Party In The Pipeline

This is a lesbian, gay, bi and trans friendly event, and women are encouraged to perform music and bring art.

Not In Our Town: The Legacy of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder

Editor’s Note: Ten years ago, on July 1, 1999, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, a gay couple from Redding, California, were murdered by
white supremacists. Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams confessed to killing the couple because they were gay. The two brothers were also responsible for the 1999 Sacramento synagogue arson attacks. The Working Group documented the tragic loss and the remarkable response by the greater community to condemn hate violence and support the Matson and Mowder families. We asked Clea Matson, Gary’s daughter, to reflect on the couple’s legacy.

By Clea Matson for Not In Our Town:

It has been 10 years since my dad and his partner were murdered. It is so surreal to write those words, simply because I cannot believe that it has already been 10 years since my life changed so drastically, so suddenly, and in such an unexpected way. Even after such a significant amount of time, I still find myself, at times, feeling angry at the fact that my parents were robbed of such a large part of their lives, and that my family and I were robbed of them. But the person that I have become over the last 10 years has been so affected by this experience with loss, violence and hate, and there are things about the person that I’ve become – things that I have learned – that I am proud of.


Through my experience growing up in a place that I perceived to be not accepting of my family, and living through the events of the past 10 years, something that I have come to know is that an ability to feel empathy, or to pay enough attention to feel true empathy, is an essential ingredient to being truly tolerant (or “accepting,” as my mom would have said).

I have learned, and am learning, to be this observant. I realize now that people are hardly ever who they appear to be at first glance. I realize that there is so much behind the actions and statements of each and every person. At the time of my parents’ murders, I could not believe that anyone could see them only as symbols of something wrong with the world. To me, they were, and will always be, symbols of what can be right with the world. This is partly because of their determination to live their lives as they wanted and with whom they wanted, but mostly because of other things: because of how important their community was to them, and what great parents they were.

Soon after my parents’ death a friend gave me a small piece of paper with a famous quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., the one that ends with:

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.”

Since then I have taken this on as a sort of motto to live by – a truth to make sure that I constantly remind myself of.

Clea Matson is pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Amsterdam

Watch video of Clea and her family featured in “Not In Our Town Northern California: When Hate Happens Here”:

A Visit to the Creationism Museum Makes Scientists Laugh, Cry

The museum argues, among other things, that war, famine and natural disasters are to blame on belief in evolution.

from AlterNet:

For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference.


But while there were a few laughs and some clowning for the camera, most left more offended than amused by the frightening way in which evolution -- and their life's work -- was attacked.

"It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?" said Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology and evolution at University of California, Berkeley.

"Like Sunday school with statues... this is a special brand of religion here. I don't think even most mainstream Christians would believe in this interpretation of Earth's history."

The 27 million dollar, 70,000-square-foot (6,500-square-metre) museum which has been dubbed a "creationist Disneyland" has attracted 715,000 visitors since it opened in mid-2007 with a vow to "bring the pages of the Bible to life."

Its presents a literal interpretation of the Bible and argues that believing otherwise leads to moral relativism and the destruction of social values.

Creationism is a theory not supported by most mainstream Christian churches.

Lisa Park of the University of Akron cried at one point as she walked a hallway full of flashing images of war, famine and natural disasters which the museum blames on belief in evolution.

"I think it's very bad science and even worse theology -- and the theology is far more offensive to me," said Park, a professor of paleontology who is an elder in the Presbyterian Church.

"I think there's a lot of focus on fear, and I don't think that's a very Christian message... I find it a malicious manipulation of the public."

Phil Jardine posed for a picture below a towering, toothy dinosaur display.

The museum argues that the fossil record has been misinterpreted and that Tyrannosaurus rex was a vegetarian before Adam and Eve bit into that sin-inducing apple.


Jardine, a palaeobiologist graduate student from the University of Birmingham, was having fun on the tour, but told a reporter that he was disturbed by the museum's cartoonish portrayal of scientists and teachers.

"I feel very sorry for teachers when the children who come here start guessing if what they're being taught is wrong," Jardine said.

Arnie Miller, a palentologist at the University of Cincinnati who was chairman of the convention, said he hoped the tour would introduce the scientists to "the lay of the land" and show them firsthand what's being put forth in a place that has elicited vehement criticism from the scientific community.

"I think in some cases, people were surprised by the physical quality of the exhibits, but needless to say, they were unhappy with things that are inaccurately portrayed," he said.

"And there was a feeling of unhappiness, too, about the extent to which mainstream scientists and evolutionists are demonized -- that if you don't accept the Answers in Genesis vision of the history of Earth and life, you're contributing to the ills of society and of the church."

Daryl Domning, professor of anatomy at Howard University, held his chin and shook his head at several points during the tour.

"This bothers me as a scientist and as a Christian, because it's just as much a distortion and misrepresentation of Christianity as it is of science," he said.

"It's not your old-time religion by any means."

At What Point Do We Speak Up?

by Jim Ru of Oil City:

Just this week we have had a extremely bigoted comment posted in the local Oil City paper, and a sign placed on a local street that is a slur on transgendered people.

Once again, the community is being asked to accept fear and hatred as a political standard, or as a joke.

You may ask why this is important? Why bring this up again?

Why not just ignore these people? Why make a fuss over it? Let's just think positive and ignore them. They don't mean it. It's just a joke. It's just a small group of stupid people.

There is a group that has formed around the United States called Not in Our Town, which started after an incident in Billings Montana.

Here is a video about that incident, and I do hope you watch it. I hope you pass it around to people you know in Oil City and the region.



The national movement web site is HERE.

There are excellent community information links on that site and I think it's important that Oil City pass this information around, especially in the government, the police department, and the schools. I think a community effort is in order here to promote this idea.

At what point do we speak up? Is it really funny to make fun of transgendered people? Does a letter promoting hatred against numerous groups qualify for us to speak up. Or is it just funny to read such things. It's politically incorrect so that makes it amusing.

And when someone gets hurt around here, will it be funny then?

Our silence gives people with hate in their hearts permission to take that next step.

We may not agree on these issues. But if we don't agree that politics is not solved by scapegoating people and making them targets of fear and violence, then our community will suffer because of it, as it already has in my opinion. People do live in fear here in Oil City. Just ask around to any minority. They live in fear because they know people think it's funny and amusing to make them live in fear.

You may say, well this guy is a community leader and has been here a long time. We don't want to upset him. Or that guy is just an uneducated redneck. Just ignore him. You may say these things until someone you know - a black friend, a gay associate, a liberal son, an educated woman - gets hurt.

We can wait until someone gets hurt and then ask, "How could that happen here in our town?" Or we can speak up now.

Boycott businesses that use bigotry and fear as a marketing tool and a political joke. Tell your neighbors how you feel about hate-filled letters in the paper. Then talk to your family and neighbors about what you did and why.

The thing that astonishes me about Oil City is that so many people claim to be Christians here. But how many speak up and follow the words of their teacher? Love conquers hate. Love one another. This is the commandment of the Christian faith. If this is the standard of our community, then your faith demands that you talk to your neighbors who spread hatred and fear.

It astonishes me that so many people sport American flags here and tell each other that they support our troops and our freedom. But if that means that you must behave exactly as they do, or else you face hatred and violence, what freedom is there in that? What exactly did those troops die for?

If you laugh at or ignore political hatred and fear, then not only are you mocking your faith, but you're destroying your freedom as citizens of the United States of America. In both cases, it will eventually catch up with you.

Thanks for listening to my concerns. I know that creating positive, constructive outlets for local people can educate them to find new, diverse environments to explore, and people learn through interaction. My efforts and support go into those ideas. I think the city is doing a good job promoting those outlets.

I know this community is better than that sign and that letter. I have met many many people here who may not agree with me, but respect my right to exist and to express my opinions. I know people here want a peaceful and prosperous community without hatred and fear, especially for their kids and those they love.

Not In Our Town seeks to gather those people together and I hope it finds a place here in Oil City.

The church is at war over homosexuality. Will our youth be the casualties?

Through My Eyes provides an unflinchingly honest look at the role of today's young Christians in the gay debate: what they really think, how they perceive the church, and what they wish other Christians knew.

Over two dozen young Christians agreed to share their private feelings, struggles, and experiences on camera. All of them have a personal stake in the debate. And all of them hoped that their stories might make a difference.

Created for Christians by Christians, Through My Eyes tackles one of the most controversial topics today with compassion and sensitivity, shining new light on the debate for people on both sides. It's unlike anything you've seen before.

It's a powerful, eye-opening experience you won't soon forget.

Learn more HERE.

Penna. State Senator Eichelberger Refuses to Apologize, Again

Pennsylvania State Senator John Eichelberger has called LGBT couples "dysfunctional" and said the state is "allowing them to exist." Dozens of activists confronted him today outside the Senate chambers asking for an apology. He refused.



Sign the Petition ... Demand an Apology ... www.WeExist.us

Church’s Exorcism of Gay Teenager Is Child Abuse and Fanaticism Disguised as Faith

Shocking Video Reveals Underbelly of ‘Ex-Gay’ Ministries

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out condemned Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Conn., for practicing child abuse in the name of religion, after a video surfaced where the church tried to exorcize demons from a gay teenager.

“This video reveals the underbelly of the ex-gay ministries and shows the medieval mindset of such organizations,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “We call on all such ministries to immediately stop the child abuse, which is harm in the guise of healing. As an organization that helps victims of such barbaric practices, we can attest to the psychological trauma that can result.

The exorcism video shows a teen writhing on the ground as adults implore so-called “homosexual demons” to get out. The leaders yell at the boy on the ground saying, “Right now in the name of Jesus, I call the homosexuality, right now in the name of Jesus.” This scene unfolds for 20 minutes with the boy in a near seizure, even vomiting.

Patricia McKinney, pastor of the nondenominational church who describes herself as a prophet, told CNN that she believes homosexuality, like crack addiction can be influenced by demons.

“It’s not just the homosexuality spirit. It could be the alcohol spirit, the crack cocaine spirit, the adultery spirit. Everything carries a spirit,” McKinney told CNN.

Unfortunately, this terrifying incident is not unique. It is a standard part of groups such as Exodus International, which promise to help people “pray away the gay.”

Here's a different perspective:



Learn more at Truth Wins Out

Let's Prove That Love Conquers Hate

Judy Shepard lost her son Matthew to an anti-gay hate crime more than 10 years ago. Since then tens of thousands more Americans have been the victims of hate violence. Tell Congress it's time to act.

Check out FIGHT HATE NOW

Inclusive ENDA Introduced! Ask your Representative to Become a Cosponsor!

In 30 states you can be fired from your job for being lesbian, gay or bisexual.

In 38 states you can be fired from your job for being transgender.

Just think about it: Right now employers in MOST states can take away the livelihood of you, or your friends, or your family members, simply because of who you are. This blatant denial of the rights of LGBT people is an affront to the United States' potential as the standard bearer for equality and a disgrace to every American.


Every single person in the LGBT community has the right to protection from workplace discrimination.

This week, Representative Barney Frank, joined by Reps. Tammy Baldwin and Jared Polis, introduced an inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) - which would extend the existing federal law prohibiting employment discrimination to protect people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The bill was introduced by a group of bi-partisan Representatives and it is important that we here in Pennsylvania contact our legislators to become cosponsors as well. Becoming a cosponsor shows that the Representative will stand firm with our community and helps build momentum for the bill’s passage.

The Representative for Venango County and a large portion of northwestern and central Pennsylvania is Glenn "GT" Thompson. Contact information for Rep. Thompson HERE.

To learn more and to find out how to contact your representative, check out Equality Advocates Pennsylvania.

Congress needs to hear from all of us, and they need to hear from us now.

July 4 "Tea Parties" Co-Organized by the American Family Association Will Include White Nationalists

by Leonard Zeskind, author of "Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream."

On July 4, tens of thousands of mostly middle-class white people in hundreds of different cities will register their opposition to the Barack Obama presidency at Tea Party events from coast to coast. Mainline Republicans will be among the protestors. They might carry poster signs about the rapidly expanding national debt, or against universal healthcare and more taxes. Expect also that peculiar brand of libertarian conservative from Congressman Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, which is actually one of two organizational pillars of the Tea Parties. The other mainstay has been Donald Wildmon's American Family Association. Its website has posted the names of more than 1,500 people who have signed up to organize protests in their communities. A total of 1,271 cities will have AFA "registered" events.


The Tea Parties will also attract a number of white nationalist activists this time around, drawn primarily by the prospect of a replay of Tea Party protests last April 15. At that time more than 260,000 people showed up at over 300 Tea Party events, according to a respectable count by Nate Silver, who used mainstream media reports as his guide. At that time, Minuteman and other anti-immigrant activists added to the count, as did members of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist organization headquartered in St. Louis with member concentrations throughout the South and Mid-South.

A recent opinion piece by Bill Rolen in the Council's tabloid newspaper, The Citizen Informer, underscores his organization's ambivalence over the Tea Party events. On the positive side he writes, "the fact that hundreds of thousands of white people got up the nerve to oppose the government [was] astonishing." On the other hand, Rolen notes the "negative tendency that plagues Tea Party activism...to deny the racial dynamic empowering the movement." He concludes that, "The future of this revolution, if that is what it is, depends on white zealots." Little talk of taxes and budget deficits intrudes into this analysis of past events.

The Council of Conservative Citizens has not yet made a visible and significant organizational commitment to mobilize its thousands of members for the Tea Parties on July 4, but from another corner of the white nationalist movement plans to participate have been brewing since the first week in May. On the Stormfront website, national socialists and others have created a discussion thread under the rubric of a possible Tea Party for Americans Coalition.

At times these posts have an almost cartoonish aspect, with elaborately construed pseudonyms and accompanying graphics--a number of which include pictures of the now deceased National Alliance founder William Pierce. But the conclusions are real enough. They will not wear any gear with swastikas or other symbols of their actual core ideologies. They might carry Confederate battle flags or other more generic symbols of white protest. And they will be handing out a leaflet with a relatively muted political message. "We need a relevant transitional envelop-pushing flyer for the masses. Take these Tea Party Americans by the hand and help them go from crawling to standing independently and then walking towards racialism," one poster argued.

Others had slightly different ideas. Several people said they would bring a variety of pieces of propaganda, with the intensity of racism apparent on a sliding scale. They would gauge the individual Tea Partyer that they were talking to, and hand them material accordingly.

In contradistinction, another message read, "I distributed WN [white nationalist] literature at the last Tea Party in Phoenix. I will be doing it again in July. This is the time and place. For those on a budget, I would suggest printing business cards with the web address of your group or organization. Keep it simple."


This band of white nationalists on Stormfront obviously believe that the Tea Parties represent an opportunity for them to strengthen their numbers, and perhaps gain a larger foothold among the grass roots opponents of President Barack Obama. This opposition may just now be starting to grow some legs. Not in Congress, where Republicans are out-numbered and remain out-gunned. Not in opinion polls, where support for President Obama remains high. Not in the deep blue states of the D.C. to Boston corridor. But in the civic arena, where a constellation of anti-tax, anti-immigrant, and Christian right activists and Republican conservatives are gathering their forces. Expect white nationalists to put their own star in this sky.

Liberals, progressives and Obama-ites of every description would make a mistake if they chose to ignore this opposition, or worse yet decided to deny it exists. And yes, Donald Wildmon and Ron Paul should wake up, before somebody comes along and eats their lunch the way Pat Buchanan and his followers took away Ross Perot's Reform Party in the 2000 elections.

Stop Bullying! Pass the Safe Schools Improvement Act

Racist and Homophobic Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Has Become All Too Common in Venango County Schools. Sign the GLSEN Petition To Call for Change.


Dear Members of the 111th Congress,

Last month the Safe Schools Improvement Act (H.R. 2262) was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor. It is our hope that you will do the right thing and support this essential piece of legislation that will help make schools safer for all students regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.

H.R. 2262 would require schools that receive Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act funding to implement comprehensive anti-bullying policies that enumerate categories often targeted by bullies, including race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression and others.

Up until this point we have failed our students and young people by allowing anti-LGBT bullying to go unfettered and unchecked. The most recent result of our negligence to respond collectively and proactively to this endemic problem has been the loss of two young lives this past April. Within just two weeks this spring, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover of Springfield, MA, and Jaheem Herrera of DeKalb, GA, returned from school with broken spirits and hanged themselves following relentless bullying and anti-gay taunts. These were just the reported cases—thousands more suffer silently.

We commend Representatives Linda Sánchez (CA-39), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18) and Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4) for introducing this vital bill and those who valiantly cosponsor and support this legislation. We urge all members of Congress to support this long overdue legislation—and to reach out to other members of Congress.

When young lives are lost as a result of a problem we have the power to correct, we all bear part of the responsibility. Passing the Safe Schools Improvement Act (H.R. 2262) is a step in the right direction towards righting this tremendous wrong we have committed against our youth through not taking decisive action sooner.

We hope you will think of Carl, Jaheem and the countless other students who are victims of bullying when considering this critical bill. Please, support and vote for the passage of the Safe Schools Improvement Act (H.R. 2262).

Respectfully,

Eliza Byard, PhD
Executive Director, GLSEN

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Our Struggle Is Local

Why the Gay Rights Movement Has No National Leader

By Jeremy W. Peters for the NY Times:

Every so often, the American social order is reshuffled. And that upheaval is typically accompanied by a prominent face.


Frederick Douglass became the face of the black abolitionist movement. A century later, Martin Luther King Jr. played that role in the civil rights movement. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem became the spokeswomen for the modern women’s movement.

Yet the gay rights movement, which is about to enter its fifth decade, has never had a such a leader despite making remarkable strides in a relatively short period of time.

Gay people have no national standard-bearer, no go-to sound-byte machine for the media. So when President Obama last week extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, there was no alpha gay leader to respond with the movement’s official voice, though some activists criticized the president for not going far enough.

Until 1973, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. Today, same-sex couples can marry in six states. How did a group that has been so successful over the last generation in countering cultural prejudice and winning civil rights make it so far without an obvious leader?

One explanation is that gay and lesbian activists learned early on that they could get along just fine without one. Even in the movement’s earliest days following the violent uprising at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village 40 years ago this week, no singular leader emerged. Some historians believe this is in part because it was — and still is — difficult for the average American to empathize with the struggles of gay people.

“The gay movement has always had a problem of achieving a dignity or a moral imperative that the black civil rights movement had, or the women’s rights movement claimed,” said Dudley Clendinen, who co-wrote the book “Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America” and now teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University. “Because this movement is fundamentally about the right to be sexual, it’s hard for the larger public to see that as a moral issue,” he said.

By contrast, the moral authority that leaders like Dr. King, Ms. Friedan and Ms. Steinem could claim — and the fact that Americans did not look at them and imagine their sex lives — made it easier to build respectability with the public.

Another reason for the absence of a nationally prominent gay leader is the highly local nature of the movement. Unlike the civil rights and the feminist movements, the gay movement lacked a galvanizing national issue.

In the 1950s and 1960s, black activists pushed for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and asserted their rights in the courts in cases like Brown v. Board of Education. Feminists campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

“Betty and her group wanted to do it from a more top-down approach,” said Daniel Horowitz, a professor of American studies at Smith College who wrote a biography of Ms. Friedan. “You go to Washington and you lobby members of Congress. In fact, she talked explicitly about the N.A.A.C.P. as her model, and the N.A.A.C.P. had achieved its goals primarily through Supreme Court cases.”

Many gay activists pursued a different approach, focusing on issues pertinent to their local communities. Though he has achieved celebrity status of late, Harvey Milk was a mere San Francisco city supervisor, without much in the way of a national profile, when he was assassinated in 1978.

City councils and state legislatures are where domestic partnership laws and legislation extending anti-discrimination protections to gays and lesbians originated. In 1982, Wisconsin became the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And of the six states that now allow same-sex marriage, three — Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont — legalized the practice through a vote by the state legislature, without prodding by a court.

“The issues of gay rights are mainly state issues, so the focus for activism is going to be on the local level,” said David Eisenbach, a lecturer in history at Columbia University and the author of “Gay Power: An American Revolution.”

The shifting legal and political environment that has confronted the movement over the years has also made it difficult for a singular leader to emerge.

After the Stonewall uprising 40 years ago, the goal was to persuade society to stop treating gays and lesbians like social deviants.

That movement for equality was later overshadowed by efforts to combat AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s. And AIDS itself is a reason leaders were hard to come by. “AIDS wiped out a whole generation,” Mr. Eisenbach said. “What you have is a vacuum. And that still has not been filled.”


As the AIDS crisis was contained, gay activists shifted their focus in the late 1990s and early 2000s to laws about discrimination, hate crimes and domestic partnerships. Successes on those issues were due in large part to gay rights groups that rose up at the local level and learned to work with local lawmakers.

Until 2003, few even contemplated that gay couples would be able to marry. Then Massachusetts’ highest court ruled that gay couples had that right under the state’s Constitution, ushering in a whole new phase of the movement. Activists on the state and local levels were already well in place and found themselves positioned to wage the campaigns for same-sex marriage — as the recent successes in the Northeast have shown.

“They see dispersal as a great thing, that it’s better not to have a concentration or too much attention overinvested in one individual,” said David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has written about the civil rights and women’s rights movements.“The speed and breadth of change has been just breathtaking,” he added. “But it’s happened without a Martin Luther King.”

Four More Years? Say It Isn't So

The Venango County Republican Committee has chosen its two top officials for new four-year terms. Martha Breene of Oil City was re-elected committee chairman, and Rev. Thomas Prosser of Knox was chosen vice chairman. The organizational meeting was attended by 70 of the 74 committee members.

Pennsylvania's Shame: Republican State Senator Says We're "Allowing" Gay People To Exist "

by Michael Morrill

I listened to it live, but I couldn’t believe my ears. So I waited for the podcast and listened again. And he really said it.


A Republican Pennsylvania State Senator told a Philadelphia radio audience that our society is “allowing” gay people to exist.

Senator John Eichelberger (R-30) made his remarks today in a live radio debate with Senator Daylin Leach (D-17) on the Radio Times show on WHYY-FM. The debate was over the senators’ competing bills on marriage equality.

Eichelberger’s bill would enshrine discrimination and bigotry by amending the Pennsylvania Constitution to ban same-sex unions.

Sen. Leach’s bill (SB 935) would expand the definition of marriage and allow same-sex couples to wed.

