Out in the Park 2012 - Hampton Roads Pride

As a member of the board of directors of Hampton Roads Pride, one of the major tasks of the board each year is to put on "Out in the Park" - Hampton Roads' annual gay pride celebration.  After last year's successful event which saw attendance estimates as high as 17,000 people, the board needless to say feels pressured to put on an even more successful event for 2012.  We think that we are well on the way to doing so and have Kristine W and Matt Zarley as headliners and radio personality Frank Decaro from OutQ radio serving as master of ceremonies much of the day.  Full details of the event, event sponsors and why the event is important, especially here in Hampton Roads can be found here via VEER Magazine.

Given the subject of the prior post and the imporance that tolerace plays in an area's economic vitality, I set out below my piece from the VEER Out in the Park piece:

Last year’s presentation of “Out in the Park” by Hampton Roads Pride marked the first time that Hampton Roads has had a LGBT Pride event in a truly prominent venue. And the people did come out in numbers: between 14,000 and 17,000 depending on the estimate used. On Saturday, August 18, 2012, once again “Out in the Park” will take place in the prominent venue of Town Point Park. Some may wonder “Why Pride.” Why is this such a big deal and why is an event like Out in the Park is important? There are a number of reasons, in my view.

The first reason is the reality faced by LGBT Virginians each and every day. As a matter of state policy LGBT Virginians are stigmatized and discrimination is legally permissible. LGBT Virginian’s can be fired at will and have no employment non-discrimination protects. Similarly, LGBT tenants can face housing discrimination, and we receive zero legal recognition of our committed life partner relationships. For younger LGBT Virginians and those perceived to be gay, bully can be relentless with little protections afforded by Virginia’s current laws. If we needed any reminding of our second class citizenship, the recent handling of Tracy Thorne-Begland nomination to the District Court bench in Richmond served as a stark reminder. Although he is well respected and a very qualified Deputy Commonwealth Attorney with credentials superior to those of many sitting judges, Thorne-Begland was not approved by the Virginia House of Delegates for the simple reason that he’s a openly gay man. It is an atmosphere that can be corrosive to one’s very soul.

While Out in the Park does not address this shameful legal reality in Virginia, it can provide a much needed sense of solidarity. Sadly, too many individuals still feel forced to live “in the closet” whether they are members of the military or employed in the private sector. An event like Out in the Park which is open to all, LGBT and straight, allows these individuals an opportunity be themselves in a non-hostile, accepting environment. It also allows teens and youths to realize that they are not the freaks or misfits some among the Christian Right and elsewhere would have them believe themselves to be. For those of us who are “out,” a successful pride event is an opportunity to demonstrate our pride - and experience a sense of empowerment - at who were are in spite of the adversities one faces living in Virginia.

Out in the Park also represents an educational opportunity for the region and can boost its sometimes negative image. In 2010, a Brookings Institute study, Hampton Roads was described as “old, slow and not too bright.” If Hampton Roads wants to attract the so-called “creative class,” the best way to do so is to show that it is tolerant and open to diversity. Out in the Park goes some way towards putting aside Hampton Roads’ dowdy, conservative image. For those outside of the Hampton Roads LGBT community, the Out in the Park event will provide a venue for such individuals to learn that the LGBT community is very diverse with a wide spectrum of individual types and social, racial and professional backgrounds. This LGBT pride event can also educate businesses to the fact that they are overlooking a very significant segment of the community in their marketing plans and business models.

Hopefully, this second Out in the Park event in Town Point Park will further cement the positive experience generated last year.

