More Saturday Male Beauty

NOM Threatens Pro-Gay Legislators

I'm sorry, but the time has come to force a revelation of the source of the funding of the National Organization for Marriage. The organization has repeatedly violated campaign finance disclosure laws in a number of states and to date we still do not know who is bankrolling the organization. Now, it the wake of a humiliating defeat in New York State NOM is threatening to spend $2 million in the 2012 election cycle targeting pro-gay legislators who do lick Maggie Gallagher's boots and vote in the way she and her fellow Christofascists demand. The public has a right to know who is behind this vicious, veracity challenged organization that continues to endeavor to undermine the U.S. Constitution's promise of religious freedom for all - not just fat, intolerant, self-enriching cows like Ms. Gallagher and her minion Brian Brown. Here are highlights from the Advocate:
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Defeated opponents of marriage equality ostensibly spent Friday evening avoiding New York City's West Village, licking their wounds, and releasing statements on just how doomed the Empire State is following a historic victory for LGBT rights . . .
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The National Organization for Marriage went a step further in announcing a reported minimum $2 million campaign in the 2012 election cycle to "hold politicians accountable for their vote" in hopes of "overturning same-sex marriage in New York."
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The Los Angeles Times quoted Gallagher's puppet, Brian Brown as follows:
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Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, vowed that in conjunction with the state's Conservative Party, his group would spend more than $1 million to ensure that lawmakers who supported gay marriage would be defeated in the next election.
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"All [the vote] means is that Gov. Cuomo was able to strong-arm and push through, because of the weakness of some Republicans, a gay marriage bill," Brown said. "It doesn't go away, and we're going to make sure the people are held accountable."
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If it turns out that the Mormon Church or the Catholic Church for example are bankrolling NOM, those institutions need to immediately lose their tax exempt status. Moreover, the public needs to know how NOM is seeking to undermine the Constitution.

OBX Pride -Day Two, Part One

The weather today was fabulous and we spent much of the day around the pool at the First Colony Inn - the main site for the OBX Pridefest event. Today's events kicked off with a opening by an actress dressed in fully costume as Queen Elizabeth I from the Lost Colony production company. Her remarks were followed by remarks from the mayor of Nags Head who among other things lauded the marriage vote in New York State last night.

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The pictures below show some of the scenes around the grounds of the Inn which is a historic treasure that was moved from its original location right on the ocean a number of blocks north of its new site. The Inn - which is gay owned - is surrounded by lawns and pine trees which make for a beautiful setting. Across the beach road is access to a wide section of beach on the Atlantic Ocean.

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We back at the beach house taking an interlude before we head back to a luau on the beach later this evening hosted by The Lost Colony. At midnight, there will be a production of Cyclops, A Rock Opera, at the Lost Colony amphitheater on Roanoke Island which is a few mikes away across a causeway for where we are staying. Based on our experience to so far, we are very happy that we made the drive down.

Saturday Male Beauty

Haters and Wingnuts React to New York Marriage Victory

Needless to say, the hate merchants at NOM, religious extremists like Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the protectors of child rapists in the Catholic Church hierarchy are acting as if the world has come to an end now that religious freedom has triumphed in New York State. NOM has equated last night's vote as a "betrayal of Jesus," Mohler is whining that "marriage has been sacrificed," and Peter Sprigg at FRC is ranting that "no religious exemptions can redeem homosexual “marriage.”
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These merchants of intolerance and hatred of others are losing the war and they are hysterical because they know that eventually their lucrative gigs will be up. In addition, the religious extremist are beside themselves that their ability to force their beliefs on others is fading. After money, power and control are the true gods of these people. It's an ugly fact and it's what will be the death of Christianity. Bob Felton has a hard hitting analysis of why these bigots are so upset. Here are some highlights:
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If you keep in mind that Mohler teaches that not even wedding vows may interfere with slavish obedience to Jesus (meaning, really, slavish obedience to the preacher), you understand what he is actually upset about. It isn’t marriage that has taken a hit — it is Holy Men, whose gatekeeping function, and therefore power, is in steady retreat.
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Mohler demand[s] that you enter marriage with dishonest intent, committed to the marriage in only such measure as it doesn’t interfere with submission to his Invisible Friend (a sociopath, by the way, who demands that all men be broken to their knees). This is why evangelicals have the highest divorce rate in the country: They teach that marriage, its mutual loyalties and shared ambitions, is always provisional, contingent upon the vagaries of day-to-day revelation. It’s not the gay couple in the neighborhood who is the threat to marriage; it’s the preacher.

OBX Pride - Day One

We arrived in Nags Head last evening and after dropping off our gear at the beach house where we are staying, we went over to the beautiful beach house of one of the boyfriend's clients. We had a very pleasant visit and his friend is amazing. She and her husband operate a foundation called the Achievable Dream (her husband founded it) which strives to change the lives of disadvantaged children.