Michael Morrill's diary:

Eichelberger also made other disparaging remarks about LGBT people and compared gay marriage to marrying a 13 year old.

I’m appalled that an elected official holds views like these. But I’m even more upset that he feels comfortable saying them in public.

If you’re as angry as I am, please take a moment to send an email to Sen. Eichelberg by clicking here.

Tell him no one “allows” LGBT people to exist.

It’s time to stand up and say we won’t allow bigots to say things like this with
impunity.

Take action now! Write to Eichelberger by clicking here

Here’s a partial transcript of Eichelberger’s remarks. Times are approximate. You can take action at:

http://www.keystoneprogress.org/

You can listen to the whole debate at: http://www.whyy.org/...


21:15
Leach: How would he [Eichelberger] want to encourage stability in gay couples?

Eichelberger: I wouldn’t. I mean they can practice whatever sexual activity they like to practice, but there’s no reason to give them special consideration. We don’t give them special consideration in Pennsylvania for any reason. Why in the world would we allow them to marry?

22:05
Leach: How would he want to encourage stability in gay couples?
Eichelberger: There is no reason to encourage that type of behavior in Pennsylvania.

24:20
Eichelberger: That comes back to the definition of family and that’s where we differ. We can call all kinds of things families. I mean, we can say a 3 party marriage is a family, or 7 or 8 people or marrying younger and younger children these days .

25:00
Host: Are you saying that by their very nature homosexual relationships are dysfunctional?
Eichelberger: [Pause] Ummmm. I guess I would say that. I would say that.

38:50
Eichelberger: This changes the definition of marriage, allowing same-sex, and then like I said, 5-10 years from now it’ll be polygamy, marrying younger people, it’ll be whatever…It won’t be a 6 year old, it’ll be a 15 year old, then it’ll be a 14 year old, then it’ll be a 13 year old.

49:40
Leach: Should our only policy towards [same-sex] couples be one of punishment, to somehow prove that they’ve done something wrong?
Eichelberger: They’re not being punished. We’re allowing them to exist, and do what every American can do. We’re just not rewarding them with any special designation.

Cool Org: Silent Witness Pennsylvania

Silent Witness PA (SWPA) is an organization of gay and straight allies dedicated to providing a non-confrontational buffer between those who condemn others based on their sexual orientation or identity and those they condemn. We provide visual protection from "street preachers" and protesters at events such as Pridefests, the showing of films such as Jim in Bold and For the Bible Tells Me So, or staging of plays such as The Laramie Project, using our bodies and rainbow umbrellas as shields. In times of need, we intervene to prevent confrontations between protesters and event participants, often acting as escorts for those who would like to attend such events. Where there are those who publicly promote hate, we will be there to help provide a loving, supportive front opposing them. We are not counter-protesters. Instead, we provide a visual representation of support for those in our society who may feel marginalized.

Silent Witnesses receive significant training in non-confrontation techniques specially designed for the type of work they do. Only those who have received this training may participate in an event as a Silent Witness. Silent Witnesses are easily recognized by their special safety vests and rainbow umbrellas.


Silent Witnesses have been part of GLBT events in Pennsylvania for the past several years. Our purpose is to act as a "human spiritual firewall" between GLBT folks and those individuals who believe GLBT's are an abomination on the face of the earth. This concerned and dedicated group of activists consists of over 600 local individuals who have been specially trained to deal with hate-mongers. Because street preachers and other vicious protestors have a long history of picketing, antagonizing and subsequently suing various individuals and organizations, Silent Witnesses stand ready to prevent confrontations while welcoming and supporting GLBT participants to the event they are attending.

It is often a struggle to refrain from arguing with street preachers and other protestors, but based on past experience, confronting them is clearly useless. Their attempts to engage participants in a "dialogue" are thinly disguised attempts to trap unsuspecting subjects into listening to their diatribe. They are impervious to logic. And at their worst, they are trying to earn a living by provoking an attack and filing lawsuits. It is precisely this kind of result that SWPA is determined to prevent.


While individual members of SWPA may hold deep religious beliefs, and are free to express them during events, SWPA supports diversity in all its forms, including religion. For some, it is their belief in the all-abiding love of their God that inspires them to do this work. For others it is their belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all people that drives their participation. Whatever the motivation, the result is the same: we will continue to support the rights of those who suffer expressions of hate.

Click here for more information about Silent Witness PA.

Happy Father's Day !

Emmy & Sundance Grand Jury Prize Nominated, one-hour documentary exploring the personal, cultural, and political impact of gay men who are making a decision that is at once traditional and revolutionary: to raise children themselves.

For more information, please visit www.DaddyandPapa.com

Pennsylvania Marriage Equality Bill

Press Conference Where Senator Daylin Leach Will Be Announcing His Pennsylvania Marriage Equality Bill

Tuesday, June 30th, 10:00am.

Pennsylvania Capitol Rotunda -- that's the big white building at 3rd and State Streets in Harrisburg

Please Support Senator Leach.

If enough of us show up, this could be a rally!

Please pass this on!

Will Your Senator Sponsor Equality or Discrimination?

Senator Daylin Leach recently introduced legislation that would make Pennsylvania the 7th state to legalize marriage equality.

While I am thrilled at this, I have to admit that I'm very disappointed that only one other Senator, Larry Farnese, has had the courage to stand with Senator Leach.

At the same time, 13 Pennsylvania State Senators, including 2 Democrats, have signed on to John Eichelberger's bill to ban marriage equality.

Both bills, the bill for equality and the bill for discrimination, are seeking more co-sponsors. We've created a petition asking our state senators to do two things:

1) Ask Senators to co-sponsor The Marriage Equality Bill (SB 935), and

2) Ask Senators to "just say no" to discrimination and bigotry by refusing to co-sponsor the bill to ban marriage equality.

Please join the movement toward full civil rights for all Pennsylvanians and sign our petition at Keystone Equality

Thank You,

Michael Morrill
Keystone Progress

Good Old Traditional Family Values

Get Your Vietnamese Bride Now: Only $167 Per Month

• Vietnamese Mail Order Bride: $8,000
• Teach Yourself Vietnamese Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs): $52.33
• Investing in human trafficking, exploitation and racial subjugation: Priceless

To buy a laptop, I can set up a monthly payment plan. To buy a new car, I can set up a monthly payment plan. To buy a Vietnamese bride, I can also set up a monthly payment plan. Is this for real? Apparently yes. Diners Club had made a deal with Vietnam Brides International which offered a four year payment plan of $167 a month, interest-free, for a bride (the actual cost being $8,000).

Amanda Kloer's Human Trafficking blog on Change.org led a campaign to stop Diners Club from setting up these payment plans.

Human beings should not be bought or sold, and they certainly shouldn't be part of a payment plan, a "blue light special", or a clearance sale. Mail order brides are not only extremely vulnerable to human trafficking, but also domestic violence, abuse, rape, and exploitation. While creating a payment plan to purchase a human being is ethically and philosophically disgusting, it also reduces the economic barrier to buying a bride. Removing that barrier allows traffickers to acquire women using less capital than they needed before. It opens the door to a new socio-economic class of criminals to buy and exploit these women.

Unfortunately, this is just a small part of the much larger problem of human trafficking of Asian women and girls. The commodification and exotification of Asian women has lead to luring unsuspecting women, usually from poorer regions of their country, to the United States, only to be sold into the sex-industry or some form of slavery with no hope of escape.

But this particular story does end on a more optimistic note. I'm glad to report that after over 800 people signed the petition, Diners Club has officially canceled their agreement with Vietnam Brides International.

“On behalf of Diners Club International, which is part of Discover Financial Services, we appreciate [your] bringing this specific merchant relationship with a Diners franchisee to our attention. Formal steps have been taken to terminate the relationship [with Vietnam Brides International].”

by Hatty Lee of RaceWire

Obama's Plan for Gay Rights

Check it out HERE



Do Something About It In Pennsylvania!

Nation's Mayors Speak Up for Equality

Where Do The Mayors and other Elected Representatives
of Venango County Stand on Equality?


The U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution supporting marriage equality today.

Conference president and mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels said, “The nation’s mayors are proud to take the lead in recognizing the importance of protecting all our citizens equally. It is now time for state legislatures and our federal government to enact the same protections for all our nation’s citizens.”

The resolution, titled Equality and Civil Rights for Gay and Lesbian Americans, also endorsed federal bills including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, the Uniting American Families Act, and the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The resolution read that the conference of mayors “opposes the enshrinement of discrimination in the federal and state constitutions.”

In a release, Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, said, “By passing this resolution, America’s mayors spoke for the families they know and serve in communities across the country and said that excluding those families from the freedom to marry must stop.”

He added that mayors “have their fingers on the pulse of the country, and their voices today said loud and clear that ending discrimination in marriage is the way to go.”

Cool Orgs: Pennsylvania Diversity Network

The Pennsylvania Diversity Network fosters strength and vitality in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Community by providing news, information, presentations, health programs, events and other services.


While its primary focus is on Eastern Pennsylvania, it is an incredible example of what is possible, and an inspiration to us about the work that is to be done here in Western Pennsylvania.

Check it out HERE

Are LGBT People Ready To Sacrifice For The Fight?

by Nadine Smith of Equality Florida:

At a recent speaking engagement, I asked a group of people, “What would the world be like if, from the day you were born, prejudice had never touched your lives?”


I encourage everyone to try this exercise because it is surprisingly difficult and because I believe it is the pathway to our most potent tools in response to government-imposed second-class citizenship: A sense of urgency and the willingness to sacrifice to harness the transformational power of living “as if.” “As if” the laws had already changed. “As if” society were just.

Sitting at a lunch counter that bans your presence is living “as if.” Keeping your seat when ordered to relinquish it to someone the law has designated your superior is living “as if.”

So where are the places where we contemplate the consequences of living “as if” equality had already arrived. Housing discrimination, workplace discrimination, adoption/custody issues and hate violence are constant threats in LGBT lives, but not in inevitable or predictable ways. Where are the “sit -in” opportunities for the LGBT movement that can expose the contradiction between what our fellow Americans believe they stand for and what they allow to be done in their name?

Certainly discrimination in marriage laws and the military provide the most direct opportunities. These are the places the law defines us specifically as unequal, where we can make a reliable appointment with discrimination and be certain it will show up right on time.

Service members who come out while on active duty and fight for the right to continue to do their jobs are a model for this kind of personal commitment and sacrifice. They decide not to participate in their own discrimination. They and the organizations fighting for them are shifting public opinion in dramatic ways.

What is the civilian equivalent? What can we do that demonstrates not only the rhetoric of equality but the personal sacrifice that will awaken the conscience of a nation?

What if those of us who are married lived as if our marriages are universally legally recognized? What if we literally refused to deny our spouse on any form, under any circumstances, ever?

When the government asks legally married couples in Massachusetts to file as “married” in their state and then mark “single” on the federal tax form, they are asking that couple to participate in their own discrimination so that the government doesn’t have to dirty its hands.

They are literally demanding that we lie, to tell an untruth about our marital status, so they can avoid confronting the difference between the hate-based discrimination they impose on us and the reality of our loving families.

Imagine the ripple effect of government-issued letters to married gay couples ordering them to deny their spouse on federal forms.

We have to compel these moments by deciding that our lives will be about honesty and self-respect. Even if it comes at a price.

Rosa Parks showed us that even one family refusing to participate in their own discrimination will have an impact.

But thousands of us, all of us, can decide to leave the discrimination up to the other side. We can refuse to collaborate in our own discrimination.

If we refuse to deny our spouses even when the law tries to force us to lie. If we insist on paying our taxes as married couples, even though the federal government assessed our taxes as though we were single.


If we risked being detained at the border by customs agents who insist we mark “single” on declaration forms despite the marriage certificate we hold.

Even with expert legal guidance detailing the risks, a good dose of uncertainty would be inevitable for anyone taking such a stand into uncharted territory.

Am I willing to take that risk? Are you? Are we all? Every civil rights struggle in this country has required people to sacrifice.

The country is watching. Are we ready to do the same?

Pride and Prejudice

John Berry, the highest-ranking openly LGBT official in the Obama administration, delivered a stirring and poignant appeal to Justice Department employees at their Pride celebration.

It’s good to be here at the Department of Justice. I deeply appreciate the work you do and thank you for your service to our country. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General, for your leadership in continuing this wonderful tradition of celebrating Gay Pride. And thank you, Chris Hook, for the kind introduction. It’s an honor to be with you all today.


I’m so glad that you’re honoring Dr. Frank Kameny today. In 1957, two years before I was born, Dr. Kameny, a veteran and Ph.D. astronomer from Harvard, was fired from his civil service job solely for his sexual orientation. In one letter to him, an agency official wrote that the Government “does not hire homosexuals and will not permit their employment...” He went on to say that “the homosexual is automatically a security risk” and that he “frequently becomes a disruptive personnel factor within any organization.”

With the fervent passion of a true patriot, Frank did not resign himself to his fate or quietly endure his wrong. He fought back. After 20 years, he achieved the goal he sought: The repudiation of the Government’s policy of formal and unfounded discrimination.

That same spirit burned in the hearts of patrons of the Stonewall bar on a warm July night 40 years ago. Laws against homosexuality were often selectively enforced by police -- not to protect and defend, but to terrorize and abuse an unpopular minority. On one such raid to arrest gay and transgender patrons of the Stonewall bar, that same spark of liberty that burned so brightly in Frank Kameny’s chest burst to bonfire life in New York City.

Saying “no” to abuse, “no” to harassment, “no” to basic violations of human dignity -- proud Americans stood up, fought back, and gave birth to the national movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights.

That movement’s agenda and goal is simple: All Americans should be free to work where their skills enable them; free to share equally in every right as well as every responsibility and burden of citizenship; and free to love and pursue happiness no more and no less than our fellow Americans.

This struggle follows the great American tradition of taking on difficult battles with the same full depth of commitment and passion of those who fought for liberty and against the injustices of their day. Who can forget the courage of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, when many of their neighbors and countrymen saw their pursuit of liberty as treason and would have cheered their hanging?

We need no public poll to tell us how half the country, desperately defending the shackles of slavery, used Scripture, courts, secession, and war to declare African-Americans as chattel and 3/5ths of a person.

Whether it was securing a woman’s right to vote or ending “separate but equal” -- make no mistake -- Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were not unanimously acclaimed and embraced by all their country. Thankfully, they were embraced by enough hearts, with enough passion, that together they could stand their ground with courage and hope, carrying the day for right, for justice, and for liberty.

Today, our country is once again divided -- and pray as I do for a middle ground, finding it is often elusive when liberty is at stake.

The tree of liberty grows but in one direction -- by adding rings. It is that miraculous quality that has produced the proud sheltering and living tree whose branches have withstood the lightning strike of secession and the gale force winds of fascism and communism.

The rings of that tree are nourished by honesty and truth, warmed by love and justice, and rooted in respect and dignity. It is my belief that Frank Kameny’s fight to hold a job he did well and the passionate fight for dignity and respect that began at Stonewall were not isolated events. They were in fact the formation of a new ring of life on the American tree of liberty.

How privileged are we, in this generation, to stand upon their shoulders and carry forth their fight? We must not rest until our ring is secure. We shall be clear in our ends; we shall be honest and open; we shall work where our abilities allow; we shall continue to serve our country with bravery and distinction; we shall love who our hearts desire. And with the help of a President who supports our cause, the aid of courageous fellow country men and women who love liberty; and with God’s grace -- We Shall Prevail.

I would like to end on a personal note. I come from a family with a proud tradition of service. My father enlisted in the Marines before Pearl Harbor and served at Guadalcanal, and my uncle, for whom I am named, was killed in battle in the Pacific.

In the year before he died, my father told me that he didn’t know what all the fuss about gays in the Military was about. He said “we didn’t call 'em gays -- but they were there and they died as bravely as everyone else.” I know he was right. A good friend of mine was a Colonel who honorably served in the Middle East. His sacrifice and risk of life was no less dear than anyone. I ask America, where do you stand -- with his honorable service or with those who would make him lie to do so?


My family has never known divorce. My first partner of 10 years died after a protracted and grueling battle with AIDS that reduced a 6-foot-2 190-pound athlete to 90 pounds at death. I was his primary caregiver -- and I held him in my arms as he died. I would have gladly traded my life for his that night, just as I would do so now for my current partner of 12 years if ever need be. Were we married? No, but I dare anyone to say we were not in love. I was blessed by two supportive families and dear friends who honored our relationship. If I hadn’t been -- I shudder to think -- because no power on earth could have kept me from his side.

Again, I ask: Where do you stand? Honoring love as precious and true wherever you find it, or with those who would demean or deny it?

I urge you. Stand where you can be proud. Stand with service and truth. Stand with love. Stand for liberty and justice for all.

God Bless you and God Bless America.

Word! "Colorblind"

People who claim to be colorblind must lead a charmed life. Constantly numbing their senses with a self-congratulatory grey blob of vagueness, ignorance and neglect, the colorblind have it made. Turning a blind eye to the racism that people experience everyday may salve their conscience, but it wont end racism.



about the WORD! series:
Words. You cant escape them. They headline the evening news, buzz around the water cooler and blow up your cell. They invoke powerful images that convey values, beliefs and an understanding of how the world works. And when repeated, words shape how problems are defined and which solutions are pursued. Words. They whitewash. They blindside. They leave you seeing red. In this series, ColorLines Magazine looks at what we talk about when we talk about race.

As posted to RaceWire

Cool Orgs: Rural Renaissance Network

There's a rural renaissance taking place in a small town or rural community near you.

From artisan cheese makers to farm-stay bed & breakfasts, from Internet-connected free-lancers to retirees restoring native prairies, rural living has creatively reinvented itself for the 21st Century.


Welcome to the good life, filled with all the hard work, pioneering spirit and commitment to community that has contributed to a worldview revolution in our approach to the health of the land and nature -- on which we depend for our survival.

The Rural Renaissance Network is about celebrating these changes, providing resources for those who dream an American dream of a home in the country, and the inspiration and how-to information to make it a reality.

The Rural Renaissance Network is a program of Renewing the Countryside, dedicated to preserving the very foundation of the American character: a thriving and healthy rural America.

Check out Rural Renaissance Network HERE.

Today: Oil Region Indie Music Festival

The Oil Region Indie Music Festival is taking it to the streets Saturday for its third annual celebration that showcases local talent throughout the area.


The event, which kicks off at 1:30 p.m., will close down Seneca Street in Oil City for a free day full of original music, food, art and hands-on activities.

It's a scaled down version from the past two years, said Jerome Wincek, festival creator and featured musician. But we hope having it as a sort of street fair will allow people to become more involved.

In collaboration with the North Side Business Association and the Seneca Street Saturday Nights, this year's affair includes 18 performers ranging in genre from blues, rock and bluegrass to acoustic and big band. And with musicians arriving from Altoona, Pittsburgh and Erie, Wincek said Saturday should boast an eclectic mix of performers more specific to the region.

We've definitely gained more of an identity this year, we aren't just some random festival anymore, said Wincek, noting in past years the action spanned two days and was held in various spots throughout Oil City. It's more of an informal gathering of like-minded people just here to have fun.

Saturday's festival, co-sponsored by the Oil City Arts Council and Clarion-Venango Campus, will also feature local artists giving lessons and demonstrations on the street, in addition to extended business hours and special promotions at some downtown establishments.

People talk about how there is nothing ever going on downtown, well now there is, said George Cooley, a member of the artist relocation program. And this is the kind of stuff you want people to find when they come and visit your town.

Cooley, moving to the area nearly eight months ago from Massachusetts, said settling into Venango County has been a pleasure because of these individually tailored programs. Different from big cities such as Chicago and Boston, he added Oil City has a special flavor and is unique because of the attention it affords each person.

Per capita there is more going on here than in most places, said Cooley, who will provide festival-goers Saturday the opportunity to try their hand at a potters wheel. And that's what's made this work, taking a theory and making it into a reality, showing people things like this can and do happen.

The music festival, slated to take place until 9 p.m., includes performances at two different locations on Seneca Street, one in Pipeline Alley and one near Classy Catering. However, Wincek said visitors are encouraged to bring their own instruments and play wherever a space may allow.

A large tent in front of the National Transit Building will house local artwork and crafts and artist studios throughout the building will be available for use. Sign-ups from interested musicians for three additional collaborations with Seneca Street Saturday Nights, tentatively planned for July 11, Aug. 8 and Sept. 12, will also be collected throughout the day.

I'm very proud of what it's become, it's more than I thought it would ever be, said Wincek, joking that even during hard times, music is a free source of entertainment, happening regardless of economic woes. And seeing everybody come together for a crazy idea has been really reassuring.


In addition to Wincek's group, The Old Hats, other bands to play include Nathanial Custer, Remora Deign, Brian Morgante, Well Strung, Joy Ike, Jeremy Jack, Susette Jolley, Mitch Littler, Brian Stoltenburg, Secretly Plotting Your Burial, Newmen, Justin Parsons, Brooke Annibale and Seth Brewster.

A drum circle, open jam sessions, sidewalk chalk for children and massage demonstrations will also be available.

I'm happy to see another event growing and flourishing in the area, because it's pretty amazing we can do this with almost no money, said Libby Williams, co-chair of the Oil City Arts Council. I just hope people of all ages come to see what it's all about.

In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick's Journey Of Faith

In Barbara Rick's acclaimed documentary, IN GOOD CONSCIENCE, a most unlikely and very funny rebel — an American nun — finds herself at the center of a human rights storm with leaders of one of the world’s most revered institutions, the Roman Catholic Church.


The film chronicles the true story of Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is defying a Vatican edict that she shut down her compassionate ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics, and silence herself permanently on the subject of homosexuality. Her battle takes her all the way to Rome where she attempts an audience with her key adversary over the years — none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the Inquisitor who would become Pope Benedict XVI.

Sister Jeannine has worked within the church for more than thirty years on behalf of the LGBT community and its fight for acceptance, recognition, and equality. When issued this ultimatum from Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II — denounce homosexuality or lose everything — quietly and with respect, she refused.

"I choose not to collaborate in my own oppression by restricting a basic human right," she says. "To me this is a matter of conscience."

Legendary filmmaker Albert Maysles was so moved by Sister Jeannine’s story he offered to shoot it. Executive produced by Humanitas Prize winner Tom Fontana, the film has won support from patrons Ellen DeGeneres, Susan Sarandon, Trudie Styler, Agnes Gund, Deborah Santana, among many others.