The Geography of Tolerance - Virginia Doesn't Place

Click map to enlarge

I've written before about Richard Florida's studies on the rise of the creative class, the so-called gay index and how states that are more liberal socially are in general pulling ahead of states that are "conservative."  Florida has a new piece in The Atlantic that looks again at this issue and tracts metropolitan areas across America.  He also lays out the top 20 metropolitan areas in therms of how they score on the "Tolerance Index" which is based on "The share of immigrants or foreign-born residents, the Gay Index (the concentration of gays and lesbians), and the Integration Index, which tracks the level of segregation between ethnic and racial groups."  Not surprisingly, no where in Virginia makes the top 20 list.  The map above shows the USA based on the tolerance index.  Here are highlights from the article:

The map above shows how metros across the U.S. score on the Tolerance Index, as updated for The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited. The chart below shows the top 20 metros. Developed by my Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Kevin Stolarick, it ranks U.S. metros according to three key variables—the share of immigrants or foreign-born residents, the Gay Index (the concentration of gays and lesbians), and the Integration Index, which tracks the level of segregation between ethnic and racial groups.

The top 20 is a mix of big diverse metros like San Diego and Miami and smaller ones. Many of these smaller metros are college towns that are home to large concentrations of professional, technical and knowledge workers from diverse backgrounds, which lead to higher levels of ethnic and racial integration than larger metros, where economic differences are often greater.



Even more than its natural resources and native ingenuity, what has stood at the heart and soul of U.S. prosperity historically has been its openness to hard working, ambitious, and talented immigrants of all stripes—doctors, engineers, and uneducated laborers alike. Roughly half of Silicon Valley start-ups have a foreign-born person among their founding team, according to several recent studies. Careful studies by the economist Giovanni Peri of the University of California at Davis have found that immigrants add rather than detract from American prosperity, for the simple reason that "the skill composition of immigrants is complementary to that of natives."  .  .  .  .   A "more multicultural urban environment," Peri concludes, "makes U.S.-born citizens more productive."


Openness to gays and lesbians similarly reflects an ecosystem that is open to new people and new ideas. It’s amazing how consistently people have misconstrued what my colleagues and I have had to say about the connection between gays and economic growth. They miss the point. A strong and vibrant gay community is a solid leading indicator of a place that is open to many different kinds of people. Ronald Inglehart, who has studied the relationship between culture and economic growth for some four decades, has noted that the lack of societal acceptance of gays is the most significant remaining bastion of intolerance and discrimination around the world. Accordingly, communities that have long been more accepting and open to gay people have an underlying ecosystem which is also more likely to be accepting of new ideas and different types of people, including the eggheads and eccentrics who invent new things and start new enterprises. As Bill Bishop put it, "where gay households abound, geeks follow."

Economists frequently note the importance of industries having low entry barriers, so that new firms can easily enter and keep the industry vital. Similarly, a place can benefit from low entry barriers for people—where newcomers from different backgrounds are accepted quickly into all sorts of social and economic arrangements. All else being equal, such communities have an advantage in attracting and retaining the diverse and different types of people who power innovation and growth.


Tolerance - and openness to diversity and inclusiveness - is not an afterthought or something that happens when communities get rich. It is a key element of the new economic development equation.

These basics of good economics and ways to stimulate an improved economy are utterly lost on the Republican Party of Virginia as it prostitutes itself to hate merchants such as those at The Family Foundation and other allied organizations that seek to marginalize and stigmatize gays, immigrants and non-whites.  Of course, most of the states in the Bible Belt act the same way and, not surprisingly, their economies suffer as a consequence.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

James Dean: A New Film Tells the Sexual Truth

I'm not one for "outing" people after they have died, but at the same time until the lives and successes of gays from past generations becomes common place knowledge among society, it will continue make it easier for our enemies to malign us all collectively as freaks, perverts and whatever other derogatory terms folks in the anti-gay industry dream up.   While James Dean was perhaps not a role model in some ways, he was nonetheless a major stay who became a legend after his untimely death.  Thus, it is appropriate that the general public know the truth about who he was.  A new movie,  Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, seeks to set the historical record straight.  Here are highlights from The Advocate:

What could possibly be left to say about late screen icon James Dean? After countless books, documentaries, and film bios, director Matthew Mishory thinks there’s plenty. Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean, his feature directorial debut currently making the rounds of film festivals around the globe, offers a breathtaking look at a little-known period in the actor’s life. 

