HRBOR 5th Year Anniversary Reminder

As I have noted before, one of the things I am most proud of since first coming out and beginning to build a new life is my contribution to the founding of Hampton Roads Business OutReach ("HRBOR"). HRBOR first officially launched in May, 2007, and the first "Third Thursday" business networking event occurred in June, 2007.  The 5th anniversary of the launch of Third Thursdays will take place on Thursday, June 21, 2012, and we have a spectacular venue - the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk pictured below - and great event sponsors: SunTrust Bank, Distinctive Event Rentals and The New Leaf floral shop.  I  hope local readers will attend this FREE event whether they own a business or not. That's right, admission is free and there's plenty of parking. Here are more details:

What: 5th Anniversary Extravaganza & Membership Drive for HRBOR!! Bring your friends, business affiliates, associates, and anyone interested in Building Equality within business as we honor the founding members and look to current as well as prospective members for the future growth within the community.New and renewing members will receive a 25% discount on membership in honor of HRBOR's 5th Anniversary.

Where: The Harrison Opera House, Grand Lobby – 160 E. Virginia Beach Blvd, Norfolk VA 23510

When: Thursday June 21, 2012 from 6 - 8 pm

Admission: FREE

 

 

Mitt Romney Believes Children Are Better Off With Straight Parents

While Michael Gerson would have his readers believe that it is Barack Obama who is fueling the "culture wars" the real truth is that it's Mitt Romney who is guilty of fanning the flames of the such wars.  A case in point: Romney's video appearance at the theocrat sponsored Faith and Freedom Coalition where Romney attacked gay parenting and stated that children do best with straight parents.  Never mind the endless child abuse cases one sees literally all around the country involving straight, not gay, parents.  This inconvenient reality never makes it on the radar screen of the gay-hating Christofascists or their political whores such as Romney.  Politiker looks at this latest example of Romney's anti-gay agenda:

Mitt Romney made a speech via satellite at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Saturday morning in which he reiterated his view that children are better off growing up with heterosexual parents.

“We need to strengthen the commitment that exists in this country to family. I hope to be able to talk to young people and tell them how important it is to get married before they have children because the opportunity for a mom and a dad to help guide the life of a child gives them such an enormous advantage in their lives going forward,” Mr. Romney said.

The Politicker reached out to the Romney campaign to see whether they felt a child could equally benefit from the guidance provided by a gay couple. Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, said it is the candidate’s long held belief children are better off with straight parents.

 Though Mr. Romney believes states should be allowed to give gay couples the right to adopt children, he has said in multiple interviews that he believes a heterosexual marriage is the “ideal setting” for children to grow up in. He opposes granting either marriages or civil unions to gay couples.

Somehow in Romney's world engaging in heterosexual sex trumps all else when it comes to parenting.  I suppose he also believes that mankind co-existed with dinosaurs as well.  The more I know about the man, the more I dislike him.

Conservative Kool-Aid on the Culture Wars

A column in the Washington Post purports to criticize the desire of liberals to attack religious institutions yet instead demonstrates the upside down world of the far right- and its ignorance and bigotry loving religious institutions - which views themselves as subject to persecution when they are not allowed to freely persecute everyone else.  The fact is that through tax policy religion in the USA receives many billions of dollars in indirect support from government every year under the pretense that churches and religious organizations are charities.  Some indeed are, but many are not as they build grandiose sanctuaries and complexes that benefit no one but their members and even as they spend countless dollars attacking other citizens and seeking to infringe on their civil rights.  It's yet one of the ridiculous special rights and deference afforded religion in this country.  And it's something that needs to end for every church and purported religious organization that isn't truly delivering charitable support to their community as their primary line of services.  And I'm sorry, but allowing mega church pastors to live the good life doesn't meet that standard.  Here's a sampling of the bullshit being peddled by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post wherein he accuses liberals and Obama of persecuting religion even as religious organizations are the main authors of the so-called culture wars:

President Obama’s decision to lead with social issues in his reelection campaign — immigration, gay marriage and contraception — makes some political sense. His ideologically divisive performance in office has left him with no serious option but a base strategy. Cultural battles inspire the liberality of liberal donors. They may pump up turnout among target groups — Latinos, college-educated whites and single women. They can goad opponents into angry overreaction. And social debates, coincidentally, are an alternative to discussing the state of the economy.

