Virginia Hardware Store Fires Anti-Gay Employee

On Monday I did a blog post that looked at the ugly anti-gay incident that occurred at Nichols Hardware in Purcellville, Virginia.  Faced with calls for a boycott and a deluge of upset phone calls, the store management announced that it had fired the offending employee who had thrown an Eagle Scout candidate out of the store after launching into an anti-gay tirade. The lesson, of course, is that if one is a business in the public square, all customers should be welcome and treated courteously. No doubt the lesson will be lost on Christofascists who will parade the employee - whose name has not been released - as the latest martyr in an effort to stir up anti-gay outrage.  The Washington Post reports on this development:

A historic hardware store in Purcellville, Va., announced Tuesday morning it has fired an employee accused of using an anti-gay slur while kicking out a teenage Boy Scout seeking donations for a service project.

“The Nichols Hardware family regrets that this even has come to pass,” the store said in a Facebook post. “The employee in question has been terminated and his views certainly do not reflect those of the Nichols Hardware.”

“He told them, ‘Your organization is not the ‘Boy Scouts’ anymore. We will not support you and you need to leave,’ ” Carlyn Hamilton wrote in her post. Then the employee, she said, turned to her and continued, “You know they let homos in, right? They are not the ‘Boy’ Scouts anymore. We do not support any homos.”

The store manager, who would only identify himself as Glenn, said in an interview Tuesday that this wasn’t the first time the employee had angered customers with his politically charged comments.

Months ago, he said, he had told the employee to stop talking to customers like that and thought the problem had been resolved until the incident Friday. . . . He described the employee as “set in his ways,” and added that he would like to apologize in person to the boy and his father but didn’t know their names or phone numbers. “It was uncalled for,” he said.

The clash marked another skirmish in the nationwide culture war over the rapid expansion of gay rights in the United States. Few organizations have been more emblematic of this than the Boy Scouts. In 2013, the organization ended its prohibition on openly gay youths . . . . The moves haven’t been universally popular. Many religious conservatives have seen the Boy Scouts as a pillar of traditional values. This month, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches that gay relationships are immoral, ended its century-long relationship with the organization.

People have demanded a boycott of the store on social media, and its phones have been deluged with calls.  The store has now moved to quell the firestorm.  “The family, who has been in Loudoun County since 1742, and which expresses tolerance in all areas of life, deeply regrets any disrespect to any organization or person,” it said in its statement Tuesday.

Sleazy Daily Beast Article "Outs" and Endangers Olympic Athletes

Douche Bag (my view) Nico Hines

Up until now, I regularly check out The Daily Beast and often have referenced their articles - I did the same with Rolling Stone until it published its fiction based story slandering the University of Virginia.  Now, The Daily Beast is going to join Rolling Stone as an outlet to be avoided.  Why? Beacuse of an utterly sleazy pieces by a scumbag (at least in my view) named Nico Hines who went around the Olympic Village with Grindr and other hookup apps and then "outed" various athletes, many from anti-gay countries where their lives might be endangered on their return home.  While the editors of The Daily Beast have done a disingenuous "We're Sorry!" piece, it is nowhere near enough and does nothing to undo thee damage done to some athletes.  Both Hines and whoever approved his piece need to be fired immediately.  Slate has a piece ripping The Daily Beast a new one and rightly so.  Here are highlights from Slate: 

On Thursday morning, the Daily Beast published an exceedingly gross and bizarre article by a straight, married male writer who lured in gay Olympians through hookup apps for no particular purpose. The entire piece is an astoundingly creepy exercise in Grindr-baiting, which involves a journalist accessing Grindr in an unlikely setting and … seeing what happens. But the Daily Beast piece, penned by Nico Hines, is a uniquely disgusting and irresponsible entry into the tired genre. Hines entices his (often closeted) subjects under false pretenses; effectively outs several closeted athletes who live in repressive countries; then writes about the whole thing in a tone of mocking yet lurid condescension. By 10:30 a.m. ET, the Daily Beast had, in response to criticism, edited out the most identifying details about closeted athletes—but that’s too little, too late. (Update, 9:15 p.m.: On Thursday evening, the Daily Beast took down the piece entirely.)