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After that, we went to the Outer Banks Brewing Station where America's Got Talent star Derrick Barry (pictured above) and Las Vegas Puppeteer Comedian Jerry Halliday perform before the event turned into a dance party. Derrick Barry put on an amazing show and I'll hopefully be talking with him early next week and will do a post based on that interview.
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Today, the weather is gorgeous and we will be heading up to the main Pride grounds where events get underway at 11:00 AM. Unfortunately, the ocean is flat, so the surf board won't see any use today.

Victory in New York!!!

WOW!!!!!!!!! The photo above shows Andrew Cuomo signing the marriage bill that cleared the New York State Senate around 10:30 last night. I will admit that I'd been almost afraid to get my hopes up too much that equality would prevail in New York, the Empire State. I heard the new last night as we were at a OBX Pride party/performance by Derrick Barry at a club up the beach. The entire place went nuts when the DC shouted out the news between one of Derrick's performances. Like so many Pride events, we had young and old, black white and the whole spectrum of the community in attendance. With the passage of same sex marriage in New York, one can only hope that the pressure will be ratcheted up on the rest of the states to move into the 21st century and embrace modernity. No doubt Virginia will be one of the last hold outs. For a state that in the early days of the nation was a font of reason and intellect, Virginia has been in the rear guard of bigotry and prejudice for most of its history. Here are highlights from the New York Times:
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Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.
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The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes.
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Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong. “I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”
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Senate approval was the final hurdle for the same-sex marriage legislation, which was approved last week by the Assembly. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the measure at 11:55 p.m., and the law will go into effect in 30 days, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by late July.
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But the unexpected victory had a clear champion: Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged last year to support same-sex marriage but whose early months in office were dominated by intense battles with lawmakers and some labor unions over spending cuts. Mr. Cuomo made same-sex marriage one of his top priorities for the year and deployed his top aide to coordinate the efforts of a half-dozen local gay-rights organizations whose feuding and disorganization had in part been blamed for the defeat two years ago.
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[A]fter days of contentious discussion capped by a marathon nine-hour closed-door debate on Friday, Republicans came to a fateful decision: The full Senate would be allowed to vote on the bill, the majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, said Friday afternoon, and each member would be left to vote according to his or her conscience.
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“The days of just bottling up things, and using these as excuses not to have votes — as far as I’m concerned as leader, it’s over with,” said Mr. Skelos, a Long Island Republican who voted against the bill.
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The boyfriend and I will be in New York City in September and just maybe we'll tie the knot! The news from New York is an amazing development indeed. And a wonderful rebuke to the Roman Catholic Church - especially Timothy "Porky Pig" Dolan, Archbishop of New York.

Eric Cantor - One of Virginia's Biggest Pricks - Part II

I wrote earlier today about Congressman Eric Cantor - one of the numerous blights on Virginia's reputation. Andrew Sullivan subsequently did a column on The Daily Beast that eviscerates Cantor for his extremism. While Cantor (a true weasel in my view) is the main target of Andrew's wrath, he exemplifies the toxicity of today's republican Party which seems driven to destroy the country in order to serve their failed ideology. An ideology that rejects objective fact and which ignores the large role that the GOP's anti-tax ideology has played in creating the nation's budgetary issues in the first place. I continue to be amazed that it's those who claim to want to "save the country" who are actually the biggest threats to stability. Here are highlights from Andrew's piece:

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Increasingly, Americans and the markets have every reason to feel scared shitless. The controlling faction in the Republican House is a faction that is not so much anti-debt as anti-government. If they have to choose between tackling the debt and raising even some revenues (while cutting spending dramtically), they will choose to push the US into default. Such a default would risk destroying the savings of Americans, make the debt far far worse, spark a double-dip recession, and throw countless people out of work and make those in work radically less financially secure. Even those of us who have saved for retirement by buying unglamorous bonds could see our financial future wiped out by these maniacs on a mission.

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Federal tax revenues are at a 50-year low; marginal rates are lower for many than they were when Reagan was president. In a divided government, any achievement requires some sacrifice from both sides. And yet the GOP is insisting that its side offers no sacrifice, even as the other party controls the Senate and the White House. Their own party, moreover, contributed dramatically to the debt we now face. And there is no clear evidence that raising revenues will lead to economic decline.

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The notion that no revenues can be raised in the current crisis is, quite simply, nuts. You can even do it without raising rates, by eliminating tax expenditures/breaks. But even that golden Bowles-Simpson compromise is too much for these fanatics - even if the president coaxes his side into swallowing big spending cuts.

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This is brinksmanship with all of our lives, our money, our core financial stability and future growth. It is an outrageously reckless way to run a government. And Cantor's refusal to take any personal responsibility for the result of these talks is of a piece with the record of this shallow, callow fanatic who has the gall to call himself a conservative, even as he launches a wrecking ball at the very fabric of the American and global economy.

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These current Republicans would rather destroy the US economy than sacrifice one scintilla of ideological purity. They are an imminent threat to the stability of this country's economy and the world's. And they must be stopped before the damage is irreversible.