Called ‘a masterpiece’ by Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple, ‘a wonderful film about a sensational human being’ by playwright Terrence McNally, and ‘excellent… enormous charm’ by Variety, audiences are embracing IN GOOD CONSCIENCE with standing ovations at sold-out festival screenings around the world. TimeOut NY magazine calls Sister Jeannine Gramick ‘a freedom fighter on the frontlines of the cultural wars,” adding, “This gripping documentary by Barbara Rick is a must-see.”


The film debuted at IFP/Lincoln Center’s Independents Night series in New York City in 2004. It won the Audience Favorite Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Philadelphia Int’l Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Best Documentary at the ReelPride Michigan Festival and Honorable Mention at NewFest for its ‘inspirational and stirring portrait of a woman who has defied censorship to speak out against homophobia and discrimination.’ It was selected as the Closing Night Film at the Queer Screen Documentary Festival in Sydney, Australia and FilmOut San Diego and is featured in the Real to Reel segment of the PBS program In The Life in the fall of 2005. IN GOOD CONSCIENCE is profiled in the Winter 2006 issue of the Yale Divinity School journal, Reflections.

As global debate continues to explode over gay civil rights, this laugh-out-loud film follows Sister Jeannine throughout the U.S. all the way to Rome where she faces grave consequences to her life-defining decision to defy the Vatican.

Learn more and see clips HERE.

This Is What True Political Leadership Looks Like

Gays Deserve Equality

by Pennsylvania State Senator Daylin Leach:

I recently drafted and am shortly introducing legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania. I do so now for several reasons.

First, because many other states are moving to consider this issue, including Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C., which have recently passed legislation. New York, New Hampshire and New Jersey soon will.

Further, a bill banning same-sex marriage was recently introduced in the Pennsylvania Senate, and it is important to provide the Legislature with a timely pro-civil rights, pro-family alternative.

But mostly, each day in which gay Pennsylvanians are denied their fundamental human rights is a profound injustice.

The case for same-sex or gay marriage is simple. The state and federal government confer hundreds of benefits upon married couples that are unavailable to single people. This is done to facilitate and encourage marriage, which benefits our entire society.

We should be doing with gay couples what we do with straight couples; encouraging them to enter permanent, monogamous, stable and legally recognized unions. The arguments against gay marriage are much more complicated.

First, we are told that we need to protect traditional marriage. But from what? What bad thing has happened to straight couples in states where gay couples can marry? Studies show straight-marriage rates remain the same in those states. So do divorce rates, birth rates and rates of domestic violence. There is no change whatsoever in the status, behavior or happiness of married heterosexual couples when a married gay couple moves in down the street.

We hear that some organizations that disapprove of gay marriage might act out if such marriages are allowed. For example, in Massachusetts a Catholic adoption agency didn't want to adopt to gay couples and closed down. This argument is akin to the "Heckler's Veto" concept.

In First Amendment law, some have tried to ban certain speech by saying it would upset the listener who would then heckle or otherwise cause a disturbance. For example, if civil rights workers were allowed to march in the South, that would upset local racists and they might throw rocks.

The courts have consistently rejected the argument that threats based on disapproval were a justification to ban speech. Similarly, there is not a justification to stop people from marrying the person they love.

We also hear the frankly strange argument that if we legalize gay marriage we will somehow have no choice but to legalize polygamy, incest and inter-species marriage. Not so. We draw reasonable lines all the time in all areas of the law. You can drive 65, but not 95. You can keep a gun, but not a truck bomb. Similarly, you can marry one partner, but not an aardvark.

Any law involves line drawing. It seems reasonable that the line should be drawn where it allows each person the opportunity to have a life partner.

The fact is that there is no reasonable alternative to recognized same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples exist and always will. Many of them are raising children.

Many opponents of gay marriage preach that children should not be raised out of wedlock, but the one sure way to raise the number of children being raised out of wedlock is to deny their parents the chance to marry. They also urge young people to delay sexual relationships until marriage. But if gay people can't marry, what would they tell a gay teen about when it is appropriate for them to have a sexual relationship?

Gay couples are denied many of the basic rights and services straight couples take for granted. This includes everything from Social Security survivor benefits to mandatory leave to care for a sick partner. Further, they and their children are forced to live under a legal framework that treats their families as somehow not legitimate. There are literally thousands of such unjust burdens placed upon people who want nothing more than to start a family. Simple decency demands an end to this.

I am under no illusions that this bill will become law in the short term. However, I also have no doubt that 15 years from now same-sex marriage will be legal in all 50 states, and people will be as ashamed that we ever banned it as they are now that we ever banned inter-racial marriage. My hope is that by introducing this bill now, we will start the discussion we need to have and bring the day of equality a little closer.

Gay Marriage Law to be Debated in Pennsylvania Senate

by PinkNews.co.uk

On June 3, as the Governor of New Hampshire made gay marriage legal, a Pennsylvania Democrat Senator has introduced the state's first bill to legalise gay marriage. But at the same time a Republican Senator will propose a constitutional ban on gay marriage saying it could lead to polygamy.

Democrat Senator Daylin Leach's says that the current ban on gay marriage robs gays and lesbians couples fundamental rights such as inheritance, making medical decisions and even the right to visit their spouse in hospital.


Writing in the Philadelphia Daily News, Senator Leach said: "The case for same-sex marriage is simple. The state and federal government confer hundreds of benefits on married couples that are unavailable to single people. This encourages marriage, which benefits society. We should be doing with gay couples what we do with straight couples: encouraging them to enter permanent, monogamous, stable, legally recognized unions."

He added: "The arguments against gay marriage are more complicated.
"We're told we need to 'protect traditional marriage.' But what's happened to straight couples in states where gay couples can marry? Studies show straight-marriage rates remain the same. So do divorce rates, birth rates and domestic violence. There's no change in the status, behaviour or happiness of married heterosexual couples when a married gay couple moves in down the street."

"There is no reasonable alternative to same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples will always exist. Many are raising children. Many opponents of gay marriage preach that children shouldn't be raised out of wedlock, but the one sure way to raise the number of children being raised out of wedlock is to deny their parents the chance to marry. They also urge young people to delay sex until marriage.
"But if gay people can't marry, what would they tell a gay teen about when it is appropriate for him to have a sexual relationship? "

But at the same time, Republican Senator John Eichelberger has said he will introduce a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He says that this will prevent court decisions as in Iowa and briefly in California that gave gay couples the right to marry.

Senator Eichelberger says his proposal is to prevent polygamy and other forms of marriage. "The same logic that's being used for same-sex marriage is the argument that would be used for the next form of ‘marriage," he told The Bulletin

Two similar measures have failed in recent years.

Pennsylvania has one of the oldest populations in the country, with older citizens still showing high disapproval of gay marriage. It is also heavily Catholic.

However, it has been tipped as one of the states which will recognise gay marriage soon.

Nate Silver, one of the nation's top analysts of political data, recently created a map predicting when all 50 states would legalise gay marriage.

Based on factors such as religious power and voter demographics, he predicted that Pennsylvania will legalise gay marriage in 2012.

Equality = Good Economics

WILLIAMS INSTITUTE REPORTS ECONOMIC BOOST FROM MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE AND NEW ENGLAND

LOS ANGELES – Data from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law show that New Hampshire’s decision to extend marriage to same-sex couples will bring an economic windfall to the State. With five New England states now recognizing marriage for same-sex couples, the entire region will experience an overall economic boost of almost $400 million.


Approximately half of New Hampshire’s same-sex couples, or 4,703 couples, will marry within three years. Their weddings will generate over $14.5 million in new spending.

New Hampshire joins four other New England states in extending marriage to same-sex couples. Below we also present our estimates of the number of couples expected to marry in Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont and the revenue their weddings will bring to each state over three years. For Massachusetts, we use official marriage counts from the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Records and Statistics and survey data to measure their actual wedding spending. We estimate the total wedding spending of couples who live in New England to top $163 million.

In addition to those weddings, we project that 75,000 same-sex couples from other states will travel to the New England region to marry. Over 24,000 of these couples will come from New York since their out-of-state marriage will be officially recognized at home. We estimate that each out-of-state couple will spend $3,000 while in New England on wedding and other tourist expenditures, which will result in a total of $228 million in new spending for the region. Combined with in-state couples, wedding spending in New England will total approximately $391.3 million.

The Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy advances law and public policy through rigorous, independent research and scholarship, and disseminates its work through a variety of education programs and media to judges, legislators, lawyers, other policymakers and the public. This study can be accessed at the Williams Institute website, www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute.

Infamous "Ex-Gay" Study Debunked

For decades, anti-gay organizations (including Venango County's Lighthouse Ministries, Christian Radio Station WAWN, and American Family Association of Pennsylvania) have gleefully pointed to Masters & Johnson's 1979 book, "Homosexuality in Perspective", where the famed sex therapist couple claimed they could cure homosexuality.


Sadly, they had released their results on NBC's Meet the Press, which harmed countless GLBT people and fueled the so-called "ex-gay" industry.

In his groundbreaking new book, "Masters of Sex", author Thomas Maier discovered through investigative reporting that the results of Masters & Johnson's study were entirely fabricated.

One can not overstate the importance of Maier's findings. They undo the very underpinnings of the "ex-gay" industry, that has touted "Homosexuality in Perspective" as "proof" that one could"change."

In an exclusive one minute video, Maier discusses his revelation with Truth Wins Out.

Responsibility For What We All Let Come To Pass

We Hope and Pray that the Incendiary Anti-GLBT Rhetoric of Venango County's Own Christian Radio Station WAWN and Locally-Headquartered American Family Association of Pennsylvania Do Not Have Such Tragic Results Here

By Mary Alice Carr

The first time I appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor," in 2004, I sat across from Bill O'Reilly in awkward silence while he shuffled papers and took notes.


Finally, he glanced up and acknowledged my existence. "Thank you for coming on," he said. "Most people don't have the guts."

I said, "Well, you are one of the most-watched new shows on cable."

He swiftly retorted, "The most-watched new show on cable TV."

Let's face it: Bill O'Reilly is not only aware of his power and his reach, he's damn proud of them.

So I went on his show, time and again, even though many other progressives discouraged me. I went because I know what O'Reilly knows: It's the most-watched show, and I thought it was imperative that his audience also hear our viewpoint.

I also know that when you have a bully pulpit, you need to be held accountable for what you preach.


O'Reilly is being incredibly disingenuous when he claims that he bears no responsibility for others' actions in the killing of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday. When you tell an audience of millions over and over again that someone is an executioner, you cannot feign surprise when someone executes that person.

You cannot claim to hold no responsibility for what other people do when you call for people to besiege Tiller's clinic, as O'Reilly did in January 2008. And this was after Tiller had been shot in both arms and after his clinic had been bombed.

O'Reilly knew that people wanted Tiller dead, and he knew full well that many of those people were avid viewers of his show. Still, he fanned the flames. Every time I appeared on his show, I received vitriolic and hate-filled e-mails. And if I received those messages directly, I can only imagine what type of feedback O'Reilly receives. He knows that his words incite violence.

That is why I made a personal pledge to no longer sit across from him after he called for people to converge on Tiller's clinic. I realized that appearing on the show with him would only legitimize his speech and that no good would come of my efforts.


So on Tuesday morning, when an O'Reilly producer called and asked me to come on the show to "discuss the reasons why women have late-term abortions," I held fast to my pledge. I told his producer what I thought: that I had had that conversation on air with O'Reilly five years earlier and that he agreed with me at the time that the decision was between a woman and her doctor. That O'Reilly then went on to pretend we had never talked about it and continued condemning women and doctors. That the nation and those of us in the pro-choice community are reeling from the murder of a doctor who helped women. That we hold O'Reilly responsible for helping to create a climate in which hate was allowed to fester. That I refused to dignify his irresponsible behavior, not to mention his deplorable reaction to Tiller's shooting.

O'Reilly had the opportunity to apologize for his words, and he didn't. He had the opportunity to say that this tragic outcome was something about which he felt sorry. He didn't. When restraint and perspective were called for, he fanned the flames higher. In fact, on his June 1 "Talking Points," he played the martyr, saying his critics were seeking to stifle any criticism of "people like Tiller -- that and hating Fox News is the real agenda here." On his show the next day -- the show I declined to appear on -- he again called a murdered man "Dr. Killer."

I admit that after the call from the producer, I hesitated. What an opportunity, I thought, to sit across from O'Reilly and call him out for what he has done and where his responsibility lies. To speak for everyone in America who is hurt and scared and angry. I have never been a Fox News hater; clearly, I've used the show for the benefit of my movement and my organization, and I've answered his questions on some of the toughest issues around. Didn't I have the right to also call him out for his speech?

But then I realized I just couldn't. Because if the murder of a man in a house of worship wasn't enough to make Bill O'Reilly repent, what hope did I have?

The writer is vice president of communications for NARAL Pro-Choice New York.

Reminder: 17th Annual Erie Pride Picnic Saturday, June 13th

Once again, the Erie Pride Picnic will be held at Presque Isle State Park at the Rotary Pavilion.


It is being held the SECOND Saturday in June (June 13) and will run from 1 PM to 6 PM

Check out all the details HERE.

Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum Offers Up Some Racist Dating Advice

The Republican gave some dating advice, then took the opportunity to say that African-American men aren't interested in marriage.

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet

This past Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was tapped by Fox news to discuss the crucial, timely matter of Obama's Saturday night date. Santorum covered the relative advantages of various date destinations (Broadway or the corner bar?). He philosophically mused about what makes a marriage special (it's, in fact, the mundane!). And, he also took the opportunity to casually propagate some terrible racial myths and stereotypes (via Salon):


Number one, I think it's great that the president has a date night with his wife. He's a role model. He's a role model in particular, whether he likes it or not, in the African-American community.

And you have an African-American community, particularly in the poor inner city areas, we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock. Marriage is an institution that's a bridge too far for too many African-American women and is not desirable among African-American males.

I know this doesn't need explaining, but just for fun: Here Santorum taps into centuries-old stereotypes that paint black men as sexually deviant and irresponsible, and hence to blame for the existence of the black underclass (as opposed to blatant as well as structural racism, the lack of support for all poor people and families, a legacy of violence and discrimination, etc. etc.)

Marriage is an institution that is "not desirable" for African-American men? Really?

Santorum also slips up by saying "African-American women and men", without qualifying the statement with some sort of reference to class status -- thereby implying that African-Amercans are naturally averse to marriage, regardless of class, social status, or education. This also nicely dovetails with classic racist myths about African-American sexuality.

Anyway, nice to know that social conservatives can deeply embarrass themselves and the GOP even when talking about something as trivial as the President's date night.

Here's the rest of Santorum's wise take on modern relationships in case you need some dating advice:

I think he has to realize that flying to New York is self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer. It does not matter where you go with your wife, is that it's with your wife. That's really the point... I would make the argument, the simpler the date, the more normal it is.

It connects to people. Here is what you do. Here is how you do it. And it is not going to Broadway. All right, once in awhile, you do something special. But it is mundane that really makes the marriage special, but because you are with your wife the mundane isn't mundane. It's special.

Beware The Army Of (Some People's) God, 'Cause ... They Want America Back

Enjoy, But Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid:

Church-Based Hate

by David P. Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University.


"'FAG' ran across my chest in letters eight inches high," recalled Jared Horsford, a student at Texas Tech and one of 40 gays and lesbians who tell their stories in this book. "I stared in the mirror, bitter irony rolling through my mind about how illegible it was, bloody and backwards, in the bathroom mirror. I wouldn't make the same mistake a few months later when I carved 'i hate you'—backwards this time—across the same skin."

In high school, Jared was a basketball star, student government president, church youth group leader and valedictorian. But Jared was also attracted to males rather than females. "So I fought. I got counseling; I fasted; I prayed; I dated a girl from church; I worked at a Christian summer camp." But nothing worked. He spiraled between attending ex-gay meetings and engaging in anonymous gay sex. When his desires persisted, he would start "feeling defeated because I wasn't getting 'healed,' and go home and cut myself."

Matt Comer, who came from a conservative Baptist family in North Carolina, began experiencing same-sex attraction in his preteen years. Matt's preacher said from the pulpit things like: "Put all the queers on a ship, cut a hole in the side and send it out to sea." The contrast between his sexuality and the beliefs of his church and family drove Matt to thoughts of suicide. But that same religious faith told him that suicide "would have sent me straight to the depths of hell, landing me in the same spot as being gay. So, I turned to begging and pleading."

Lying on his bed at night, "crying and praying," Matt would ask God to spare him eternal damnation if he tried his very best not to feel attraction to males. But it didn't work. Finally Matt told the truth to his parents. "My mother said I was crazy and sick and told me I was going to hell." Eventually, however, his mother changed her views. "Today," Matt writes, "she is my strength and my most avid supporter, and I know that she loves me no matter what."


The coeditor of this collection, Mitchell Gold, grew up Jewish in Trenton, New Jersey, in the 1960s. He spent his teenage years in a cloud of depression, loneliness, fear and confusion. He tried to pass as straight but was unable to sustain the fiction. "I made a pact with myself: If I could not change and want to be with a woman by the time I was 21, I would commit suicide."

Like a number of others who tell their stories in this book, Gold moved beyond suicidal thoughts into serious planning. Finally he received psychiatric care that helped him toward self-acceptance. "The number one reason I work toward equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is because I do not want kids to go through what I did."

What exactly do such young people go through? Gold and coeditor Mindy Drucker offer not just stories but summaries of some key data. They include the following:

• Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among 15-to-24-year-olds; for every young person who takes his or her own life, 20 more try.

• Gay teens are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.

• Forty-five percent of gay men and 20 percent of lesbians surveyed had been victims of verbal and physical assaults in secondary school specifically because of their sexual orientation.

• Gay youth are at higher risk of being kicked out of their homes and turning to life on the streets for survival. They are more likely than their heterosexual peers to start using tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs at an earlier age.

• Twenty-eight percent of gay students drop out of school—more than three times the national average.



All the stories in this volume focus on the particular problems faced by teenagers from religious families and congregations. Some of the stories are contemporary; others tell of long-ago hurts.

Jarrod Parker woke up one morning at Boy Scout camp (having apparently been drugged the night before) with the word "faggot" written across his forehead, "a picture of a penis at the corner of my mouth," and further obscenities and drawings scrawled over his chest and back. Jorge Valencia, who works at a teen crisis and suicide prevention hotline, recalls getting calls from youths whose parents had told them, "I would rather have a dead son than a gay son." Rodney Powell, a black homosexual who marched during the civil rights movement, says: "I suffered more fear and numbing anxiety from my 'secret' as a teenager than I did from racism and segregation."

Two of the stories are told by the parents of young adult children who died. Mary Lou Wallner lost her 29-year-old daughter Anna to suicide. Wallner was estranged from her daughter because of her inability to come to terms with her daughter's sexuality. She writes that the last communication she had from her daughter was a letter telling her that "I was her mother only in a biological way, that I had done colossal damage to her soul with my shaming words, and that she did not want to, and did not have to, forgive me." Wallner decided to "respect Anna's wishes and give her the space she was asking for." The next communication she received was the news that Anna was dead.

"What do I wish I'd done? What would I do now? Grab my toothpaste, credit card and car keys, jump in the car, drive to where she lives and tell her I love her no matter what. I did not do that, and now I never can." Wallner and her husband now run an organization whose goal is to reunite parents with their gay children.

Elke Kennedy was awakened at 4:30 one morning in May 2007 with a call from a South Carolina hospital, where her 20-year-old son Sean had been brought. "When I finally got to see my son, my knees buckled. He was lying flat on his back, stitches on his upper lip, blood on his hair and neck, hooked up to a respirator. As I stood there holding his hand, he felt so cold. I wanted to hug him, to keep him warm. I kissed him, telling him I was there and that I loved him so much and to please wake up. I remember praying. A doctor came in and explained that the tests had revealed Sean had severe brain damage and his injuries were not survivable."

What had happened to Sean? "As he was leaving a bar, a man named Stephen Moller got out of the car and called Sean a faggot. Then he punched Sean so hard he broke Sean's facial bones and separated his brain from his brain stem. Sean fell backward onto the pavement, and his brain ricocheted in his head."

Sean died. Moller was convicted only of involuntary manslaughter and was jailed in November 2007. Although his request for early parole was denied in February of this year, he will finish his modest sentence in July.

Gold and his organization "Faith in America" believe that religious hostility is at the basis of violence against gays. If the problem is religion, then religion must change.

Religious groups have a First Amendment right to teach their convictions about homosexuality. By law, if they want to teach that homosexuality is wrong, that is their business. Gay advocates usually recognize this right while asking that traditional religious communities not bring such convictions into the public arena.

Gold takes a more confrontational tack. He believes that the heart of the issue is precisely what religious groups teach within their own walls and what religious families teach within their own homes. He pleads for an end to the "misuse of religion to harm gay people."

As an evangelical Christian whose career has been spent in the South, I must say I find it scandalous that the most physically and psychologically dangerous place to be (or even appear to be) gay or lesbian in America is in the most religiously conservative families, congregations and regions of this country. Most often these are Christian contexts. Many of the most disturbing stories in this volume come from the Bible Belt. This marks an appalling Christian moral failure.

In contrast to the love and mercy that Jesus exemplified, Christian communities offer young lesbians and gays hate and rejection. Sometimes that rejection is declared directly from the pulpit. But even when church leaders attempt to be more careful, to "hate the sin but love the sinner" (as that hackneyed formulation has it), the love gets lost. Perhaps we need to focus on refining our ability to love; maybe we are not actually capable of compartmentalizing hate.

Christ's command that we love our neighbors, especially the most despised and rejected, means that we must respond immediately to the crisis outlined in this book. Such love requires not only that we be vigilant about the impact of individual and congregational words and actions, but also that we consider seriously the broader ramifications of Christian activism that seeks to oppose all social advances for gay and lesbian people. Many Christians act as if opposing gays and lesbians is fundamental to the church's mission, which leads many gay and lesbian people to perceive Christianity as their mortal enemy. Is this how we want to be perceived?



Reading about the murder of Sean Kennedy in Greenville, South Carolina, helped cement a conclusion for me: there is very likely a gap between what traditionalist church leaders may intend to say when they discuss biblical references to homosexuality or the issue of gay marriage and what those listening to them actually hear. Such discussions may inflame the less discerning in the pews and lead them toward hateful and contemptuous attitudes and behavior. We must be extraordinarily careful about how we express ourselves, especially in a polarized cultural climate.

