I think it's interesting that the tie for the number one spot took precedence over what Luzhkov is doing.  Prentice and Thomasson haven't the power of Luzhkov - they are denying us marriage equality while Luzhkov goes a step further to deny LGBT people pretty much anything.

Of course, Luzhkov's influence on U.S. policy is pretty null, so basing it on U.S. standpoint only, I could see why he's number 2.

Thanks for the information!

Interesting how the core of these "anti-gay" arguments are only religion (which should not interfere with state) , the others lack (HIV? values??) substance and logic

Dante A. did not fully describe the particular level of Hell that these individuals have deservedly purchased with their malevolence and pure unadulterated hatred.

I have found it interesting spending time on some of these sites (http://www.afa.net/) A wealth of information and resources.  I really found their legislative pages very informative.  It has always amazed me how organized they are and how they, like the Utah church, are able to mobilize so quickly.  

Why aren't we?  Could we take some tips from our opponents?  We are quick to scream hateful statements out of pain, but where are we when publicity is needed?  In the warmth of our living rooms yelling at the TV news that we have been wronged? 
Or are we jumping on the phone and internet and crashing email systems to Campbell's soup in support of their stand because they have received so many supportive emails from us, their system was unable to process it?  Could you image the news blitz that would get?  Can you also image that would show other companies who have yet to stand out as supportive of their inclusive stand, that we would make a statement like this for them as well?

In a sense, it is the reverse psychology technique.  Companies such as (was it Pepsi or McDonald's?) caved to the AFA's boycott because AFA got more press and were more vocal in NOT supporting their businesses, than those who support them.  Makes sense that they take the side of the most vocal right?

How do we become as organized and knowledgable as a group--unified in our actions (sometimes regardless how we feel) and make some noise?  Are we too lazy?  Are we so tired of standing up, that while we are on the brink of change we are going to just complain and finger point instead of doing anything?

And to the new 2.0 youth - please be remember that those who have walked before you, walked in a different time and era, with different tools than you.  Take advantage of that which you have today but also combine and include the knowledge and wisdom of those who have been doing this longer than you have been alive.  The inroads that we have today are because of their dedication, pain, loss and work.  Never discount that or you are more likely to harm us much more than our opponents.

Pass the Matthew Sheperd Act.  Down with Homophobes!

Rella -

As a member of the class of 1946- the oldest of baby boomers, thank you for remembering our struggles:

1) Gay bars were found in the seediest parts of town. They were often run by the Mafia. Undercover vice cops sat and drank on duty and arrested you if you suggested that you go home with them. Dance bars were like twenties speakeasies - trap door and lights to advise you that only the same number of gay and lesbian couples could be on the floor in order to switch partners.

2) Sodomy - oral or anal was a crime - a felony. The Church called it a sin. The Psychological and Medical Societies said that you were sick....and that was 1967, when I became an adult at age 21, not 18.

3) Stonewall Inn was my Village watering hole on occasion when I left New Haven to go to the City. I was not there that night but I remember the NYC laws against serving a queer a drink.

4) Anita Bryant and that whole time in the late seventies preceded AIDS. In the early seventies, the APA and the AMA said that we were no longer sick. We were still sinners and felons.

5) A lot of my buddies, and older guys were either effeminate or they were heterosexually married with kids...divorced or open marriage. In 1976, we were brave to get committed and live together for the next thirty-two going on thirty-three years.

We do all we can. We got married and fought for it in MA and in ON. We fought the decriminalization battle.

We are still fighting the AIDS pandemic. My spouse and I lost so many friends who were single or in open relationships. We were fortunate to have trust in our monogamous relationship. As clergy, I buried friends and strangers with gnawing regularity in those years.

We have the SSI Foundation, and still work to educate same sex couples become families in many areas of the world.

So if you ever see a very healthy and energetic " older couple" with a toddler, remember that my mother is 95 next month and healthy, as is my 89 year old mother-in-law. We'll say hello !!

PS- Simultaneous to our 33rd committed year of cohabitation, we will celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary in June. We wanted our six year old to be raised in wedlock. LOL.

