A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey speaks at today's ENDA press conference, where LGBT rights advocates and community members call on Congress to pass ENDA.
Right now people can be fired in 29 states for being lesbian, gay or bisexual and in 38 states for being transgender. There’s no excuse for this kind of backwards discrimination in this day and age. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, PFLAG National, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Black Justice Coalition, National Stonewall Democrats, National Center for Lesbian Rights and Pride at Work today held a press conference at the National Press Club urging Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Community members — Donna P., Terrance L. and Gloria Nieto — came forward to share powerful stories of the discrimination they have experienced in the work place for simply being who they are.
Help us ensure that this discrimination becomes a thing of the past. Help us pass ENDA once and for all! Please make a short phone call now to your legislators to keep the pressure on. They need to hear loud and clear from people who support equality. Even if you’ve called before, and even if you think your representative is supportive of ENDA, it’s critical that they hear from you again today.
Just follow these three steps:
1) Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202.224.3121 and ask to speak to your representative. (If you’re not sure who your representative is, simply give the operator your zip code and they will connect you.)
2) Follow this script:
My name is _____ and I live at (say your street address) in (say your city and state). I am calling to ask that you please pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act now! Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can't wait any longer for protection from job discrimination. So, please — no more delays. Pass ENDA right away. Thank you for your time.
3) Go back to step 1 and call at least one of your senators — we need to make our voice for equality as loud as possible.
Thank you for taking action with the Task Force today!
To read Rea Carey's remarks,go here. For photos and more from today's press conference, visit ENDAnow.com.
According to an unnamed person on a conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she vowed that she has "no intention" of losing the (hopefully) upcoming votes on DADT and ENDA. Kerry Eleveld reports for the Advocate:
A second participant said the Speaker discussed the timing of taking a vote on ENDA relative to a DADT repeal vote, which is automatically built into the calendar for next week based on the fact that the House is scheduled to consider the National Defense Authorization Act that week. A DADT repeal measure is likely to be proposed on the House floor as an amendment to the NDAA. The second source said the Speaker went through the chronology of the calendar and the fact that taking a vote on ENDA and DADT in the same week is literally impossible from a scheduling standpoint. Pelosi also said she thought ENDA would have a much better likelihood of passing if DADT were successfully ushered through first. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force planned to hold a press conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday urging a vote on ENDA. In addition, Get Equal, a new LGBT direct action organization, planned a demonstration outside of Pelosi’s San Francisco district office Tuesday afternoon.
Rumors are flying that the GOP is planning new language for ENDA that would strip transgender and gender identity protections from the bill. In 2007 the House passed a trans-exclusive version of ENDA. The bill did not come to a vote in the Senate.
"Solicitor General Elena Kagan's sexual orientation is the subject of much discussion in blogs and mainstream newspapers. The White House response denied Ms. Kagan is a lesbian. Instead, shouldn't the White House have denounced the speculation and conveyed that such inquiries are improper? By denying she is lesbian instead of denouncing the inquiry, the White House is implicitly stating sexual orientation is a legitimate issue of discussion in the confirmation process.
"On the positive side, raising the issue of Ms. Kagan's sexual orientation may give more support to Barney Frank's [ENDA] bill with 198 co-sponsors in the House and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon with a similar bill and 45 co-sponsors barring employment discrimination by the federal government against people because of their sexual identity. Only 20 states in the Union - New York being one of them - have such legislation. The current debate regarding Ms. Kagan's candidacy demonstrates the imperative of passing such legislation. How many U.S. Senators now considering Ms. Kagan's nomination will vote for such legislation? Write to yours and let's find out. Also, ask your member of Congress." - Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, writing for the Huffington Post.
For decades Koch has refused to acknowledge his own gayness, which explains why he's so upset about the speculation regarding Elena Kagan.
To paraphrase Frank Rich - this would be laughable if gay people's rights were not being taken away:
1. We've got a closeted Lesbian Governor in Hawaii claiming that civil unions are like marriage when the mantra of the anti-gay marriage crowd has always been about the word of marriage.
2. We've got a Governor in Minn. who has taken away the rights of dead gay people.
3. We've got the US military (and their families - now) which claims to be the greatest fighting force ever-assembled scared of a bunch of homos.
4. We've got a 'proud homophobe' trying to clean up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico
5. We've got Congress afraid to pass ENDA because of a bunch of men with beards in dresses.
6. We're got the founder of the anti-gay movement's Family Research Council caught with a rentboy whose testimony is on court record in major anti-gay causes in FL, AK and CA and taxpayers money is paying for it.
