Billionaire Koch Brother, A Tea Party Favorite, Supports Marriage Equality

from Metro Weekly (8/30/12):

Marriage equality supporters found a new ally in an unlikely place earlier this week.

The American billionaire and political activist David Koch, who, with his brother Charles, has funneled millions of dollars into conservative organizations bent on electing Republicans, told Politico that he supports marriage equality.

When asked if he agreed with the Republican Party’s stance on gay rights, Koch responded, “I believe in gay marriage.”

Although Mitt Romney and much of the Republican Party support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and the Defense of Marriage Act, which forbids federal recognition of same-sex marriages, Koch thinks otherwise, telling Politico, “Well, I disagree with that.”

The former 1980 vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, which is generally liberal on social issues, also broke with Romney on taxes and defense cuts, stating that the U.S. military should withdraw from the Middle East and defense spending cuts as well as tax increases should not be kept off the table.

Koch was in Tampa, Fl. as a delegate for the Republican National Convention. He said he considers himself a Republican first, despite his differing ideological views.

It was reported in May that the Koch brothers plan to give nearly $400 million by November to conservative groups set on defeating President Barack Obama in November and electing Republicans to Congress. David Koch alone is worth an estimated $25 billion.

Koch is one of several high profile Republicans that have differed with Romney on the issue of marriage equality.

Although not a supporter of gay couples’ right to marry, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said in a radio interview earlier this week that he thinks marriage equality is a matter best decided on the state level rather than with a constitutional amendment.

[Photo: David Koch (Courtesy of celebexperts).]

Potter County Library Faced Protests Over Gay Documentary

Thanks to good reporting by the Harrisburg Patriot-News, the truth about the smear campaign being waged by the Potter County Tea Party and the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania about a recent screening of OUT IN THE SILENCE in Coudersport is starting to come out.

The whole sad affair reminds us of comments that a Venango County school district superintendent made a few years ago about the American Family Assoc. of Penna.'s president, Diane Gramley:

"She likes to start a fire, then throw gasoline on it."


Potter County Library Faced Protests Over Gay Documentary

by Donald Gilliland for The Patriot-News:

After several hours of people pointing their fingers in her face and telling her she was going to hell, Keturah Cappadonia cracked.

In tears, the 28-year-old librarian in this rural town of 2,500 people typed an e-mail to Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer canceling the planned screening of their award-winning PBS documentary about the challenges of being openly gay in rural Pennsylvania.

Wilson and Hamer are traveling the state with their film “Out In The Silence,” and Perry County is on the list of future venues.

The film recounts the men’s return to Oil City after a plea for help from the mother of a gay high school student being bullied at school.

It has been reviewed favorably by the American Library Association and Christianity Today, but it’s getting resistance in some of the rural counties where Wilson and Hamer think it most needs to be seen.

Several churches in Potter County launched a campaign to force the local library to cancel, and the president of the Potter County Tea Party called for the library’s funding to be revoked if it didn’t comply.

The 58-year-old library board president, Jane Metzger, decided she would have none of it.

Regardless of what she thought of homosexuality, she was not going to compromise the library’s mission “because of the very loud voices of a few folks.”

“Basically we’re looking at intellectual freedom,” said Metzger. “That’s the bottom line. That’s what a library is for.”

A quick series of calls to the other members of the board resulted in a unanimous decision: the screening would go forward as planned.

The leader of the Potter County Tea Party, through a local blogger, claimed the library was allowing conservative Christians to be “attacked for our beliefs at a public library we support with our tax money. This is wrong and cannot be tolerated.” Later, he apologized for using the Tea Party name to express his personal opinion.

In the meantime, the filmmakers issued a press release, and the local blogosphere lit up in a bonfire of anonymous comments and accusations.

By the time people began to arrive for the screening two days later, Cappadonia looked shell-shocked.

“I don’t like controversy,” she said. “I know it’s a conservative community, but I never imagined it would get such a knee-jerk reaction.”

Some were saying Christian views would never be allowed an airing at the library because of separation of church and state. But the the library has six shelves of Bibles and Christian books in the non-fiction section, and Christian fiction is “wildly popular,” said Cappadonia.

Many Christians in Coudersport support the library. One said, “This is not a town that burns books.”

Cars quickly filled the library parking lot. Then they filled the lot for the neighborhood park next door. Then they began pulling onto the grass.

When the lights went down, all seats were full. People were sitting on the floor, sitting on bookshelves, standing between the stacks and against the wall. Many could not see the screen, but stayed just to listen.