We who are Christians must love our homosexual neighbors. We must treat them as we would want to be treated. We must remember that as we do to them, we do to Jesus (Matt. 25:31ff.). We must oppose their harassment and bullying in schools, churches and clubs—everywhere. We must rebuke any Christian who speaks or acts hatefully toward gays and lesbians. We must teach Christian parents of gay children to communicate unconditional love and under no circumstances evict them from either their hearts or their homes, no matter what they believe about the moral significance of homosexual inclinations. We must seek opportunities in the church to build relationships with those who so often have encountered Christian hatred.

Crisis recounts the sad stories of dozens of young people who, like the biblical Esau, cried for a blessing from their parents, friends and churches. All too often they have not received it. All too often they have been left broken, rejected as human beings—at the hands of Christians and in the name of the Bible. Obviously we must extend basic acceptance to gay youths such as these, as well as Christian love.

Moreover, after reading these stories, I feel that Christians have something they need to request from God and from gays and lesbians, and that is forgiveness.

Divorce Religion From Gay Marriages

by Nancy Eshelman for The Harrisburg Patriot-News:

Great literature focuses largely on love or hate.

Who among us doesn't want to love or be loved? Who among us is blind to the hate in the world?


That's why we celebrate love. We feel joy when people marry or celebrate anniversaries. For a brief moment, we're able to set aside the hate that steals innocent lives or batters at our fundamental belief that each of us is equal to all others.

History demonstrates how hate allowed the extermination of tribes of American Indians, the enslaving of Africans, the elimination of European Jews. We hang our heads in embarrassment at these acts of hate.

Yet, we continue to allow hatred to deny basic rights to those who would love a person of the same sex. Most states, including ours, deny gay people the right to marry who they love. A Pennsylvania senator wants to change that.

Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery County, said he will introduce a bill that would establish full and equal marriage rights for same-sex couples.

Leach's bill wouldn't force churches or clergy to perform or recognize any marriage, but it would give gay couples the right to marriage licenses and grant full legal recognition to their unions.

It seems pretty straightforward. Two people in love could declare they are a couple, with all the celebration and ensuing rights of any other couple.

When a man and a woman marry, they don't need a church or a member of the clergy, so the bill isn't breaking new ground there.

And the argument that would deny marriage to homosexuals because they can't have children the old-fashioned way doesn't hold up. If you carry it forward, marriage would be denied to the infertile or to those either too old or with no intention to have children.

Still, there are those who try.

Leach's announcement came on the heels of an effort by state Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair, who wants to strengthen the state's Defense of Marriage Act, which allows marriage only between one man and one woman.

Eichelberger said his bill would amend the state constitution, making it more difficult for any court to overturn the 1996 law.

It seems to me that a lot of those who agree with Eichelberger and oppose Leach find their backbone in biblical quotes.

I think these folks are missing two main points. First, they can believe whatever they want. No one is forcing them to marry anyone or even to celebrate someone's marriage. Second, this country was founded on religious freedom. It bothers me when someone uses their religion to intrude on another person's rights.

We're slow to realize this. So far, only Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa have legalized gay and lesbian marriage. Laws in Vermont and Maine take effect in September.


Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court recently upheld that state's law to ban gay marriages, but the court allowed the continuation of 18,000 same-sex marriages that took place before the ban was enacted.

When viewed as great literature, the Bible is filled with stories of love and hate. But its main lesson, I believe, is to love my neighbor.

Who am I to decide who my neighbor can love?

Proclamations or Progress?

After more than five months of no action on his agenda for the LGBT community, expectations are high for Obama in the month of June -- Pride month. But will he deliver?

By Lane Hudson

After more than five months of no action on his agenda for the LGBT community, expectations are high for President Obama in the month of June. Pride month, rumor has it, is when the White House will unveil a "major announcement." How major and by whose standard remains to be seen.


One of the special celebrations this year will be the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which gave birth to our modern social movement. For me, however, and you must forgive my pessimism, instead of celebrating, I am still wondering why life and limb were risked for so little progress over those 40 years.

My perspective on this is as a Gen X'er, so I understand when many of those who came before me gasp with horror when I suggest that little progress has been made. After all, going from being harassed in our bars to hosting political candidates in our bars who desperately seek our votes and our money qualifies as great progress. Even during the span of my political consciousness I have seen much improvement in public perception and respect from the political establishment.

But for too long that respect has been limited. While most Republicans have used the LGBT community as a lightning rod for electoral gain over the past two decades, most Democrats have responded in kind with acquiescence. In the Congress, that is still very much the case. Even the easy lift of hate-crimes legislation seems insurmountable for Harry Reid’s Senate and a Democratic caucus busting at the seams with 59 members. Although polling shows the legislation supported by an overwhelming majority of the public, Senator Reid can’t wrangle the necessary votes for passage of a stand-alone bill.

There is one Democrat who shed the usual pattern of candidates beyond any before him. Tears came to my eyes when he took the oath of office as president of the United States because I knew that everything was about to change. Throughout the campaign candidate Obama promised to be a fierce advocate for the LGBT community, and the political climate of the nation was ripe for major progress.

Obama quickly appointed LGB people (no T’s) to positions in the government in unprecedented numbers. However, including hate-crimes legislation passing the House, there has been no progress on achieving civil rights for the LGBT community beyond progress that hadn’t already been achieved.

So, we stand at a moment where expectations are high -- and Obama's administration has set this as a time when he will surprise us. Let’s hope their beginning effort is just that -- only a beginning. On June 1 the White House issued its LGBT Pride Month Proclamation. While some laud it, I don’t. It’s nothing we haven’t heard before. More important, it is without substance. Proclamations aren’t legislation and don’t do anything to achieve full civil rights.

What is forthcoming, I have no idea. Over the past two months we’ve seen amazing progress on the state level in marriage equality, with more to come. Yet, on the federal level, it’s not only been zilch, but the White House keeps stumbling over itself on our issues. Nearly ever person at the Pentagon has flubbed "don’t ask, don’t tell" -- from the secretary to a junior press guy. The White House press secretary is increasingly pummeled with questions on our issues and he has yet to deliver an answer that reflects honesty, transparency, and candidness.

Many in our community have asked others to give President Obama time to get in office and get settled before we hold him accountable for his promises. Some have also suggested that the economic crisis and the wars should take precedence over our civil rights.

Excuses for waiting are running out.

What the White House does this month will set the tone for whether Barack Obama’s administration will be one of proclamations or progress. While I have been consistently pushing him and his administration to do what every one of us knows is right, I remain inspired by his message and philosophy. Yet, I need reason to believe that he will be the fierce advocate he has claimed to be. Now is the time to show it.

The Desperate Howls of a Fading Species: Right Wing Extremists

An extremely important essay that has resonance for us and many concerns here in Venango County.

By Bob Herbert for the NY Times:

One can only hope that the hysterical howling of right-wingers against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is something approaching a death rattle for this profoundly destructive force in American life.

It’s hard to fathom the heights of hypocrisy currently being scaled by the foaming-in-the-mouth crazies who are leading the charge against the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who never needed a factual basis for his ravings, rants on Twitter that Judge Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist,” apparently unaware of his incoherence in the “Latina-woman” redundancy in this defamatory characterization.

Karl Rove sneered that Ms. Sotomayor was “not necessarily” smart, thus managing to get the toxic issue of intelligence into play in the case of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, went on to get a law degree from Yale and has more experience as a judge than any of the current justices had at the time of their nominations to the court.

It turns the stomach. There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough.

The amount of disrespect that has spattered the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is disgusting. She is spoken of, in some circles, as if she were the lowest of the low. Rush Limbaugh — now there’s a genius! — has compared her nomination to a hypothetical nomination of David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. “How can a president nominate such a candidate?” Limbaugh asked.

Ms. Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic civil rights organization. In the crazy perspective of some right-wingers, the mere existence of La Raza should make decent people run for cover. La Raza is “a Latino K.K.K. without the hoods and the nooses,” said Tom Tancredo, a Republican former congressman from Colorado.

Here’s the thing. Suddenly these hideously pompous and self-righteous white males of the right are all concerned about racism. They’re so concerned that they’re fully capable of finding it in places where it doesn’t for a moment exist. Not just finding it, but being outraged by it to the point of apoplexy. Oh, they tell us, this racism is a bad thing!

Are we supposed to not notice that these are the tribunes of a party that rose to power on the filthy waves of racial demagoguery. I don’t remember hearing their voices or the voices of their intellectual heroes when the Republican Party, as part of its Southern strategy, aggressively courted the bigots who fled the Democratic Party because the Democrats had become insufficiently hostile to blacks.

Where were the howls of outrage at this strategy that was articulated by Lee Atwater as follows: “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.”

Never a peep did you hear.

Where were the right-wing protests when Ronald Reagan went out of his way to kick off his general election campaign in 1980 with a salute to states’ rights in, of all places, Philadelphia, Miss., not far from the site where three young civil rights workers had been snatched and murdered by real-life, rabid, blood-thirsty racists?

We’ve heard ad nauseam Ms. Sotomayor’s comments — awkwardly stated but hardly racist — about what she brings to the bench as a Latina. But how often have we ever heard the awful, hateful position on race offered up by William F. Buckley, the right’s ultimate intellectual champion? He felt comfortable declaring, in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering the desegregation of public schools, that whites had every right to discriminate against blacks because whites belonged to “the advanced race.”

Right-wing howls of protest? I think not.

Ms. Sotomayor’s nomination is a big deal because never before in the history of the United States has any president nominated a Latina to the highest court. Only two blacks have ever been on the court, and the one selected by a Republican has been like a thumb in the eye to most African-Americans.

The court is a living monument to America’s long history of exclusion based on race, ethnic background and gender. Where is the right-wing protest against that?

It was always silly to pretend that the election of Barack Obama was evidence that the U.S. was moving into some sort of post-racial, post-ethnic, post-gender nirvana. But it did offer a basis for optimism. There is every reason to hope that we’ve improved as a society to the point where the racial and ethnic craziness of the Gingriches and Limbaughs will finally have a tough time finding any sort of foothold.

Those types can still cause a lot of trouble, but the ridiculousness of their posture is pretty widely recognized. Thus the desperate howling.

Overcoming the Myth of Lifestyles

by Linda Henderson:

I received a letter the other day from my step-grandmother.

The Lord had put it upon her heart to write to me about the "homosexual way of life." She included a tract from church which lamented the horrors of a homosexual lifestyle.


Businessdictionary.com has a very good definition of lifestyle:

"Way of living of individuals, families (households), and societies, which they manifest in coping with their physical, psychological, social, and economic environments on a day-to-day basis. Lifestyle is expressed in both work and leisure behavior patterns and (on an individual basis) in activities, attitudes, interests, opinions, values, and allocation of income. It also reflects people's self image or self concept; the way they see themselves and believe they are seen by the others. Lifestyle is a composite of motivations, needs, and wants and is influenced by factors such as culture, family, reference groups, and social class..."

Stereotyping is one of the oldest tools in the book for keeping a hated group isolated and feared.

The idea that there is a "homosexual lifestyle" is the first myth we have to overcome.

How ridiculous!

What is the heterosexual lifestyle? Do they all have the same activities, attitudes, interests, and allocate their income in the same manner?

Talk with anyone who admonishes the "homosexual lifestyle" and ask them if they actually know any homosexuals.

My step-grandmother has never been to my home - not in 42 years. I have actually seen her about 20 full days in my life. Her opinions about my lifestyle are purely based on what her church tells her my lifestyle is about. She, and others like her, will not learn any different because they will hold firm to their stereotype. Because they have used the Bible to justify their mythical beliefs, they will accept no evidence that would contradict it.


Actually getting to know GLBT people would shatter the "lifestyle" myth. Examining their Bible in full context would shatter their literalist myth. Insisting that every single verse in the Bible be applied in it's most literal interpretation would expose the foolishness of their views.

There is no more a homosexual way of life than there is a heterosexual way of life.

Stereotyping is bigotry even when you use the Bible to justify it.

A Proclamation on LGBT Pride Month by the President of the United States

Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.


These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

ExxonMobil Says Yes to Gay Bias

For the past decade a proposal to add sexual orientation and gender identity to ExxonMobil's official equal employment opportunity policy has been voted down by the oil company's shareholders. At the most recent vote more shareholders than ever voiced support for the protections -- but the proposal still failed.

For the past decade a proposal to add sexual orientation and gender identity to ExxonMobil's official equal employment opportunity policy has been voted down by the oil company's shareholders. At the most recent vote more shareholders than ever voiced support for the protections -- but the proposal still failed.

The Human Rights Campaign announced that 39.3% of shares voted in favor of the new policy this year, compared to 8.2% in 2000. Before merging with Exxon in 1999, Mobil included sexual orientation in its equal employment opportunity policy , but the wording was removed when ExxonMobil was formed. Since then, support for adding sexual orientation and gender identity to ExxonMobil's policy has grown, but not by enough to make it official policy. Meanwhile, 85% of Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies -- all Fortune 50 companies have it as part of their official policy -- and more than 35% include gender identity.

"ExxonMobil continues to have the dubious distinction of being the only Fortune 50 company that refuses to add sexual orientation and gender identity to their nondiscrimination policy and is stuck in the ever-shrinking minority of businesses that don't offer domestic-partner benefits," Joe Solmonese, Human Rights Campaign president, said in a release. "While the rest of corporate America recognizes and respects the diversity of their workforce, ExxonMobil continues to resist the most basic protections that should be afforded to all Americans."

Sex with Ducks or Pat Robertson

Riki "Garfunkel" Lindhome and Kate "Oates" Micucci sing a pro-gay marriage song in response to a Pat Robertson quote that legalizing gay marriage would lead to legalizing sex with ducks.

Maya Angelou Calls for Marriage Equality

Acclaimed poet Dr. Maya Angelou is lobbying New York state senators to vote for marriage-equality legislation, placing phone calls to say that same-sex marriage is a matter of fairness.

Acclaimed memoirist and poet Maya Angelou is among the celebrities lobbying New York state senators to vote for marriage-equality legislation, reports The New York Times.


Angelou, who maintains a home in Harlem in New York City, placed three phone calls to state senators in the past week, compelled by her belief that allowing same-sex couples to marry is a matter of fairness.

“To love someone takes a lot of courage,” the 81-year-old said in an interview with the newspaper. “So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, ‘I forbid you from loving this person’?”

Other prominent personalities lobbying the legislature include Paul Tagliabue, the former commissioner of the National Football League, who has a gay son, and Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon, who is a lesbian.

Nixon plans to visit lawmakers in Albany on Tuesday.

Marriage-equality legislation passed the assembly on May 12, but with four weeks left in the legislative session, its outcome remains uncertain in the closely divided state senate.

Despite Angelou’s stature, a call this week did not convince state senator Shirley Huntley, a Democrat from Queens who opposes the marriage-equality bill, to support it.

“If they gave me a million dollars, tax free, I just wouldn’t vote for it,” Huntley told the newspaper.

The Defenders

Hmmmm ... Does This Remind You Of Anyone Here In Venango County?



Learn more at Educate Against Prop 8

The Big Gay Chip On My Shoulder

Former Matchbox Twenty front man turned solo singer Rob Thomas let out his frustrations on The Huffington Post Wednesday -- titling his article “The Big Gay Chip on My Shoulder.”

The self-professed liberal wrote the article in the wake of the California supreme court’s decision to uphold Proposition 8, saying he’s never received more backlash and controversy than he did when he likened Pat Robertson to the devil and declared his support for same-sex marriage.

by Rob Thomas:

I am a straight man, with a big gay chip on my shoulder.

A while back on my Twitter page (yes, I know how ridiculous it sounds), I mentioned that, if I believed in the devil, Pat Robertson might be him.


Being a fairly liberal-leaning guy with either liberal friends or Republican and Christian friends who don't believe that being one has anything to do with the other, I was surprised at how many people took offense to what I had to say.

These people weren't friends of Mr. Robertson but friends, apparently, of God. They had "spoken" with him and he had assured them that he was no friend of the gays. He also told them that he loved America more than any other country and was a huge fan of Dancing With the Stars.

The small controversy or "Twitter-versy" (patent on phrase pending) all started when I had made the mistake of asking why two people of the same sex shouldn't be able to make the same life-long commitment and (more importantly) under the same god, as straight people. Why can't my gay friends be as happily married as my wife and I? It seemed simple to me, but let me start off by telling you a series of things that I believe to be true:

I am a person who believes that people are born gay. I don't think you have any control over what moves you or to whom you're attracted. That's why it's called an attraction and not a choice.

I believe that America is a great nation of even greater people. I also believe that anyone who says that this is a "Christian nation" has RHS, or revisionist history syndrome, and doesn't realize that most of our founding fathers were either atheist or at least could see, even in the 1700s, that all through Europe at the time, religion was the cause of so much persecution that they needed to put into their brand new constitution a SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE so that the ideals of a group of people could never be forced onto the whole. (I also find it funny when people point out to me that it says "one nation under god" in our pledge of allegiance, not realizing that this was an addition made in 1954 during the communism scare of the McCarthy era. It's not surprising, however, knowing that these same people would punch me in the mouth if I called Jesus a Jew.)

I believe the fact that an atheist, who doesn't believe in God at all, is allowed to enter into the holy land of marriage while a gay Christian is not, shows that this law is arbitrary. Are we to believe that anyone who doesn't live their life according to the King James Bible isn't protected by the same laws that protect those who do? Using the same argument that I've seen on the 700 Club, that would mean that Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim weddings are also null and void.

I believe that to deny this right to the gay population is to say to them, "this god is not your god and he doesn't love you." There isn't one person who is against gay marriage that can give me a reason why it shouldn't be legal without bringing God or their religion into it. Still, I'm amazed at the audacity of a small, misdirected group of the ultra-conservative Christian right wing, to spend millions of dollars, in a recession, on advertisements to stop two men or women who love each other from being able to be married, but when you present any opposition to them, they accuse you of attacking their religion. Isn't it funny that the people who are the quickest to take someone's basic rights to happiness are always the loudest to scream when someone attacks their right to do so?



But this isn't a paper about religion. How could it be? Since we clearly have a separation of church and state, how could a conversation about laws have anything to do with religion at all? I'm writing about basic civil rights. We've been here before, fighting for the rights of African Americans or women to vote, or the rights of Jewish Americans to worship as they see fit. And, just as whites fought for African Americans or Christians for Jewish Americans, straight people must stand up and be a voice for gay people.

I've heard it said before, many times, that if two men or two women are allowed to join into a civil union together, why can't they be happy with that and why is it so important that they call it marriage? In essence, what's in a name?

A civil union has to do with death. It's essentially a document that gives you lower taxes and the right to let your faux spouse collect your insurance when you pass away. A marriage is about life. It's about a commitment. And this argument is about allowing people to have the right to make that commitment, even if it doesn't make sense to you. Anything else falls under the category of "separate but equal" and we know how that works out.

The support of legalizing gay marriage is in no way meant to change the ideals of the section of Christians who believe that homosexuality is a sin. But we should refuse to let other people's ideals shape the way we live our lives. Each of us has a short ride on this earth and as long as we stay in our lane, and don't affect someone else's ride, we should be allowed to drive as we see fit.

Bush Solicitor General, Ted Olson, Explains Why He's Now For Gay Marriage

When Will There Be Public Voices of Support for GLBT Visibility, Rights & Equality in Venango County?

by John Aravosis at Americablog:

We wrote recently about how Ted Olson, George Bush's former Solicitor General (the guy who argues the administration's cases before the Supreme Court) - and the guy who argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court on behalf of Bush - is now teaming up with attorney David Boies to launch a federal legal challenge to Prop 8 in Cailfornia.

As I mentioned last night, it's hard to overplay the significance of this. Olson may very well be the man singlehandedly responsible for putting George Bush in the White House these past eight years. He is a conservative. He was a member of the board of the American Spectator, the magazine that investigated Bill Clinton in the early 90s, and got that entire ball of wax rolling. Olson was the guy who was so conservative that Harry Reid torpedoed Bush's desire to make Olson Attorney General after Gonzales. Olson is so conservative that Bob Novak (aka Novakula) called him "highly esteemed."

You get the point.

This is as significant in conservative circles, I believe, as former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt, now supporting gay marriage. Moderates in the Republican party - or perhaps more accurately, conservatives - are suddenly speaking out with more moderate views. The irony is that we always wanted moderate/liberal Republicans to stand up and denounce the culture wars. To take their party back. But instead, we have a growing number of conservatives who are washing their hands of the religious right and its phobias.

Read what Olson said to Byron York at the Washington Examiner about his work on the Prop 8 case:

"I personally think it is time that we as a nation get past distinguishing people on the basis of sexual orientation and that a grave injustice is being done to people by making these distinctions," Olson told me Tuesday night. "I thought their cause was just."

I asked Olson about the objections of conservatives who will argue that he is asking a court to overturn the legitimately-expressed will of the people of California. "It is our position in this case that Proposition 8, as upheld by the California Supreme Court, denies federal constitutional rights under the equal protection and due process clauses of the constitution," Olson said. "The constitution protects individuals' basic rights that cannot be taken away by a vote. If the people of California had voted to ban interracial marriage, it would have been the responsibility of the courts to say that they cannot do that under the constitution. We believe that denying individuals in this category the right to lasting, loving relationships through marriage is a denial to them, on an impermissible basis, of the rights that the rest of us enjoy…I also personally believe that it is wrong for us to continue to deny rights to individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation."

If Ted Olson can say that about gay marriage, then all bets are off in terms of what we should expect from Democratic politicians.

Joe and I both used to give a lot of latitude to Democrats on gay marriage. We're both realists who believe that civil rights, like so many other victories, are most often won in small steps (or "tranches" (aka slices) as they say in the financial world, and France). We were willing to cut Obama some slack on gay marriage because we understood that America wasn't there yet, and it was difficult for a Democratic politician to openly support gay marriage and not lose his career.

No more.

Times have changed. We have conservative Republican leaders like Steve Schmidt and Ted Olson openly endorsing gay marriage while our Democratic president and far too many of his administration are treating gays and their civil rights like some kind of crazy Aunt you don't talk about in polite company because she's just so embarrassing.