Hines begins by explaining that his entire assignment consisted of walking around the Olympic Village while using several hookup apps, hoping to learn whether “an Average Joe” can “join the bacchanalia.” He quickly abandons apps like Tinder, which are mostly used by straight people, for Grindr, which is for gay men: “No prizes for guessing that Grindr proved more of an instant hookup success than Bumble or Tinder,” he writes. Presumably, Hines awards “no prizes” because he believes gays are more promiscuous than straight people—a theme to which Hines often returns throughout his vile piece.

Because Hines is not gay, you might find his use of Grindr a bit dishonest. But not to worry: “For the record,” Hines writes, “I didn’t lie to anyone or pretend to be someone I wasn’t—unless you count being on Grindr in the first place—since I’m straight, with a wife and child.” This sentence reflects a stunning amount of ignorance, because, in Hines’ situation, of course being on Grindr in the first place is a lie. Grindr is an app for men who wish to hook up with other men. That is its purpose! To be on Grindr when you do not have that goal, and when you could not possibly have that goal because you are straight, is itself a mendacious deception.

With his dubious premise established, Hines proceeds to out athlete after athlete, providing enough information about each Olympian he encounters for anyone with basic Google skills to uncover their identities. (After several minutes of Googling, I surmised the identities of five of the gay athletes Hines described.) I’m not going to repeat his descriptions, because—as Hines himself acknowledges!—some of them live in “notoriously homophobic” countries and remain closeted at home.

Shortly after Hines’ article published, openly gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy tweeted that the author “basically just outed a bunch of athletes in his quest to write a shitty [Daily Beast] article where he admitted to entrapment.” That is correct, but it’s worth exploring why Hines embarked upon this weird, sleazy quest in the first place. I count two reasons. The first is that Hines simply enjoys tittering with condescension at all the gay athletes who take the bait and engage with him—a straight dude, as Hines emphatically reminds us. Why else zero in on Grindr? The second reason is more repulsive: Hines appears to take pleasure in luring in these Olympians then outing them to all the world.

But the offensive purpose of Hines’ article is really the least of its problems. Far worse is the actual damage it will likely cause to real, live human beings—inevitable onsequences that Hines blithely ignored. Several athletes who are closeted at home (and possibly to their own teammates) will wake up on Thursday morning to the news that the Daily Beast has outed them. Their teammates could ostracize and alienate them; their families could disown them; their countries could imprison them. And for what? A homophobic article about how a straight guy conned gay Olympians from anti-gay countries into hitting on him through Grindr? Hines’ article is a dangerous disaster, a wildly unethical train wreck that should be taken down immediately for the sake of its duped subjects. Hines may view his Grindr-baiting as all fun and games. For the victims of his unprincipled journalism, however, his nasty little piece has the power to ruin lives. 

As I said, I am saying good bye to The Daily Beast.  As for Hines, he needs to be fired and  boycotted by legitimate news outlets.  Perhaps he can get a job with FRC or AFA where lying and seeking to harm gays is an everyday mission. 

The Out Hotel Is No More, Thanks to Ted Cruz

Out Hotel and club

Readers may recall when I wrote about Ian Reisner and his business partner, Mati Weiderpass, self-anointed A-List gays who hosted a fundraiser for anti-gay zealot, Ted Cruz.   The backlash against Reisner and Weiderpass has taken its toll and now the Out Hotel and New York City and the affiliated gay club (which the husband and I visited a year ago last September) has been sold and will no longer cater to an LGBT clientele.  The Advocate looks at the fall of Out Hotel thanks to Ted Cruz.  Here are excerpts:

The hotel that had become a symbol of support for Ted Cruz’s antigay policies is now closing.