As the film neared its conclusion an hour later, there was a flash of lightning outside, a sharp clap of thunder, and a double rainbow filled the sky.

Inside, a few opponents of the film offered their brimstone and walked out.

Applause erupted when a woman told the library board, “I think it’s good what you’ve done here.”

Some attempted to speak at length about “God’s Law,” and expressed frustration when they were asked to let others talk, too.

Openly gay members of the town — teenagers, adults and senior citizens — spoke briefly. Some said they felt embraced by the community and lucky to live there; others much less so.

Walter Baker, former chairman of the local Republican party and a member of the vestry at the Episcopal church, has owned a hotel in the center of town as an openly gay man for over 30 years.

“The people here are probably the most friendly people around,” he said. “They’ve been more than generous to me knowing who and what I am.”

A man from a town nearby said his church was very important to him, but when he came out of the closet “the people who considered themselves the most religious wrote me horrible letters.”

The discussion got loud a few times, but the consensus afterward was it was worthwhile.

When everyone was gone, Keturah Cappadonia locked the door.

Library board member Terri Shaffer sat on the floor and began ripping up the tattered duct tape patching the carpet.

The carpet “was good stuff when it was put in,” said Metzger. “June 1973 to be exact.”

Although the local Tea Party claimed “$1.5 million of local taxes” go to the library, the reality is its total budget last year was $117,000 - with less than $42,000 from local governments.

“I think it was a good experience,” said Shaffer. “Who cares if people get a little loud and speak their mind?”

Maybe the experience will bring in some donations — “especially from Harrisburg” she quipped.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

It was one of the local ministers who spoke against the “homosexual lifestyle.”

When Cappadonia opened the door, he apologized to her.

“I feel badly about people coming in and badgering you,” he said.

Then he addressed Shaffer, saying “Terri, I hope I didn’t disappoint you too much.”

“It’s not my job to judge you,” she said with a smile.

Pa. Tea Party Apologizes for Documentary Controversy

By Jeffrey Gerson for The Advocate:


George Brown, president of the Potter County Tea Party, has issued a public apology for his protest of the acclaimed documentary Out in the Silence when it screened at a local library on its tour throughout Pennsylvania.

In an interview with The Advocate, Joe Wilson, co-director of Out in the Silence, explained the project’s mission: “The purpose of the whole tour was really to use this film to raise awareness and visibility about the lives of LGBT people in rural communities and small towns and help strengthen the ability of LGBT people in these communities to begin organizing for change.” The tour has so far covered over half of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties. Yet upon setting up shop in Coudersport, Pa., Wilson and Dean Hamer, his partner and codirector, met with controversy.

The film was set to be screened at the public library, Wilson explained, emphasizing, “just as any community group can do, or any citizen can use the public library for a program.” All was well until the duo received a call from the library director announcing that the event would have to be canceled. “She was receiving angry calls from local pastors for having scheduled a gay and lesbian program at the library. They were making threats that they were going to call for the library to be defunded,” Wilson said

An article that ran Monday on CoudyNews.com provides quotations both from Pete Tremblay, pastor of the Free Methodist Church and the Tea Party's Brown. Tremblay issued a request for people to “call the library ... and in a Christian manner inform them that this event is not a benefit to our community, and ask that it be canceled.” Brown took a different approach: “Should this agenda be continued, we may need to ask if the library should be defunded.”

The library's board of directors ultimately supported the film, saying they would not be threatened. The event was a success, Wilson reported: “It was the largest event in the library in a long time. We had a very supportive crowd from high school students all the way up to elderly people. There were conflicting viewpoints present during the discussion, though Hamer believes these were positive as well, as it made it clear how challenging it can be to be LGBT in that kind of environment.”


Brown issued an official apology for his actions Thursday, stating, “The Tea Party is not concerned with a gay movie, but I as a person was concerned with the library being the venue for the movie, and frankly that had little to do with our Tea Party mission either. In retrospect I should of used my personal email to voice my opinion.”

Whose Country, and Whose County, Is It?

This NY Times Op-Ed raises interesting questions not just about the country, but about what's going on in Venango County as well.

Whose Country Is It?

by Charles Blow:

The far-right extremists have gone into conniptions.

The bullying, threats, and acts of violence following the passage of health care reform have been shocking, but they’re only the most recent manifestations of an increasing sense of desperation.


It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of “take our country back.” The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.

