Why Gay Kids Off Themselves

Clueless, frustrated old straight dude claims to speak for God . . . so what else is fucking new?  What follows could have come from any of the major Christian churches in this country.

And this divinely timed pronouncement came Sunday, after those five suicides.

Same-sex attraction can be overcome and any type of union other than marriage between a man and a woman is morally wrong, an LDS apostle told millions of Mormons on Sunday. “There are those today who not only tolerate but advocate voting to change laws that would legalize immorality, as if a vote would somehow alter the designs of God’s laws and nature,” Boyd K. Packer, president of the church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles, said in a strongly worded sermon about the dangers of pornography and same-sex marriage. “A law against nature would be impossible to enforce. Do you think a vote to repeal the law of gravity would do any good?” Some argue that “they were pre-set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural,” he said. “Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone?"

Why indeed? Why infuckingdeed?  Unless, of course . . . that phony God is just a projection of a warped, arrogant, hate-filled straight man's mind.  Ya think?

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, responds:

Words have consequences, particularly when they come from a faith leader. This is exactly the kind of statement that can lead some kids to bully and others to commit suicide. When a faith leader tells gay people that they are a mistake because God would never have made them that way and they don’t deserve love, it sends a very powerful message that violence and/or discrimination against LGBT people is acceptable. It also emotionally devastates those who are LGBT or may be struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identify. His words were not only inaccurate, they were also dangerous.

Oh but wait, newsflash! Those kids didn't kill themselves because of bullying - no, they just couldn't live with "the shame of submission to their own evil desires."

Oh . . . right. See Rob Tisnai's brilliant post for the full explanation of the flowchart:

Dan Savage rips the religious right and points out the blood on their oh-so-holy hands:

Joe Solmonese to Obama: We Are Your Equals

Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign let 'er rip this morning with a polite but scorching letter to the President; here's an excerpt:

Dear Mr. President:

I have had the privilege of meeting you on several occasions, when visiting the White House in my capacity as president of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization representing millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people across this country. You have welcomed me to the White House to express my community’s views on health care, employment discrimination, hate violence, the need for diversity on the bench, and other pressing issues. Last week, when your administration filed a brief defending the constitutionality of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,”[1] I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours. I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you. . . .

As an American, a civil rights advocate, and a human being, I hold this administration to a higher standard than this brief. In the course of your campaign, I became convinced—and I still want to believe—that you do, too. I have seen your administration aspire and achieve. Protecting women from employment discrimination. Insuring millions of children. Enabling stem cell research to go forward. These are powerful achievements. And they serve as evidence to me that this brief should not be good enough for you. The question is, Mr. President—do you believe that it’s good enough for us?

If we are your equals, if you recognize that our families live the same, love the same, and contribute as much as yours, then the answer must be no.

We call on you to put your principles into action and send legislation repealing DOMA to Congress.

#1 in Russ's Book Club

Update: The White House sent John Berry, head of the Office of Personnel Management and the highest-ranking gay person in Washington, to run interference by giving an interview to the Advocate today.

John Aravosis at Americablog sums up Berry's totally lame defense of the indefensible this way (emphasis mine):

The president does not have the option to oppose existing law, at all, no exceptions, zero, nothing -- Berry claims. That's a flat out lie, as we showed earlier with the essay by former Clinton White House special assistant Richard Socarides.

BERRY: This president took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and he does not get to decide and choose which laws he enforces. He has to enforce the laws that have been enacted appropriately and that he has inherited. It would be wrong for me or any of our community to advise him to lie or to shirk his responsibility. He’s doing his job.

The president can ask DOJ to oppose laws in cases where there are important political and social issues at stake. Period. We've proven that they're lying about this, it's no longer debatable.

Oh, and where in the Constitution does it say that the president is required to compare our marriages to incest and pedophilia? We still haven't heard an explanation for that one. Nor have we heard an apology.

Did you catch how Berry said, above, that if we asked the president to file a brief opposing DOMA, we'd be asking him to "lie"? (First off, Berry admits that Obama owns the brief - so no more of this, "it was the lawyers" - it's Obama.) Anyway, so asking Obama to oppose DOMA in the brief would be asking him to "lie." What the hell is that supposed to mean? You mean the president was telling the truth when his brief claimed that gay marriage is like incest? He actually believes that? When the president claimed that Loving v. Virginia has nothing to do with our battle for marriage equality, he was saying he really believes that somehow the civil rights battle of African-Americans is different, better, than ours? Obama really believes that it's unfair to ask straight taxpayers to pay for our spousal benefits when we already pay for theirs? Obama thinks DOMA doesn't discriminate against gays? That it doesn't deny us benefits? That it's good for America in these tight budget times?

We're now to believe that Obama actually agrees with the bigoted crap that the White House let the DOJ put in that hateful brief? WTF?

Pam Spaulding says:

Who's holding this administration hostage to PTSD fears of Clinton and DADT in 1993? It's 2009, toadies. This administration, sitting atop high approval ratings with a minority party choking on its own bile and an American public that is more supportive of LGBT issues in the polls that at any time in history is crapping on the community in broad daylight and wondering what all the fuss is about. Someone in the White House needs a reality check. Fast.

Mike Signorile did an interview with Joe Solmonese of HRC last week about the Administration's alleged plan for LGBT rights. Listen carefully to why the hate crimes bill is being pushed, and read between the lines, now that you know what this Administration is really all about.

I am so fucking mad, people. Mr. Obama is about to discover there's no fury like an old queen scorned - or 15 million old queens, more like it. He lied to us. He used us. And now he's kicked us out the door like a Saturday night trick on Sunday morning. Tell him how you feel.