Raymond,

As always, I enjoy reading your posts.  I almost spit out my soda laughing at your PS.  That was great!

What I have seen recently is the youth's disdain for how things have been handled, yet most would admit this is the first time they have done anything (and protesting is the only thing they are convinced that will change the world).  While others will insist they know more than you, you who have done so many of the things you mention above.  Yet most would not have a clue what you are talking about, and many believe, that is history--it's all about today.  But it's not.  They have to understand, truly understand what life was like before, how we changed and where we need to go from here.  (And these are generic statements since I have seen then coast to coast). 

Many think this 'just began' in the last few years and really started out of the want for marriage equality.

How do we come together--what I see as three generations - your generation (1.0), mine (1.5), and the 2.0's?

I am all for protesting when there is a purpose and a clear goal--but not just for media's sake nor public view.  I also believe there are means, which cost each of us nothing - such as letter writing, supporting issues (such as the Campbell's soup company for standing strong) etc. 

How do we align ourselves behind one central point, *such as* HRC -- and make the changes that need to be made to incorporate all aspects of our fight  -- to accomodate the 1.0's, 1.5's, and 2.0's?  There is much splintering of existing groups, and now like wildfire, new groups with no real direction other than displeasure for how another group has handled something.

How would you break it down - say in three or four departments... such as Action (say protesting), Communication (snail mail and internet), Legislative, and then Media.  Everyone should be involved in community help as the 5th.

Any ideas? 

I find the sodomy arguement from anti gays hypocritical. does this mean that hetero sexual men who perform sodomy on their heterosexual female partners are also thrown into the sodomy law pots and abusive treatment from others?  You never hear about hate crimes of gays beating up on heteros.  If the church calls it a sin, what about all those preachers who are caught molesting the young boys? HYPOCRITES!

Now we have 4 guys who beat up on that announced lesbian young woman.  Soon this melting pot called the USA will melt into nothing.

the fact that churches were the biggest proponent in YES on 8 dates back to T Jefferson letter about separation of church and state, another violation. 

For the most part, California I believe to be one of the more liberal and progressive states.  even connecticut passed gay marriage not to long after calif lost to prop 8.

let's hope YES on 8 is overturned!

"Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and NO man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."

-- John Adams (An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)

Rella,

Speaking as a member of generation 2.0 (though probably not a typical member), I would be very hesitant to praise a major corporation such as Campbell's for anything at all.

Of course I believe in acknowldedging when a person or organization does something right, but I fear that too much support for Campbell's would be construed as legitimizing the corporation's existence and procedures. I may admire it for taking a progressive stand on one contentious issue, but that doesn't justify it for participating in and furthering a system which oppresses women, poor, people of color, immigrants, the disabled, citizens of other countries, queer people--in fact, the entire human race, including rich, heterosexual white males.

The fight for freedom is everybody's fight. If we only focus on one group's emancipation without thought for the others, then the system will shift the cost onto another oppressed group, and we end up getting nowhere. We become like the poor white strikers fighting the poor black strikebreakers, ultimately feeding the interests of the companies which oppress us both.

As to organizing: that's exactly the question I've been struggling with for months. Countless peoples movements in the past and the present have sprung up and done incredible things: securing women's suffrage in the US, toppling dictators and dictatorships in Europe and Latin America. On a smaller scale, they've done such things as shutting down the World Trade Organization in Seattle, re-communalizing water in Cochabamba, shut down dams in India.

But how did they organize all that, and how can we take such change even further? I wish I knew.

Rella -

In 1982, we lost a very close AA friend - a gay man who had spent much of his life within his community on the "down low".

We became friends some five years earlier, during Gay Liberation activism over Anita Bryant. We talked about the differences and similarities with the AA and the LGBT movements.

He said that the NAACP was the gentrified and accepted mouthpiece for the Southern Republican party - then entirely AA and entirely subjugated by the white Southern Democrat racists.

The NAACP had accepted Plessy v Ferguson, he told us," because some rights were better than none." They believed in the vice of incrementalism, that racists would become more tolerant as the generations passed.  Look at the acronym," National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he added, "and no change in nomenclature."