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What scares me is that we have a president who gives away half the store before he even begins to negotiate. I have zero confidence in Obama to stop the extremists and demagogues in the GOP. That would take guts and a backbone and a dispensing with Obama's insane notion of bi-partisanship.

OBX Pride Weekend

After work the boyfriend and I are headed down to Nags Head in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the first ever OBX Pridefest. The beach house we will be staying at is supposed to have wifi, so I will hopefully be doing some posts and uploading some photos as the weekend goes by.

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And yes, I am taking my surf board and hope to get in some time in the water over the course of the weekend. Perhaps even with some other members of Gay Surfers who surf the Outer Banks (the organization is based out of Australia and is promoting OBX Pridefest on its webpage). The photo at left shows my long board that I'm taking down with me, although we are thankfully out of full suit water temps!

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Here are more details on Pridefest:

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OBX Pride Event – June 24-26, 2011
Venue: 6715 South Croatan Hwy, Nags Head, North Carolina 27959
Start: 24/06/2011 at 09:00 AM End: 26/06/2011 at 17:00
Category: Party
On June 24 through June 26, 2011, the first ever OBX Pride Fest will take place on the grounds of the First Colony Inn in Nags Head, North Carolina. Activities will include outdoor concerts with over 20 entertainers/musicians, a sunset cruise, and much more. Details can be found here: http://www.obxpridefest.com/

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Drop me an e-mail if you're going to be at Pridefest.

Friday Male Beauty

Eric Cantor - One of Virginia's Biggest Pricks

Pardon my French, if you will, but Eric Cantor - one of Virginia's members of Congress - is a total prick. And that's stating it nicely, especially given the competition the Virginia GOP provides for that title. The irony to me is that as Cantor kisses up to the most nasty elements of the ultra-far right, he forgets one thing: he's Jewish and the Christofascist elements of the GOP will ALWAYS despise him for it. Nonetheless, Cantor seems bent on making himself into a clone of Ken Cuccinelli when it comes to extremism. Cantor's latest stunt and an example of his egomania is walking out of budget/deficit reduction negotiations in a tantrum because Democrats will not take tax increases off the table. Never mind that tax rates are at a 50 year low and we've had a decade now to prove that tax cuts do not yield increases in revenue or jobs. The Daily Beast looks at Cantor's latest act of petulance. Here are highlights:
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By single-handedly bailing out, Cantor puts the onus of finding an elusive deal back on John Boehner, the man who assigned the majority leader to the thankless task in the first place. The fact that Cantor reportedly gave the House speaker just a moment's notice of his decision before the news leaked to the press only reinforced the widespread belief on Capitol Hill that the two men are more rivals than teammates, especially when it comes to the loyalties of the large and powerful freshman class.
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One indication of why Cantor may have abruptly pulled out of the talks came when White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed that Boehner and President Obama met privately Wednesday night. Carney said the meeting was "following up on conversations they had on the golf course on Saturday” during their 18-hole summit.
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With the two principals already at the table, aides say the inevitable endgame of Obama and Boehner hammering out the final deal appeared to already be under way—rendering moot anything that Cantor could have done in the six-way talks with Biden. After news broke of the majority leader's surprise maneuver, Boehner and Cantor hardly presented a united front.
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By bailing on the talks, Cantor has effectively shifted the negotiations from the congressional working group to Obama and Boehner, leaving anxious House Democrats without a representative in the negotiations and openly concerned that the president will strike a deal they won’t like. “We’re worried,” said Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, who compared Cantor’s withdrawal from the talks to playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun.
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House Democrats are still angry with Obama for cutting a deal with Boehner last December to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, over the loud objections of much of his party. With that history casting a shadow on the current negotiations, Welch said Democrats are not prepared to support the president on any agreement he achieves.
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Beyond heightening worries among House Democrats, Cantor’s move saddles Boehner with the nearly impossible task of finding a deal that will significantly cut the deficit without raising taxes. Cantor has repeatedly made the point that House Republicans do not have the votes to increase taxes to any degree, especially with almost 90 GOP freshmen who have pledged to oppose any hike. “Cantor is basically saying to Boehner, ‘Now it’s your problem,’” a Republican aide said.