The mendacity of hope, indeed. Mine just went down the toilet, as far as this President is concerned.

P.S. - Note the heavy irony of the impassioned speech Berry gave just last week at the Justice Department to mark Pride month, a speech that was intended to demonstrate the Administration's deep concern for gay rights and equality.

P.P.S. - Notice, in the message Berry conveyed from the White House, there is 1) No apology, 2) No retraction, and 3) No reach-out to the community. Boiled down, the message is, Sit down and STFU about it.

But that's not what I voted for, Mr. President.

Right Wing Ruckus over the Gays

The right wing has its knickers all in a knot this week over them awful gays. So what else is new? Jeezus, don't those people ever think about anything else? Keith Olbermann has the definitive report:

As HRC reports, first it was rock 'n' roll oldtimer Pat Boone scratching a hate letter in the mud with these comments:

...there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists.

Hmm. Now just what would a sexual jihad look like, I wonder? What a maroon.

Next, after that inspirational note the right wing is deluging Newsweek with fire-and-brimstone letters over their great cover story this week on "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," which exposes the illogic of upholding so-called "Biblical standards of marriage," when in point of fact marriage in Biblical times is something nobody wants to go back to. Bravo, Newsweek!

Here's a link to hear the mag's religion editor, Lisa Miller, talking with HRC's Joe Solmonese about the bombardment of rightwing hate mail over the story:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid4576406001/bctid4653963001

Go check out the stories at the HRC site, send an email, make a donation. God will love you for it.

Op-ed: "You Can't Take This Away From Me"

An op-ed from Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, just released today (emphasis mine):

Like many in our movement, I found myself in Southern California last weekend. There, I had the opportunity to speak with a man who said that Proposition 8 completely changed the way he saw his own neighborhood. Every "Yes on 8" sign was a slap. For this man, for me, for the 18,000 couples who married in California, to LGBT people and the people who love us, its passage was worse than a slap in the face. It was nothing short of heartbreaking.

But it is not the end. Fifty-two percent of the voters of California voted to deny us our equality on Tuesday, but they did not vote our families or the power of our love out of existence; they did not vote us away.

As free and equal human beings, we were born with the right to equal families. The courts did not give us this right—they simply recognized it. And although California has ceased to grant us marriage licenses, our rights are not subject to anyone's approval. We will keep fighting for them. They are as real and as enduring as the love that moves us to form families in the first place. There are many roads to marriage equality, and no single roadblock will prevent us from ultimately getting there.

And yet there is no denying, as we pick ourselves up after losing this most recent, hard-fought battle, that we've been injured, many of us by neighbors who claim to respect us.

By the same token, we know that we are moving in the right direction. In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 22 by a margin of 61.4% to 38.6%. On Tuesday, fully 48% of Californians rejected Proposition 8. It wasn't enough, but it was a massive shift. Nationally, although two other anti-marriage ballot measures won, Connecticut defeated an effort to hold a constitutional convention ending marriage, New York's state legislature gained the seats necessary to consider a marriage law, and FMA architect Marilyn Musgrave lost her seat in Congress. We also elected a president who supports protecting the entire community from discrimination and who opposes discriminatory amendments.

Yet on Proposition 8 we lost at the ballot box, and I think that says something about this middle place where we find ourselves at this moment. In 2003, twelve states still had sodomy laws on the books, and only one state had civil unions. Four years ago, marriage was used to rile up a right-wing base, and we were branded as a bigger threat than terrorism. In 2008, most people know that we are not a threat.

Proposition 8 did not result from a popular groundswell of opposition to our rights, but was the work of a small core of people who fought to get it on the ballot. The anti-LGBT message didn't rally people to the polls, but unfortunately when people got to the polls, too many of them had no problem with hurting us. Faced with an economy in turmoil and two wars, most Californians didn't choose the culture war. But faced with the question—brought to them by a small cadre of anti-LGBT hardliners – of whether our families should be treated differently from theirs, too many said yes.

But even before we do the hard work of deconstructing this campaign and readying for the future, it's clear to me that our continuing mandate is to show our neighbors who we are.

Justice Lewis Powell was the swing vote in Bowers, the case that upheld Georgia's sodomy law and that was reversed by Lawrence v. Texas five years ago. When Bowers was pending, Powell told one of his clerks "I don't believe I've ever met a homosexual." Ironically, that clerk was gay, and had never come out to the Justice. A decade later, Powell admitted his vote to uphold Georgia's sodomy law was a mistake.

Everything we've learned points to one simple fact: people who know us are more likely to support our equality.

In recent years, I've been delivering this positive message: tell your story. Share who you are. And in fact, as our families become more familiar, support for us increases. But make no mistake: I do not think we have to audition for equality. Rather, I believe that each and every one of us who has been hurt by this hateful ballot measure, and each and every one of us who is still fighting to be equal, has to confront the neighbors who hurt us. We have to say to the man with the Yes on 8 sign—you disrespected my humanity, and I am not giving you a pass. I am not giving you a pass for explaining that you tolerate me, while at the same time denying that my family has a right to exist. I do not give you permission to say you have me as a "gay friend" when you cast a vote against my family, and my rights.

Wherever you are, tell a neighbor what the California Supreme Court so wisely affirmed: that you are equal, you are human, and that being denied equality harms you materially. Although I, like our whole community, am shaken by Prop 8's passage, I am not yet ready to believe that anyone who knows us as human beings and understands what is at stake would consciously vote to harm us.

This is not over. In California, our legal rights have been lost, but our human rights endure, and we will continue to fight for them.