7. We've got a Supreme Court nominee forced to demean herself by telling the President that she's not a Lesbian - she's just too ugly to find a man. As if the Dean of Harvard Law School who everyone loves couldn't find a nice Jewish boy.
8. We've got the Catholic Church (unmarried Priests) ... and the Mormon Church (polygamy) as the foot soldiers against gay marriage.
9. We've got Bauer, Sanford and Graham in SC.
10. And, then we've got Laura Bush and Cindy McCain as the only people with a brain in America
Portugal's President To Sign Marriage Equality Law
All that pressure from the Vatican was useless. Today Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva announced that he WILL ratify his nation's marriage equality law, which was bound for approval whether he vetoed it or not. Interestingly, Silva's decision comes on the International Day Against Homophobia.
The head of state's decision to permit the enactment of a bill passed by Parliament in January makes Portugal the sixth European country allowing same-sex couples to wed. President Anibal Cavaco Silva said in a nationally televised address he regretted that the country's political parties had failed to reach a compromise during days of heated debate in Parliament four months ago. Vetoing the bill would only send it back to Parliament where lawmakers would overturn his decision, he said, adding that the country needed to focus on overcoming an economic crisis that has increased unemployment and deepened poverty. The Socialist government's bill was backed by all of Portugal's left-of-center parties, who together have a majority in Parliament. Right-of-center parties opposed the measure and demanded a national referendum. "Given that fact, I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese and divert the attention of politicians away from the grave problems affecting us," Cavaco Silva said. He said that, in ratifying the law, he was setting aside "personal convictions."
Parabéns, Portugal! Eight nations now allow same-sex marriage: Canada, Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, and Portugal. Who will be next?
If you are gay or not, you should forward this as a support of your friends and loved ones that are. Love is not defined by color, belief, or gender.
I am the mother that is not allowed to see the children she gave birth to, took care of and raised. The courts say that I do not fulfill the requirements to be a mother now that I live with another woman.
I am the boy that never finished his degree because every day I was called a Faggot.
I am the girl who was kicked out of her house because I confessed to my mother that I was a lesbian.
I am the prostitute working in the streets because no one wants to hire a transsexual.
I am the sister that tightly hugs her gay brother during long nights of fear and crying.
We are the parents that barried their daughter much sooner than they should have.
I am the man who died alone in a hospital because who was my partner for 27 years, was not allowed access to my room.
I am the orphan that wakes up at night due to nightmares, because I was taken from the only home where I was shown love, simply because I have two fathers.
How I would like to be adopted. I am not amongst those who were lucky.
I took my own life only weeks before I would graduate from college. I wouldn’t take it anymore.
We are the couple that the landlord stood up when he found out we wanted to rent a room for two men.
I am the person that never knows which bathroom to use in order not to be sent to the management office.
I am the survivor of domestic abuse that realized that the support system became cold and distant when they found out that my abusive partner was also a woman.
I am the survivor of domestic abuse that doesn’t have a support system to go to because I am a man.
I am the father that was never able to hug his own child because I grew up with fear to show any affect towards other men.
I am the economics teacher who always wanted to be a sports teacher until someone told her that only lesbians do that.
I am the woman who died when the paramedics stopped treating her when they found out I was a transsexual.
I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a better person if society didn’t despise me.
I am the man who left his beliefs aside, not because I stopped believing, but because I was rejected as a person.
I am the warrior who keeps serving its own country but without being able to reveal my own lifestyle because in the army, I am not allowed to be gay.
I am the person who has to hide and keep to myself what this world needs the most: love.
I am the young girl who is embarrassed to confess to her friends that she is a lesbian, because they are constantly making fun of them.
I am the young man tied to a pole, brutally beaten and abandoned because two “macho” men wanted to “teach me a lesson.”
On October 7, 1998, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson took Matthew Shepard to a remote area of the East side of Laramie, where they conducted unimaginable acts of hate. Matthew was tide up to a pole, where he was beaten up and abandoned to the awful weather of a cold fall night. Almost eighteen hours later he was found by a cyclist, who initially confused him for a battered doll. Matthew died October 12 at 12:53 am in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. MURDERED FOR BEING GAY.
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HOMOPHOBIA IS WRONG, AND IT KEEPS US AWAY FROM BEING A SOCIETY THAT IS
JUST AND UNDERSTANDING, FORWARD THIS WITH THE TITLE 'HOMOPHOBIA'
Yesterday Mariela Castro lead a parade of hundreds through the streets of Havana as part of the International Day Against Homophobia. Last year Mariela's father, Raul Castro, replaced Fidel Castro as president of Cuba.
