Gay Rights

I don't give to any organization that does not support our rights.Even some Democrats refuse to come out and support our rights because they are afraid of alienating their constituents.Politicians have to come out and support our rights,No matter the cost.Their constituents will admire them for that fact.

It's been over forty years now Paul "merely ten months" and my government MUST stop working at an agonizing pace when it comes to "issues like this". You are the one that needs to get a grip.

Yet we're getting pissed off because nothing is happening after merely ten months?

Seriously Paul? Not only are the DemoNcrats NOT actively working on the repeals of DADT and DOMA, this president's Department of Justice is ACTIVELY working against us by defending this rubbish they refer to as "law."

The president does not have to defend "laws" they believe are unconstitutional, which this president ran on the notion that these two laws were unconstitutional. Now he continues to have his DoJ defend them.

In regards to DADT, this president HAS the executive power, not to repeal, but to suspend discharges based on the DADT policy. Yet he refuses to actually use his executive power.

Therefore, I have a form letter that send to the DNC and the president when they ask for money, it goes like this:

Dear DNC,

I truly "support" Democrats being elected in 2010 and 2012. I am a "fierce advocate" of the Democratic Party after all. I know that I have promised you my support over the past few decades and have done my best to follow through.

Even now I am "working towards" a financial donation to the Party. I do have to ask for your "patience" though, because as a gay man, my family and I are still second class citizens and are having to funnel our resources towards causes that protect and honor our basic civil rights. "We have a lot on our plate."

We are "proceeding" towards lifting the denial of funds to the DNC and are "developing a strategy" that will get us there by the end of Obama's time at the White House. As a matter of fact, my family has planned several "meetings" to discuss these very important donations and will be sending out a press release shortly to announce our "cocktail party" celebrating Democracy.

Thanks for understanding. And hang in there!

Sincerely,

This letter was developed by Liam over at Americablog, and I use it absolutely EVERY chance I get which seems to be quite often lately.

@ Rick, I have a grip.  If you want to get technical, ok.  40 years struggling for LGBT equality.  The first African American slaves were brought to North America in 1607.  Slavery in America was abolished some time around 1865.  They did not gain equal civil rights until 1965.

By my calculation, thats 358 years, give or take.

As for women's rights, even longer.

By 10 months I meant how long its been into Obama's term.

@ David, I wasn't aware that he could do that, I'm not hugely politically savvy.

Paul, You must be joking.

If you are willing to wait at all for equality then I have no need to continue this exchange. I don't have 318 more years like you do.

I'm sure the GOP and the DNC love you and hope you spread your words of realism.

Did you miss what I said in my original post, about how I don't like the fact that its taking so long, and that we need to see results soon?

Maybe I didn't make my point very well:  As shitty as it is, our county moves slower than frozen molasses.  Things like this should be resolved quickly and efficiently, but they won't be.  This means that we need to be in this for the long haul, we need to be ready to drag the fight out and last longer than they can.

We can't let the fact that its taking longer than we want make us angry, because all we are doing is over-expecting then getting mad when it falls through.

Anger is a largely debilitating emotion, interfering with rational thought.

So no, I'm not willing to wait for equality, but I'm not dumb enough to expect it to come waltzing over the horizon either.

I definitely do not have 318 years.

I don't think the african americans did either.

Well then how about we get off our asses more and start revolution a little bit sooner. Let me give you a few quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. about patience.

"The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals."

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.""

"I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

I contest your argument about how republicans treat the Christian fundamentalist. The republicans do all they can in their power to appease these bigots in any way they can. From trying to strip evolution and science from schools, to trying to force, harmful and deadly ex-gay therapy in schools. Let us not forget about abstinence only education, which is scientifically proven to be entirely flawed.

As Bill Maher said oh so clearly with Larry King. "There is no left any more, you have your kookies on the far right which are your republicans and you have your democrats which are right of center. There is no longer a left party any more that has any political pull or say in this country."

Chris:

Obviously you are neither a social or Christian conservative, nor a Republican. Nor do you know or understand them.

Bill Maher may be close about the Democrat Party, a willing tool of large corporations where center-left politics are a cover for policies that restrict competition, hence the corporations get richer. This is socialism soft, the third way making corporations part of government.

But with leaders like Steele, McCain, Bush (père et fils), (girly man) Schwarzennegger in California, and on and on, all of them left of center. Maher looked at the words, but actions speak louder than words and the actions say left of center, the whole bunch. Their actions are almost identical to Democrats. And visa versa. Obama’s actions look like Bush on steroids.

Is it any wonder that social and Christian conservatives are abandoning the Republican Party in droves? They’re tired of being talked down to. They’ve had it up to here of promises that were never fulfilled. They say “Enough already” to being taken for granted by Republican Mandarins.

As George Wallace said back in the ’60s, “There ain’t a plugged nickel’s worth of difference between the two parties.” It seems that that’s as true today as it was then.

I would contest with that. Bush, McCain, Steele, all believe in the absolute oppression of LGBT, they believe women are less than men, so on and so forth, they are an absolute example of the religious right. Tell me how is bushes Federal Marriage Amendment policy not christian when he quoted bible passages while he endorsed trying to pass a piece in legislation that will forcibly divorce every gay couple legally married in their home state?

The only christian conservatives abandoning the republican party are those like Will Brown who are fed up with people who try to use the republican party to impose their narrow minded religious beliefs on all.Those who feel morally superior to everyone else and wish to use our government to impose that superiority onto others.