Obama - The Least Bad Option for the LGBT Community

Proving once again that he's spineless and ever ready to throw LGBT Americans under the bus - after a shake down of our money first - Barack Obama said last night at an A-list LGBT fundraiser in New York City that marriage equality is an issue best left to the states. Where would Mr. Obama and many black Americans be today if that had been the attitude taken towards racial equality during the 1960's? The statement is a cop out and an outright insult. I truly do not believe anything that Obama says at this point. The Washington Blade has these highlights on Obama's latest betrayal:
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President Obama reiterated on Thursday that the marriage issue should be left to the states during an LGBT fundraiser in New York City that took place amid increasing pressure for him to endorse marriage rights for gay couples.
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Obama drew on his opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits same-sex marriage, in his remarks on the New York marriage bill and leaving the issue to the states. The president has called for legislative repeal of DOMA and, in February, announced the law was unconstitutional and his administration would no longer defend it in court. “Part of the reason that DOMA doesn’t make sense is that traditionally marriage has been decided by the states,” Obama said.
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About 600 donors, mostly male, sat at round tables in a large ballroom for the $1,250-a-plate dinner at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in New York. Gay actor Neil Patrick Harris and Capt. Jonathan Hopkins, a West Point graduate who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” introduced Obama at the start of the event.
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The whole affair translates to "I don't give a crap about you or your lives, but please give me your money." A column in the Guardian looks at Obama's record on LGBT issues and describes him as "the least bad option." Here are highlights from that column:
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This intensive media campaign [by the White House] has been put into motion precisely because not everyone's on board. Talks with major LGBT donors, bloggers, and activists reveal marked discontent with the gap between the candidate who promised to be a "fierce advocate" for LGBT Americans and the president who has delivered no legislative victory besides repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" – and that under great duress. (I'm not counting the Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an Obama victory because Congress did all the hard work, while Obama merely signed it into law.)
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Otherwise, Obama's contributions have amounted to little more than a generous sprinkling of what blogger Pam Spaulding calls "baby steps for equality" or "Cinderella Crumbs". These are "a shiny, beautiful, breathtaking accomplishment that turns into a pumpkin at midnight – in this case, whenever a future homophobic president decides to rescind the baby step."
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[A]s Robin McGehee, the director and co-founder of GetEQUAL, puts it, "We were promised the Acura with all the accoutrements, but wound up with a stripped-down Honda instead."
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Of course, you'd never know there were hordes of politically active LGBT people who are ticked off with Obama from reading the mainstream press. Major strategic placements by Obama's people in that realm include the gay-donors-fuel-Obama's-2012-campaign story they fed to Politico, now being featured in a magazine widely distributed at Los Angeles Pride. . . . a powerful core of primarily LGBT grassroots activists and bloggers aren't drinking the Kool-Aid.
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Other signs of discontent include last week's brawl at Netroots Nation, a national gathering of progressive activists and bloggers. . . . . And then there are the physical manifestations of discontent. The ones that protesters outside of tonight's LGBT Gala will carry include "Evolve Already" and "Do you believe in evolution? We do."
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Candidate Obama promised LGBT people the world in 2008, and our community provided a disproportionate amount of the money, volunteer hours and enthusiasm so crucial to his win. Now, when he and the DNC are back to woo us for 2012, is the time to ask for more than vague assurances of hope and change.

More Thursday Male Beauty

Michele Bachmann's Holy War

Rolling Stone has a lengthy piece on GOP loon and Christofascist Michele Bachmann (seen hiding while spying on gay rights activists at left) . The picture that it paints is none too pretty. In my view, Bachmann is a clear and present danger to constitutional government and in some ways I find the woman even more frightening than Sarah Palin. The big question to me is one of whether or not the trained circus dogs in the main stream media will break loose of their leashes and advise the general public as to just how looney tunes Ms. Bachmann is in fact. So many bad things have happened - e.g., the Iraq War - and continue to happen - the GOP threats to the poor and unemployed while seeking further tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy - because the MSM no longer does its job. Investigative reporting - as opposed to mindlessly parroting sound bites from the GOP and the Christian Right - seems to be a lost art. Here are a few highlights from the Rolling Stone article (read the whole article):
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Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.
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It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. . . . .
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But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.
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In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy . . . .
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Bachmann's story, to hear her tell it, is about a suburban homemaker who is chosen by God to become a politician who will restore faith and family values to public life and do battle with secular humanism. But by the time you've finished reviewing her record of lies and embellishments and contradictions, you'll have no idea if she actually believes in her own divine inspiration, or whether it's a big con job.
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Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.
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Bachmann was mentored by a crackpot Christian extremist professor named John Eidsmoe, a frequent contributor to John Birch Society publications who once opined that he could imagine Jesus carrying an M16 and who spent considerable space in one of his books musing about the feasibility of criminalizing blasphemy.
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Bachmann says she believes in a limited state, but she was educated in an extremist Christian tradition that rejects the entire notion of a separate, secular legal authority and views earthly law as an instrument for interpreting biblical values. As a legislator, she not only worked to impose a ban on gay marriage, she also endorsed a report that proposed banning anyone who "espoused or supported Shariah law" from immigrating to the U.S. (Bachmann seems so unduly obsessed with Shariah law that, after listening to her frequent pronouncements on the subject, one begins to wonder if her crazed antipathy isn't born of professional jealousy.)
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The woman is truly crazy and in my view, her followers need some serious mental health intervention (as does Bachmann herself). Perhaps we need to ship her to Iran or Saudia Arabia. She wants a religious extremist government,? Then let her live under one for a while.