Set in the early 1950s when the charismatic Indiana native was just another determined hopeful, Mishory’s Dean (portrayed by The Gates star James Preston) depends on the kindess of well-to-do gentlemen friends, while experimenting sexually with his male roomate as well as numerous females. It’s a portrayal that will likely excite many fans of the mercurial star but upset others unready for the sexual frankness on display here — all told in glorious black-and-white cinematography.

We wanted to create a very intimate and perhaps unexpected portrait of who this man was. And that is the core of James Preston’s performance — actually conveying who James Dean was, not as an icon but as a person.

What is it about Dean that keeps people enthralled nearly 60 years after his death?
On the one hand, there is the sort of self-created mythology of James Dean as sensitive rebel bad boy that perhaps exists in at least one of the screen performances but largely was created through publicity photographs and the public imagination.  .   .  .   .  Dean continues to enthrall and always will because he fundamentally changed acting. He changed the way actors act on-screen. He brought a naturalism and an intensity to his performance that I feel didn’t exist before him. As many have pointed out, watching him act opposite his contemporaries, one often wonders if he is in an entirely different movie. Without Dean, we would never have had the great young method actors who followed — River Phoenix, for instance. So I think he fundamentally changed the way actors act and also the way Hollywood portrayed young people. The three Dean performances represent probably the first three truly realistic and compelling young characters in studio movies. Dean marks perhaps the first real American teenager put to film.

One area of Dean’s persona that’s still constantly debated is his sexuality. Do you think he privately conformed to some label? Was he bi? Was he gay?
One of the things I really like about our film is that you’ll never hear the words “gay” or “bisexual” or “heterosexual” spoken. You won’t hear any sexual labels expressed because we approach the topic of sexuality without any angst or hand-wringing at all. The characters are who are they are and were, and we leave any judgments or labels to the audience. That said, the notion that James Dean was nonheterosexual hardly begins with this film, and what is essentially common knowledge is, to my mind, entirely uncontroversial. One thing that so fascinates about this era, the late ’40s and early ’50s, especially among the Hollywood elite, is that people lived much more freely, sexually, than they do in our more conservative times. The great difference is that privacy still existed, so they did so behind closed doors. And of course there was an entire studio publicity machine in place to keep certain realities hidden from prying eyes.

Do you think that grappling with his sexual orientation really gave him insight into playing these tortured characters?
I think that, as James Preston has often remarked, Dean had no lack of pain to draw upon. His mother died horrendously of brain cancer when he was 8 years old. He had a father who probably didn’t love him enough and definitely didn’t know how to show it. And then he made his way to Hollywood, without a trust fund or family name, to chase a truly impossible dream  . . . .

James Preston gives a mesmerizing performance. How did you decide he was right to play Dean?

.   .   .  .  When we got to the callbacks, it was between James, who had come to us through [Joshua Tree actress] Dalilah Rain, and a few others. And when James came in we knew that we had our Jimmy. It wasn’t that he looked more or less like James Dean, although he did, and it wasn’t that he could do a mimicry or an impersonation, because we didn’t want that at all. James had a naturalism to his performance style that fit what we were trying to do.

Mormons’ First Families Rally Behind Romney

It's only to be expected that some of Mitt Romney's fellow Mormons would rally to his support in the current presidential contest.  The irony, of course, is that the family histories of many of these "first families" makes a mockery of Romney signing onto the National Organization for Marriage's anti-gay manifesto.  And these family histories also most definitely demonstrate the lie of Romney's repeated statements against same sex marriage (one of many lies from Romney) wherein he claims that throughout recorded history, marriage has always been between "one man and one woman."  Romney apparently has amnesia as to his own genealogy and that of his fellow Mormons.  Or perhaps they retroactively withdrew from polygamy.  The New York Times looks at these "first families" and their role in Romney's political aspirations.  Here are some excerpts: 

In the mid-1800s, newly converted families from across the United States and Europe gathered in the growing Mormon town of Nauvoo, Ill., to help their prophet, Joseph Smith, build a New Jerusalem. 