The Out Hotel in New York City faced a heated boycott last year after its gay owners held a fundraising dinner party at their home for the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful. Ian Reisner and his business partner at Parkview Developers, Mati Weiderpass, came up with a lot of reasons for that party, but none flew.

 

Numerous groups canceled events in outrage, including the New York Gay Men’s Chorus, AIDS Walk, Broadway Bares, Urban Bear, and more. When the boycott began spreading to the Fire Island Pines commercial district, the management there publicly distanced themselves from their chief investor. A Facebook group launched in the hopes of exacting a punishment, though exactly what that should be was always unclear. 

Things had recently calmed down, with that Facebook group disbanding, but business remained slow. The Real Deal, a real estate blog, reports Out NYC was just sold for $40 million to Merchants Hospitality. Its hotel, restaurant and nightclub will no longer cater to a gay clientele.

Cruz, booed by his own party during the Republican convention, was named The Advocate’s Phobie of the Year at the end of 2014. Along with a table of high-dollar guests, he’d met with Reisner and Weiderpass in April 2015. The two had first claimed it wasn’t a fundraising dinner but later admitted donating $2,700 — the maximum allowed — as a show of “support for his work on behalf of Israel.” 

The owners have been alternately contrite and angry during the boycott. They feigned ignorance about Cruz’s anti-LGBT policies and asked for forgiveness. Nothing seemed to work.

It wasn’t a win for Cruz either. When asked about the dinner party on the campaign trail, he called himself a “big tent Republican” and simultaneously announced he’d push for two new anti-LGBT bills in the Senate. The first would amend the Constitution to allow states to define marriage as only between one man and one woman, and the second would ban federal courts from ruling on marriage. Amping up his anti-LGBT rhetoric, though, didn’t stop the meeting from coming up here and there in attacks against him as weak on LGBT issues. 

The hotel might never have made money, even before the boycott began. In an interview in May 2015 with New York magazine intended to smooth things over — but that actually insulted LGBT consumers — Reisner said it hadn’t turned a profit. 

 

 

How Soon Will the 4th Circuit Ruling Impact North Carolina?

Christofascist supporters of HB2 at a "prayer vigil"

With North Carolina just 25 miles or so away and with a family wedding scheduled in the Outer Banks later in the year (we cannot get out of going), it is difficult not to focus on the batshitery happening across the border and the gyrations being engaged in by North Carolina Republicans who want to pander to their Christofascist masters and push for special rights for these knuckle draggers and their toxic religious beliefs.  This is especially true after the cataclysmic ruling of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals which indicates that a major piece of the anti-LGBT animus inspired HB2 is illegal.  Indeed, it suggests that public schools and universities like UNC at Chapel Hill will be putting their federal funding on the line if they comply with HB2.  A piece at CBS News looks at the possible time table for the 4th Circuit ruling to impact HB2.  Here are highlights:

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond sided Tuesday with a transgender teen's arguments that a Virginia school board violated Title IX by forbidding him from using the boys' restroom. The interpretation of the federal education law directly affects North Carolina.

The court's ruling imperils a provision in the North Carolina law - called HB2 - that requires transgender students in public schools and universities to use bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate, said Maxine Eichner, a University of North Carolina law professor.

"We have the writing on the wall here how that will come out," said Eichner, an expert on sexual orientation and the law.

How quickly the ruling's effects are felt in North Carolina depends on several factors. Among them are possible appeals, a separate lawsuit still pending and interpretation by state lawyers.

Last month in North Carolina, a transgender student and employee in the state's university system filed a lawsuit arguing that the new law violated Title IX. Eichner said they could use Tuesday's ruling to win an injunction blocking the law's provisions on bathroom access in public schools.

"What the plaintiffs would be doing is saying: 'There are transgender kids out there that are experiencing harm as a result of HB2 and who are likely eventually to ... have their legal claims resolved in their favor.' And given that, a court should step in immediately and bar the application of HB2," she said, referring to the law by its legislative name.