Hence their anger and frustration, which is playing out in ways large and small. There is the current spattering of threats and violence, but there also is the run on guns and the explosive growth of nefarious antigovernment and anti-immigrant groups. In fact, according to a report entitled “Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism” recently released by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “nativist extremist” groups that confront and harass suspected immigrants have increased nearly 80 percent since President Obama took office, and antigovernment “patriot” groups more than tripled over that period.

Politically, this frustration is epitomized by the Tea Party movement. It may have some legitimate concerns (taxation, the role of government, etc.), but its message is lost in the madness. And now the anemic Republican establishment, covetous of the Tea Party’s passion, is moving to absorb it, not admonish it. Instead of jettisoning the radical language, rabid bigotry and rising violence, the Republicans justify it. (They don’t want to refute it as much as funnel it.)

There may be a short-term benefit in this strategy, but it’s a long-term loser.


A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday took a look at the Tea Party members and found them to be just as anachronistic to the direction of the country’s demographics as the Republican Party. For instance, they were disproportionately white, evangelical Christian and “less educated ... than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack.” This at a time when the country is becoming more diverse (some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be nonwhite), less doctrinally dogmatic, and college enrollment is through the roof. The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future.

You may want “your country back,” but you can’t have it. That sound you hear is the relentless, irrepressible march of change. Welcome to America: The Remix.

Sunday Sadness: If You're Not White or Not Straight, The "Tea Party" Is Out To Get You

By Paul Kane for the Washington Post:

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus said that racial epithets were hurled at them Saturday by angry protesters who had gathered at the Capitol to protest health-care legislation, and one congressman said he was spit upon. The most high-profile openly gay congressman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), was heckled with anti-gay chants.


Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) issued a statement late Saturday saying that he was spit upon while walking to the Capitol to cast a vote, leading the Capitol Police to usher him into the building out of concern for his safety. Police detained the individual, who was then released because Cleaver declined to press charges.

"The congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him. The congressman would like to thank the U.S. Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the other Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care," said Danny Rotert, a spokesman for Cleaver.

Protesters outside the Capitol hurled epithets at Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Andre Carson (D-Ind.) as they left the building after President Obama delivered an 11th-hour speech on behalf of the health care bill. Carson told reporters that protesters yelled "kill the bill," then used a racial epithet to describe Carson and Lewis, who is a revered figure on both sides of the aisle.

According to observers, Frank was confronted by about 100 protesters inside the Longworth House Office Building, where Democrats were huddling for another meeting about the legislation. Some targeted Frank with anti-gay epithets and urged him to vote against the bill.

Democratic leaders and their aides said they were outraged by the day's behavior. "I have heard things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to get off the back of the bus," said House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking black official in Congress.


And Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement, "On the one hand, I am saddened that America's debate on health care -- which could have been a national conversation of substance and respect -- has degenerated to the point of such anger and incivility. But on the other, I know that every step toward a more just America has aroused similar hate in its own time; and I know that John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, has learned to wear the worst slurs as a badge of honor."

"This is not the first time the congressman has been called the "n" word and certainly not the worst assault he has endured in his years fighting for equal rights for all Americans," said Rotert, Cleaver's spokesman. "That being said, he is disappointed that in the 21st century our national discourse has devolved to the point of name-calling and spitting."

The incidents followed a noontime protest on the west side of the Capitol that drew several thousand people from around the country for a "Code Red" rally against the health-care bill. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) addressed the crowd.

As that rally ended, some protesters moved around to the south side of the Capitol, near the entrance to the House chamber, and across the east front of the complex.

On the first day of spring, most lawmakers walked across the street from their office buildings to the Capitol, rather than using the underground tunnels. That brought them into contact with protesters forming a gauntlet on each side of the walkway leading into the House. At one point, when Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) wanted to walk across the street to an office building, he was ushered into a car by his security detail and driven a couple hundred feet through the screaming crowd.


Saturday evening, more than a handful of House Republicans held an impromptu rally on the Capitol steps. Using a megaphone, the lawmakers urged on the crowd. Shortly after 6 p.m., Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) dared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to come out onto the House steps and address the more than 1,000 people who were gathered at the foot of the Capitol, prompting a loud and angry chant of "Nancy, Nancy, Nancy."

The protesters believe that the Obama administration and Congress are ignoring the public's opposition to the $940 billion legislation, which they consider it to be a government takeover of the health-care system. They carried signs saying "Remember in November"; one carried a broomstick with cardboard pasted onto it with the label "Here's Your Ride," for Pelosi.