'Why Nancy Reagan turned down Rock Hudson's plea for help before he died' & other Tuesday midday news briefs

Nancy Reagan Turned Down Rock Hudson’s Plea For Help Nine Weeks Before He Died - Easily one of the best, saddest, and most thorough stories I have ever read. And know this - regardless of your opinion after reading it, this is only the beginning.  There will be more stories like this coming out.  Whether or not HIV/AIDS is cured (and I hope that it is), future generations will view it in the same light as racism - an ugly physical manifestation brought to life by our egos, religious exploitations and ignorance; a ghost which will never be fully exorcised; an undying ravenous minotaur in a labyrinth which can never be destroyed. And the actions of those who could have slayed the beast in its infancy, but chose not to, will be put in the spotlight .  

Eleventh Circuit won’t halt Alabama same-sex marriages - Roy Moore. You are not stopping this.

Churches in Mountain Home, Ark. refuse funeral for gay man - There will more on this story in the Dallas Voice on Friday. When I hear about things like this, I don't get angry. I get sad because these folks will answer to God for their judgment.  

Jon Stewart rips into Mike Huckabee’s outrageous remarks about same-sex marriage - Thank you Jon Stewart for doing what the media should have but DID NOT do. 

 Oregon Bakery Found Culpable For Anti-Gay Discrimination, Could Face $150,000 Fine - I posted about this last night but Zack Ford from Think Progress gives a much better analysis.

Montana pastor: Why not discriminate against gays. We discriminate against child molestation

Folks who claim that we lgbts are too pushy and or can't handle "disagreement" with our supposed lifestyle don't know what we know and they certainly don't hear what we hear.

And most of all, they don't take into account how certain things which are said affects our lgbt children.

What I am talking about is this awful video below from January in which a Montana pastor spoke to lawmakers in opposition of a non-discrimination bill:

Partial Transcript:

 “I am here primarily as representative of myself and my family, most specifically my children, and that wouldn’t change if one of my children were to come forward and announce themselves as homosexual,” Steve Boettger of the First Baptist Church of Cascade said at the hearing.

“I firmly believe I do not have to agree with someone’s behavior in order to continue loving them.” “We do, as a culture and as a people, discriminate against behavior, and whether it is voluntary, innate, in-born, a choice, it is really not relevant to the point that it is indeed behavior,” he explained.

“For instance, we discriminate against incest. We discriminate against child molestation. We discriminate against a long list of behaviors that have long been believed to be wrong.”

 “I don’t understand how it is we could possibly disagree with what thousands of years have said, that most people have agreed is wrong. I think it is easy to understand that every advancement of this agenda… comes at the expense of what our founders, who I believe were right, set forth as our first right, and that is the right of religious expression.”

Mr. Boettger seems to forget that historically, segregation and the second-class status of women was thought to be a part of correct "religious expression." As for  the rest of his speech, it always amazes me when folks reduce lgbts to their fevered sexual imaginations or compare us to pedophiles and then act all shocked when we take offense.

Saying you love someone before ripping away their humanity is merely a facade. It's no different than expressing love before you proceed to punch out of your partner.

Lgbts don't need nor do we want love like that and personally if I DID want love like that, I would pay my mother to pistol whip me (apologies to Suzanne Sugarbaker).

By the way,the bill was voted down 7-5 thanks to the Republicans who were against it.

Hat tip to Raw Story.

Anti-gay bakery & 'religious liberty' argument loses again

No matter how much they cried, moaned, and played the victim in front of a national audience, the owners of an Oregon bakery learned that the law is the law for everyone.

According to the Willamette Week newspaper:

The gears of justice grind slowly. But administrative law judge Alan McCullough made an interim determination that Gresham bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa discriminated unlawfully when they refused to serve a lesbian couple in May 2013.

Sweet Cakes owner Aaron Klein denied a wedding cake to the couple in May of 2013, after learning that the cake would be eaten at a same-sex wedding. The couple filed a complaint, and in January 2014, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries found "substantial evidence" that Sweet Cakes wasn't within their rights to deny service. 

A hearing on March 10 will determine whether the bakery owes the couple damages. Sweet Melissa owners Aaron and Melissa Klein filed for a summary dismissal of the complaint, citing religious freedoms. They also attempted to retrieve $200,000 in damages and legal fees from the couple. 