Chris Brook, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who's leading the litigation challenging the North Carolina law, declined to discuss specifics about what his legal team's next move would be. Yet he said the appeals court's decision confirms one of their key arguments.

"Today's ruling makes plain what we've been saying since the day that HB2 was introduced in the legislature: that it violates Title IX," he said in a phone interview. "If you are a recipient of federal education funds you cannot discriminate."

The [Gloucester County, Virginia] school board could appeal the decision to the full appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court. David Patrick Corrigan, an attorney for the school board, didn't immediately return a phone message requesting comment.

Personally, I would like to see the members of the Gloucester County School Board have to pay all litigation costs personally since they have deliberately violated Title IX because of their cowardice and desire to appease a few anti-LGBT crackpots in their county.   Gloucester County is a truly backward part of the Hampton Roads region, but it nonetheless needs to grasp that it is now the 21st century, not the 19th century. 

North Carolina Reaps the Economic Whirlwind for Anti-LGBT Bigotry

The anger being unleashed by corporate America in the wake of that state's passage of a bill that repeals all LGBT non-discrimination protections statewide is truly epic.  What is almost laughable is how unprepared the Republican nitwits who rammed this bill through have been to deal with the fury that they have unleashed.  A small amount of research and consideration of the Supreme Court ruling in Romer v. Evans would have suggested to remotely sentient individuals that HB 2 was a very, very bad idea - at least outside of spittle flecked, knuckle dragging Christofascist circles.  One can only hope that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe is burning up the telephone lines contacting the businesses that are announcing plans to cancel expansion in North Carolina and soliciting them to move to Virginia.  The opportunities would seem to be numerous between the corporate announcements and conventions being cancelled and/or relocated.   Fist, here are highlights from Paypal's announcement that it is cancelling plans for a global operation in Charlotte:

Two weeks ago, PayPal announced plans to open a new global operations center in Charlotte and employ over 400 people in skilled jobs.  In the short time since then, legislation has been abruptly enacted by the State of North Carolina that invalidates protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law.
 The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.  As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.
 This decision reflects PayPal’s deepest values and our strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect. These principles of fairness, inclusion and equality are at the heart of everything we seek to achieve and stand for as a company. And they compel us to take action to oppose discrimination.    

But Paypal is not alone in rethinking expansion in North Carolina.   Marketing concern Red Ventures is rethinking a 500 person expansion as well.  Here are highlights from Fox 46 News: 

Red Ventures is also considering pulling out of their 500 person expansion in 2016 after HB2 was passed.

"HB2 does not reflect the values of our people, our state or our democratic process. The speed with which it was passed and lack of constituent input enabled a select group of North Carolina representatives to ignore their responsibility to represent the whole state and, instead, eviscerate the civil rights of North Carolinians," The CEO of Red Ventures, Ric Elias said.

Elias said as a CEO who is committed to expanding our Charlotte presence by 500 people in 2016 and thousands after that, I am forced to seriously reconsider adding more jobs in a state that tolerates discrimination. 

The largest threat to North Carolina's economy, however, comes from the specter of lost federal funding.  Here are excerpts from the Washington Post:

At least five federal agencies are weighing whether to withhold funds from North Carolina in response to a recently enacted state law that blocks protections for gay, lesbians and bisexuals, and prohibits transgender individuals from using bathrooms that are not the same as the gender they were assigned at birth.

The ongoing reviews at the Education, Transportation, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Health and Human Services departments are not yet complete, and it is unclear how much federal money might be involved. But the Obama administration’s decision to scrutinize what White House press secretary Josh Earnest described as “both policy and legal questions that are raised by the passage of this law” suggests that the measure signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R) last month could have major implications for his state.

Earnest said that “individual agencies are undertaking” the review, and the White House had not issued specific guidance on how to proceed. But he emphasized that President Obama said that “ensuring that individual Americans are not discriminated against because of who they love is something that the president feels strongly about,” and he was not surprised that North Carolina officials “are feeling some pressure” on the issue.