Now, more than 150 years later, descendants of those first families of Mormonism are joining together in a new effort: delivering the White House to Mitt Romney.

These families — Marriotts, Rollinses, Gardners and others — have formed a financial bulwark and support network for Mr. Romney at every important point in his political career. Starting with his 1994 Senate race, moving into the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics effort that became his political springboard and continuing through his first foray into presidential politics, they have been there to open doors, provide seed money and rally support. 

Mr. Romney’s candidacy has produced great pride among many Mormons, known officially as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But for this core group of the religion’s most prominent families, the ties to Mr. Romney go deeper. They share with him not only a faith, but also a dramatic history in which they have scaled the ladder of American society,  .  .  .  .

In interviews, several of Mr. Romney’s supporters expressed their concerns that attention to the financial support he has received from other early families of the religion would raise old prejudices and accusations of clannishness that followed their forebears. 

On the manifests of the wagon carts that made the difficult trek with Young and then helped settle Utah were names that now dot the campaign filings for Mr. Romney and the political groups that support him. 

Mr. Eyre said the main attraction to Mr. Romney for most Mormons is their “common values” with him, not their “common faith.” But he nonetheless described a “giddiness” over his prospects. 

“It’s like an arc where the steps to mainstream understanding and inclusion were so small for so long — unfairly small, because other groups’ arcs seemed to move faster,” he said. “And now suddenly there is this big chance that the arc will complete itself very swiftly and very powerfully.” 

I am by no means anti-Mormon.  I do believe, however, in telling the full story.  And sadly, the Times piece doesn't note that almost all of these families involved polygamous marriages.  I guess it would have underscored Romney's hypocrisy on same sex marriage too heavily even for the Times' taste. 

More Monday Male Beauty

The Bain of Romney's Existence - Part Three

Another day and more damning commentary and conflicting statements from the Romney campaign.  Yes, I believe that Romney has lied through his teeth on his post 1999 involvement with Bain Capital and its management.  I likewise believe that the reason that Romney refuses to release his tax returns boils down to the simple fact that they must contain something Romney desperately wants to hide.  It may be obscene income levels or huge payments from Bain even as Romney continues to lie that he left the firm in 1999 despite SEC filings, video clips of Romney himself and other sworn statements to the contrary.  Here's a sampling of pundits on Romney's Bain fiasco.  First, Andrew Sullivan:

The claim that he committed a felony by falsely reporting his role at Bain Capital under oath is what has really gotten under Romney's skin. But it seems pretty clear to me that he signed a federal financial disclosure form, under the penalty of perjury, saying he had not been involved "in any way" with Bain after he left for Utah in February 1999. That's a strong statement. And it is directly undercut by Romney's own statement in his 2002 attempt to prove residency to run for governor:

Romney testified that “there were a number of social trips and business trips that brought [him] back to Massachusetts, board meetings” while he was running the Olympics. He added that he remained on the boards of several companies, including the Lifelike Co., in which Bain Capital held a stake until 2001...

So the question of whether Romney committed a felony in his financial disclosure form is a very real one - because Romney and Romney's lawyer provide the strongest evidence that it was perjury. Now we have more contemporaneous evidence that Romney perjured himself:

During the 2002 hearing — in a remark that has not been previously reported — Romney said that after he departed Bain in February 1999 he went through a transition period regarding his work in Boston.

When a lawyer challenging his eligibility asked Romney, "Did you remain more or less continuously in Salt Lake City from February '99 to the end of the year," Romney answered: "Actually, there was some transition away from my work in Boston for the first few months and then I pretty much stayed there after."