Marriage Equality Versus Sex and Deception in the Catholic Church

Even as the Roman Catholic Church continues to play a leading role in efforts to thwart marriage equality in New York State - using the cry that gay marriage is a "threat to religious freedom" as its disingenuous rallying cry - a new article in Philadelphia Magazine looks at the true cesspool nature of the Church hierarchy. While the article focuses on crimes and obstruction of justice in Philadelphia, the problems discussed are endemic to the Church and include figures like Timothy "Porky Pig" Dolan, Archbishop of New York and head of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Looking at the seamy and criminal actions of the Church hierarchy in Philadelphia and elsewhere, the question ought to be why aren't GOP legislators in New York calling for Dolan's criminal prosecution rather than kissing his very wide ass? Here are some story highlights:
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As the Archdiocese reels from a second grand jury report detailing its cover-up of sexual abuse by priests, the local church faces the biggest crisis in its history. How could a spiritual institution turn a blind eye to evil not just once, but twice? The answer lies in the story of the two men who’ve led the Catholic Church in Philadelphia for the past 25 years.
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[T]his second grand jury report, six years later, was much shorter than the first, yet in some ways it was more devastating, because the central charge was the same: The Archdiocese of Philadelphia still allowed alleged pedophile priests —37 of them, the report said—to continue ministering to children. What’s more, the DA’s office was charging a monsignor, William Lynn, along with three priests and a parish teacher, with crimes related to sexual abuse.
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Lynn reported directly to Cardinal Bevilacqua, and he was the first member of Church hierarchy in this country to be indicted as part of the sexual-abuse scandal. The point was inescapable: Something was very wrong with the way the archdiocese had been run. And with how it is still being run.
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The Church’s protection of priests who sexually abuse children is a testament to its completely insular control and power apart from civil society. The Church takes care of its own, in other words, and that fact leads to a cruel bottom line: Maintaining the institution’s standing in the world is more important than taking care of victims of sexual abuse.
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The crisis can best be understood not just through the victims, but through the two men who have led the archdiocese through the past quarter century. Anthony Bevilacqua, arrogant and cocksure, and Justin Rigali, timid and duty-bound, reflect quite different sides of the institution and how it operates. Through them, the story of the local Church’s crisis unfolds, and it raises yet another question: Will the Catholic Church as we know it survive in Philadelphia?
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Father Schmeer brought Joe into his office and stood behind him. His fingers dug into Joe’s shoulders. He pressed against Joe. Then he reached into the front of Joe’s pants and tried to masturbate him. A month later, Joe was called down to Father Schmeer’s office again. This time, standing behind him, the priest pulled Joe’s pants down, and his underwear, and pushed his penis into Joe’s anus, and kept at it until he was satisfied. The next day, in English class, Joe’s teacher—a lay teacher—asked him if he was all right. He said he was. The teacher knew what had happened. So did his classmates. One of them said, “You got it, didn’t you?” From Schmeer the Queer. That’s what students called him.
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The Church prefers that we think sexually abusive priests are a relatively new phenomenon, that Rome and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia first learned of it when the general public did, in the past decade or so. In various ways, however, the Church has known about, avoided, and sometimes tried to actually deal with sexual abuse by clergy for centuries.
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WHEN ANTHONY BEVILACQUA came to this city from Pittsburgh in 1988, he offered something that Cardinal Krol, the iron fist who preceded him, could not: charisma. . . . . And he was a very clever man—both a canon and civil lawyer—and very ambitious.
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Shuffling Ferraro around was unconscionable, yet Bevilacqua was operating exactly as Church authorities do all over the world: Protect a priest’s job; protect the Church from scandal; move the priest to another unsuspecting parish. But how could Bevilacqua operate that way while championing Tom Doyle’s reforms? “The only virtue is obedience,” says Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and an ex-priest who has spent the past few decades trying to understand the collision of sex and power in his church. “As long as you’re obedient to the Church, as long as you protect and embrace it, you are justified.”
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Bevilacqua did want the Church to deal with sexual abuse in a more responsible way; meanwhile, though, Bevilacqua would move sex perps to some other parish. Because he was being obedient to, and protecting, his Church.
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Those working under Bevilacqua in Philadelphia, however, say he was a royal prick as a boss. He would scream at his chauffeur over what route they took; he would demand that no mortals smudge the polished brass rails leading from the front door of his City Avenue mansion. Bevilacqua created an atmosphere in the archdiocesan offices in which underlings tiptoed about on tenterhooks as they did the cardinal’s bidding.
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Doyle [Tom Doyle—by this time a widely sought expert on sexual-abuse issues] now believes that Cardinal Bevilacqua—who’s 88 years old and said to be infirm—should be in prison.
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HERE WAS A general feeling among Philadelphia’s Catholic parishioners that, as bad as the 2005 grand jury report was, the Church would get past it. The Church would clean up the mess and move on.