David Stacy, government affairs director for the Human Rights Campaign, noted that a host of federal laws — from Title IX in the Education Amendments of 1972 to the Affordable Care Act and Violence Against Women Act — have anti-discrimination language that suggests North Carolina could stand to lose funding on a range of fronts.

Personally, I want to see North Carolina crucified.  Ditto for Mississippi which just enacted an even more heinous and expansive law granting special rights to Christofascists.

Hollywood’s Continued Diversity Problem

With the Academy Awards tonight, there will be much talk of Hollywood's diversity problem, with much focus on the lack of black actors among the nominees.  But in addition to the Academy's suggested racism is Hollywood's continued homophobia.  Both the Advocate and Towleroad look at the continued problem and point fingers at the system itself.  First, excerpts from The Advocate:

After the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the nominees for its 2016 Academy Awards, outrage followed. For the second year in a row, nominees in the four top acting categories (for best actor, actress, supporting actor, and supporting actress) are all white.

Charges of persistent racism spread like wildfire on social media in the #OscarsSoWhitecampaign. Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee, and several other prominent people of color in the film and television industry vowed to boycott Sunday's Oscars ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

“These are all legitimate complaints,” says the Oscar-nominated actor Ian McKellen of the accusations of bigotry in Hollywood. McKellen suggests that actors of color aren't the only ones shut out of top honors. No openly gay man — including McKellen himself, twice nominated for an Academy Award, and one of our generation’s most impressive openly gay actors — has ever won an Oscar in the acting categories either. 

Commentators have taken Eddie Redmayne to task for playing a transgender woman in The Danish Girl. Redmayne, the film’s star, is a cisgender (nontrans), straight, white, British, Eton-educated actor who last year won a Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything. For me, attacks against Redmayne seem similar to criticism of the Emmy-nominated transgender actress and advocate Laverne Cox for accepting the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the upcoming television restaging of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Advocacy and education can change the hearts and minds of liberals and conservatives alike. But, some will still hate certain kinds of marginalized people no matter what we say or do. That's why we need legal protections for all of us, even those that appear (often mistakenly) to lack the respectablity of the "model minorities." Moreover, all gender-variant people deserve protections, regardless of our identity and our expression — whether we're medically transitioning or cross-dressing. 

But, the attention paid to individual performers obscures the root of the issue. Just as I said in 1993, it's the system that's the real problem. The New York Times recently unpacked the considerable impediments to changing the Academy's system of voting and membership. Despite the influence of its (relatively new) black female president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and the advocacy of Phil Alden Robinson, a progressive white director who serves as the Academy’s secretary, the organization’s bylaws pointedly prevent changes to many of its voting procedures and membership rules. 

A new report from the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that the film and television industry is mired in an out-of-control “inclusion crisis.” The structure of the Academy epitomizes this crisis. Its voting members are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and, on average, above the age of 63. And the bylaws of the organization appear designed to keep it that way.

Fundamentally, changing the composition of those in power is threatening to the powerful because it means that eventually they must share power with the very same people that they systematically ignored, excluded, or promoted only as tokens.

  Towleroad looks at the homophobia issue in particular:

What started as a reaction to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ failure to nominate any actors of color for the second year in a row has expanded into a broader conversation about minority representation in Hollywood.

As more voices have emerged in that conversation, additional attention has been paid to the inequity which the LGBT community faces in the industry. While the Academy failed to nominate any person of color this year for an acting Oscar, it also failed to nominate any openly LGBT actors. . . . Yet, three were nominated for playing LGBTQ characters: Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as lovers in Carol and Eddie Redmayne for playing a trans woman in The Danish Girl.”

And this year is not an isolated year of exclusion for LGBT actors, as O’Keeffe notes
In the 10 years since Crash beat Brokeback Mountain for the best picture Oscar, things have improved little for movies about trans or queer characters. Only four movies about LGBTQ protagonists have been nominated for best picture: Milk, The Kids Are All Right, The Imitation Game and Black Swan. (Dallas Buyers Club‘s protagonist, played by Matthew McConaughey, is straight.) That number looks all the lower in context.