Religious right bigots like to invoke Obama's supposed opposition to gay marriage when trying to take away our civil rights, and the White House says nothing to dispel the comparison. Well, perhaps it's time we started quoting pro- gay marriage conservatives like Steve Schmidt and Ted Olson, and asking the White House why Barack Obama seems to have a bigger hang up with our civil rights - hell, with us (do you see anyone openly gay in the Cabinet?) - than two of the most conservative Republicans in Washington.

Please Support Equality with a Phone Call on Thursday Night

Friends,

Representative Babette Josephs of Philadelphia will be on Pennsylvania Cable Network’s call-in program Thursday night at 7pm to discuss House Bill 300, legislation that would outlaw discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Pennsylvanians in employment, housing, and public accommodation.


Rep. Josephs is one of our greatest champions for LGBT equality at the General Assembly. What she needs from you tomorrow night is your support! The other guest will be Randy Wenger from the Pennsylvania Family Institute, an anti-gay organization that advocates against LGBT civil rights at the state capitol.

The phone number to call in to support HB 300 is 1-877-726-5001. If you don’t have cable, you can watch the program online at http://www.pcntv.com/streaming/streaming.html.

Talking points are available at our website:

http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/PHRAtalkpts.pdf
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/TPsBusinessHB300.pdf
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/ReligionAndHB300.pdf
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/GenderID101HB300.pdf

You know how people say, “when push comes to shove”? Well, now is that time on HB 300. We need you to get loud. Because freedom can’t protect itself….

Yours in liberty,

Andy Hoover
Legislative Director
ACLU of Pennsylvania
Don't mourn. Organize.

Invasive and Traumatizing

by Wayne Besen:

Having watched the court proceedings on television, I was pretty certain that the California Supreme Court was going to uphold Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to overturn an earlier court ruling allowing gay couples the freedom to marry.

Still, knowing that a punch to the gut is coming does not make it hurt any less. The 6-1 ruling was degrading, humiliating and a shameful day that will live in infamy. The decision upheld tyranny of the majority and promoted the idiotic idea of mob rule.

What next?

Can the voters of California now decide whether I can eat bacon and eggs for breakfast? Are they able to choose if I can own a cat or a dog? May they regulate my weight or pick what career I choose?

These are serious questions. The fact is, banning my potential marriage is more an imposition and hardship than if the voters had chosen to enact the above examples. Any non-biased person would agree that the idea of the public banning the possibility of their marriage would be both invasive and traumatizing. Yet, the voters of California, backed by the Supreme Court, upheld this Orwellian idea.

Really, what are the limits to such insanity? Are we unique individuals with inalienable rights or public property with provisional rights granted or eliminated by the whims of the fickle electorate?

In his dissent, Justice Carlos Moreno was correct to write, "Denying gays and lesbians the right to marry, by wrenching minority rights away from judicial protection and subjecting them instead to a majority vote, attacks the very core of the equal protection principle."

There are now calls from gay and lesbian leaders to place the marriage question back on the ballot in California. The competitive side of me says, "bring it on, let's win." But, another side believes that the gay and lesbian community should simply boycott all votes relating to rights - and take our outrage to the streets and the halls of Congress. After all, why are we the only minority in the history of this nation that has had to explicitly win public approval for our most basic needs?

Hell, if African-Americans had been forced to win equality through referendum they'd still be drinking out of separate water fountains in the South. Yet, we are routinely forced to degrade our humanity and grovel to voters, who smugly sit on the throne, judging whether we are worthy to visit our ailing spouses (scratch that, we are now partners, again) in their hospital beds.

The only silver lining is that the very act of fighting has compelled more people to "come out" - thus eroding the stigma of homosexuality. Recent public opinion polls have reflected this shift, with supporters of marriage equality reaching more than 40 percent. Demographic trends are also favorable, with younger voters embracing the freedom to marry.

No doubt, anti-gay forces are celebrating today's ruling as a major victory. Still, the court's ruling upholding the same-sex marriages that already took place in California must be disconcerting. If the existence of 18,000 gay married couples did not cause God to plunge California into the ocean, why would 180,000 make a difference? Our opponents have a real messaging problem that will only deepen, as more Californians are introduced to these couples.

The "Lucky 18,000" also creates the existence of a new caste system. At the top of the hierarchy are straight married couples that receive state and federal benefits. The next rung down, we have legally married gay couples who receive state benefits. Then, of course, we have the untouchables, who receive state domestic partnerships as a result of their inferior status. It seems that until gay couples can tie the knot, the judicial system will be tied up in knots over these supposedly "separate but equal" arrangements. And, I'm confident the public will eventually see the current reality as inherently unfair.

At a rally in New York in response to the ruling, I joined thousands of protesters who turned their disappointment into determination and pain into progress. Our movement is resilient and we understand that this is merely a speed bump that will not be a deterrent from ultimate victory.

I am further encouraged by the hoards of young activists who joined me at the Union Square demonstration. Mobilized by a sense of injustice and organized through the Internet, they may be the first generation fully supported by their peers. By the time they attend their college reunions, state sanctioned discrimination will be a distant memory, like homework and drinking games. Unfortunately, that day has yet to arrive, and gay people of all ages are experiencing a nasty hangover from the California Supreme Court's egregious ruling.

Good News: Sen. Daylin Leach to Introduce Bill Providing For Full, Equal Marriage Rights to Pennsylvania's Same-Sex Couples

Take Action Below: It's Time Venango County Joins the Movement for Fairness and Equality for All.

HARRISBURG, May 27, 2009 – Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Delaware/Montgomery, today announced plans to introduce a bill that would offer full and equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania. Under the new legislation, Pennsylvania would also recognize same-sex marriages conducted in other states.

Leach noted that after the recent passing of same-sex marriage legislation in New Hampshire and Maine, and the rapidly expanding list of states considering the approval of same-sex marriage, it is time for Pennsylvania to act.

“In the past few weeks, several states have legalized same-sex marriage, and many will soon follow suit,” Leach said. “There has never been a more propitious time for Pennsylvania to embrace equality and enshrine the civil right of all Pennsylvanians to marry.”

While the bill would not require religious institutions to perform any marriage ceremonies or recognize any marriages that they do not wish to sanction, Leach said his legislation would dissolve all of the barriers to building families that gay and lesbian couples currently face, both at the state and federal level.

“The alternative to legalizing same-sex marriage is retaining our current, archaic protocol which treats an entire group of citizens as second-class,” Leach said. “This protocol denies the reality of same-sex families, many of whom have children. It provides no vehicle by which society can encourage gay couples to do what it encourages straight couples to do: namely to form permanent, monogamous and committed life-long partnerships.”

Leach’s bill is currently circulating for co-sponsorship.

Please contact our local State Senator Mary Jo White to let her know we support this bill and expect her to become a co-sponsor.

Capitol Address
286 Capitol Building, Senate Box 203041
Harrisburg, PA 17120
Phone: 717-787-8724
TTYD: 800-364-1581
Fax: 717-772-1589
Email: mwhite@pasen.gov

District Address
1140 Liberty Street
Franklin, PA 16323-1140
Phone: 814-432-4345

In The Long Run, We May Have Just Scored A Victory In California

by John Aravosis:

Yesterday the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, a ballot initiative that made it illegal to marry gay couples. But the court did something else. They let stand the marriages of 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before Prop 8 became law. I believe that those marriages may, in the long run, make gay marriage inevitable in California.

Sexual orientation already enjoys equal status with gender and race in California discrimination law, and, as the LA Times notes, today's court decision doesn't change that:

Even with the court upholding Proposition 8, a key portion of the court's May 15, 2008, decision remains intact. Sexual orientation will continue to receive the strongest constitutional protection possible when California courts consider cases of alleged discrimination. The California Supreme Court is the only state high court in the nation to have elevated sexual orientation to the status of race and gender in weighing discrimination claims.

The fact that 18,000 gay marriages will remain on the books means that, eventually, another case will go to the California Supreme Court, questioning the constitutionality of laws banning gay marriage, and the court will have to consider why those 18,000 marriages how not destroyed traditional marriage as we know it. In other words, the ongoing existence of these marriages, with no demonstrable harm being caused by their existence, will call into question, if not outright destroy, the bigots' argument for why the state has an interest in banning gays from getting married. In more colloquial terms, no harm no foul.

Yes, the decision is disappointing, but it wasn't unexpected. What is now clear is that those 18,000 gay marriages will remain the law of the land in California. And those 18,000 gay couples should now be able to get California state benefits that straight married couples get. All of that will eventually, I believe, lead California courts to rule that the sky has not fallen - there is no valid reason for not protecting gay couples equally under the law.

And those 18,000 couples will help prove, in states across the land, that the existence of gay marriages do not somehow cause bigots like Tony Perkins and Jim Inhofe to suddenly want to get divorced and shack up with a guy.

Nationwide Parties/Protests Planned: The California Supreme Court to Deliver Its Prop. 8 Verdict on Tuesday

Those battling for equality have devised new outlets for activism which have amped up the pressure for action at every level.

The California Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on Tuesday morning at 10am PT on whether or not to throw out Prop. 8, a Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in the state. Brian Devine has the best legal description of this anywhere, which you can read here. The Court isn't really looking at the law itself, but whether a change of this type violates the limited ability of the people to amend the Constitution through an initiative; in other words, whether Prop. 8 was an amendment, which is legal through the initiative process that was used, or a revision, which requires a more deliberative process.

Based on the oral arguments, most people believe that the Court will not overturn Prop. 8, but may allow the 18,000 marriages that were consummated when same-sex marriage in the state was legal to remain that way. But the Court could surprise.

The initiative battle and particularly the aftermath of Prop. 8 have sparked a tremendous amount of activism in the state and nationally. Regardless of the outcome, the group at Day of Decision will hold nationwide events praising or protesting the Court ruling. On Saturday, 70 civil rights and progressive groups are sponsoring Meet In The Middle For Equality, a large gathering in Fresno, CA.

Lucas O'Connor remarks:

All of which adds up to yes, Prop 8 has proven to be one of the best organizing points in recent decades for the state of California. It's been a perfect storm of tactical and technological innovation from facebook and text messaging plus orgs like Courage Campaign and CREDO meeting resurgent activist energy and experience coming from the issue and the '08 presidential campaign legacy.

Like with the Dallas Principles, those battling for equality have devised new outlets for activism which have amped up the pressure for action at every level.

300,000 people have signed the pledge to repeal Prop. 8. Grassroots groups have sprung up out of nowhere, with more coming on line every day. There is no equal to the activism and organizing this has set off.

If I have any faith left in the ability for California to manage its seemingly intractable governmental problems, it's because I see this effort that has been launched in the name of rights and equality, and dream that it can be scaled up into a larger progressive movement that expands the fight for justice. Such an organizing effort has never even really been tried in the nation's largest state, and if successful could spread like wildfire across the country.

Distortions Aside, Clergy Support Gay Rights in Surprising Numbers

By Peter Montgomery for Religion Dispatches:

In a recent ad by the National Organization for Marriage, a scary storm of homosexuality threatens to rain gays into people’s lives and churches. That campaign, widely mocked by Stephen Colbert and numerous others, was just the most recent example of the Religious Right’s ongoing effort to portray the gay rights movement as an enemy of religious liberty and faith itself.


Progressive religious leaders have been working hard to make it clear that religion and religious people are not only on the “anti” side of the gay rights movement. Now there’s new evidence for widespread support among Christian leaders for public policies that protect the rights and lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and for their full inclusion in the life of the church.

An in-depth analysis of Mainline Protestant clergy shows large majorities of support for anti-discrimination laws, hate crimes legislation, and the right of gay couples to adopt children. Even same-sex marriage, so often portrayed by Religious Right leaders as an attack on the church, draws support from nearly half of Mainline Protestant clergy when it is clarified that no church would be forced to bless same-sex couples.

Those findings are drawn from recently-released findings from the Clergy Voices Survey conducted last year by Public Religion Research. Researchers identified 1,000 senior clergy from each of the seven largest Mainline Protestant denominations and sent them in-depth questionnaires by mail (the response rate was over 40 percent). The survey’s 60-plus questions covering LGBT issues provide the most extensive look ever at clergy beliefs about homosexuality, interpretations of scripture, and the inclusion of LGBT people in the life of the church—including ordination.

The PRR analysis holds mostly good news for equality advocates providing yet another tool for challenging assertions by anti-gay activists and public officials that, for example, hate crimes laws are a designed as a prelude to dragging preachers from their pulpits.

Among the most dramatic findings is the striking diversity of opinion within Mainline clergy who, in general, hold much more diverse political views than white evangelicals; Mainline Protestants are one of the only major religious groupings who are truly swing voters. (White Catholics being the other).

Some of the divisions break down pretty dramatically across denominational lines, with clergy from the United Church of Christ and Episcopal Church at the equality-affirming end of the spectrum, and clergy from the American Baptist Churches, USA and the United Methodist Church at the more conservative end, both theologically and politically.

With facts support doubles

But it’s also interesting to look at factors that cut across the denominations. The authors of the analysis, Public Religion Research’s Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox, also looked at a set of questions, including things such as the inerrancy of scripture and the sinfulness of homosexuality, to evaluate Mainline clergy along traditionalist/orthodox and modernist theological orientations. And, based on questions about sexuality, public policy, and the role of LGBT people in the church, they divide Mainline clergy into three major groupings.

Roughly equal proportions fall into a strongly gay-supportive base—who generally do not see homosexuality as a sin and are very supportive of pro-equality policies and full inclusion of gays in church leadership (29 percent)—and an opposing base holding the opposite view (30 percent). A plurality of respondents (41 percent) fall into what they call the Uncertain Middle.


That large middle group is ambivalent or uncertain about the nature of homosexuality, but is also generally supportive of equality-affirming public policies—much closer on policy issues to the supportive base than to the opposition. In some ways, clergy in the Uncertain Middle model an approach to the public policy issues that gay-rights advocates need to bring more fully into the policy arena: the majority of these clergy believe that having religious questions or concerns about the nature or sinfulness of homosexuality does not require one to oppose equality in the legal realm. This is the separation of church and state in action; with churches deciding questions about leadership and ordination, and policy decisions being made on constitutional principles like equality under the law.

This kind of clergy voice could be especially compelling to those people of faith who find themselves in an uncertain middle, perhaps struggling with what they have been taught about scripture, and wondering how much credence to give the arguments that religious liberty and legal equality are somehow irreconcilable.

This potential is evidenced by one of the most striking findings in the survey, which deals with support for same-sex marriage among clergy in the Uncertain Middle—which, remember, is a 41 percent plurality of the overall group. When asked whether they support marriage for same-sex couples, civil unions but not marriage, or no legal recognition at all, only 26 percent of clergy in the uncertain middle initially choose marriage equality. But when asked a follow-up question about whether they would support allowing gays to legally marry if the law guarantees that no church would be forced to marry any couple, that support jumps a remarkable 23 percentage points, to 49 percent. That is a powerful and potentially very useful fact.

But perhaps the most hopeful results for gay-rights advocates is the fact that almost half of the Mainline clergy report that their own views on gay and lesbian issues have become more liberal over the past ten years, with only 14 percent saying they have become more conservative.

Peter Montgomery, an Advisory Council member of ReligionDispatches, was until recently Vice President for Communications at People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation. Peter is now a spokesperson on a range of issues, including religion and politics, gay rights, and free speech.

Before joining People For in 1994, Peter Montgomery was associate director of grassroots lobbying for Common Cause where he worked on grassroots lobbying campaigns, volunteer recruitment, and media relations strategy. He wrote for Common Cause Magazine, an award-winning journal featuring investigative reporting about the federal government, where his work was honored by Project Censored.

Watch Out Conservative America -- the Queer Base Is Getting Organized

There's a new call to action being sent out and it's time to start listening.

While the rest of progressive America was cheering on last November's election night, things weren't a total celebration for many in California as gay marriage foes won the battle over Proposition 8 and the few months that same-sex marriages had been sanctioned by the state Supreme Court came to an abrupt end.

California took a step back as Iowa and much of New England is moving forward to grant equal marriage rights and both the setbacks and victories are helping to spur new waves of activism for LGBT equal rights.

The Advocate reported a meeting that just took place among 20 activists to try and set a new course:

The group, which included grassroots activists, bloggers, and donors/fund-raisers, laid out eight organizing principles that underlie their call to action, seven civil rights goals for the movement as a whole, and seven ways to get involved, all of which are included below.

Participants said the meeting was mutually driven by a sense of historic opportunity combined with some discontentment over the pace at which LGBT rights are moving forward.

Here's one important point that makes me hopeful that they'll be bringing something different to the table:

For a number of reasons, Winkleman said the group decided not to include any executive directors from big LGBT organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He said they hoped to create something fresh and aspirational that was not driven by the needs, desires, resources, or advancement of any one particular organization.

The article also lays out their principles, goals and call to action:

PRINCIPLES

The following eight guiding principles underlie our call to action. In order to achieve full civil rights now, we avow:

1. Full civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals must be enacted now. Delay and excuses are no longer acceptable.

2. We will not leave any part of our community behind.

3. Separate is never equal.

4. Religious beliefs are not a basis upon which to affirm or deny civil rights.

5. The establishment and guardianship of full civil rights is a non-partisan issue.

6. Individual involvement and grassroots action are paramount to success and must be encouraged.

7. Success is measured by the civil rights we all achieve, not by words, access, or money raised.

8. Those who seek our support are expected to commit to these principles.

FULL CIVIL RIGHTS GOALS

Being united by common principles and engaging in united action, we will achieve the following goals:

1. DIGNITY AND EQUALITY. Every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender person has inherent dignity and worth, and has the right to live free of discrimination and harassment.

2. FAMILY. Every LGBT person has the right to a family without legal barriers to immigration, civil marriage, or raising children.

3. ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY. Every LGBT person has the right to economic opportunity free from discrimination in employment, public housing, accommodation, public facilities, credit, and federally funded programs and activities.

4. EDUCATION. Every LGBT child and youth has the right to an education that is affirming, inclusive, and free from bullying.

5. NATIONAL SECURITY. Every LGBT person should have the opportunity to serve our country openly and equally in our military and foreign service.

6. CRIME. Every LGBT person should enjoy life protected against bias crimes.

7. HEALTH CARE. Every person should have access to affordable, high quality, and culturally competent health care without discrimination.

CALL TO ACTION

1. We demand that government officials act now to achieve full civil rights without delay.

2. Our organizations and individuals need to develop a collaborative and revolutionary new organizing model that mobilizes millions of supporters through emerging Web and phone technologies.

3. All LGBT individuals must accept personal responsibility to do everything within their power for equality and should get involved in the movement by volunteering, giving, and being out.

4. We will hold elected officials and our organizations accountable for being transparent and achieving full civil rights by active participation when possible and active opposition when necessary.

5. Our allies need to be proactive in public support for full civil rights.

6. Every government measure that quantifies the U.S. citizenry must permit LGBT individuals to self-identify and be counted in every way citizens are counted.

7. We demand that the media present LGBT lives in fair, accurate, and objective ways that neither include nor give credence to unsubstantiated, discriminatory claims and opinions.

WAYS TO STAY UPDATED

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"Inequality Isn't Just Un-Republican - It's Un-American"

An Open Letter to New York Republicans by Meghan McCain (daughter of John McCain):

As I read the news about the recent advances of marriage equality across our country, I think it is easy for many to get distracted by the politics and rhetoric on this issue and lose sight of what is really at its heart: the equality of freedom.


No matter how politically charged the discussions about marriage equality may get, the question is really a simple one: Do the rights and privileges we offer citizens include everyone in our country, or only some of us?

I believe that allowing gays and lesbians the freedom to marry is an idea whose time has come. Though my opinion is no doubt influenced by my family's public role in political life, I still approach this from personal experience, as I think most people do. For me, this is about treating all of my friends, and all of our brothers, sisters, children and grandchildren the same as I want to be treated. Equality under the law and personal freedoms are what make America the greatest country in the world, and they are core values that I hold as a Republican.

As I recently wrote after speaking at the Log Cabin Republican convention: "People may always have a difference of opinion . . . but championing a position that wants to treat people unequally isn't just un-Republican. At its fundamental core, it's un-American." I believe most Americans want our nation to succeed. Marriage equality moves us to a place where more of us can do a better job of taking care of our families.

Gays and lesbians are a vital part of our communities. They are doctors, teachers, firefighters, emergency personnel and neighbors. In this way, marriage equality is also about supporting good citizens and strengthening our communities. When a committed gay couple seeks to declare their love for one another and get married, the whole community benefits from the added stability and strength of that family. On top of that, we don't give up anything by sharing responsibilities and protections with those whom we love.

That's why I support marriage equality. It is the best and fairest way to grant gay and lesbian neighbors and family members the protections and responsibilities that they need to provide for their family and give back to their community.

As Republicans, we understand the importance of strong communities. Last week, the New York Assembly passed the marriage bill with the support of five Republican Assembly members. Now, the bill goes before the state Senate, where Republican senators will make the difference on whether the bill becomes law or dies. Once again, New York has the opportunity to make a statement about Republican values and fairness by passing the marriage bill.

I believe marriage equality will soon come to New York. My hope is that Republican senators will offer their support and make the difference to pass the marriage bill.

By voting for the marriage bill, they will make a strong statement about supporting New York families, strengthening New York communities and demonstrating that equality and fairness are fundamental values of New York Republicans. It will leave a legacy that will make us all proud.

Get Over It, Conservatives: Same-Sex Marriage Will Be Legal in All 50 States

Some day, people will look back with amazement and disdain that same-sex couples were denied a fundamental right for so long in America.

By Michael Abernethy, PopMatters:

Do a Google search for the term "same-sex marriage". I'll wait. Odds are that you got over 33 million results. Seems like everyone has something to say on the subject, good, bad, or ignorant.

Which is one reason I've never devoted an entire article to the subject ‘til now. After all, what could I say that is new? Still, there comes a time when the elephant in the room is tearing up all the furniture and peeing on everything and you just have to say, "Hey, look. There's a big elephant making a mess, here!"

Vermont, Iowa, New York, Washington, D.C., Connecticut -- most likely, you don't need me to tell you what's going on in those states (and the district of D.C.). And if you're a savvy, literate person, you've already seen Frank Rich's wonderful New York Times piece deconstructing the ridiculous "Gathering Storm" commercial from the National Organization for Marriage, a group whose sole purpose it to stop loving couples from getting married, as opposed to helping those in troubled marriages fix their problems.