The LGBT movement does not lack for primo and prima donnas. It lacks a strong leader, because no one looks good in martyr red.

The man who will give Obama's benediction, Dr. Joseph Lowery, came from a small cadre of accredited seminary trained clergy with accredited doctoral degrees.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also one of these men. Together, and with others, they formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

"Why did they not merely integrate into the NAACP?," I asked.  His answer is burned into my memory these decades later, he said to me, "Father Ray, it is because they were activists and not accomodationists." 

Not all blacks followed MLKJR at the start. There were  AA leaders who thought that he was "uppity n word" - and felt that he would undo the "Jim Crow and Plessy" that had enslaved them for nearly a century by then. White racists had difficulty dismissing a truly accredited minister with a PhD from Boston University, rather than "jackboot preacher man."

The oldest trick in the racist playbook or the majority Right Wing Secular Pol or Religionist is the same.  DIVIDE AND CONQUER THE MINORITY. THEY ARE FEARFUL OF CHANGE AND BELIEVE ALL CHANGE IS WORSE THAN BEFORE. THEY LACK COURAGE.

I have always prayed for our "Moses or our Ruth" - or BOTH.

No offense, but there is nothing more sad than a sore loser. Gay "marriage" has been defeated in ALL 30 states where it has been placed on the ballot, and with a cumulative 68% majority.

When are you people going to realize that the majority (this is still a democracy) in this country, as much as you would like to change it, still have and listen to their conscience?

You do not have any right to marry. It is a privilege, not a right. It is like driving a car or buying alcohol or even voting. You have to meet certain requirements, set forth by the majority of voters. You have to be 16 to drive. You have to be 21 to buy alcohol. You have to be 18 to vote. And you have to be marrying someone of the opposite sex to be legally married. The Constitution gives you no "right" to marry. And while the Declaration of Independence says that you have the right to the "PURSUIT of happiness," you are not guaranteed happiness. You have pursued it and you have failed, time and time again. Enough already! Move on!

FYI: in 1947, 90% of America DID NOT AGREE with interracial marriage. In 1991, this number became a MINORITY for the first time.

I understand that in 1968, a year after Loving v Virginia made intermarriage legal......and Barack Obama was seven years old ...the statistics still showed a high level of disagreement both on the " sin " and the "illegal" meter.

The lesson should be simple. Law is law is law regardless of whether they love us or not.

 More than others, I receive "compliments" from RightWingReligionists who provide me with a theocratic approach to my demand for civil rights as well as graphic descriptions on how I conjugally make love with my partner and spouse of three decades.

My usual "reply" is studied neglect. After all, drive-by spiritual violence is their goal. They are told that they alone have both the moral high ground and that AA civil rights and ours differ in many ways -including choice. Same old lies, same old repetition of medical lies, legal lies, and theological lies.

But my ordination, and more, my consecration requires that I teach the truth, even to those deafened by the clanging cymbals of hatred.  I replied:

Sir: (it is always the guy steeped in his heterosexist patriarchalism):

I suspect that you are a heterosexual. I suspect that you did not choose this psychosexual orientation, but that is your truth.

I suspect that your "plug and play" superiority provides you with the moral high ground. I discounted any oral acts because you are part of the so-called "christianright".

I suspect that you are offended by being described by how you describe conjugal acts with whom you love exclusively. How dare anyone describe the love that you feel for your spouse in psychosexual terminology? After all, you chose to be heterosexual because God told you to be. ROFLM*O.

I suspect also that you are aware of all the medical, psychiatric, psychological, sociological evidence in associative majority who disagree with you. Any pseudo science to the contrary is quackery.

I suspect that civil law does not exclude any minority population or class from equal justice under law....and further suspect that your denial of this fact merits any comment beyond that. The Courts have defined us as a civil class. That sir, is a fact.

And lastly, as a Christian clergyman with liberal Christian bona fides, I suspect all these things, because I cannot affirm it.

I do not know you. I only read words that does not represent love of neighbor or does represent bearing false witness against your neighbour.'