Hollywood, it seems, has a big problem with the LGBT community; one of representation and inclusion. And some of Hollywood’s top talent agrees.

Academy Award-nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor recently commented that he thought it was “harder to be gay” than to be black in Hollywood. He told The Times, “Sexuality is still marginalized in a way that is pretty open. I think it’s tough.”

Ian McKellen went on record saying that the frustration felt by black actors in Hollywood is not so dissimilar from that felt by gay actors.

To rub salt in that already festering wound is another reality LGBT actors experience in Hollywood: when straight actors get cast to play gay characters, they’re called brave; when gay actors get cast to play straight characters, they’re called lucky.

On a personal note, I would like to add that much of what the statistics and stories shared by LGBT people in entertainment about Hollywood’s LGBT inclusivity problem rings true for me as someone who has worked in various roles in “the industry.” While there are voices of support in many corners—individuals who champion LGBT actors, business professionals and stories— the overarching hegemony is one which does not value actors coming out as L, G, B or T, marginalizes and pigeonholes actors who are out, and ghettoizes LGBT stories, treating them as universally “edgy”, “controversial”, “risky” and “dangerous.”
 

Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass Fundraise for Anti-Gay Senator

Seemingly, Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass learned nothing from the debacle surrounding their fundraiser for anti-gay extremist, Ted Cruz.  Now the two self-anointed "A-listers"  are back raising money for an anti-gay politician who opposes civil rights for the rest of non-A-lister gays.  Reisner and Weiderpass apparently believe that their wealth protects them from the consequences of policies pushed by anti-gay Republicans such as Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the latest enemy of LGBT individuals to benefit from their fundraising.  In their self-centered world, the rest of us gays can go f*ck ourselves.  Gay City News looks at this latest slap in the face to the LGBT community by these douche bags.  Here are highlights:

A host and guests at a fundraiser held by embattled real estate developers Ian Reisner and Mati Weiderpass at their Central Park South penthouse donated at least $10,600 to Republican Ron Johnson, a right-wing US senator from Wisconsin who faces a 2016 challenge from Democrat Russ Feingold. Reisner, who is gay, gave Johnson $2,700, the maximum allowed under federal election law.

Other donors who maxed out at the Johnson event were Ken Mehlman, a longtime Republican Party operative who is also gay, and Sam Domb, a longtime Reisner business associate. Domb owns the property that houses the Out NYC, Reisner’s Midtown hotel.

The hosts and the guests were supporting Johnson because of the senator’s support for Israel and his views on the Middle East, according to the press release, which described those in attendance as “a bipartisan group of Jewish business leaders –– both committed Republicans and several traditionally aligned with Democrats.”

The Out NYC and Reisner’s properties in the Pines on Fire Island came under boycott after the New York Times reported that he held an April 20 fundraiser for Republican Ted Cruz, a Texas senator and candidate for the Republican nomination for president.  . . . The community objected to Reisner and Weiderpass taking money from their LGBT customers and giving it to anti-LGBT right-wingers.

Cruz and Johnson are associated with the Tea Party movement and are anti-LGBT. Both oppose same-sex marriage and both voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in 2013.

Reisner and Weiderpass did not respond to requests for comment. 

Let the boycotts continue!!

Gays Who Hosted Ted Cruz Face Blowback and Boycotts

Cruz and a traitor

Two gay New York City hoteliers - Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner who seemingly like to view themselves as "A-listers" -  hosted a diner this past week for virulently anti-gay Senator Ted Cruz at their duplex on Central Park.  The pair have gone to great lengths to say it was not a fundraiser, yet most gays who put self-worth, truth and dignity above money see the event for what it was: the equivalent of 1930's Berlin Jews hosting a diner for Adolph Hitler.  Underscoring the idiocy of Weiderpass and Reisner, the next day Cruz introduced two bills: (i) a proposed Constitutional amendment to protect states who want to block gay marriage and (ii) a bill to protect "Christians" who want legal protection for fabricated "discrimination."  One commenter on the Facebook page established to urge a boycott of Weiderpass and Reisner's properties described the situation this way: "we can't understand the benefit of welcoming such aggressively hateful people to a "fireside chat"...Gee Mrs. Lincoln let's have coffee and chat about how much you enjoyed the play. It just doesn't make any sense."  Another said "what douche bags."  Supporting such an enemy doesn't make sense.  Politico looks at the growing blowback.  Here are highlights:

Two gay businessmen who held a reception for Sen. Ted Cruz continued to face blowback Friday as a nonprofit canceled an event at one of their nightclubs.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, an AIDS fundraising nonprofit prominent in the New York City theater community, announced it would be canceling its fundraiser scheduled for next month at 42West, a nightclub owned by Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner. Weiderpass and Reisner hosted Cruz, the Texas senator and presidential candidate — and vocal opponent of same-sex marriage — at their duplex apartment earlier this week for a “fireside chat” and dinner.

“We cannot in good conscience hold an event at a venue whose owners have alienated our community,” Broadway Cares executive director Tom Viola wrote in a statement on Friday.

“It is a rare instance where the actions of a donor negatively impacts us as an organization and potentially jeopardizes our relationship with others whose support is integral to our success,” Viola added. “But when it does occur, in a way that’s blatantly against all we stand and work for, we can’t pretend it doesn’t come with consequences. Silence is not a neutral position. It is complicit.”

Weiderpass and Reisner have faced criticism from the gay community since a New York Times report detailing the meeting with Cruz. A Facebook page urging supporters to boycott two establishments owned by Reisner — including a New York City hotel co-owned with Weiderpass aimed at serving gay customers — had more than 4,700 subscribers as of Friday evening.

Earlier this year, Reisner hosted a fundraiser for Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who also opposes same-sex marriage.

In the past, the senator has called himself a supporter of traditional marriage, harshly criticized the Supreme Court for effectively allowing same-sex marriage to move forward in five states and said in a 2011 email that “engaging in homosexual conduct is a choice.”

Weiderpass and Reisner live in a gay friendly state and apparently believe that they have enough wealth so as to avoid the toxic consequences of what Cruz seeks to do to gays.  Most of us are not in that position - especially those of us living in anti-gay red states - and their betrayal deserves to carry a strong negative consequences.

The Salvation Army's History of Anti-LGBT Discrimination

As we move into the beginnings of the holiday season, it is again good to be reminded that not all charities are worthy of support by the LGBT community.  One charity to be avoided is the Salvation Army which has a long history of anti-gay bigotry.  In short, there are many much more deserving charities that do not make LGBT discrimination one of their cornerstones. Here are highlights from a post at Huffington Post that merits a revisit as the holiday season nears:

In recent years, the Salvation Army has come under fire for its lengthy history of anti-LGBT political maneuvering and other incidents. The church has publicly articulated its belief that homosexuality is unacceptable, stating:

Scripture opposes homosexual practices by direct comment and also by clearly implied disapproval. The Bible treats such practices as self-evidently abnormal. ... Attempts to establish or promote such relationships as viable alternatives to heterosexually-based family life do not conform to God's will for society.

While such statements were recently removed from the Salvation Army's website, the church has yet to repudiate any of its explicitly anti-gay beliefs. And though these positions may seem to be limited to the group's internal doctrines, they've become a persistent element of the church's overtly political activities -- activities which have negatively impacted the Salvation Army's ability to provide charitable services, and have aimed to limit the rights and benefits of LGBT citizens in multiple nations.

"Without discrimination" -- myth or fact?

The Salvation Army has recently attempted to counter this perception of the church as homophobic, scrubbing explicitly anti-gay statements from its websites and issuing missives purportedly "debunking" the "myth" of its anti-LGBT stances.

