Free Speech is a Civil Right

Much ink and many pixels have been employed recently over the oppostion of Chick-Fil-A's Chief Operating Officer, Dan Cathy, to marriage equality.  The mayors of Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D. C., have called for the company to be banned from opening stores in their locales.  But pardners, that just ain't the American way.  Giddown off your high horse for a minute and give a listen to Kevin Naff in the Washington Blade:

It’s true that the bigots at Chick-fil-A are on the wrong side of history, but unfortunately so are HRC and the groups that support government retaliation against a citizen on the basis of his political views. Does the LGBT movement really want to find itself on the losing side of a debate over freedom of speech? Sure, criticize Cathy and his views. Organize boycotts and protests of the restaurants. And use this ugly episode to make the case for the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, because surely Cathy’s LGBT employees lack job security. But endorsing government attacks on a business over its president’s views — however offensive and wrong — is reckless and ignores our community’s long, painful history of being victimized by government officials. . . .

Members of the LGBT community ought to be the most aggressive in defending the freedom of speech. We continue to use it in powerful ways to advance our equality. To now applaud politicians who would deny business licenses to companies based on the political views of their owners might feel good, but are we so desperate for validation that we want to stoop to the ugly (and unconstitutional) practices of our opponents?

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg got it right when he said, “trampling on the freedom to marry whoever you want is exactly the same as trampling on your freedom to open a store.” Dan Cathy deserves the right of free speech. He’s entitled to his views and welcome to spend his money funding our enemies. It’s ultimately a losing fight so his money is wasted. We should counter his message of hate and intolerance by pressing for justice. This controversy should be Exhibit A in the case for ENDA.

Let's think this through here, fellas. What is the purpose of a business? To sell a product or service to the public, and thereby make a profit for its owners. As long as the business pays its taxes, complies with the laws that prohibit selling shoddy or dangerous merchandise, as well as the laws regulating pay and treatment of its workers, you're good to go here in the U. S. of A., right?

There is no political or religious test for running a business. And do you really want to see that here, friends? The proprietor can be an atheist or a Holy Roller - a flaming liberal or a die-hard conservative - a member of PETA or the NRA. None of that matters a bit, nor how the proprietor votes or what he thinks about any issue of the day. Our government simply takes no notice of all these irrelevant things. Nor should it.

They don't ask to check your gay card when you walk up to the counter and order a scrumptious chicken sandwich and waffle fries, do they? Which is a treat your Head Trucker dearly loves - but I won't be eating any, anytime soon. That's also my privilege in this land of the free and home of the brave. 

But frankly, this whole uproar is getting much more attention than it deserves - to reduce marriage equality, which means so much to so many, to a goddamn chicken sandwich is just so fucking 5th-grade that I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

So can the government - local, state, federal - take any action against a company run by a bigoted owner? Um, no. No more than the government can tell you what neighborhood you can or can't live in because of your political views, bucko, or where you can or can't buy your groceries. It's called freedom, ya know?

So Russ, you're asking me, does that mean the government can never touch a business that's behaving badly? Well, it can - when the business breaks a duly enacted law. It's called the rule of law, ya know?

Take a little walk with me back to the Civil Rights era of the 1960's, to a controversy involving another Atlanta-based outfit. The government did indeed step up to the plate then to prosecute businesses that broke the law - but it was because they violated the law, not because the owner shot off his mouth in one direction or another. That is always an American's privilege - yours and mine and even the buffoonish bigot, Lester Maddox, whose Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta was smack-dab in the middle of a major civil rights confrontation back in 1964. From the New Georgia Encyclopedia:

Maddox refused to serve African American patrons. He kept ax handles--called "Pickrick drumsticks" near the restaurant's front door to discourage African Americans seeking to eat at the restaurant.

Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Maddox chased two African Americans away from the Pickrick at gunpoint. Maddox publicly announced he would go to jail before serving African Americans, even after being charged in court for pointing a gun at the men. On July 22 in a case against the Pickrick and the white-only Heart of Atlanta Motel, a federal court upheld the Civil Rights Act and issued an injunction beginning August 11 against both businesses prohibiting them from denying service to customers based on color or race. Lawyers appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court which heard the case in October; while waiting for the court to hear the case, the Heart of Atlanta began accepting African American customers, and Maddox closed the Pickrick on August 13.

On September 26 Maddox opened the Lester Maddox Cafeteria in the Pickrick's old location and announced he would serve "acceptable" Georgians. During a trial for contempt of court on September 29, Maddox argued that he was not in contempt because he was no longer offering service to out-of-state travelers or integrationists. In December 1964 the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Civil Rights Act. On February 5, 1965 a federal court ruled Maddox was in contempt of court for failing to obey the injunction and ordered him fined two hundred dollars a day for failing to serve African Americans. Maddox closed the restaurant February 7, 1965 blaming president Johnson and communism for putting him out of business.

Maddox had to close his restaurant not, be it noted, for his opinions on race, but because he violated the law - though the notoriety got him elected Governor of the state of Georgia at the very next election. And so for four years, he was Bozo-in-Chief of the Peach State, until succeeded by Jimmy Carter in 1971.