Left of center means you believe in social progression not social stagnation. The only one you named that shows quasi support for social progression is Schwarzenegger. Like the others in the republican party who are progressives they are being slowly kicked out of the party. Perhaps you might also want to consider that the ones who are fed up with the republicans who are the bigots, are leaving in a fit of tantrum like little children because they are losing their campaigns of insurmountable evil against innocent and productive members of society. They are losing the battle with gays just as they have lost the battle with african americans, native americans and women, and they know it.

The sooner the nut balls leave the republican party the sooner that party can start healing and become what it once was. It was once a party of social progression that fought for the rights of both women and african americans. And then it became a party that supported anti miscegenation laws and became more and more racist, sexist, homophobic and "christian" as the religious Reich started to pour in.

I am not a christian, I am an atheist, as well as a scientist and researcher for the APA. However, I have spent more than seven years studying theology, Hebrew history, Hebrew culture, middle eastern culture, ancient Roman Culture, ancient Nordic culture, and ancient Asian culture. I have studied twenty six religions including all thirteen bibles, six Torah, and four Qu'ran. I despise religion because it forces people to think in absolutes, and then permeates into their minds fallacies, and lies and uses the test of time with fear to instill them as unshakable, undeniable truths. 

Religion has proven, more specifically the Davidic Dogmas, to create a toxic atmosphere of a fictitious spiritual battle between a perceived good and a perceived evil. The line of what these religions call good has always been moved in order to oppress or outright slaughter a certain group they dislike.

So I ask you if the fundamentalist are so quickly abandoning the republican party why is that party still thirty five years behind the times in terms of social understanding of its citizens, more importantly its LGBT citizens and party members? Why does the republican part still refuse to listen to the evidence from science over their religion? I will correct on that one. The good religious people(those that see this issue of marriage equality as a moral imperative to support) are leaving the republican party, while the fundamentalist stay behind and corrupt it further into the retched cesspool of ingrates it is slowly becoming.

In no way am I showing support for the Democrats. On the contrary, what I said here can also be applied to the Democrats. However the democrats were the ones that supported slavery, segregation, and abandoning fundamental rights of all if they were to include a minority that the majority hated, instead of just simply expanding those rights. They are simply only repeating the travesties of their history, and next to Clinton, Obama is a perfect Hallmark example of that.

Oh and as for promises, the religious Reich want nothing more than the elimination of LGBT in our world, as well as eliminating "real" science in public curriculum. They have been pushing for removing restrictions that force respect amongst other non christian religions, and even different denominations of christianity that do not absolutely equal their belief systems, no matter how insane and dangerous they are.

We should know that there are republicans that do support these insane and inhumane measures, as well as democrats but there is far more republicans that support this than democrats. If these nut balls want to break away and form their own party more power to them. It will be easier to generalize them, group them up, and expose them as the lunatics they are. Hopefully we can also get them to seek the much needed psychological treatment they need before they become more of a danger to society as to themselves than they already are.

“I would contest with that. Bush, McCain, Steele, all believe in the absolute oppression of LGBT, they believe women are less than men, so on and so forth, they are an absolute example of the religious right.” C’mon!! This claptrap is utter nonsense! Give me a break! How do you expect to be taken seriously when you spout such ignorance?

“Tell me how is bushes … policy not christian when he quoted bible passages…” Because that’s what politicians do. As an ancient Greek put it, “The philosophers equally disbelieve all religions, the common people equally believe all religions, and the politicians find all religions equally useful.” Quoting Bible passages does not a Christian make. Even that sexual predator and anti-Christian bigot President Clinton quoted Bible passages when he thought it would help his cause de jour. Likewise Bush, in other statements, made it very clear that he is not a Christian.

“…party to impose their narrow minded religious beliefs on all.Those who feel morally superior to everyone else and wish to use our government to impose that superiority onto others.”  When the party is not listed, this sounds like Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats.

“The only one you named that shows quasi support for social progression is Schwarzenegger.” Do you know how Schwarzenegger got into politics? The energy companies, most notably Enron, bribed the previous governor, Democrat Gray Davis (campaign donations), then artificially set up a series of energy shortages to help Gray Davis sign energy contracts very favorable to the energy companies, picking the pockets of California consumers. Then Gray Davis was recalled in a special election. The front runner to replace him was a Republican, reputed to be the best expert on California law in the legislature, who promised to tear up these contracts because they were illegal. The energy companies were in a panic. So they called in their big shots, Pete Wilson, Warren Buffet, and a few others, to find a person with no principles who was willing to sell out to the energy companies, who had a big name and was electable. They found their candidate in Schwarzenegger. He did not tear up those contracts. Yes, he’d make a perfect Democrat.

“I am not a christian, I am an atheist,” figured as much. What I find so interesting about atheism is that it is so logically incoherent. Fascinating.

“I despise religion…” yet you are a firm disciple of one—atheism.

You wrote that the Republicans “… became a party that supported anti miscegenation laws…” silly, that was the Democrats, read your history, “…became more and more racist,…” such as passing the 1964 civil rights laws over the opposition of the Democrats, when the KKK was still an active part of their party.

So much of the rest of your two messages is so out of touch with reality that I found myself laughing out loud while reading it.

However your closing comments that Christians ought to get psychiatric treatment because they are a danger to society reminds me of the Soviet treatment of political dissidents, among whom Christians were a large percentage, in mental institutes using drugs that would often destroy their minds.