Some of the marchers played drums and others walked on stilts as they made their way down a wide avenue in the capital's hip Vedado neighborhood, where they have held a series of debates and workshops ahead of the May 17 celebration of the International Day Against Homophobia, which participants say marks the day in 1990 when the World Health Organization stopped listing homosexuality as a mental illness. "We have made progress, but we need to make more progress," said Mariela Castro, a campaigner for gay rights on the island and the leader of Cuba's National Sexual Education Center. She is also the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro.
Cuba has come a long way in accepting homosexuality. In the 1960s, shortly after the revolution, homosexuals were fired from state jobs and many were imprisoned or sent to work camps. Others fled into exile. But that began to change in the 1980s, in large part to the work of Mariela Castro's center. Recently, the government has even agreed to include sex change operations for transsexuals under its free national health system, another project championed by the center.
Mariela has been campaigning for marriage equality in Cuba as well, although that movement has seen little advancement.
"Thanks to Rekers’s clownish public exposure, we now know that his professional judgments are windows into his cracked psyche, not gay people’s. But there is nothing funny about the destruction his writings and public activities have sown. His fringe views have not remained on the fringe. His excursions into public policy have had real and damaging consequences on a large swath of Americans.
"The crusade he represents is, thankfully, on its last legs. American attitudes about homosexuality continue to change very fast. In the past month, as square a cultural venue as Archie comic books has announced the addition of a gay character, the country singer Chely Wright has come out as a lesbian, and Laura Bush has told Larry King that she endorses the 'same' rights for all committed couples and believes same-sex marriage “will come.” All of this news has been greeted by most Americans with shrugs, as it should be." - New York Times columnist Frank Rich, in a delicious evisceration of Dr. George Rekers.
“Stories from the Frontlines: Letters to President Barack Obama” is a new media campaign launched to underscore the urgent need for congressional action and presidential leadership at this critical point in the fight to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). Every weekday morning as we approach the markup of the Defense Authorization bill in the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, SLDN and a coalition of voices supporting repeal, will share an open letter to the President from a person impacted by this discriminatory law. make the jump here to read the full article
"Put yourself in the shoes of the teenager, bewildered and frightened by these feelings he or she is not 'supposed' to have, feelings of sexual attraction to people of the same gender. You try to deny them, try to ignore them, try to suppress them, but they will not go away. You are all alone, isolated behind a secret that presses down on you like weights, a fear of rejection that haunts you like ghosts.
"And here comes Dr. Rekers telling you that you are abnormal, telling you that you are bad, telling you he can cure you, as if you had a disease like measles or the flu. Then, in his off hours, he's trolling rentboy.com looking for young men to handle his, ahem ... baggage. That's more than hypocrisy, more even than self-loathing. It is a betrayal of one's own, a sellout of the most vulnerable. And what's sad is not just that a George Rekers would do this, but that ours is a culture that would encourage and reward such duplicity in the first place.
"He purported to heal homosexuals? One is reminded of an injunction from the book of Luke: 'Physician, heal thyself' (4:23). Rekers would be wise to heed that advice. Homosexual urges are the least of his afflictions." - Nationally syndicated Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts.
Today's headline at Washington City Paper: "Gay Marriage Opponents Inch Closer To Death." Hello, Lady Bluntness! The below graph vividly demonstrates how seniors remain the group most strongly opposed to marriage equality. Think of the chart as color-coded waves of acceptance. Still far offshore is the red wave, but it will arrive.
Fred Karger is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Really. He won’t get it. He might make things interesting.
by Jon Margolis — 13 May 2010
Ye who doubt that the 2012 presidential campaign has begun, consider this: Fred Karger campaigned in Iowa this week and spent several days in New Hampshire earlier this month.
Fred Who?
Ah, he’s anticipated that. Those are the very words on the logo atop his web site.
The answer to that “Fred Who?” question is “Fred Karger,” a 60-year-old Illinois-bred Californian who is the first person to be openly (if, for legal-financial reasons, not yet officially) campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination.
Also the first openly gay candidate to seek the presidential nomination of either major party, ever.
Waitaminit. Did that say “gay” and “Republican,” in concert as opposed to conflict? Was there a typo involved, or at least a confusion?
Nope. Fred Karger is really a gay advocate—indeed a gay rights troublemaker—who is also really a Republican. He was raised by Republican parents. He first got active on behalf of Illinois Republican Senator Charles Percy. He’s campaigned for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. This guy’s got GOP cred.
These days he calls himself “an old Rockefeller Republican,” fiscally conservative but socially moderate.