Instead, let me direct your attention to another well written op-ed piece, "Constitutional amendment on gay marriage is a waste of time" (11 March 2009), this one by an excellent writer named Michael Abernethy. No, not me. This Michael Abernethy is a writer with The Times News, Burlington, North Carolina's leading, and -- one assumes -- only, newspaper.

Abernethy excels at deconstructing some of the arguments against allowing gay marriage with wit and intelligence. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should admit that Michael and I are e-mail acquaintances and he is probably a distant cousin of some sort, as I have a considerable number of kinfolk in that area of the country.)

In response to the idea that allowing gay marriage will destroy the traditional marriage, he notes, "America's idea of the sanctity of marriage ended sometime between Elizabeth Taylor's fourth or fifth husband and Britney Spears' 55-hour marriage to a school friend." And he seems almost gleeful when it is suggested by an anti-gay crusader that after allowing gay marriage, marriage with "pets or robots" could be next: "I'll be first to sign the papers and finally consummate my love for ‘Agnes' -- my red, hollow-body, Washburn electric guitar -- to whom I've been devoted for 10 years."

What I like about Abernethy, aside from the great name, is his ability to cut through carefully constructed claims that are basically bullshit and fear-mongering and get to the absurdity of the primary arguments. And you should read some of his music reviews -- he's not shy about telling you a piece of crap music when he hears it, either. But I digress.

The same qualities I like in Michael's article are what I like about the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage, only take out the wit and add a lengthy discussion of the Iowa state constitution, with emphasis on the striking similarities to the U.S. Constitution (message to the U.S. Supreme Court received, thank you). The ruling cut down a well-financed, finely tuned anti-gay argument with logic, based in adherence to the principles of the Constitution. For instance, in response to arguments that the people of Iowa were opposed to gay marriage, the court replied, "A statute inconsistent with the Iowa Constitution must be declared void, even though it may be supported by strong and deep-seated traditional beliefs and popular opinion." (p. 13, VARNUM, HYDE, BARBOUROSKE, BARBOUROSKE, MORGAN, SWAGGERTY, TWOMBLEY, HOCH, MUSSER, DREAMING, OLSON, and EVANS v. TIMOTHY J. BRIEN, In His Official Capacities as the Polk County Recorder and Polk County Registrar.) They got it: that marriage is a legal right, not a religious practice. That doesn't preclude people from making the marriage ceremony a religious service, in any of a number of ceremony choices, but at its heart, marriage is all about the law.


Even if you have a grandiose wedding worthy of a four-page spread in People and performed by the Pope himself, you're not married in the United States until you file an official license with the government and some clerk with a bad attitude and hair extensions enters your information into the state's computer records. Then, you stay married until some court says you're not, at which point you are legally single, regardless of what your church thinks or says.

In fact, many denominations just avoid the whole divorce issue, leaving it strictly to the courts to determine. This is understandable, though; after pronouncing "what God has joined together, let no man put asunder" during the wedding, you've kind of painted yourself into a corner. Who really wants to take on God?

Thus, marriage exists in two forms in America: the legal form, which gets you tax breaks and hospital visitation rights, and the religious form, which gets you peace of mind in knowing that you are not going to Hell for screwing around with your spouse. Churches are free, and always have been, to marry whomever they want and to not marry those they don't want.

There are still a few churches that won't marry interracial couples, and some that won't perform someone's second (or third, fourth…) marriage. And there are plenty that won't marry gays. That is their right, and I absolutely support them in that right, as offensive as it may be.

That leaves legal marriage. One could easily argue that those weddings performed by a justice of the peace, ship's captain, or Elvis impersonator don't fit into the historical, traditional view of marriage, performed in and sanctioned by the church. Yet, no one has proposed in our lengthy discussion of traditional marriage that these marriages are invalid, which is recognition of the legal aspects of the issue and acknowledgement that weddings performed outside the church are legitimate. This is the area that the Iowa Supreme Court looked at in assessing the constitutionality of gay marriage:

Iowa Code section 595.2 is unconstitutional because the County has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage. A new distinction based on sexual orientation would be equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution. This record, our independent research, and the appropriate equal protection analysis do not suggest the existence of a justification for such a legislative classification that substantially furthers any governmental objective. (You can read the entire 68-page decision here.)

Now, if I recall my high school civics class correctly, in order to bring an action, the state must have a compelling interest. For instance, it is in the state's best interest to prosecute a serial killer because it protects the citizenry or to establish educational standards because it allows the development of society. The supreme court said the state of Iowa has no compelling interest in refusing gays the right to get married. That's it in a nutshell.

To reach this conclusion, the Iowa Supreme Court (and others that have issued similar rulings) had to cut through innumerable claims that rejecting gay marriage did "substantially further" some purpose of government, including that gays are a threat to children, gay marriage would destroy heterosexual marriage, and gay marriage would redefine marriage to allow any type of wedding contract, including with robots and Agnes the electric guitar. In my mind, I see Iowa's Madame Chief Justice waving her magic gavel at those opposing gay marriage and saying, "Be gone, before someone drops a house on you", but I imagine there was probably a little more decorum to the ruling.

Those who oppose gay marriage are in full, code-red hyperdrive, dispensing emergency teams to various states with an efficiency that FEMA could learn from. As more legislative bodies adopt gay marriage bills, it will grow increasingly difficult for them to argue that activist judges are skirting the will of the people. Most certainly, the next few years will see innumerable ballot measures to amend state constitutions to bar gay marriage, and a sad number of them will pass.

In the meantime, thousand of gay couples will have had time to get married, settle in next door, and pose a threat to absolutely no one. When Carol and Sarah settle down in Keokuk, Iowa, with their two kids, get involved in the local PTA and Neighborhood Watch, and use their connections to lure some hot acts to the annual Keokuk Rollin' on the River Blues Fest, then folks might see them as an integral part of the community, not a warning sign of the pending apocalypse.


As more courts and legislative bodies recognize the legal aspects of marriage, separate from the religious, and more people grow comfortable with their gay neighbors, co-workers, friends, and relatives, gay marriage will become a reality. There will be a time when it is legal in all 50 states, and it will be such a part of our societal fabric that people will look back at this fight for rights with amazement and disdain that such a violation of human rights continued for so long in America. This probably won't happen in my lifetime, mind you, but that's OK. Not every soldier gets to see the end of the battle.

In the end, I really haven't said anything new, just as I predicted. All the arguments for and against gay marriage have been on the table for a while now, and all I may have accomplished is adding one more hit to the 33 million plus results you'll get on Google. But at least I can get that damn elephant out of my living room, now.

While The Country Moves Forward on GLBT Equality, Pennsylvania Moves Backward

Pa. Senator Introduces Gay Marriage Ban

State senator John Eichelberger, a Republican from Blair County in central Pennsylvania, plans to introduce a bill to amend the constitution to ban same-sex marriage, reports the Philadelphia Daily News.


Pennsylvania enacted a law in 2006 to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but Eichelberger contends a constitutional amendment is needed to prevent courts from overturning that law.

The amendment would require approval from the house and senate in two consecutive two-year sessions, followed by approval from voters in a statewide referendum. Proposals to amend the constitution to ban same-sex marriage have failed in the past two legislative sessions.

Despite recent advances such as the extension of health benefits to the domestic partners of state employees, attitudes on same-sex marriage remain slower to change in Pennsylvania than in neighboring states. A poll from Muhlenberg College and the Allentown Morning Call earlier this month showed that support for same-sex marriage rose from 35% to 42% since 2004, with public opinion split on a constitutional ban.

Please VOTE in Today's Pennsylvania Primary!

by Mike Mahler & Dave Martin:

Just a reminder that the Pennsylvania Primary is TODAY, May 19. Polls are open from 7 AM to 8 PM. Voting takes only a few minutes, but it is incredibly important!

PLEASE exercise your right to determine who makes the laws that affect your life.

Not sure who to vote for? Call and discuss with friends, then go to the polls.

On today's ballot are statewide races for courts. These are more important than most folks might be aware. 2010 will be the decennial census, which means redistricting. When there are disputes, this is handled by the State Supreme Court. The candidate who get elected this year will decide not only important cases, but might make rulings that will affect what happens in our state legislature!

(And we received word today about a representative in Blair County who wants to introduce a constitutional amendment that will ban marriage equality.)

As we have seen recently in several states across the country, GLBT equality issues are often decided by state courts, so it's vitally important to elect candidates who understand and support fairness and equality sitting on the bench when GLBT issues come before the courts.

The following candidates are endorsed and/or recommended by Liberty City Stonewall Democrats, Steel City Stonewall Democrats, the Pa Chapter of NOW and the PSEA.

Please get to the polls on Tuesday and cast your vote in support of:

- Justice of the Supreme Court (vote for one)......Jack Panella

- Judge of the Superior Court (vote for three)......Anne E Lazarus - John Younge - Kevin F McCarthy

- Judge of the Commonwealth (vote for two)......Barbara Ernsberger - Daniel Bricmont

We Are Not Alone

Pride 2009

"Pride 2009" - in celebration of GLBTQ pride and the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the birth of gay pride.



Lyrics HERE

More info HERE

Anti-Gay Bigots Caught Lying Again

by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog:

I mentioned this a number of times, and the media that covers the religious right should especially take note. The religious right lies. A lot. You can't trust any "fact" they give you, as more often than not, it will be a fact ripped out of context to the point where if you read the context, the "fact" usually proves the exact opposite of what they're claiming. I found this when I was helping Senator Kennedy's office on gay issues back in 1993 and 94. I went through every document I could get my hands on that a particularly well known RR group had produced about gays. I then got the original sources for all of their footnotes. Of some 60 or so footnotes per document, I recall, very few were what any English teacher would consider "real" footnotes. It was rather astounding. Citing court cases to prove their point, and not telling you that they were citing the dissent - in other words, the court ruled for us, not them. Quite literally, there were documents in which not a single footnote was real. Anyway, read the blog post below, it's another prime example of how they operate. Liars to the core of their cold un-Christian hearts.

from Southern Beale blog:

Lost In Homophobic Translation

The ironically-named columnist Charlie Butts of OneNewsNow (the American Family Assn.'s "news" division) is leading a parade of wingnuts crowing over a statement on sexual orientation from the American Psychological Assn. This is supposedly “scientific proof” that there is no gay gene:

The attempt to prove that homosexuality is determined biologically has been dealt a knockout punch. An American Psychological Association publication includes an admission that there's no homosexual "gene" -- meaning it's not likely that homosexuals are born that way.

For decades, the APA has not considered homosexuality a psychological disorder, while other professionals in the field consider it to be a "gender-identity" problem. But the new statement, which appears in a brochure called "Answers to Your Questions for a Better Understanding of Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality," states the following:

"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles...."

This story has been picked up at WingNut Daily and conservative blogs as proof that gays don’t deserve to get married or even exist because if sexual orientation is a “choice” not, you know, something you have no control over, then we don’t have to protect GLBT folks with hate crime laws and stuff, and obviously they are just that way because everyone loves a great queer party.

Or something.

So smelling the aroma of bullshit wafting my way, I headed over the APA to read this supposed new statement for myself. Tell me if you notice anything missing:

There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

Again, did anyone notice anything missing from Butts’ quote?

That's some "knockout punch," all right.

What Might A More Welcoming Climate Mean In Venango County?

AFTER 5 YEARS OF EXTENDING MARRIAGE TO GAY COUPLES, NEW STUDIES SHOW MASSACHUSETTS HAS ATTRACTED HIGHLY-SKILLED WORKERS AND EXPERIENCED ECONOMIC BOOST OF OVER $100 MILLION

from the Williams Institute:

On the eve of the fifth anniversary of same-sex couples marrying in Massachusetts, two new studies released today by UCLA's Williams Institute show clear economic gains for Massachusetts that have resulted from marriage equality. Massachusetts gained a competitive edge in attracting young, highly educated "creative class" professionals who are in same-sex couples, according to one study. The second study confirms that the weddings of same-sex couples have given a significant boost to the state's economy.

Earlier studies predicted that state economies would gain in several ways from allowing gay couples to marry. Economic development expert Richard Florida argued that policies promoting tolerance and equality would be a welcome mat for highly mobile creative class members whose creative energy drives economic growth. Other studies have predicted a wedding windfall for many businesses as same-sex couples and their guests spend money on weddings, gifts, and tourism. However, until today, no one had tested whether those predictions have actually happened.

"Data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey show that same-sex couples in the 'creative class' were 2.5 times more likely to move to Massachusetts after 2004 than before," notes Gary J. Gates, Williams Distinguished Scholar at UCLA's Williams Institute and the author of one study. "The timing of this movement to Massachusetts suggests that those couples were flocking to the first state to allow them to marry."

Gates argues that this infusion of younger and highly educated same-sex couples could help improve the long-term economic prospects for Massachusetts.

As states struggle with the current downturn in the economy, marriage equality has also given a boost to businesses, according to the second study. A new survey of married same-sex couples shows that the typical gay or lesbian couple spent $7,400 on their weddings in Massachusetts, with one in ten couples spending more than $20,000. The study's analysis of state data on hotel occupancy tax payments confirms the boost from out-of-state guests at these weddings.

"Florists, caterers, hotels, bakers, restaurants, and many other businesses have gotten a share of the $111 million spent on the 12,000-plus weddings of same-sex couples," notes economist M. V. Lee Badgett, a study co-author and director of the Center for Public Policy & Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "Allowing gay couples to marry won't end the recession, but their spending still helps in tough times for businesses."

The findings of these two studies confirm the predictions made in previous studies. They also indicate that other states allowing gay couples to marry-including Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and Maine-will see similar economic gains.

The Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy advances law and public policy through rigorous, independent research and scholarship, and disseminates its work through a variety of education programs and media to judges, legislators, lawyers, other policymakers and the public. These studies can be accessed at the Williams Institute website.

Pennsylvania To Offer State Employees Domestic-Partner Benefits

Where Is Venango County On Issues Of Basic and Meaningful Equality?

by the Associated Press:

In breaking news, the Philadelphia Gay News reports that on July 1, Pennsylvania will become the 16th state to offer state employees domestic-partner benefits. This includes all current and retired employees (139,000) of the commonwealth.


“The Pennsylvania Employees Benefit Trust Fund, a non-governmental agency that oversees the state benefits programs, will offer medical, prescription drug, dental, vision and hearing-aid benefits to the same- and opposite-sex domestic partners of all PEBTF-eligible employees, which amounts to about 81,000 individuals.

The approximately 60,000 retired state employees eligible for the Retired Employees Health Program will also be able to extend their benefits to domestic partners.”

The state had already offered employees life-insurance and long-term care options for domestic partners, but they were not eligible for medical benefits.

Philadelphia Gay News Publisher Mark Segal said, “This is the greatest step toward equal rights for the LGBT community in Pennsylvania since Gov. Shapp outlawed discrimination in state employment in 1975.”

Check out the full story here.

Perhaps It Is The Catholic Church That Is "Objectively Disordered"

Ex-Archbishop Speaks About Catholic Church and Homosexuality

By Laurie Goodstein for the NY Times:

In spring 2002, as the scandal over sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests was escalating, the long career of Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, one of the church’s most venerable voices for change, went up in flames one May morning.


On the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the archbishop watched a man he had fallen in love with 23 years earlier say in an interview that the Milwaukee archdiocese had paid him $450,000 years before to keep quiet about his affair with the archbishop — an affair the man was now calling date rape.

The next day, the Vatican accepted Archbishop Weakland’s retirement.

Archbishop Weakland, who had been the intellectual touchstone for church reformers, has said little publicly since then. But now, in an interview and in a memoir scheduled for release next month, he is speaking out about how internal church politics affected his response to the fallout from his affair; how bishops and the Vatican cared more about the rights of abusive priests than about their victims; and why Catholic teaching on homosexuality is wrong.

“If we say our God is an all-loving god,” he said, “how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay? Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, you have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love?”

He said he had been aware of his homosexual orientation since he was a teenager and suppressed it until he became archbishop, when he had relationships with several men because of “loneliness that became very strong.”

Archbishop Weakland, 82, said he was probably the first bishop to come out of the closet voluntarily. He said he was doing so not to excuse his actions but to give an honest account of why it happened and to raise questions about the church’s teaching that homosexuality is “objectively disordered.”

“Those are bad words because they are pejorative,” he said.

Archbishop Weakland’s autobiography, “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church” (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), covers his hardscrabble youth in Pennsylvania, his election as the worldwide leader of the Benedictine Order and his appointment by Pope Paul VI to the archbishop’s seat in Milwaukee, where he served for 25 years.

“He was one of the most gifted leaders in the post-Vatican II church in America,” said the Rev. Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest and associate editor of America, a Catholic magazine, “and certainly beloved by the left, and sadly that gave his critics more ammunition.”

In an interview at the Archbishop Weakland Center, which houses the archdiocesan cathedral offices in downtown Milwaukee, Archbishop Weakland said the church opened itself to change in the 1960s and ’70s after the Second Vatican Council but became increasingly centralized and doctrinally rigid under Pope John Paul II.

Archbishop Weakland was among those who publicly questioned the need for a male-only celibate priesthood. He also led American bishops in a two-year process of writing a pastoral letter on economic justice, holding hearings on the subject across the country.

A later effort by the American bishops to issue a pastoral letter on women was quashed by the Vatican, he said, because the Vatican did not want to give the national bishops conferences the authority to issue sweeping teaching documents.

The archbishop said it was partly because of his strained relations with Pope John Paul II that he did not tell Vatican officials in 1997 when he was threatened with a lawsuit by Paul J. Marcoux, the man with whom he had a relationship nearly 20 years before and who had appeared on “Good Morning America.”

Mr. Marcoux said then that he had been deprived of income from marketing a project he called “Christodrama” because of Archbishop Weakland’s interference. Archbishop Weakland said he probably should have gone to Rome and explained that he had had a relationship with Mr. Marcoux, that he had ended it by writing an emotional letter that Mr. Marcoux still had and that the archbishop’s lawyers regarded Mr. Marcoux’s threats as blackmail.

But, the archbishop said, a highly placed friend in Rome advised him that church officials preferred that such things be hushed up, which is “the Roman way.”

“I suppose, also, being frank, I wouldn’t have wanted to be labeled in Rome at that point as gay,” Archbishop Weakland said. “Rome is a little village.”

Asked if he had regrets about the $450,000 payment to Mr. Marcoux, he said, “I certainly worry about the sum.”

The morning in 2002 that Mr. Marcoux surfaced on national television, Archbishop Weakland said he phoned the pope’s representative, or apostolic nuncio, in Washington — Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo — who, he said, told him, “Of course you are going to deny it.”

Archbishop Weakland said he told the nuncio that while he could deny emphatically that it was date rape, “I can’t deny that something happened between us.” (Archbishop Montalvo died in 2006.)

Archbishop Weakland is still pained that his scandal, involving a man in his 30s, became intertwined with the larger church scandal over child sexual abuse.

But at the time, many Catholics in Milwaukee said they were angrier about the secret settlement with Mr. Marcoux than with the sexual liaison.

Archbishop Weakland and the Milwaukee archdiocese are also the target of several lawsuits accusing them of failing to remove abusive priests, allowing more minors to be victimized.

In the interview, he blamed psychologists for advising bishops that perpetrators could be treated and returned to work, and he blamed the Vatican’s tribunals for spending years debating whether to remove abusers from the priesthood. In one case, he said, the Vatican courts took so long deciding whether to defrock a priest who had abused dozens of deaf students that the priest died before a decision was reached.

“The concern was more about the priests than about the victims,” Archbishop Weakland said.

In Milwaukee, Peter Isely, the Midwest director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said Archbishop Weakland ultimately failed his people.

Mr. Isely pointed out that while Archbishop Weakland was waiting for the Vatican courts to defrock abusive priests, he allowed them to continue working in ministry without informing parishioners of their past. And he said the $450,000 payment was particularly galling to victims because many received “no compensation whatsoever.”

In June, Archbishop Weakland, who has been living in a Catholic retirement community since his resignation, is moving to St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, N.J., where he said he would be closer to his family in Pennsylvania and grow old in the care of a community of Benedictine monks.

How Low Can Anti-Gay Activists Go?

by Wayne Besen:

It was unusually satisfying to watch beauty contestant turned Bible-thumper Carrie Prejean crash and burn. In the bat of an eyelash, she went from Christian role model to wannabe underwear model after racy pictures of her surfaced. "They were quite inappropriate and certainly not photos befitting a beauty queen," Alicia Jacobs, a Miss USA judge told NBC's Today Show.


The verb "strip" is the one most associated with Prejean's name these days. She stripped her clothes, may be stripped of her Miss California crown and was certainly stripped of her moral authority as a spokesperson for marriage. In her brief stint as America's scold, she forgot to memorize one Bible passage: "Judge not lest thou be judged."

What's amazing is that the circus-like antics of Prejean are the rule, not the exception for today's anti-gay activists. There has clearly been a brain drain among our opponents -- with the conservative intelligentsia largely running from GLBT issues. Filling the vacuum, are the vacuous -- with little to offer, other than comedic relief.


For example, Joe the Plumber plunged into culture wars with his usual thoughtful advice: "I personally still think it's wrong...you know, God is pretty explicit in what we're supposed to do--what man and woman are for...I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children."

Joe the Plumber looked like Einstein compared to Maine Rep. Bernard Ayotte (R). During a state House debate on marriage equality (passed 89-58), Ayotte said that he couldn't support the legislation because it would provide legal protections to people whom he said suffered from hormonal imbalances.


"By all indications, homosexuality in human beings seems to be generated by imbalances in the human body," Ayotte (pictured right) said. "As legislators, it is important that we do not base our statutes on genetic aberrations."Even by the low standards set by anti-gay activists, this level of ignorance was shocking, yet indicative of how far the quality of our opponents has fallen.

Joining the chorus of anti-gay clowns was former Washington, DC mayor Marion Barry, best remembered for smoking crack and allowing the city's rats to grow as large as cats.


A longtime gay rights supporter, he was the lone city councilman to vote against a bill, passed 12-1, to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the District.

"All hell is going to break lose," Barry predicted. "We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this." Columnist Leonard Pitts summarized Barry's political cowardice when he said the former mayor "punked out."