David Frum, a man who is no liberal Democrat adds in with these remarks:

It's not just his [Romney's] arguments that are weak. For the past year, we have watched him be pushed around by the radical GOP fringe. He's been forced to abjure his most important achievement as governor, his healthcare plan. In December, he was compelled to sign onto the Ryan budget plan after months of squirming to avoid it. Last fall he released an elaborate economic plan. On the eve of the Michigan primary, he ripped it up and instead accepted a huge new tax cut - to a top rate of 28% - that has never been costed (and that he now tries to avoid mentioning whenever he can). Romney has acknowledged in interviews that he understands that big rapid cuts in government spending could push the US economy back into recession. Yet he campaigns anyway on the Tea Party's false promise that it's the deficit that causes the depression, rather than (as he well knows) the other way around.

The hope for many of us was that a Republican president could do a better job constraining them than Barack Obama has been able to do - especially if (as I personally also hoped) the very act of electing such a president would deflate the radicalism of the congressional GOP and revive a more constructive spirit.

But at every point, Romney has surrendered to the fringe of his party. Weak. And now in his first tough encounter with Barack Obama, Romney is being shoved around again. This is not what a president looks like - anyway, not a successful president.

Then from a liberal perspective, we have Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post blasting Romney as well.  Here are highlights:

Mitt Romney has every right to cloak his personal and professional finances in secrecy — and voters have every right to assume he has something embarrassing to hide. If this seems unfair, Romney has only himself to blame.

Through a series of miscalculations, Romney has managed to turn what should have been a minor hiccup into what may be a defining moment, and not in a good way. Attacks by President Obama’s campaign serve mainly to draw attention to the train wreck.

On the Sunday morning talk shows, even Republicans urged Romney to release more tax returns while wondering what secrets he’s trying to keep. And the campaign’s latest attempt to explain how and when Romney left Bain Capital — he’s supposed to have “retired retroactively” at some unspecified date — became an instant punch line.

The only reason anyone cares when Romney left Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded and ran, is because Romney made a totally unreasonable claim: When Democrats pointed to outsourcing and job cuts at companies Bain owned or controlled, Romney denied any responsibility since these unfortunate developments took place after he left to run the Winter Olympics in 1999.  This was an absurd position to take.

As late as 2002, Bain’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission list Romney as chairman, chief executive and sole stockholder.    If you look at Romney’s signature on those documents and listen to what he’s been saying on the campaign trail, you have to conclude that either he lied to the SEC or he’s lying to voters now. 

All of this flows from a fundamental misrepresentation: Bain Capital’s purpose wasn’t to create jobs, it was to create wealth. If Romney had spoken honestly from the beginning about his company’s goals and actions, his campaign surrogates wouldn’t have to be out there trying to explain how retroactive retirement works.

Romney has spent the better part of a decade running for president. Did it never occur to him that if he ever won the Republican nomination, surely there would come a time when he was under pressure to release multiple years’ worth of tax returns?  


The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Romney believes that while stonewalling on his taxes may cost him some support, releasing them would cost him more.

Some conservatives are becoming restive; Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, for example, said Sunday that it was “crazy” for Romney not to release more than the one tax return he has grudgingly surrendered. If Romney is trying to hide something, what might it be? Could there have been more offshore accounts? Some additional undisclosed mansions? Might Romney have made some kind of profitable — but impolitic — bet against the U.S. economy?

 

Romney has created this disaster himself through lying and the probable unbridled greed that his tax return would document.  I for one cannot find a shred of sympathy for the man.