Obama’s appeal to Hispanic Americans has little downside, exploiting a vulnerability Republicans have taken great pains to create. His evolution on gay rights corresponds to a swift evolution of public sentiments. It is his assault on the liberty of religious institutions — forcing their complicity in the distribution of contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs — that remains the most dangerous overreach of Obama’s culture war.

This issue concerns not just the outcome of an election but the nature of liberalism itself. In a free society, which should have priority: pluralism or the advance of liberal values?

A pluralist view of freedom requires tolerance for some ways of life that other citizens find oppressive or unreasonable.

This tolerance, of course, is not unlimited. It covers the Old Order Amish. It would not cover the Old Order Aztecs engaged in ritual human sacrifice. Without imposing an ideal way of life, the state can rule out the clearest abuses of human rights. But in the pluralist view, the government should grant broad latitude to institutions, even illiberal institutions, in determining and transmitting their own views and practices.

But pluralism has critics. . . . . In this view, the state has a responsibility to defend individual rights against every form of social oppression, public and private. 

[A] strong civil society prepares people for participation in liberal, democratic institutions while limiting the pretensions and ambitions of those institutions. This is the genius of pluralism, and the best hope for lasting peace in the culture wars: a single nation with room for deep disagreements. 

Apparently in Gerson's up is down and white is black world, the fact that his conservative - dare we say Neanderthal? - allies are persecuting other citizens and reaping special privileges to themselves to the detriment of others is perfectly fine.  I'm sorry, but institutions that receive government largess either through direct receipt of government funds or indirectly by huge indirect tax subsidies forfeit the right to pick and chose which rights are to be deprived to other citizens.

More Monday Male Beauty

Why the GOP is Far Worse - Dare We Say Immoral? - Than the Democrats

Click image to enlarge

I catch grief at times from readers who find my criticism of the GOP - especially the Christianist/Tea Party extremists in the GOP - lacking in balance in terms of  equal criticism of the fringe elements in the Democratic Party.  But in my view, there is a big difference between the extremists in the two political parties.  First, as a gay American, the GOP party platform seeks to bar me from civil rights afforded to other citizens.  And the far right extremists in the GOP want to either make me a criminal, place me in concentration camp like detention centers, force me from the USA or perhaps even kill me.  NOTHING the extreme elements of the Democratic Party comes close to such visceral hate and malice towards other citizens.  This, to me is a defining difference.

Adding to the differentiation between the fringe elements of both parties is the GOP's contempt for the health, safety and welfare of other citizens - even as they hypocritically wrap themselves in the cloak of religion.  The hypocrisy is beyond stunning.  In fact, it makes the Pharisees of the Bible seem like soft hearted liberals.  A case in point is found in the image above.  It's an image from a free, makeshift dental clinic for the uninsured in Tennessee.  That so many Americans lack basic health care and dental care is a national embarrassment.  Yes, "Old Europe" has its problems, but rarely do your see European nations - or ultra-liberal Democrats - treating their citizens as disposable garbage.  Andrew Sullivan made these telling remarks:

That scene is a free, makeshift dental clinic for the uninsured. It was mobbed - as it would be in a developing country. Except it's right here in Tennessee, where many of the working poor are uninsured, and where the state is perfectly happy to keep it that way. For these strapped, working-class folk, Obama's demonized healthcare reform is a godsend. Pity almost none of them in this part of deepest red America have heard of what it could do for them:

It was hard to find visitors to the clinic who would not benefit directly from the law. Barbara Hickey, 54, is a diabetic who lost her insurance five years ago when her husband was injured at his job making fiberglass pipes. She gets discounted diabetic medication from a charity, but came to the clinic to ask a doctor about blood in her urine.