Sharing the anti-gay spotlight was caustic talk show host Michael Savage and the Kansas preacher noted for picketing military funerals with "God Hates Fags" signsFred Phelps, Fred Phelps (Pictured) and his wife, Shirley. They were banned from visiting England and publicly scorned for their bigoted views. While I do not agree with their banishment (neither do civil liberties groups), it does force social conservatives into the PR nightmare of having to turn Savage and Phelps into "creep celebres."

Even the "mainstream" anti-gay activists seem to have come unhinged. In stating his opposition to federal hate crime legislation, James Dobson appeared in a video where he falsely claimed that the inclusion of "sexual orientation" opened the door to, "bisexuality, exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, voyeurism, bestiality." Dobson added for effect, "I have to ask, 'have we all gone completely mad?'"Huckabee


Oddly enough, Dobson lives in Colorado, one of twelve states that have a hate crime law offering protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity. There are also 31 states that offer such protection based solely on sexual orientation. In these 43 states, can Dobson point to a problem with hate crime laws being applied to necrophilia or bestiality? If not, his bizarre and paranoid ranting says more about his overactive imagination, than it does about the reality of such laws.

Of course, for the sake of sheer amusement, we can't leave out the absurdity of Bristol Palin hawking abstinence. With baby in-tow and embittered ex-boyfriend on tail, she is the poster girl for the social conservative mantra: "do as I say, not as I do."


Let me reiterate, so you can fully appreciate and savor the situation. The new faces of social conservatism are: Carrie Prejean, Joe the Plumber, Marion Barry, Bernard Ayotte, Michael Savage, Fred Phelps and Bristol Palin.

With such luminaries, it should be no surprise that the GLBT community has had a string of incredible victories. Somewhere in the process of passing the torch to the next generation, anti-gay activists have stumbled and are in danger of burning down the homophobic house.

17th Annual Erie Pride Picnic on June 13

by Michael Mahler

Erie Gay News will once again sponsor the annual Erie Pride Picnic.

The 17th Annual Erie Pride Picnic will be on Saturday, June 13 from 1 to 6 PM at the Rotary Pavilion at Presque Isle State Park, Erie, PA. This is the same location that we have used for the past few years.


Food will be served from 2 to 5 PM. We will provide hot dogs, Sloppy Joes, beverages, and table setting. Please bring a dish to share.

Alcohol is prohibited, as are vendor sales. However, info tables are welcome! Please contact Michael Mahler by June 6 if you will be setting up a table.

Karaoke was a big hit last year, and so we are bringing it back! Thanks to DJ J-Roc for his help.

Donations to support the picnic will be gratefully accepted. We encourage people to register in advance and volunteer online at http://www.eriegaynews.com/pride/register.php. (There is also a link to register online in the right side bar of all pages at http://www.eriegaynews.com) Please see the contact info at the end of this article if you don’t have online access, or further questions.

Because we believe that an important part of being a community is recognizing the greater community, participants are also asked to bring a non-perishable item for the Second Harvest Food Bank of NW PA.

Friends, family, and children are most welcome! We will have games and children’s activities. There is a playground near the site. Parents are responsible for supervising their own children.

We will be taking the Annual Family Portrait at 4 PM. Anyone is welcome to be included in the portrait, and it is also okay not to be in the photo.

Please check in at the registration table when you arrive. If you have registered online, we will just need your name. If you don’t want to be photographed, get a red dot to put on your name tag. We will also have a table to take face photos that will appear at http://www.eriegaynews.com for those interested.

The Pride Picnic has been around since 1992 and is the largest Pride event in Erie County. For more information, contact Michael Mahler at(814) 456-9833, info@eriegaynews.com, or check out the web page at http://picnic.eriegaynews.com.

The Gay Season

By Lisa Neff, 365gay.com

Madison Square Garden filled to near capacity in early May to celebrate the 90th birthday of folk legend Pete Seeger.

Seeger adapted “Turn, Turn, Turn (to Everything There is a Season)” from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

It was the right song for the mid-1960s, for those days leading up to the Summer of Love.

And it is the right song for now:

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)

And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down

A time to dance, a time to mourn

A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

We turned through a fall of frustration, a November in which we lost to the religious right on ballot initiatives in Florida, Arkansas, Arizona and California.

A time to lose.

A time to mourn.

We turned through a winter of weariness as we learned of the purchasing power of hate, of the wealth that religious organizations pumped into those anti-gay ballot initiatives, and as we learned of a Bush administration that declined to join in a United Nations declaration of human rights for GLBT people.

A time of hate.

A time to heal.

And we turned through a spring of celebration as we secured victories in state after state and in the U.S. Capitol.

A time to gain.

A time to love.

A time for the Iowa Supreme Court to clear the way for same-sex couples to marry.

A time for lawmakers in Maine, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire to vote for same-sex marriage — not partnership benefits, not civil unions but marriage.

A time for Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell to sign a same-sex marriage bill into law.

A time for Maine Gov. John Baldacci to sign a same-sex marriage bill into law.

A time for the Vermont Legislature to override a governor’s veto and enact its same-sex marriage bill into law.

A time for the D.C. Council to vote to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions.

A time for New York Gov. David Paterson to introduce equal marriage legislation stating, “Rights should not be stifled by fears. What we should understand is silence should not be a response to injustice.”

A time for Colorado to pass legislation recognizing same-sex partnerships.

A time for Maryland lawmakers to approve domestic partner benefits for state employees.

A time for Washington state to expand its partnership benefits and add gender identity to its hate crimes act.

A time for the U.S. House to pass — and send to the U.S. Senate — an inclusive hate crimes bill.

A time for the Obama administration to support the UN declaration affirming human rights for gays.

A time, despite big boasts from the right, for lawmakers to kill an anti-gay adoption bill in Kentucky.

A time for 300 members of the clergy to lobby Congress for the passage of hate crimes, employment non-discrimination and safe-schools legislation and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

What a long strange trip it’s been since June 1969 — 40 years ago, when the modern GLBT civil rights movement gained national attention with the demonstrations at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, N.Y.

Turn, turn, turn.

And we now turn into summer.

A summer of what?

A summer that should bring gayety to our Pride parades like never before, a summer that should bring a time to dance, a time to plant, a time to cast away stones before we turn into the fall and a time to build up and gather stones together.

Equality Does Not Require Preferential Treatment

The following article was written in response to Washington, DC Councilmember Marion Barry's vote against recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. His was the only opposing vote. The law has been signed by the Mayor and awaits Congressional review.

The message in this article is important and on-target for those in the Nation's Capital as well as in Venango County.

By Michael Stanek:

There were nights in high school and college when I'd cry myself to sleep over the confusion and frustration I felt over my sexuality. As with every other moment at that time, I'd force my tears to roll silently down my face so as to hide my anguish from the normalcy around me. At 25, with the help of wonderful friends and family, I have survived those wounds of alienation and fear that cut deep into the core of so many young gay men and lesbians.

Many are not so fortunate, though. Some teens in that position end their lives. Some run away because of their fear of rejection. Others spend their entire lives tortured -- sometimes with a heterosexual spouse and children and sometimes despairingly alone -- too afraid to experience the joy of true intimacy because it would mean being abnormal.

Those who sit in a local legislative seat and say that gay and lesbian Americans don't deserve equality and respect under the law ["Uproar in D.C. as Same-Sex Marriage Gains"] simply fail to grasp what it means to be different than the heterosexual norm we are all taught from the moment socialization begins -- and how feeling that difference so profoundly weighs down so many gay men and lesbians.

Some who are opposed to equality for gay and lesbian Americans are just bigots. Most, however, simply do not understand because no one has helped them know what it means to be gay in our society. I don't believe that D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) is a bigot -- he just doesn't understand.

Growing up, I knew virtually no diversity. In the small college town of Greencastle, Ind., my presumptions about racial differences in this country were challenged. I learned that even when no overt bigotry is present, subtle prejudices still can permeate and degrade some groups.

Barry undoubtedly has felt and continues to witness such subtle prejudice against African Americans, even in Washington. That is why I ask him and other local legislators to reflect on the effect that their opposition to basic fundamental rights has on young gay and lesbian teens.

It doesn't matter what Barry says or what portion of his record he highlights in an effort to mitigate the harm he has done. It doesn't matter if he reassures gays and lesbians that he "tolerates" or "respects" us. All that these young teens see is yet another person -- this time a community leader -- labeling them as unworthy of equality.

Equality does not require preferential treatment; nor does it coerce private institutions like churches into believing what they don't believe. Equality is a principle that our country was founded upon and that generations have fought for. It is the means for demonstrating to our gay friends and family that they have a stigma-free place in society.

I ask Marion Barry to learn about his gay and lesbian neighbors: to get to know us and to see how our lives are affected by both outright bigotry and the more subtle kind of prejudice that permeates even tolerant places such as the D.C. Council's chambers.

Choosing The Homophobic Lifestyle

by Will O'Bryan for DC's Metro Weekly:

With the recent protests against marriage quality -- replete with a grandstanding politician, muddy logic, and faith in God being on one's side -- there's no doubt that as the nation's capital moves further in the right direction, our District will become a battlefield in some measure.


The irony, I find, is that those who fight against gay people's civil right to marry, just don't know what they're missing. Not that I'm thinking they'd benefit from some same-sex lovin', but rather they don't seem to grasp how much they have in common with GLBT people, how much richer their lives might be if they'd just take us at face value.

For example, I recall a lesbian acquaintance once beginning a story with a basic assumption: ''We all believe in God, right?'' It was very awkward. A few answered in the affirmative, I said nothing, and she continued with her story that somehow pulled 9/11, the design on a dollar bill, and faith in God into some unified whole that reinforced her faith. Fair enough. I sometimes throw coins in fountains, so who am I to judge? The point is, plenty of folks who would've been enraptured by her story wouldn't give her the time of day because of her ''lifestyle choice.''

The same could be said for all sorts of ''lifestyle choices,'' like being a football devotee or singing gospel music every Sunday. For every homophobic person who thinks that marriage equality is a societal evil because it would recognize gay people as just another part of the pattern, rather than as folks with whom you might have a civil conversation while still feeling certain they are somehow deviant or broken or lesser, there is a gay person who probably shares their non-homophobic values and interests.

Poor "Joe the Plumber," who recently told Christianity Today that he has "homosexual friends" -- mm-hmm -- but won't let them around his kids. While he's not doing his kids any favors, certainly not the ones who may be gay, he's damaging his own life. There may not be many Jeff Gannons in the world, but there's at least one. And he and Joe might likely be the best of buds if Joe weren't choosing a homophobic lifestyle.

Instead of seeing the commonality of their lifestyle choices, such as being an active member of a church, or fishing every weekend, there are some people who just can't seem to get past their fixation with gay people's sex lives. It's just so goddamned important. (Pun intended.) While I should just be able to label that ridiculous and move on, I genuinely feel sympathy for those who suffer from this fixation.

On one hand, they may feel that to accept gay people, sodomy and all, is akin to turning one's back on God. After all, there's that crazy Leviticus bit in the Bible. There are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Mormons and Buddhists who will back you up on your homophobia, too. Then again, there are all sorts of straight Christians, Jews and Buddhists -- and even some Muslims, despite the hangings and wall-topplings -- who feel fine with both their faith and their GLBT pals. I'm not certain about there being any such Mormons.


Holy books are full of contradictions that are open to interpretation, and prohibitions that may be a bit kooky outside of their ancient contexts. Using religion to apply some special category to gay people, that is a lifestyle choice. It's not done because God demands it, but because people choose to. One interpretation of the Bible surely tells us that those who don't believe Jesus Christ to be the single, glorious messiah are going to hell. But there are surely plenty of Christians who've visited, say, Egypt, and didn't gaze upon crowds of locals, nearly all Muslims, and think, ''damned to hell.'' Such an interpretation is a choice.

On the other hand, some are just stuck on gay as being a choice. That's even more annoying. Just because you were once able to eroticize a member of the same sex for two seconds, does not mean you're choosing not to be gay by not forcing yourself to continue those thoughts. You don't get piety's gold star for ''choosing'' to be straight. Ya just are, Blanche. Some are gay, some are bi, some are straight. Some are a little more fluid than others, but most of us just know what we are. A gay person who is celibate is still gay. So get over it. If you think it's unnatural, that's natural. I don't want to imagine my parents having sex either, but they were certainly entitled.

It's the marriage-loving homophobes for whom I feel sorriest, though. Take poor Maggie Gallagher, fighting for years now to "protect" marriage. She'll get no argument from me that the institution of marriage has been beaten down. I may have done some of the beating, not having made up my mind on whether the government should be involved in marriage at all. Still, if the relatively rational Gallagher could get past her homophobia -- which she denies, though I don't know what else one could call it -- and created an organization whose sole purpose was to support marriage, rather than fight marriage equality, I am absolutely certain there are countless gay men and women, myself excluded, who would be jumping on her bandwagon. But until Gallagher and her peers come to terms with the difference between a choice and what's innate, between a theocracy and a democracy, between a first- and a second-class citizen, they'll just keep fighting would-be friends.

Will O'Bryan, Metro Weekly's managing editor, was born as the Stonewall Riots ended, making him a Stonewall Baby, he insists.

The Far Right's First 100 Days: Getting More Extreme by the Day

Their talk is turning ugly, and it's not unthinkable that we could be in for a wave of domestic terrorism unseen since the mid-'90s.

by Sara Robinson for the Center for American Progress:

Sometime back in February, about three weeks into Barack Obama's administration, everybody on the left suddenly noticed that there was something different going on with the conservatives.


The outrageous screeds and paranoid delusions sounded pretty much as they always had -- but there was a new fury behind them, a strident urgency that hadn't been there before, and a very audible shift of the gears in right-wing behavior and rhetoric.

None of this came as a surprise to veteran right-wing watchers -- we'd been predicting a bad backlash since the 2006 election -- but more than three months into the new administration, it's increasingly hard to ignore the fact that this ominous new trend is taking on a momentum of its own.

On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security ratified some of those observations. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's loss of world standing, they said, the militant right wing is indeed rising again.

Its numbers are up, its talk is turning ugly, and it's not unthinkable that we could be in for a wave of domestic terrorism unseen since the mid-1990s.

I've been meaning for a while to talk about what changed after the inauguration, and why, and what it means to the country going forward. Our observance of the end of the first 100 days seems to be a good time to do that.

The DHS report laid out the history and the current drivers in straight factual terms and made some safe predictions about what might make the situation worse. But the report stopped short of taking the next step.

(Interestingly, the nightmare scenario for most right-wing watchers -- a white-hot backlash in the wake of another major terrorist attack -- appears nowhere in the DHS assessment. Perhaps they didn't want to put ideas into paranoid right-wing heads.)

We need to look at what long experience has taught us about the past escalation patterns of right-wing rhetoric and violence and figure out where we currently stand within those patterns.


We actually know quite a bit about this. Most national agencies tasked with keeping tabs on political and religious extremist groups look for specific signs that help them sort out who's just talking the talk and who's actually getting ready to walk the walk.

The criteria vary from agency to agency; and our collective insights into these patterns changes and deepens every year. But there are some generally accepted principles -- and applying them to the current state of conservatism gives a clearer view what's changed in the past 100 days, what the shift really means and what could be coming next if the right keeps going down this road.

I want to make it clear: The DHS report emphasizes that there's no specific evidence that any particular group is planning any particular action.

At the same time, what's equally clear from the pattern analysis is that the upshift we heard was the right wing going into overdrive -- the speed at which talk about revolution (which has been going on for years, but intensified after 2006) accelerates into concrete preparation for action.

Here's why:

Ready ...

The far right wing has been laying the groundwork for violent action for decades. Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first steps down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action.

The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same:

First: Their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near.

Second: It divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle -- a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them.

This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff.

Third: This split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that it shares a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts.

Fourth: Insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense -- and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors.

Fifth: Communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary in order to purify the world for their ideology.

All these ideas have been part of the discourse on the right for decades. You can trace their genesis all the way back to the 1950s, starting with the overheated apocalypticism of the anti-communist movement.

Over time, it came to include the dualism of the John Birch Society and assorted white supremacist groups; the persecution complex of Richard Nixon and his Silent Majority followers; the anti-liberal eliminationism that's been gathering force for the past decade; and the war on evidence-based science and reason that's always been at the heart of conservative arguments.

As J. Peter Scoblic argues in Us vs. Them, narratives that justify violence have always been deeply ingrained in the right-wing belief system.

Since the inauguration, all of these themes are being played far more loudly and openly. And somewhere between Nov. 4 and the 100th day, the right wing has also begun to act on these beliefs in ways that push the whole process to the next level -- the level where thoughts and beliefs begin to crystallize into action.

Set ...

What's different now?

Plenty of things -- all of which, taken together, strongly suggest a group that's just about done talking and is beginning to organize itself to act.

First: There's been a shift in rhetoric. Over at Orcinus, Dave Neiwert and I have argued for years (with plenty of expert support from social psychologists) that strong words are often a thought rehearsal, a premonition of possible strong action to come.

It's not that people always act on the rhetoric -- they don't. It's that when the actions do come, you find that there's usually been plenty of very hot rhetoric tossed around in the run-up, as people psych themselves up for battle.

That's why agencies watching worrisome groups keep their ears open and listen carefully for a specific shift in tone. A lot of groups seeking change establish the lines of conflict by constantly naming and accusing their enemies and insisting on their essential evilness.

This isn't great politics, but it's not usually a problem -- unless it moves to the next stage, where the group starts expressing a clear intention to eradicate those perceived enemies. This can be a signal that they've accepted the need for violent action in their own minds, and may be actively planning something. It's a shift that should never be ignored.

When Sean Hannity runs a poll asking whether his viewers prefer a military coup, secession or armed rebellion -- and armed rebellion wins -- that's evidence of this kind of shift. Right-wing talkers have built careers out of demonizing liberals; but when they start talking about what specific steps should be taken against them, that's not something we should ignore.

Second: There's been a quantum leap in the sheer down-the-rabbit-hole surreality of their beliefs about the world. Bloggers have been pointing out for years that conservatives have zero compunction about making shit up; but in the past, their prevarications were almost always built around a kernel of fact, wrapped in thick layers of distortion, mis-attribution or lies of omission.

What's new in the past 100 days is that we're now seeing stories that are just flat-out fabulation, without even so much as a nod to reality. They're not even bothering to try to attach these claims to any kind of truth. Their fantasies are so much truthier to them.

Up is down. Black is white. Obama's not a citizen, he's going to take our guns, Congress is about to legalize incest ... this we believe, and there is no expert and no amount of real-world evidence that can ever convince us otherwise.

The right wing's retreat from consensus reality has finally left it living in an Orwellian alternative universe all its own.

Third: They've been humiliated by their election losses. And that's hugely dangerous, because authoritarian leaders react uniquely badly to being humiliated.

Experts tell us that their huge egos and insatiable need for control make them very brittle -- and that the shattering point is often a specific event that publicly repudiates their authority, or makes it obvious to the world and their followers that they are no longer in control. Decisively losing both the White House and the Congress has been all that and then some.

This overweening humiliation is growing every day that the Democrats and their new president stay in power. It's a pain that will not go away, and it's likely to curdle into something far more venomous in time.

The result, unfortunately, is probably going to be more violent attacks on government authority like the one in Pittsburgh last month.

Fourth: There's that new sense of urgency. Groups heading for violent confrontation are often pushed past the brink by the belief that the apocalypse is unfolding before their very eyes and that they have no choice but to seize the moment and act.

For many on the right, Jan. 20 was the day the trumpet sounded. Obama is going to turn the country over to the commies. He's going to take away your guns. He's going to open the borders, turn the country into a welfare state and give all our tax money to lazy minorities.

And it's no idle threat -- they're quite convinced that he's going to do all this any day now. This panic is new, and it's palpable. It's also worrisome, because these would-be revolutionaries have been preparing themselves for years for just this moment.

Fifth: The demagogues have seized conservatism's center stage. Violent groups typically organize around a leader who promotes the apocalyptic visions, the dualism, the persecution complex, the eliminationist fantasies -- and the sense that True Patriots can no longer wait another minute to act.

In some groups, this leader exerts total control over every aspect of their followers' lives, like David Koresh and Jim Jones did. In others, the leader is simply a figurehead who puts the ideology out there, leaving the followers to figure out how to implement things on their own. (The followers also bear full responsibility for the results, leaving the leader relatively unscathed.) Osama bin Ladin runs his show this way.

Either way, these leaders are invariably amoral, ego-driven, high-social-dominance men who gain power by hijacking their followers' moral systems.

When they succeed -- which is to say, when they finally override the ethical ballast provided by tradition, customs, laws and conscience to become the dominant moral authority in their followers' lives -- they can gain a stunning degree of influence and lead people into doing things they'd never have considered on their own.

The right wing has never been short of these guys. Still, in the past, the paranoid stylings of media ideologues like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck were simply background ranting to the more reality-based lead vocal of the party's actual politicians.

But now the election is over. The candidates have all gone home. And the GOP's party structure is in tatters. There are no credible political leaders left to drive the conservative conversation. That leaves a power vacuum on the front line that the right-wing hate talkers are now rushing forward to fill.

When Limbaugh is considered the GOP's spiritual leader, and Beck is its leading prophet, the conservative movement's entire discourse is now driven by whatever outrageous rhetoric seems most likely to boost Fox News' ratings. The moral hijacking of the movement has begun, and nobody should be surprised when these folks finally end up in the same moral abyss these kinds of leaders always bring their followers to.

Sixth: They're putting themselves in direct opposition to state power -- and identifying that power as their primary enemy.

All groups headed for a violent confrontation eventually come to believe that their enemies are somehow aligned with the government -- and the government is out to get them. Conservatives are coming up hard against this one now that they no longer control the government themselves. Back when they were gleefully dismantling the Constitution and building a surveillance state, it never occurred to them that they might someday be out of power.

Now, of course, they're terrified to find all that unleashed, unaccountable power in the hands of Libruls and That Black Guy.

Weirdly, they seem to have almost total amnesia about their role in all this. To hear them tell it, Barack Obama seized all this power for himself in just the past three months. Given that epic memory failure, there's not much hope that they'll draw the right lessons from this reversal.

It's far more likely that their newfound terror of government power will lead them to resent -- and eventually overreact to -- even casual encounters with government authority.