Still, it's the rule of law that is the lesson here. White, black, gay, straight - everybody can speak their mind in these United States, even if it's the mind of a dipshit jackass. And if you don't agree with that, you don't deserve the freedom to speak yours.

Picket, protest, abstain, do whatever peaceful thing you want to do - but just remember: what goes around comes around, fellas. We may be gay, but we're Americans first.


Here's some clips of Lester at his asshole best, I thought you boys might get a chuckle out of them. The first is from 1964, when a few black activists tried to enter the Pickrick, and Maddox arrogantly turned them away:



Another clip is from 1968, when then-Governor Maddox was interviewed by Joe Pyne - forgotten now, he was a hard-hitting forerunner of Phil Donahue:




See also: Rob Tisnai's brilliant post, "Hating Hate Speech Laws."


Bonus: The Rev. Baxter Wynn, of First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina, and a nephew of Lester Maddox, compares his uncle with another Atlanta boy, Martin Luther King Jr., in this fascinating excerpt of a talk (I wish someone had posted the whole thing on YT):

Gays Have Destroyed Freedom in Europe, U.S. Next

It's that ol' Radical Homosexual Agenda that's already wiped out religious liberty, parental controls, and fundamental freedoms everywhere in Europe that same-sex "marriages" exist. And now they're coming to crush America!

Listen carefully to what Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline megachurch in Rancho San Diego warns about the advancing threat - Christians will die!



The fundies and rightwing nuts have whipped themselves into such a frenzy, they really do believe we're planning to murder them all in their beds.

How do you resolve a conflict of values when it's completely out of hand and totally irrational?

Middle Class Is Un-American

The New Yorker reports on the arrogant, thieving, high-Tory mindset of today's Republican Party, and their Orwellian attempts at corrupting the meaning of plain English - emphasis mine:

On the floor of the Senate this week, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican Minority Whip, criticized President Barack Obama for talking about the middle class. The mere phrase “middle class” — that most anodyne of demographic terms, the category to which half of all Americans polled identify, and into which Mitt Romney is always trying to shoehorn very, very wealthy people like himself — emerged, in Kyl’s evocation, as some kind of crazy-lefty bumper-sticker slogan. By alluding to “what he calls ‘the middle class,’ ” Kyl said, as though Obama had come up with the phrase, the President was “pitting these Americans” against the wealthy, “spreading economic resentment, and weaken[ing] American values and ideals.” Kyl went on: “We don’t need the current American President touring the country and defining every American’s values and status based on a class system that he’s made up. I don’t think there’s anything called middle-class values. I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It’s not what we do in America.”

Increasingly, it isn’t. Not if we’re in office or running for office, and especially not if we’re Republicans. America perpetuates a class system — and an income-inequality gap growing faster than that of most other countries — but American politicians try not to speak of it, because if they do, they get slimed. “What you could do for me,” President Obama told a group of Presidential historians in May, 2011, “is to help me find a way to discuss the issue of inequality without being accused of class warfare.” A year later, it takes even less to attract that particular charge, even as it takes more rhetorical chutzpah to get around the reality.

It’s remarkable how far to the right the acceptable political discourse about the haves and have-nots has shifted — or perhaps it’s just moved into the realm of denial. In the not-so-distant political past, it was considered reasonable for Republicans to allude to inequality and even vow to try to remedy it. In an excellent recent article in Rolling Stone about the contemporary Republican party’s extreme attachment to tax cuts for the rich, Tim Dickinson quotes a 1985 speech by Ronald Reagan, a speech that somebody — maybe Kyl — would surely be calling “class warfare” talk until he heard who’d made it. “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” Reagan vowed, adding that they “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10% of his salary—and that’s crazy." . . .

Marriage in Maine: "It's about Family, not Politics"

A very touching PSA by Harlan Gardner and four generations of his family in support of Why Marriage Matters Maine:



Even though it's short, this little video blows your Head Trucker's mind:  to think of an entire family sitting down at one table to support the gays.  Unfuckingthinkable for me, way down here in Texas.

The Pine Tree State will go to the polls this November to vote on whether to allow marriage equality or not, which was voted down in a similar referendum there in 2009.

Why Everybody Says "Thank God for Mississippi"

Everybody in neighboring states, that is; Mississippi makes them look good by comparison.  Fifty years ago, as your Head Trucker well recalls, and perhaps even forty years ago, this would not have been news at all in most parts of the South:  just bidness as usual.

Yet though times have changed drastically for racial equality across the length and breadth of Dixie, there are even yet some pockets of resistance, as in Crystal Springs, a small town near Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.



If they feel that way about the blacks, just imagine how they feel about the queers.

Sunday Drive: Remember When

The Celluloid Closet

My truckbuddy Frank has posted a clip from a new documentary about the late author and activist Vito Russo over at Reluctant Rebel; which reminded me of this documentary, now posted in six segments on YouTube, of Russo's Celluloid Closet, a survey of how gays were depicted in film during the past century.  Fascinating stuff; and as Frank says, should be part of the required viewing before anyone gets their gay card.