But Justin Rigali, it turns out, is particularly unsuited to deal with a problem so scandalous and unseemly. . . . or nine years, before coming to Philadelphia to replace Bevilacqua in 2003, Rigali was archbishop of St. Louis, and he once described the sexual-abuse scandal there as the worst problem of his tenure. For a period, he would meet with victims, but his solution to their rage and pain and wrecked lives was prayer; he soon stopped meeting with victims altogether, according to SNAP.
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RICHARD SIPE, THE psychotherapist and ex-priest, as well as Tom Doyle, notes that most of the serious trouble the Church has gotten into for 2,000 years somehow involves sex, and that the strictures of celibacy and utter control a cleric is supposed to exhibit over both mind and body lead to problems—not sexual abuse, per se, but almost inevitably a certain degree of hypocrisy. It is time, they believe, for the Church to fully emerge from the fourth century. . .
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“The organization is corrupt,” Sipe says, “if you think of hypocrisy and double-dealing as corrupt. I’ve been in on depositions of cardinals in sex-abuse cases, and they lie with tremendous abandon,. . . . The one necessary ingredient—the thing that keeps those in power morally afloat—is total fealty to the Church. Bevilacqua, in arrogance, and Rigali, in fear, came at their churchly duty through diametrically opposed prisms. But it amounts to the same thing: obedience. And it bears repeating: “The only virtue is obedience,” Sipe says. “You are not beholden to charity or truth or anything else. Everything can be sacrificed to obedience.”
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THERE IS SERIOUS anger now among Catholic parishioners in Philadelphia. They are talking and organizing. The top-down hierarchy they’ve been beholden to no longer holds sway. Yet that, ironically, may be the Church’s hope for long-term survival: voices on a grassroots level forcing the powers that be to at least listen.
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Given this pattern of lies, treachery and hypocrisy, why does anyone listen to Dolan or any other members of the Church hierarchy? Are they so afraid of having to think for themselves that they are willing to be de facto accessories to sexual abuse of children and youths? Like it or not, that's what they are if they continue to meekly kiss the ass of porcine hypocrites like Dolan. Are you all listen in Albany?

Thursday Male Beauty

White supremacist praises David Tyree on anti-gay marriage stance

For years it has driven me to distraction to watch members of the black community act as water carriers for the Christianists/white supremacists who long kept blacks as slaves and then fought tooth and claw to maintain segregation as a way of life. The Christianists/white supremacists (I combine the terms because of the huge overlap between the groups - even within "family values" group like Family Research Council) must be laughing their asses off at the way they dupe blacks time and time again into acting as their lackeys. It drives me crazy!! The latest "boy" to do the bidding of the Christianists/white supremacists is former football star David Tyree who I slammed the other day for his bigotry against marriage equality in New York State. Now, as Alvin McEwen points out on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, Tyree is drawing praise - at least in terms of his anti-gay bigotry - from a noted white supremacist. Hello, Mr. Tyree! Can you get your head out of your ass? Here are some highlights from Alvin's post:
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David Tyree can count on one person to support his negative stance on gay marriage - a man by the name of James Edwards. For those who don't know, Edwards is a white supremacist. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
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Edwards, 27, is the host of "The Political Cesspool," a shamelessly white nationalist radio talk show that's broadcast for two hours every weeknight from a studio near Memphis, Tenn., where Edwards grew up and still lives. "The Political Cesspool" in the past two years has become the primary radio nexus of hate in America. Its sponsors include the CCC and the Institute for Historical Review, a leading Holocaust denial organization. Its guest roster for 2007 reads like a "Who's Who" of the radical racist right.
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Concerning the situation with Tyree and marriage equality, Edwards says the following: Even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then. While I might not agree with David Tyree on anything else, on this single issue, he is absolutely right.
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How fascinating. If the issue was about African-Americans, Edwards would be saying things like: "Crime and violence follow African-Americans wherever they go. And if you think that is racist, then spend some time on the mean streets of south Memphis." . . . . "Whites are in for the fight of their lives. America is becoming balkanized. We are being robbed of having a future in the very nation our ancestors carved from the wilderness."
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I'd like to ask a question: If the African-American movement for equality and the gay movement for equality aren't similar, then how come we both have the same fools trying to put a boot on our necks?
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Every time a black pastor joins in the rants against gay equality, they need to look and see who they've allied themselves with. They are - stupidly, in my opinion - aiding and abetting the cause of those who hate them and who, if they could have their way, would have them disenfranchised and totally marginalized. Simply put, they are being played for fools and might as well put a sign around their necks that reads "I'm an ignorant ass."