Under the law, she would qualify for Medicaid. Her eyebrows shot up as the law was described to her. "If they put that law into effect, a lot of people won't need disability," she said. "A lot of people go onto disability because they can't afford health insurance."

Tom Boughan, 58, came to the clinic for glasses and dental work, with a sci-fi novel to pass the time. He's been without coverage since being laid off from his industrial painting job last year, which means he's paying $400 every few months for blood work for a thyroid problem.

This piece was supposed to run on the front page of the Washington Post. They turned it down went cool on it on the grounds that it was too long and too supportive of Obamacare. It's worth remembering before we all go into a Beltway frenzy about SCOTUS and the ACA - that this issue affects people's lives in the most graphic and direct way imaginable. It becomes the difference between living with chronic illnesses or being healthy. It can be the difference between a short life and a long one.

Yes, even the supposedly liberal Washington Post lacked the guts to run this story.  To allow this nation's priorities to treat men, women, and countless poor children as disposable garbage is the worse sin one can image if one is truly a moral person as opposed to a Bible beating self-congratulatory mentally ill narcissus.  Unless and until decency and compassion return to the GOP, I will have NOTHING to do with the GOP. I would argue that, if there is a Hell, it will largely populated by current day Republicans and Christofacsists.  

Brandon's Beacon of Hope HIV AIDS Foundation - OBX Pridefest's Featured Non-Profit

This past weekend down at OBX Pridefest offered the boyfriend and me a great time as we had the opportunity to meet new people and also socialize with numerous friends from Hampton Roads who likewise made the trip down.  We drove back this morning and had a wonderful time last night at the cabaret production put on by the cast of The Lost Colony , one of the sponsors of OBX Pridefest, as well as Dame Edna's show. As a group the cast from The Lost Colony included very talented young people and, yes, some of the cast are gorgeous - one young man bore a striking resemblance to Baptiste Giabiconi.  And our stay at the First Colony Inn was most pleasurable and I would recommend the 1932 era Inn without reservation to anyone considering a trip to the Nags Head, North Carolina area. 

But OBX Pridefest did have it's tear jerking moments.  Particularly when Diane Midgett (pictured below), the chairwoman of Brandon's Beacon of Hope HIV AIDS Foundation spoke early on in the Saturday festival portion of the event.  The organization is named for her late son, Brandon Keith Finley, who was born prematurely on February 17, 1983, and who underwent a great number of blood transfusions as medical personnel tried to save his life after his premature birth.  Sadly, through one or more of those transfusions, Brandon contracted HIV/AIDS.   After a heroic battle with little or no help from the federal government in terms of AIDS research and support, Brandon lost his battle and died on  April 15, 1984.  Diane is candidly bitter when she recounts the lack of support from the federal government in the early years of the AIDS crisis with Ronald Reagan avoiding even saying the word for far, far too long.  But, from her family's tragedy, she has vowed to make a difference and to see that Brandon's short life was not in vain.  She is truly a woman on a mission.  During her presentation, Diane stressed that not only is HIV/AIDS present in North Carolina but also the alarming infection rate among those 13 to 24.  That more isn't being done borders in my view on the criminal.  

In her quest to make a difference and to help the lives of others, Diane Midgett founded Brandon's Beacon of Hope HIV AIDS Foundation ("BBH") which was selected by the OBX Pridefest board as the recipient of the net profits from OBX Pridefest 2012.  OBX Pridefest described the non-profit's mission as follows:

[Brandon's Beacon of Hope] is working with the regional medical professions to offer absolute private services and assistance to victims of HIV-AIDS in the Northeast region of North Carolina.  Up until now, those needing assistance had to travel to metropolitan areas to receive care, and thus, the number of victims in Dare County and the surrounding regions has gone unreported.  We are trying to change that and we hope you can help.  Even though people are living much longer lives with HIV, the average cost to these people is $367,000 for the rest of their lives.  Your donation or sponsorship of OBX Pridefest, our biggest fundraiser of the year, will help us help BBH.  Any profits made from OBX Pridefest (after we have paid our bills) will be donated to BBH.