Liberal Christians do not suffer these egregious lies by the Dominionist Theocrats such as yourself. You have too many victims who are incidentally in your path.

My only consolation is that you will eventually live in a nation where full equal justice under law will be made law....and you can vent your spleen along with the racists who still condemn interracial marriage and the end of apartheid.

Homophobia is a metaphysical illness. I pray for your cure, and in the interim, your respect for other Christians who find your representation more in keeping with Pharisees than our Lord, Jesus Christ.

"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness." --Samuel Adams, letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778

"[R]eligion, or the duty which we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and this is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other." --Virginia Bill of Rights, Article 16

Marty Dudeck, I commend your civility.

That said, I disagree with your assertion that majority rule = democracy. By that logic, mob rule can be taken to = democracy. A lynching? That's incredibly democratic. ~200 votes yea, 1 vote nay. See the problem?

Of course, majority democracy is the theory under which American government runs (whether or not that's how it works in practice is open to debate). And even if that were how our government worked, that'd be really messed up.

Democracy means "rule by the people." Not the majority. The people. Until we have a system in which ALL voices are heard equally, and EVERYBODY'S interest is taken into account (not just the majority's), democracy will be a sham.

Also note that just because you have a majority doesn't mean you're right. The white racists in the South apparently had a majority during segregation. Does that automatically mean they were right?

Personally, I consider marriage a very stifling tradition. It may work for some people, but it's sure not a one-size-fits all institution.

And yet in Western culture, marriage is universally upheld as the apex of human romantic relationships. It's the be-all-and-end-all. To deny that "privilege" to any two (or more) caring, consenting adults for any reason is to label them de facto second class citizens. Sort of like slaves: more than animals, but less than human. (And what about people with ambiguous physical sexual characteristics? Do they not get to marry too because they happened to be born outside of the arbitrary Western gender-binary?)

I agree that the State has no right to say whether homosexuals have the right to marry. Marriage is, after all, a religious status, not a legal one. Therefore, the State has no right to say whether heterosexuals have the right to marry or not, either. However, until such time as governmental authority over all forms of marriage is lifted, I will continue puhing for equal marriage rights for all, as the next best solution.

In conclusion, any law that arbitrarily limits one person's happiness which does not impinge on the life and health of any others is no law worth obeying.

The oppressed blacks of the American South pursued their own happiness for hundreds of years, and were continually thwarted by the institutions of first slavery, and then segregation. People of color are to this day oppressed by racism, but do they give up their pursuit of happiness? Should they? Hell no.

(Interesting note: according to a book I read recently, back in the 1770s, "pursuit" in this context meant something like "practice." Interesting how meanings change over the years ...)

Raymond Sawyer, that was beautifully said. I agree with pretty much everything in your comment ... except this:

"My only consolation is that you will eventually live in a nation where full equal justice under law will be made law"
Not until that equality extends to the economic sphere (if then), and that's a fight that will make the struggle for marriage equality look downright easy. Not to mention the struggle for real, participatory democracy as opposed to elected dictatorships ...

S N: I'm not sure I understand your point. I'm going to guess that you would agree that forbearance, love, and charity would counsel against implementing measures which effectively label millions of your fellow humans as second class citizens, less than human. And since the manner of discharging religion can only be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; free exercise of religion would not extend to actions which cause structural violence to your homosexual siblings. Am I way off?

To give up in what you believe in and stop fighting for the movement, the cause, nothing gets accomplished.

should we tell those who keep putting on the ballot that female minors have to have their abortion doctors tell their parents 48 hours ahead of time that their daughter is gonna have an abortion to give it up already and move on because they keep losing?  3 times they have placed this on the ballot.

just because you arent for it, doesnt mean one needs to give up.

i found myself being a hypocrite because i didnt want the abortion notification prop to pass and thought they should give up, it's all because i dont support it nor agree with it.  but I do realize they still have the right to fight for it.

I am guessing you don't support No on 8 either.

Obama doesn't support  LBGT rights either.... do a research on his voting record on this matter..