Black Pastors Once Again Play Uncle Tom Role For Maggie Gallagher and NOM

This blog has vented many times over the way that black pastors - or at least the ignorant ones who are dumb as bricks and utterly ignorant of history, including the racist history of the lily white Christianist "family values" organizations - time and time again act as the water carrying house slave for the likes of the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") and similar organizations which might as well have KKK membership as a prerequisite for involvement within their ranks. Despite the endorsement of same sex CIVIL marriage by President Obama and the NAACP, some cretins and morons within the black pastor community have yet again come groveling and licking the boots of Maggie Gallagher as if she were Miss Scarlett at Tara.   While hypocrisy certainly sets me off, conscious decisions to embrace ignorance really puts me in a rank.  Yes, some will find my remarks offensive, but that doesn't make them any less the truth.  Think Progress looks at the black pastor crowd that are still doing the bidding of the descendants of their slave owning masters.  Here are highlights:

In March, confidential memos detailed the National Organization for Marriage’s strategy to drive a wedge between the gay and black communities (and nullify the existence of people who are both black and gay in the process). Unfazed by the backlash, NOM doubled down on the strategy, following through on it in North Carolina and refusing to apologize, even after internal emails showed how particular the group was about highlighting black religious leaders at events.

Now, NOM has redoubled its effort to “fan the hostility” by propping up the overstated Coalition of African-American Pastors and its founder (and NOM’s new spokesperson), Rev. Bill Owens, who likes to compare homosexuality to bestiality. The organization has released a new video, featuring Owens, the vitriolic Bishop Harry Jackson, Pastor Ericka McCrutcheon (who says gays “sodomize each other and practice other deviant behaviors in society), and others, criticizing the NAACP for “pandering to the President” and joining him in supporting marriage equality.

While technically CAAP is a coalition of black pastors, it’s not actually representative of anybody except the few radicals who’ve joined it. When CAAP had the gall to demand a meeting with the President two weeks ago, it admitted that it does not speak for any denomination, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Church of God in Christ. The group’s only purpose since its founding has been to attack marriage equality, and only since partnering with NOM has its anti-gay tantrums received any legitimate media attention. Unsurprisingly, in the vein of all of NOM’s failed online campaigns, CAAP’s 100000 Signatures 4 Marriage campaign has garnered a full 46 Likes on Facebook.

NOM’s media effort has been to paint CAAP as being some huge conglomeration of black pastors, when in fact it seems to have at best tens of active members (despite Owens’ claim of 1,300 members), and they clearly do not speak on behalf of their community. National polls have shown that a majority of African-American voters support marriage equality, even at higher rates than the national average. 

I will concede that likening a fat bloviating cow Maggie Gallagher to Scarlett is a stretch, but Rev. Bill Owens kisses Gallagher's and NOM's ass just as thoroughly as the house slaves at Tara pandered to Scarlett. I suspect he even kiss up to the white supremacist linked Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.  Owens and his compatriots make whores look virtuous.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

HRBOR July 19th Third Thursday at Sassi Cakes

It's hard to believe that a month has already flown by since HRBOR's 5th Anniversary celebration last month.  This month's Third Thursday networking event will be at Sassi Cakes and Sweets on 22nd Street in Ghent in the Palace Station Shops.  The desserts are wonderful and there's a lunch and snack menu too.  Here are event details:

Sassi Cakes and Sweets offers an intimate yet relaxing atmosphere, delectable treats and sensational martinis and much more. You must experience it to believe it! They have everything from cake covered in various types of chocolates, to mini cakes that is fit for individuals or couples to share, to the big holiday/birthday specialty cakes that you can share with family and friends. Additionally, Sassi hosts a sit down bar area where you can experience some of the best Martinis in Virginia and our separate "other than dessert" menu that challenges you to a culinary experience.

What: HRBOR Third Thursday Networking Event

Event Hosts:

Sassi Cakes and Sweets/Stephanie Wadnola, Owner/Chef

757-321-6759

http://www.sassicakesandsweets.com

Where:  330 W 22^nd St, Norfolk VA 23517

When: July 19th, 6pm - 8 pm

Parking: Ample

Featured Non-profit and Bar Sponsor:

 

Cost: Free to Members, $15 Guest Fee to Prospective Members

Invite friends and colleagues. 

 

Exciting Raffle Opportunity for Two Tickets to EV & a Tysinger Mercedes