As long time readers know, in 1999 I nearly lost one of my children to bacterial meningitis.  As harrowing and devastating as that experience was, it pales compared to Diane's nightmare.  Moreover, my child recovered and, indeed, was written up as a miracle case by Children's Hospital of the Kings Daughters in Norfolk, Virginia.   Consequently, I truly cannot imagine what Diane and her family went through.  She is a real trooper and so is her youngest son  (also pictured below) - her gay son - who was born after Brandon's death.  As she recounts it, God had a plan for her and gave her a gay son to replace the child she lost.

Please check out BBH and consider making a donation.  Their plan is to be fully operational by fall and to have an operational website and referral service.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Why DOMA Violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution

I have long argued that anti-gay laws in general and laws like DOMA in particular are illegal because they establish one religious belief system in violation the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion for all citizens and the ban on an established religion.  What DOMA in effect represents is the establishment of a conservative, gay-hating form of Christianity as the defacto established religion of the nation.  And as more religious denominations - e.g., the conservative Jews just joined the same sex marriage accepting ranks - come to accept same sex marriage, the discrimination against other religious beliefs is becoming more pronounced.  To date, most courts don't want to open their eyes to this unconstitutional defacto establishment of conservative Christianity as the nation's official religion or the special rights granted to this segment of religion.  A post in Towleroad looks at this legal reality.  Here are highlights:

Today, there are men and women of faith who are vocal supporters of gay rights, many of whom have taken their cues from religious leaders like the Reverends Troy Perry (right) and Brent Hawkes of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) and the Reverends John V. Moore and Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. These men and their religious orders have not only made waves advocating on behalf of LGBT persons, but they have also put the weight of faith behind opposition to Prop 8, DOMA, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell; in support of students' rights to identity-affirming expression in schools; and in support of marriage recognition legislation in New York, Maine, North Carolina, and other states

This leadership and bridge-building is of singular importance, second only to exercising power where it counts. To that end, religious groups from many faiths have come together to file amicus briefs against the Defense of Marriage Act and against Prop 8. In their brief in Gill v. OPM, the First Circuit case that recently declared DOMA unconstitutional, for example, we see the importance of religious dialogue and religious allies.
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To persons of faith, DOMA's definition of valid marriages for the purposes of federal law discriminates against those faiths that would define marriage differently. Whereas Gill's attorneys and the Department of Justice argued that DOMA fails a constitutional test because it treads on powers traditionally and exclusively left to the states and because it treats similarly situated individuals simply because of their sexual orientation, the amicus brief from our religious allies argued that DOMA departed from the federal government's traditional neutrality among various religious definitions of marriage, enshrining one -- a particularly conservative and arguably ahistorical Judeo-Christian definition -- as the only federal definition of civil marriage. In this way, DOMA violates the Constitution's ban on the establishment of religion, or the favoring of one religious doctrine over another.

This novel legal argument complements the moral weight and access brought by religious allies. We often find that our quest for equality takes us across religious territory and we shy away from those engagement all too often. The campaign against Prop 8 in California was decried for its anemic religious outreach, as were other campaigns. Granted, many religious houses spout hateful invectives against the gay community; but, it is also liberal reticence to engage in the language of morality, values, and piety that push our leaders to give up finding religious allies before they even try. After all, the libertarian language of freedom and rights is the balliwick of progressives. We feel most comfortable when discussing our right to do this or our freedom from that. But, true equality and honor for gay persons requires more than that. It requires that we dive into the language of values and morality and prove that our lives and marriages are worthy of state recognition.

Can the GOP Evolve?