But there’s nothing moderate about his commitment to gay rights. Karger is the founder of Californians Against Hate, inspired by opposition to the anti-gay marriage movement behind the 2008 referendum overturning the California Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples could marry. Under Karger’s leadership, Californians Against Hate organized boycotts against businesses owned by donors to the referendum campaign, and relentlessly attacks the National Organization for Marriage, claiming that it is essentially funded by the Mormon Church.
In fact, the squabble between Karger and the NOM indirectly inspired his presidential candidacy. After Karger filed complaints against NOM with campaign finance agencies in both California and Maine (where gay marriage was also overturned by referendum), he was served with a subpoena ordering him to produce (as he wrote) “all emails, correspondence, faxes and all stored information that deal with my activities…(and ) all correspondence pertaining to three of my four web sites.”
In response, Karger and his supporters organized a “Five for Fred” campaign to raise money for his legal fees. It was so successful that he began to realize that there was a nationwide constituency he could mobilize. As a fellow who does not appear to be short of ambition and ego, he decided to mobilize it on the grandest scale possible.
Now he’s out there on the trail, doing meet-and-greets in restaurants, making speeches in hotel meeting rooms, marching in parades. He even held a press conference (though he had to crash the party and pay for the space himself) at an official Republican event—the Southern Republican Leadership Conference—in New Orleans last month.
At that press conference, Karger said he was running because “Our nation is facing tremendous challenges right now. I pledge to put new effective leadership in place to end our nation’s economic crisis. I will work tirelessly to bring back the spirit in every man, woman and child to help remake America the land of opportunity and equality for all.”
Letting the world know he can spout political pabulum like a more conventional candidate.
No, Karger is not going to be nominated by the Republicans at their convention in Tampa (in mid-summer? Who made that decision?) in the summer of 2012. But GOP bigwigs would be foolish to underestimate him. Not only is he persistent; he’s a pro. He made his money (a fair amount, it seems) as a California Republican political operative. That means he knows how to play the game, with sharp elbows if necessary (or even if not necessary, but just because it’s fun). A recent article about him in Mother Jones magazine said he was once “one of the GOP’s top dark-arts operators.” He’s not ashamed.
He worked with the late Bill Roberts, of the famed Spencer-Roberts consulting firm, in the successful 1986 recall campaign that ousted the liberal, anti-death penalty, Chief Justice Rose Bird from the California Supreme Court. He said he was also involved in the 1988 “independent expenditure” campaign that produced the commercials about Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who raped a woman while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison while Michael Dukakis was governor. Those ads were one reason Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush. Karger is not a social moderate when it comes to the death penalty. He’s for it.
Now he’s using the same argument against a potential competitor in the 2012 race, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who reduced the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, who was then paroled in 2000. Nine years later, Clemmons killed four police officers in Lakewood, Washington.
Karger raised the Horton connection in a letter to Huckabee after Huckabee was quoted assailing the idea of gays having children, who, he said, “are not puppies,” and should not be part of “experiment.” “You have caused tremendous pain by your widely covered comments,” Karger wrote. “You owe the millions of gay and lesbian families in this country an apology.”
Karger has real public policy goals for his campaign: end the “don-ask, don’t tell” policy in the armed services. pass the federal Employment Anti-Discrimination law; eliminate the federal Defense of Marriage Act; make same-sex marriage legal across the country; try harder to find a cure for HIV/AIDS and a vaccine to prevent HIV.
But his attack on Huckabee indicates there is also a visceral element to his effort, and he doesn’t deny it. “One of my reasons for running is to keep those other candidates in line,” he said, and he will react strongly whenever another candidate “goes after my community.”
There’s one more reason Republicans should take Karger seriously. He will campaign everywhere, but he’s going to make a special effort in New Hampshire, the site of the first primary.
“I’m going to spend half my life there,” he said. “I’ll rent a house, buy a car, and conduct a massive voter registration drive.” He already has a field representative in the state.
As Karger pointed out, more than 40 percent of New Hampshire voters are independents, meaning they can vote in either party’s primary. In all likelihood, there won’t really be a Democratic primary because President Barack Obama won’t face a serious challenge for renomination. So a lot of those independents might decide to vote in the Republican primary, and some of them might decide to have a little fun and make a little trouble. New Hampshire voters do have an anarchistic stream in them.
In that context, with four or five socially conservative Republican candidates splitting the mainstream Republican vote, could Fred Karger actually win the New Hampshire primary?
Oh, probably not. But wouldn’t it make the morning-after political buzz a lot of fun?