Backwardness Has a Price - Hampton Roads Won't Regain Lost Jobs Until 2015

I've argued many times that one of Hampton Roads's biggest problems is it's image - as described in a Brookings Institute report - as "old, slow and not too bright. Behind this image is an undercurrent of intolerance and backwardness which is found within many municipal governments and certainly the leadership of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce which all but laughed at the concept of HRBOR, the gay and gay friendly chamber of commerce I helped found. A new report described in the Virginian Pilot indicates that it will be 2015 or beyond before the region regains the jobs lost during the ongoing Great Recession. This continued closed mindedness and deliberately chosen backwardness - here in Hampton Roads and in state wide offices in Richmond - obviously will not help attract new progressive employers. Here are some story highlights:
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After losing almost 48,000 jobs during the economic downturn, employment in Hampton Roads won't return to its pre-recession peak until 2015, a consulting and forecasting firm said.
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"Most metropolitan areas will suffer persistently high unemployment beyond 2011, and, for many, into the middle and latter part of the decade," consulting firm IHS Global Insight said in a report compiled for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In Hampton Roads, the pace of job creation will be slower than in more than half of the nation's 363 metro areas, the report said.
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The prospect of subdued job growth comes in the wake of anemic gains in Hampton Roads during the past decade. Employment in the region expanded by only 3,500 jobs, or one-half percent, since 2001, according to the report. Employment in the region peaked in the third quarter of 2007, the report found. Prolonged weakness in the job market is worrisome, IHS said, because large numbers of individuals entering the labor force aren't gaining the job skills and work experience needed for career advancement.
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Much of the report called attention to the economic activity generated by the nation's metro areas. Last year, they accounted for almost 86 percent of U.S. jobs and almost 90 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, IHS said.

An Evening From Hell

Tonight should have been a pleasant relaxing evening with the boyfriend and one of his dear friends/clients over a quiet dinner at our home. Instead thanks to an idiot - naturally driving with a suspended license, no insurance, and appearing to have ingested some sort of illegal drug- turned the evening into a nightmare where I found myself on the side of the Interstate for over two hours talking to Virginia State Troopers and waiting for a flatbed tow truck.

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The aforesaid driver ran into the rear end of a Ford Explorer carrying three young military service members who were a distance down the acceleration ramp behind me as I was getting on the Interstate to make the trip from Norfolk to Hampton. After hitting the Explorer, he tried to leave the scene and came flying up the ramp at at least 50 -60 mph where I sat not moving in the acceleration ramp and waiting to merge into the traffic flow which thankfully was barely moving. With nowhere to go, he slams on his breaks and then slams into the rear passenger side of the boyfriend's car (like the one above except green with a black roof) and the rear passenger side wheel and then continues to try to leave the scene and would have succeeded but for the traffic and his by now heavily damaged vehicle.
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Yes, it could have been worse. Other than being jarred with some lower back and neck discomfort (possibly caused by stress arising from the fact I had the boyfriend's car rather mine which was having a scheduled servicing) I think I am fine. Oh, and other than being almost physically sick about damage to the boyfriend's car - which after the two dogs is his baby. As for the car, it's at our friend's dealership awaiting a review of the damage and a visit from the insurance adjuster. As for the low life driver, I hope the State Police arrested his ass.
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I am going to further self-medicate with additional alcohol, so this will be the last post of the day absent some development on the same sex marriage vote in New York State.

Wednesday Male Beauty

Gays and Bisexuals in America pre-date Columbus

I often note how the far right and the Christianists in particular re-write history - especially U.S. history - to suit their own intolerant and often hate filled theocratic agenda. Hence why I state that in general, when a Christianists lips are moving, the safest assumption is that they are lying. A new book by Michael Bronski, entitled "A Queer History of the United States," looks at the constant presence and contributions of LGBT individuals throughout the history of America - including long before Columbus brought an often scourge like form of Christianity to the shores of the Americas. The UK publication, The Independent, has a review of the book which, in my opinion, ought to be required reading for American students as a method to counter the near incessant lies of the far right and Christianists. Here are some highlights from the review (NOTE: I recommend reading the entire review):
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The American right presents homosexuality as something alien to the American experience – an intruder that inexplicably gate-crashed America in 1969 in the form of a rioting drag queen clutching a high heel in her fist as a weapon. The statements of Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, or Mitt Romney insistently hint that the fag does not belong under the flag. But there's something odd here. For people who talk incessantly about honouring American history, they have built a historical picture of their country that can only be sustained by scrubbing it clean of a significant part of the population and everything they brought to the party (if not the Tea Party).
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In his new book, A Queer History of the United States, the cultural critic Michael Bronski runs the film backward, through 500 years of American life, showing there were gays and bisexuals in every scene, making and remaking America. They were among some of the country's great icons, from Emily Dickinson to Calamity Jane to perhaps even Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt.
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The gay alternative to Puritan America began before the first white settler ever arrived. The day before Christopher Columbus set foot in North America, it was a safer place for gay people than it was ever going to be again for several centuries.