The title of this post is a question I sometimes get  asked given that I am a former Republican.  My answer typically is an emphatic "No."  Not with the current Christianist/Tea Party base and the total lack of guts in the party leadership to stand up to hate and bigotry - not to mention calling out statements and positions that ignore objective reality.    Thus, I see only repeated electoral defeats as the route to any sort of evolution.    When and how such defeats will happen is anyone's guess, but sooner or later the aging bigoted core of the GOP will die off and defeat will be the norm for the GOP.  That process cannot happen soon enough in my book.  David Frum a rational conservative - something that is becoming an oxymoron - looks at this question of whether or not the GOP can evolve.  Here are some excerpts:

It’s 2024. The vast majority of baby boomers have arrived at retirement age. The pre-baby boomers are rapidly passing from the scene. (The youngest of them, born in 1945, are about to turn 80.) The long-predicted crisis of the American fiscal system has arrived.

The political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined politics as a contest over “who gets what, when, and how.” Over the next dozen years, as the gap between the revenue lines and the expenditure lines of the federal and state governments widen, that definition could aptly be amended: Who gets disappointed—and by how much?   .  .  .  .  These harrowing questions have disconcerting political implications for the country’s two great political parties.

For Democrats, the trends pose a stark distributional question. The younger people of the 2020s, survivors of the Great Recession, will in the aggregate be poorer than their elders. Should these younger workers be taxed or see their own social services squeezed in order to support Medicare and public-service pensions in their full amplitude?

For Republicans, the trends pose a coalition-management question. Throughout the Obama years, Republicans built a powerful coalition of the rich and the old. The coalition was built on two principles: militant rejection of any and all new taxes, and unyielding defense of existing government benefits for those at or near retirement age.   But as Medicare costs rise, the no-new-taxes/no-cuts-in-Medicare combination will become increasingly difficult to sustain. Already, polls show that Republican voters (as opposed to activists) prefer tax increases on upper-income earners to Medicare cuts. So long as the choice between taxes and Medicare cuts remains latent, the preferences of rank-and-file Republicans may not matter much. But as budget gaps widen, that tension will surely come to the fore.
  
If the fiscal squeeze tightens enough, Republicans will be forced to choose between their limited government ideology and their older voting base. If they choose their ideology, they will need to locate some new voters in upper-income America. They will need to draw back to the Grand Old Party the kind of voters who defected to Barack Obama in 2008: affluent professionals, especially women, in major urban centers. This was the kind of Republicanism practiced in the 1990s by governors like Christine Todd Whitman, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, and George Pataki. Such a Republicanism would not need to jettison its pro-life message, just de-emphasize it, as Democrats have, for example, de-emphasized their message on gun control.

At the beginning of the Tea Party era, there was much talk that Republicans might switch to a more economic, less culturally exclusive message. That talk came to nothing. Instead, Republicans infused cultural exclusion into their economics, drawing a sharp distinction between the “earned” benefit of Medicare and Social Security and other programs that serve supposedly less deserving populations: food stamps, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid.

Yet it does not have to be this way. The GOP can remain a culturally conservative party without needing to endorse vaginal inspections of women or miring itself in fights over birth control. The coming generational shift within the GOP on gay rights points the way to such future change.

Such a GOP would look more like conservative parties elsewhere on the planet—and less like the Southern Democrats of the 1950s. And while some Republicans might dismiss those non-U.S. conservative parties as squishy, it’s worth noting that at least some of them—notably the Germans and Canadians—managed successfully to complete the fiscal consolidation that in the United States still looms terrifyingly ahead.

Frum's views make sense but for one thing: the Christian Right. Until the GOP sends the Christofascists back to the political wilderness, the type of conservatism he contemplates will not be possible.  The big question is when will the Party realize this and take the steps to regain its soul.

Will Gay Marriage Bring An End to Special Privileges for Christians ?