You might be surprised at how much gaiety some filmmakers managed to slip past the censors back in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Here's segment 1, narrated by Lily Tomlin:

Cary Grant - "I've just gone gay!" - in the
screwball comedy Bringing up Baby, 1938

Waitin' for the Weekend

God, I love ordering out of the Sheplers catalog.

Wedding Recap: Barney and Jim

From the Daily Dish:  Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) reflects on his recent wedding to Jim Ready.

Southern Language

Unfortunately, ever since they won the War, our friends at the frozen Nawth have looked down upon our lovely, euphonious Southern speech as something déclassé.  But the late humorist and author Lewis Grizzard from Georgia sets the record straight in this clip that makes your Head Trucker howl with laughter.  Maybe you will too:




Update: My truckbuddy Frank has posted a reply of sorts over at Reluctant Rebel, go check it out. I reckon it's a reply - hard to tell since it's in some weird furrin language.

Posthumously Out: First American Woman in Space

Astronaut Sally Ride died yesterday at age 61 of pancreatic cancer, after a remarkable career that included being the first American woman to go into space, during two trips aboard space shuttle Challenger in 1983 and 1984. Her obituary, posted yesterday, marks the first time public acknowlegement of Ride as a lesbian has ever been made:

Sally Ride died peacefully on July 23rd, 2012 after a courageous 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Sally lived her life to the fullest, with boundless energy, curiosity, intelligence, passion, joy, and love. Her integrity was absolute; her spirit was immeasurable; her approach to life was fearless.

Sally was a physicist, the first American woman to fly in space, a science writer, and the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science. She had the rare ability to understand the essence of things and to inspire those around her to join her pursuits.

Sally’s historic flight into space captured the nation’s imagination and made her a household name. She became a symbol of the ability of women to break barriers and a hero to generations of adventurous young girls. After retiring from NASA, Sally used her high profile to champion a cause she believed in passionately—inspiring young people, especially girls, to stick with their interest in science, to become scientifically literate, and to consider pursuing careers in science and engineering.

In addition to Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years, Sally is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues around the country.

Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed got confirmation from Sally's sister:

"The pancreatic cancer community is going to be absolutely thrilled that there's now this advocate that they didn't know about. And, I hope the GLBT community feels the same," Bear Ride, who identifies as gay, said.

"I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay that they know that another one of their heroes was like them," she added.

Terry McEntee, a spokeswoman from Sally Ride Science, the company Ride formed to provide educational materials and programs for schools, confirmed to BuzzFeed that there had not, to her knowledge, previously been published acknowledgment of Ride and O'Shaugnessy's relationship.

Bear Ride, though, said that her sister "never hid her relationship with Tam. They have been partners, business partners in Sally Ride Science, they've written books together .... Sally's very close friends, of course, knew."

O'Shaugnessy is the chief operating officer and executive vice president for Sally Ride Science, as well as an emeritus professor at San Diego State University. Sally Ride had previously been married to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley in 1982; they divorced in 1987. Ride went into space on two missions, first in 1983 and then again in 1984.

Of Sally Ride's sexual orientation, Bear Ride said, "Sally didn't use labels. Sally had a very fundamental sense of privacy, it was just her nature, because we're Norwegians, through and through."

I don't know what being Norwegian has to do with anything, but I can't help thinking how vastly more encouraging it would have been to thousands of young lesbians and gays to have a living example to look up to. A couple of years ago, when I think every gay man and woman in the country wanted to contribute a video to the It Gets Better Project when it got started, would have been such a wonderful time to have come out - truly an inspiring moment. Don't you think, fellas?

Still, as I've blogged here in the Blue Truck before, coming out is a process of many stages and levels, a movement of the soul, very personal and not something to be dictated by anyone else. So I have to respect that choice of Sally's, and anyone else's - as long as they aren't working against us.

Rest in peace, Ms. Ride, and condolences to your partner and family.

Update:  More from Sally's sister on "Why Sally Ride waited until her death to tell the world she was gay."

And an excerpt from a powerful piece by Michael Signorile in Huff Po, via David Mixner:

While the news of her death at the age of 61 after a 17-month battle with cancer is immensely sad, and while it would have been terrific if she came out while alive, Ride's posthumous coming out is a wonderful gift to America's youth. And it's what we needed right now. If astronauts are among the ultimate heroes and examples of American ingenuity, fortitude and bravery, then with that one line in her obituary -- survived by "Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years" -- Sally Ride dispelled all the ugliness foisted on this country in recent weeks by the Boy Scouts of America, Chick-Fil-A and Jennifer Carroll, Florida's GOP lieutenant governor, who, denying charges that she had sex with another woman in her office, claimed women who look like her are not involved in same-sex relationships (and refuses to apologize).

Yes, Lt. Governor Carroll, you are right. With your bigotry and cowardice, you are not what a lesbian looks like.

This is what a lesbian looks like: Sally Ride: physicist; author of seven science books for children; member of the space shuttle Challenger crew; member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology; director of the California Science Institute; inductee into the National Women's Hall of Fame, the California Hall of Fame, the Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Astronaut Hall of Fame; recipient of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award, and the NASA Space Flight Medal (twice).