Yet these efforts at cleaning up their image still fail to address the most substantial criticisms of the church's policies. The Salvation Army states that numerous clients at its soup kitchens and homeless shelters are members of the LGBT community, and that these individuals are served without discrimination. They further add: "The Salvation Army embraces employees of many different faiths and orientations and abides by all applicable anti-discrimination laws in its hiring."

These statements completely ignore the reality that the Salvation Army continues to maintain anti-gay theological stances, and continues to discriminate against its own employees and their partners. They also neglect to mention that the organization historically "abides" by anti-discrimination laws by way of shutting down services in areas where such laws apply. The Salvation Army has given no indication that it intends to change any of these anti-LGBT policies.

Supporting the Salvation Army this season, whether by tossing your change in their red kettles or donating your used goods to their resale shops, means assisting an aggressively anti-gay church in furthering its goals of discrimination. Would-be donors should consider whether "doing the most good" might mean supporting one of the many other effective and reputable charities that provide for the needy without engaging in anti-gay beliefs, policies, or political activities.

Green Family/Hobby Lobby - A Study in Hypocrisy

The Greens - a study in self-centered hypocrisy

In addition to holding animus towards those who do not subscribe to their hate and fear based religious beliefs, one of the principal characteristics of today's "conservative Christians" is rank hypocrisy.  The Green family that owns Hobby Lobby and which demands special rights to ignore the laws that govern the rest of us is a case study in hypocrisy.   As an article in Forbes reports, these modern day Pharisees do not want to provide health coverage to employees that includes certain forms of contraception, but they have no problem in investing in the very same corporations that make the supposedly religiously abhorrent types of contraception.  If one wanted a reason to boycott Hobby Lobby stores you now have yet another one.  Here are highlights from Forbes:

 In what just may be the most stunning example of hypocrisy in my lifetime, Mother Jones has uncovered numerous investments on the part of Hobby Lobby’s retirement fund in a wide variety of companies producing abortion and contraception related products.

[T]he company is closely held by the Green family who purport to have strong religious objections to certain types of contraceptive devices and are suing to protect those religious rights.
Remarkably, the contraceptive devices and products that so offend the religious beliefs of this family are manufactured by the very companies in which Hobby Lobby holds a substantial stake via their employee 401(k) plan.

As I suspect many readers will find this as hard to believe and digest as I, the data can be confirmed by reviewing the company’s 2012 Annual Report of Employee Benefit Plan as filed with the Department of Labor.

This according to Mother Jones’ Molly Redden:

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012 (see above)—three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

According to the Green family, interfering with an already fertilized egg is tantamount to abortion—an act unacceptable to the family and one they refuse to participate in no matter what the Affordable Care Act may require .

However, it turns out that the owners of Hobby Lobby do not appear to have any problem with profiting from the companies that manufacture the very products that so grievously offend their religious principles.

The following is a summation of the companies manufacturing these products that are held by the Hobby Lobby employee retirement plan, as set forth by Ms. Redden’s remarkable reporting:

These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis ACT -1.03%, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer PFE +0.96%, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer , which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca AZN +2.02%, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna AET +1.05% and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.

When added up, the nine funds holding the stated investments involve three-quarters of Hobby Lobby’s 401(k) assets.

You may be thinking that it must have been beyond Hobby Lobby’s reasonable abilities to know what companies were being invested in by the mutual  funds purchased for the Hobby Lobby 401(k) plans—but I am afraid you would be wrong.

Not only does Hobby Lobby have an obligation to know what their sponsored 401(k) is investing in for the benefit of their employees, it turns out that there are ample opportunities for the retirement fund to invest in mutual funds that are specifically screened to avoid any religiously offensive products.

While these revelations will likely have no impact on the outcome of the case pending in the Supreme Court, the sheer and stunning hypocrisy of these people will forever stain any finding by the Court in favor of Hobby Lobby—should this come to pass.

 As I have noted before, increasingly, when I encounter someone who purports to be a "born again" or "conservative Christian," my first reaction is to believe that they are not nice or decent people but instead are self-centered assholes and hypocrites.  Those labels seemingly fit the Green family members.