The limited-but-sturdy evidence provided by historians that Bronski draws on suggests homosexuality was treated matter-of-factly among most Native American tribes. In the records of the Lewis and Clark expeditions, Nicholas Biddle observes: "Among the Mamitarees, if a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them, and sometimes married to men."
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[I]n most places, different sexualities were granted room for expression, much of it consensual. The Europeans looked on in revulsion, like Jerry Falwell in a powdered wig. In the 1775 diary of Pedro Font, a Franciscan on a trip to what is now California, he warns that "the sin of sodomy prevails more among [the Miami] than in any other nation" and concludes with a cluck: "There will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them."
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There was a lot to do and it was done with extreme violence. These practices were stamped out by force, which Bronski notes "provided a template for how mainstream European culture would treat LGBT people throughout much of US history".
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Yet here's a strange wrinkle. The ideas of the Enlightenment were at the core of America's founding, yet they didn't percolate into its view of sexuality until far later. In France, the implications of Enlightenment values for gays were obvious almost immediately. In 1789, the French National Assembly declared that "liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else" and abolished all punishments for sodomy two years later. The United States kept, elaborated on and enforced its sodomy laws for another 212 years. Why?
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The historian RI Moore has tried to unpack how societies create "dangerous" groups that need to be shunned – Jews, heretics, lepers, gays – in his book The Formation of a Persecuting Society, and Bronski subscribes to his perspective. Nothing helps to solidify a group, and to make its members feel they belong, more than identifying an enemy, or somebody who has to be expelled from the tribe. To have Us, you need to have Them. Perhaps precisely because America was admirably a country of immigrants, it needed to cling to the embers of Puritan homophobia to reinforce a sense of unity.
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My view – since reading Andrew Sullivan's masterpiece Virtually Normal when I was a teenager – is that the point of the gay-rights struggle is to show that homosexuality is a trivial and meaningless difference. Gay people want what straight people want. I am the same as my heterosexual siblings in all meaningful ways, so I should be treated the same under the law, and accorded all public rights and responsibilities. The ultimate goal of the gay-rights movement is to make homosexuality as uninteresting – and unworthy of comment – as left-handedness.
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That's not Bronski's view. . . . He believes that while the persecution in this 500-year history was bad, the marginality was not. Gay people are marginal not because of persecution but because they have a historical cause – to challenge "how gender and sexuality are viewed in normative culture". Their role is to show that monogamy, and gender boundaries and ideas like marriage throttle the free libidinal impulses of humanity.
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It's bizarre that Bronski – after a rousing historical rebuttal to the right-wing attempt to write gays out of American history – ends up agreeing with Santorum, Beck and Bachmann that gay people are inherently subversive and revolutionary, longing for the basic institutions of the heterosexual world to be torn down. . . . . they were all Americans. And no, they didn't choose marginality and exclusion. They were forced to the margins. It would be a betrayal of them – not a fulfilment – to choose to stay there, angrily raging, when American society is on the brink of letting them into its core institutions, on the basis of equality, at long last.

Does Obama Lack the Spine to "Evolve" on Marriage?

I continue to be exasperated with Barack Obama's dodging and weaving on the issue of marriage equality. Is the man at heart a bigot who cannot let go of his personal religious beliefs? Or is he a slick, calculating politician who thinks he can secure LGBT votes and money without delivering on full equality? Frankly, I do not know the answer. But it looks like we will see more claims of Obama being "a fierce advocate" even as he acts anything but fierce - or even an advocate much of the time. Kerry Eleveld looks at the issue over at Equality Matters and urges Obama to stop acting like those who tried to have things both ways back when the battle raged for an end to segregation. The truth is, you cannot have it both ways and history will look unkindly on those who lacked courage and a spine. Here are highlights:
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President Barack Obama ­– a self-declared “fierce advocate” for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans who doesn’t support marriage equality – swoops in to address LGBT Democrats in a city that’s barely slept as Empire State lawmakers weighed whether to reaffirm the promise of Lady Liberty: That freedom does, in fact, mean freedom for everyone, even in marriage.
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The White House was already smelling trouble as it turned the corner into June, the month in which celebrations across the country mark the birth of the modern queer rights movement. Per usual, the president issued a Pride proclamation but, for the very first time since taking his seat in the Oval Office, he included no mention of relationship recognition whatsoever.
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An open door, perhaps, through which Obama could fully evolve into supporting every American’s right to the pursuit of happiness? Or maybe White House officials simply didn’t want to poor salt on a wound for which they have no salve. But one has to wonder, what can President Obama tell a room full of gays who paid $1,250-plus to feel uplifted and inspired by their chief executive if he continues his objection to their full and equal participation in this union?
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He can’t avoid the subject altogether. . . . it will be devilishly difficult even for our pitch-perfect president to effuse enough lofty rhetoric to obscure the elephant in the room.
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Look, everyone knows this is a political calculation. President Obama was for marriage equality as a state senator in 1996 before he was against it as an aspiring presidential candidate in 2004 (the evolution of his positions are traced here). But as he heads into the 2012 election cycle, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to have it both ways on same-sex marriage – to carry the magic mantle of hope and change, to appeal to the better angels of our nature, while literally falling behind the trend lines on supporting something as fundamentally American as the expression of our liberty.
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Beyond a shadow of a doubt, all this adds up to one thing: Drama. But more importantly, it’s about people’s lives, who they are to the core of their being, the fact that their heart pounds just as truly as everyone else’s. It’s about a longing for leadership that adds up to something more than a cold political calculation for the next election cycle.
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But if calculate we must, let’s face it, the next election – like every election – will be about the economy, not marriage equality. So why not come full circle and stake your claim on the right side of history, Mr. President?
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What distresses me in all of the political maneuvering and the constant attacks by the Christianists is that somehow we in the LGBT community are always treated as less than human and our relationships are deemed unworthy - even it seems by our president.