Seventh: They're arming up. Back in 2006, right-wing watchers warned that white-supremacist groups were encouraging their members to join the military in order to get the weapons training they'll need to execute their racial holy war. And for the first time ever, the recruit-starved military wasn't doing much to cull them out.

The DHS' concern about returning veterans was no doubt partly based on this recent history, which has given racist groups unprecedented access to propagandize troops at the front.

At the same time, the past 100 days have seen record gun sales and nationwide ammo shortages as terrified conservatives buy up guns in anticipation of a total weapons ban.

This seems like just another curious, only-in-America news story -- until you realize that the far right is already sporting most of the earmarks of a group that's gearing up for violent action. Given the rest of the pattern, we should take this trend very, very seriously.

Eighth: They're flexing their muscles. Groups who are flirting with terrorist action will usually start by experimenting with threats and petty violence. Learning that they can successfully intimidate others adds to the group's sense of invincibility and teaches them the dangerous lesson that violence works. Both these discoveries increase the chances that they'll resort to violence more quickly, and in greater magnitude, in the future.

The Southern Poverty Law Center carefully tracks hate incidents around the country, and it has seen a significant uptick in violence and threats since the inauguration.

While we can hope this will die down in time as people make their peace with the new status quo, we also need to be aware that there's a pattern where things go the other way -- that these events will embolden the right to commit bigger acts of thuggery and organize on a broader scale for actual domestic terrorism.

If our national terrorism watchers were tracking a religious or political group that had suddenly escalated on all eight of these fronts in a matter of three short months, they'd be seriously concerned. They'd be asking the question we need to ask: Now that we're here, what comes next?

... Go?

Let me start this last piece of the discussion with a warning. This isn't a prediction. It's just a description of how things typically play out when any authoritarian group arrives at the place where the American right now stands.

If they keep going this way, this is where the road leads -- but the people now in that movement still have a choice about whether they're actually going to make the trip. If they do, here's what lies ahead:

Further separation: One of the watershed moments in the development of a religious or political radical group is the day they decide to go upcountry, building some sort of secluded retreat or community away from the prying eyes of the authorities.

The Aryan nations, the fundamentalist Mormons, Jim Jones ... the list is long, because this is such a universal moment in the radicalization process. It's also the next place the gears shift.

The American right is too big to just all go off into the woods together -- but its obviously trying hard to retreat from the rest of us in other ways. The complete break with factual reality is one part of this. The growing talk of secession is another overt sign that it's desperately looking for someplace to escape to.

Given that impulse, it's very likely that land is already being quietly bought up and that some people are beginning to plan their moves to various locations around the country where they believe they'll be safer.

It's not unreasonable to expect that over the next year or two, we'll start to hear about a new round of separatist compounds, and that a few states will become right-wing havens where secessionist talk will turn more serious.

This is a dangerous development. Groups that try to separate always claim that they're retreating to "live in peace" -- but too often, peace is about the last thing that results from this.

Goin' up to the country is an overt declaration that the group believes that the mainstream culture is "out to get us," and is now asserting its right to live outside the law. There's an unquestioned conviction that the outside world means them harm -- and that they must organize and arm themselves for the coming showdown.

The isolation also allows high-dominance leaders to concentrate their power over group members without any pesky social or legal recourse to fairness. Suspicion and dependency flourish. People learn that might makes right and come to accept violence as a natural and proper way to deal with conflict.

This is why law-enforcement groups consider the moment of physical retreat as sort of Rubicon beyond which the likelihood of violence increases dramatically. We should be very concerned that the right wing seems determined to go there.

Overt lawlessness: A group that is separated from society, living in its own world, telling itself stories that justify violence, gripped with paranoia, perfectly willing to engage in petty thuggery and intimidation and is armed to the teeth has pretty much everything required to turn into a first-rate criminal cartel.

Members come to believe that they answer to a "higher law," and express that newfound "freedom" by overtly and deliberately defying laws passed by a government they don't respect as legitimate.

At this point, it's common to see people who've never been in trouble with the law before suddenly coming into contact (and confrontation) with the authorities. Lawlessness is a sign of an increasingly open contempt for and defiance of the larger society -- and a hint that that the group is moving into the openly oppositional stance that precedes a large-scale attack or confrontation.

Furthermore, once they get to where they're brazenly breaking laws, you can bet they're especially breaking weapons laws. Gathering guns and bomb-making materials is seen as necessary to either defend their home turf from their perceived enemies or for make offensive plans to eradicate those enemies.

Picking fights with authorities: A decade ago, law enforcement and government officials too often blundered into bloody showdowns with radical groups because they simply didn't understand the central role they played as The Enemy in the group's unfolding eschatological drama.

These days -- following several disastrous confrontations in the 1990s -- government officials are being trained to move slowly, to avoid backing would-be revolutionaries into humiliating corners and to work within their worldview and belief structure wherever possible to defuse a possible confrontation.

That's important, because a group that's gone all the way to the end of the road arrives at a place where it's armed, barricaded, mentally and physically prepared and spoiling for a fight. From that point, any excuse -- a routine business inspection, a traffic stop, a custody hearing that didn't go the right way -- can become the catalyst that leads the group to take out after its government persecutors.

As the group becomes more dug in and angry, these confrontations become harder to avoid. And all too often, they end in disaster.

* * *

From here, the most likely case is that the vast majority of the folks now drunk on right-wing hate talk will ultimately sober up just soon enough not to follow the movement's emerging leaders down this road. But, if the 1990s were any guide (and the DHS report seems to think that they are), there will also be a small but significant fraction of hard-core right-wingers who will zoom right through the flashing red lights and ride all the way to the bloody end.

Without the moderating influence of the saner voices among them, they'll quickly turn violent -- and we could be in for an interesting few years before it all burns itself out.

And, in the end, it probably will burn itself out. In the 1990s, the violence escalated to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 -- an event so gruesome and dramatic that it discredited the movement even among its own followers. Tim McVeigh's capture and execution also scared tough-talking movement leaders with the threat of real consequences. And so that round ended.

What we've seen the past 100 days strongly suggests that, to at least some degree, we will be going there again. The right wing long ago accepted a foundational narrative that justifies violence.

Now, the leaders of the movement are inciting their followers to take many (if not most) of the intermediate steps that signal a group actively gearing up for violence. From this point, it's only a short slide to further separation, disengagement, and finally, confrontation.

What we've seen so far has been intense and surprising -- but we should also recognize it as the first warning gusts of a rapidly gathering storm.

Sara Robinson is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006 and is a founding member of Group News Blog.

onQ: A More Tolerant, Inclusive City

These two shorts videos, produced by WQED, Pittsburgh's PBS station, ask important questions about what it takes for a community to be tolerant and accepting enough to retain and attract GLBT residents in order to ensure long-term viability for the area's social, economic, and cultural life.

Venango County too must start grappling openly with such issues in order for it to be relevant in 21st Century America.

Video 1: Celebrate Life, Celebrate Art

A photographer from the North Side who's lived with HIV for 23 years, and a painter from North Oakland who has tested negative - also for 23 years. They are just two of many artists donating work to a cause that helps countless people. OnQ contributor Dave Crawley tells the story of a group called Persad and its art auction that takes place at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Video 2: Discussion of GLBT Pittsburgh

OnQ host Chris Moore and guests Joy Royes, Gary Van Horn, Betty Hill, and Darrell Philips discuss the current state of life in the Pittsburgh region for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community, as well as, the challenges, advances, setbacks they may face.

Where's Our 'Fierce Advocate'?

This article about President Obama from the Washington Post demands that we ask similar questions about leadership here in Venango County.

Where are the local allies who will publicly stand with GLBT residents and help advocate for change,who will say that it is no longer acceptable that GLBT people live in the shadows, in the fear and isolation of the closet, because of the ignorance, bigotry and discrimination of a vocal minority with misplaced values ??

Where are our 'fierce advocates' ?

By Richard Socarides

In December, while trying to quiet the furor over his invitation of Rick Warren to take part in his inauguration, Barack Obama reminded us that he had been a "consistent" and "fierce advocate of equality for gay and lesbian Americans." But at the end of its first 100 days, his administration has been neither.

What makes this especially disappointing is that it comes during a crisis-driven "change moment" in our country's history that not only cries out for leadership but presents a particularly good climate for making substantial progress on gay equality.

As an adviser on gay rights to President Bill Clinton during his second term, I know how hard it is to achieve real progress. We learned that lesson acutely during Clinton's abortive first-term attempt to allow gays to serve in the military, an outcome for which he is still paying a steep legacy price.

But recent victories on gay marriage, a youth-driven paradigm shift in public opinion and the election of our first African American president make this a uniquely opportune moment to act.

I understand that the president has his hands full saving the economy. But across a broad spectrum of issues -- including women's rights, stem cell research and relations with Cuba -- the Obama administration has shown a willingness to exploit this change moment to bring about dramatic reform.

So why not on gay rights? Where is our New Deal?

It is the memory of 1993's gays-in-the-military debacle (and a desire never to repeat it) that has both the president's advisers and policy advocates holding back, waiting for some magical "right time" to move boldly.

This is a bad strategy. President Obama will never have more political capital than he has now, and there will never be a better political environment to capitalize on. People are distracted by the economy and war, and they are unlikely to get stirred up by the right-wing rhetoric that has doomed efforts in the past.

And people are willing to try new approaches. The court ruling legalizing gay marriage in Iowa represents a real opening, an opportunity to get "undecideds" to take another look not only at gay marriage but at gay rights in general. As Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin remarked, many Americans may be asking themselves, "If the [Iowa] Supreme Court said this, maybe I have to think anew."

Here is what Obama should do to seize this opportunity:


First, he should start talking about gay rights again, the way he did during the campaign. What made Clinton such a transformational figure of inclusion was his constant willingness to talk to and about gay people. When he said, "I have a vision and you are a part of it," you could feel his sincerity.

As president, Obama barely mentions gay and lesbian Americans. During his first 100 days, he has done so only while defending his selection of inauguration speakers. He was silent after the announcement of the Iowa decision -- one of the most important gay civil rights victories ever.

Second, he should move swiftly, as he promised during the campaign, to help secure passage of the bill now moving through Congress imposing new federal penalties for anti-gay hate crimes, as well as legislation allowing gays to serve in the military. Ten years have passed since Matthew Shepard was killed. We have endured 15 years of "don't ask, don't tell" discrimination. We have waited long enough.

Third, he should appoint a high-ranking, respected, openly gay policy advocate to oversee government efforts toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. Give this person access to policymakers, similar to what has been done on urban policy and for people with disabilities. This is especially important because, unlike Clinton, who had gay friends such as David Mixner, Roberta Achtenberg and Bob Hattoy around to nudge him, Obama has no high-profile gay senior aides with a history in the gay rights movement.

Finally, Obama should champion comprehensive, omnibus federal gay civil rights legislation, similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation and granting a basic umbrella of protections in employment, education, housing and the like (rather than the existing piecemeal approach to legislation). Such a bill should also provide for federal recognition of both civil unions and marriages as they are authorized by specific states.

Obama is in a good position, and the time is ripe for a new approach. Taking these steps might spare the country the trauma of devolving into a pervasive and divisive debate over gay marriage, which, after all, is not the only issue of concern to gay and lesbian Americans.

Gay voters who supported Barack Obama remain positive about him, and most are prepared to be patient. It's still early on gay rights for the Obama administration -- but now is the time to act boldly.

The writer, a lawyer in New York, served on the White House staff from 1993 to 1999, including three years as special assistant to President Bill Clinton.

Poll: Support for Marriage Equality at All-time High

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows support for marriage equality among Americans at an all-time high. According to the poll, 49% support same-sex marriage, while 46% oppose it. This is the first time supporters of same-sex marriage have outnumbered opponents in an ABC/Post poll.


Some key findings:

The poll found pronounced differences by age, with 66% of adults under 30 supporting same-sex marriage, 48% of respondents ages 30–64 supporting it, and only 28% of those over 65 in favor.

Support among self-identified conservatives, who remain least likely to endorse marriage equality, increased threefold over five years, from 10% in 2004 to 30% in the latest poll.

Polarization remains strong according to party affiliation, with conservative Republicans opposing marriage equality most strongly, and liberal Democrats favoring it most strongly.

Among those in the middle, the poll shows that 54% of moderates and 52% of independents favor marriage equality. However, the largest single shift is evident in moderate and conservative Democrats, where 57% support same-sex marriage now compared to 30% in 2006.

Additionally, 53% of respondents said that same-sex marriages performed legally in another state should be recognized in their states.

The poll was conducted by telephone from April 21 to 24 among a random sample of 1,072 adults. It surveyed attitudes on a range of questions including same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, and decriminalization of marijuana. Results have a 3-point margin of error

New Movie: Ask Not

ASK NOT is a rare and compelling documentary film that explores the effects of the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay and lesbian soldiers and service members. The film exposes the tangled political battles that led to the discriminatory law and examines the societal shifts that have occurred since its passage in 1993.

Current and veteran gay soldiers reveal how “don’t ask, don’t tell” affects them during their tours of duty, as they struggle to maintain a double life, uncertain of whom they can trust. The film also explores how gay veterans and youth organizers are turning to forms of personal activism to overturn the policy. From a national speaking tour of conservative universities to protests at military recruitment offices, these public events question how the U.S. military can claim to represent democracy and freedom while denying one segment of the population the right to serve.

Watch the trailer HERE

Former Pennsylvania College Football Captain Was Openly Gay

Brian Sims led his Bloomsburg University team to Division II Championship game

from Outsports.com:

In the autumn of 2000, we at Outsports had run the story of Greg Congdon, a high school football player in Troy, Penn., who had been run off the team because he was gay. At the same time, 100 miles away, a very different football story was unfolding.

Defensive tackle Brian Sims was the captain of the Bloomsburg University football team. He had grown up an Army brat with two Army colonels for parents. The family settled in Pennsylvania for Brian's high school career, and he ultimately suited up for the nearby Bloomsburg. Playing in Division II, the team's record midway through the 2000 season was 4-2, and they were setting their sights on a Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship. What he and his teammates didn't know was that they were in the middle of what would become the longest season in Division II history; And Sims was about to tell them he was gay.

Actually, Sims said he didn't come out to his team: "My team came out to me."

Someone Sims had dated shared a class with the quarterback of the football team, Eric Miller. Sims believes that the jilted lover wanted Sims kicked off the football team, so he told Miller that he had been dating Sims. Soon after, Sims was out on the town with Miller and longtime friend and teammate Fran Gregor. After a couple drinks, Miller asked Sims if he was gay.

It was the question Sims had been fearing for years. He knew many of his teammates probably suspected that he was gay, and he was right.

"He's the captain of the football team, he's a good-looking guy," Gregor, his good friend and teammate through high school and college, said. "In the dorms, there were nights when girls would literally stumble into our room and climb into bed with him. And five minutes later, they would leave."

At the time, Sims was actively dating men. While living with nine of his teammates, he was able to hide his romantic life from these very close friends. He had first realized he was attracted to men in junior high school and in high school had a long-term affair with a fellow athlete. It wasn't until he was in college that he realized he was gay, and it wasn't until that night that he told any of his friends.

Despite his suspicion, Gregor never talked about Sims' sexual orientation until that night. No one did. Not having talked about it with anyone, Sims feared how divulging that he was gay would change his team and how he fit on it.

"I knew it was going to happen, I just didn't know how or when," Sims said. "I feared it would change the dynamic in the locker room. You're spending four or five hours a day with your friends, and that's what I played for. I cared that my team would still be comfortable around me. I was concerned that in the locker room guys would be uncomfortable around me."

Despite the fear, Sims told them he was gay. They spent much of the rest of the night talking about the revelation, mostly making sure that Sims was in good shape emotionally. Word spread to the rest of the team slowly. It was before MySpace and Facebook; In 2000, no one was Tweeting about anyone's sexual orientation. The guys Sims told that night didn't hold a team meeting, but slowly more and more teammates found out.

"I think it genuinely came as a shock to most people," Gregor said. At 6-feet, 260 pounds, Sims didn't fit the mold that most of the guys on the team had for gay men. In his senior year, he bench pressed 225 pounds 37 times. He was a "guy's guy": No limp wrist and no feather boas. "I wouldn't call Brian your stereotypical gay man, whatever that may be."

As teammates found out, in the locker room no one moved away from Sims. No one shied away from him. His being gay became just more fodder for locker room teasing, like someone's fat mom. Sims said he also became the dumping ground for every question his teammates had about gay people.

"Straight guys tend to be the most curious about sex, in general," Sims said. "My team asked me everything you can possibly ask a gay guy about sex, and in the crudest terms possible."

Both Sims and Gregor said they never heard a single negative comment about Sims' sexuality the rest of the year. Part of that was the timing. They were in the middle of a season for which they all had high hopes, and by the time most of the team found out about Sims, they had started talking about the playoffs. After starting the season 1-2, they ran off 11 straight wins and reached the 2000 Division II National Championship game. With the preparation and frenzy surrounding the team as they inched closer to the playoffs and then started winning playoff games, the sexuality of one of the team's most respected players was the furthest from players' concerns.

"We made a hell of a run that year, going to the national championship game," Gregor said. "Everyone was just really focused on the goal at hand, and [Sims being gay] was just put on the backburner. It didn't play a major role on our team. I don't think anybody was concerned that it would get out to the press or anything."

It also helped that Sims was good. Very good. He was the captain of the team and he was a first-team all-conference player that year. While his team got beaten badly by Delta State in the national championship game, 63-34, Sims said he recorded three sacks in the game.

"By the time it happened, I was the longest-running starter on the team," Sims said. "I had a lot of success on the football field. And I think that bought me a certain amount of leeway with this group."

Gregor agreed: "Had he been a scrub sitting on the bench and not really part of the team, I'm sure he would have gotten ridiculed and made fun of. I'm sure it would have been a much worse road for him had he not been a good player and the captain of the football team."

On the contrary, Sims said because he was a good player many of his teammates found the positive side of having an openly gay man on their team.

"It became a funny sense of pride for a lot of my teammates and close friends," Sims said. "Pennsylvania is not an extremely liberal state, especially central Pennsylvania. Football players are not what I would consider particularly exposed people, especially college football players. But I think it became a sense of pride for all of them. ‘Not only is this guy an All-Conference player, and not only is he a starter, and not only is he a good friend of mine, but I'm all right with the fact that he's gay.' And I started seeing a lot of that."

Sims remembered one night when he was on a date. They were sitting in the back of the room at a candlelit table enjoying a quiet evening. Several of his teammates came in and were sharing some drinks at the bar. Out of Sims' earshot, one of the other patrons apparently made a comment about the two fags on date.

"Three or four guys on my team literally picked him up and threw him out the door," Sims said.

Many of his teammates came to him over the coming months, pulling him aside to privately apologize for anything they may have said over the years that offended him. He specifically remembered a 6-foot-3, 350-pound teammate "crying his eyes out" thinking he may have offended Brian in the past. "It was very affirming for me," Brian said.

Still, after the season ended and Sims had graduated, Gregor, who was there for one more semester, said players did talk more about Sims' sexuality and asked more questions about it. And as new players came in and younger players rose up the ranks, the story of the "gay captain" grew.

"After he graduated, it was more talked about after he left," Gregor said. "Younger guys who didn't really know him talked about it. Guys would say, ‘I can't believe that guy was gay and was the captain of the football team.' I won't say it became a legend, but it was more talked about after he left than it was when he was there."

About four years ago, Sims brought his now-fiance to a team reunion. Both of them were accepted with open arms. Sims said he "lost track of him halfway through the night because he was off with half of the football team getting bombed somewhere."

Sims said would have liked a shot at the NFL, but a 6-foot defensive tackle wasn't on anyone's radar screens, and he was never given the chance in college to play fullback or linebacker. Instead, he got his J.D. from Michigan State and now works for the Philadelphia Bar Association. One of his most recent projects was to draft a resolution on behalf of the Bar Association in support of recent state legislation protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He is also on the Board of Directors for Gay and Lesbian Lawyers of Philadelphia.

"Our Constitution is very specific," Sims said. "It either says separation of church and state or equal protection. And there's not a valid policy argument to be made for why there isn't complete 100% equal rights for LGBT folks. There just isn't. The only argument that can be made has to trace back to religions norms. I happen to pay taxes to a government that says it won't base how it treats me on what a religion has to say about me."

Talking about the law and legal protection for gay people, it's clear Sims is as passionate about this work as he was at any time on the football field.

"My experience will be the norm soon. Pretty soon, it's not going to matter if you're a gay guy on a football team, and you're parents aren't going to freak out if they find out you're gay. Will it be different? Interesting? Yes. But it's so close to not being an issue, and I want to push us beyond that point."

How To Get Wealthy In The "Hate-Gays-For-Pay" Industry

The following story raises interesting questions about the anti-gay extremists here in Venango County!!

from Pam's House Blend:

Beyond the National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) spectacular failure with the "Gathering Storms" ad and their fresh embrace of Miss California the Martyr for the Cause, we shouldn't forget how often it appears that those so loudly trying to scare everyone against equal treatment for same-sex marriages simply make a ton of cash off of their chosen 'belief system.'


Beyond Maggie Gallagher receiving over $20,000 from the Bush misAdministration to "promote marriage" through her syndicated columns (without disclosing that she was being paid to write her opinions), she also serves as President of the National Organization for Marriage and as President for the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. I've not been able to find NOM's IRS form 990's online yet, but a look at those filed for Institute for Marriage and Public Policy very clearly show that the woman pockets about 1/3 of the donations in the salary she pays herself alone.

2007 - http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2007/200/240/2007-200240184-03c761ac-9.pdf
Revenue from donations - $296,899
Gallagher's Salary - $125,000 (that's 42% of the donations before including payroll taxes and any benefits)
Other interesting, but non-specific expenses - $34,177 to 'consultants' and $37,048 for 'public relations'

2006 - http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2006/200/240/2006-200240184-0363080f-9.pdf
Revenue from donations - $413,171
Gallagher's Salary - $118,333 (that's 28% of the donations before including payroll taxes and any benefits)
Other interesting, but non-specific expenses - $33,893 to 'consultants' and $6,083 for 'public relations'

2005 – http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2005/200/240/2005-200240184-026cf278-9.pdf
Revenue from donations - $315,824
Gallagher's Salary - $102,000 (that's 32% of the donations before including payroll taxes and any benefits)
Other interesting, but non-specific expenses - $32,668 to 'consultants'

So over that 3 year period of time,