. We have god on our side; they do not. We know what’s best for society and children; they do not.

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