Currently the Roman Catholic Church is aging a war against civil marriage equality for same sex couples on a global basis, with particular open warfare raging in America, Australia and the the UK.    While the Catholic Church of has never enjoyed official special privileges as the established church in any of these countries, there has always been a de facto granting of of special rights and privileges to conservative forms of Christianity in all three countries.  Now, the Church of England - which has long been the established church in the UK - has joined the Catholic Church's anti-gay jihad.  In the final analysis, the battle comes down to whether or not the promise of religious freedom in all three countries will triumph over the the demand for special rights that have either been officially recognized as in the UK and by tacit approval in America and Australia.  A piece in The Telegraph  conjectures that in the UK the anti-gay agenda of the Church of England may lead to the end of the official privileges of the Church of England.  One can only hope that a similar demise may overtake the special rights too long granted to conservative Christianity in America.  Here are story highlights:

Two people meet and fall in love. They want it to be for life, so they get married. Simple, isn’t it? Theresa May, the Home Secretary, thinks so: “Put simply, it’s not right that a couple who love each other and want to formalise a commitment to each other should be denied the right to marry.”That’s why May wants to allow couples of the same sex to marry on exactly the same terms as a man and woman. The Government has asked for opinions on how this should be done, but not whether it should be done at all – which has upset those opposed to the move.

The Roman Catholic Church says the Government has no right to make such a fundamental, irreversible change, and it does not believe the Home Secretary’s promise of legal protection to ensure no priest is forced by European law to carry out a gay wedding: “As no Parliament can bind its successors, the Catholic Church and other religious bodies would be at risk indefinitely.” The Muslim Council of Great Britain has called the proposal “unhelpful and unnecessary”. 

The Church of England’s official response comes close to fury: “Such a move would alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, as enshrined in human institutions throughout history.” Launching the response paper last week, senior figures predicted a clash between the laws of the Church and the laws of the state that is unprecedented since the Reformation nearly 500 years ago. 

On the face of it, then, the ground is set for a battle between the Church and the state. But it’s not as simple as that. Despite the impression given by the official paper, the Church is divided. Many priests and lay people are sympathetic to the idea of equality. 

Why is David Cameron persisting with this? There are several potential reasons: to keep the Liberal Democrats happy; to repay perceived debts; to help the Conservatives seem modern and caring; and simply because he believes in it. “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us, that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other,” he said last year. “So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”
What, though, will the change actually mean? Firstly, complete equality. Civil partnerships give almost the same legal rights as marriage, but not quite.

The Church of England is unique in seeing gay marriage as a threat to its existence. It was built to care for every soul in every parish, with priests who automatically become agents of the state. They have a legal duty to marry anyone in the parish who wants it and is eligible. Now, for the first time in 500 years, there could be a difference between the Church definition of marriage and the way it is defined in English law. The Church leadership believes this will undermine its unique position, rights and privileges as the established church – deeply ironic considering it was only created so that Henry VIII could defy the Pope and remarry. 

Frankly, though, it is as if those who speak for the Church can’t see what is really going on. Or else they’re playing politics, desperate to hold on to their last remaining threads of influence. If the end is nigh, it’s not because of gay marriage. That may be a snip in one of the ties that bind, but they’ve been snapping for a long time now.

Society has changed dramatically over 30 years. We no longer want to belong to anything much; we’re disenchanted with authority of all kinds; we have a remarkably improvisational approach to family life; and are open to cultural influences from all over the world.   At the same time, as congregations have shrunk and church leaders have been careless with their money, the Church of England no longer has the cash, the clergy or the people to carry out its historic mission in the same way. 

The Government is very clear that it has other voices to listen to as well, as it attempts to reflect the dramatic recent changes in who we are as a people, where we come from and what we believe in. 

In all three nations, the awarding of civil legal rights should not be controlled by archaic writings no matter how long revered which in the final analysis were authored by ignorant nomads who were devoid of modern knowledge.  If individual citizens want to hold on to old superstitions and what some view as mere myths, that's their prerogative.  They should not, however, be allowed to force those beliefs on others or limit the civil law rights of others.