The Kleins have been the cause celebres of "religious freedom," or the right to refuse businesses to anyone on the grounds of "personal religious beliefs."

"Religious freedom" has been the calling card of retaliation for anti-gay groups in the wake losing several marriage equality cases in federal court. They claim that marriage equality would force businesses to serve same-sex couples in contradiction to the business owners' religious objections to marriage equality. The irony is that at the time of the incident, Oregon didn't allow gay couples to be legally married.

During a "Values Voters Summit" last year, Melissa Klein openly wept while claiming, without corroborating evidence, that the bakery was shut down and harassed.

Since then, several state legislatures have been pushing hard for "religious liberty" laws to be passed, including in Oklahoma, Texas and South Carolina.

While I am almost supportive for the Kleins, I am more supportive for the same-sex couples who would be negatively affected if any "religious freedom" bill or action became remotely close to law.

When you own a business, you do own a bit of power over people's lives. Who is to say in the future, if these bills became law, a group of businesses wouldn't unite to keep same-sex couples out of their area by denying food service, places to live via rental properties, or what have you?

And where would the anti-gay groups who championed these "religious liberty" laws be when all of this would be taking place?

Who do you think would be advising these businesses behind the scenes?

'Anti-gay lawmakers want revenge for losing marriage equality fights' & other Monday midday news briefs

Alabama Lawmaker: Same-Sex Couples Don’t Deserve Same Financial Benefits As Other Families - Which is why the opposition has such a hard time formulating an argument against marriage equality which is not religious and not full of lies. They come across as mean as a rattlesnake with an attitude.

Anti-Gay Lawmakers Seek Revenge With Dangerous New Laws - That's what it's all about. Revenge and intimidation and neither will work.  

The 5 Worst Fears About Coming Out As LGBT Later In Life - This article is VERY APPROPRIATE. Often times when we think of coming out, we think of young folks. Coming out crosses all age groups. 

 This Homophobic Lawmaker Is Still Trying Ban Same-Sex Marriage In Hawaii - Or what happens when a Peter LaBarbera-ish person gets a legislative seat.

 Steph Grant Talks About Life As A Photographer For LGBT Weddings - This is awesome!

What Mike Huckabee didn't say about gays during the CNN interview . . .

Possible presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was on CNN yesterday pulling his "who, me?" routine regarding his "disagreement" with marriage equality and lgbts in general.  He even pulled the "I've got gay friends" card. No doubt his performance will make headlines from coast to coast:

What a pity that people will remember the above rather than the below clip in 2012 when Huckabee implied that gays should be kept out of the boy scouts for the sake of protecting the boys from abuse:

Luckily for Huckabee, he was able to pull off his subterfuge last night. Lucky for him. Unlucky for the rest of us.

'Marriage equality expected to boost Florida's economy' & other Friday midday news briefs

ExxonMobil Adds LGBT Protections - Lesson learned here. It took 17 years for this to happen and it finally did. Never give up. 

Gay Marriage Expected to Boost Local Economy - Money, money, money, money. MONEY! Good news from Florida.
 
Breaking: Sally Kern Withdraws Anti-Gay 'License To Discriminate' Bill - Unfortunately her two other bills, and Kern herself, remains in the legislature.  

FRC prays for judges, governors, legislators to ignore marriage equality rulings - Cause apparently praying for an ending to war, poverty, and disease aren't as important . . .  

Nick Teich's Story From The Let Love Define Family Series - A camp which helps our transgender and gender nonconforming children will always get support from me.  

When Fox News Defended Bryan Fischer’s Anti-Gay Extremism - You really don't think that we would forget, did you?

Family Research Council supports punishing clerks who follow the law on gay marriage

When it comes to these "religious freedom" bills, particularly involving clerks and government employees with regards to legal gay marriages, the Family Research Council's change of semantics is very telling.

On one hand, the group claims that marriage equality is dangerous because it pits a person's employment and livelihood against their religious beliefs:

"As more states are forced to redefine marriage, contrary to nature and directly in conflict with the will of millions, more Americans will see and experience attacks on their religious freedom.   . . .  As more and more people lose their livelihoods because they refuse to not just tolerate but celebrate same-sex marriage, Americans will see the true goal, which is for activists to use the Court to impose a redefinition of natural marriage on the entire nation." - October 16, 2014.

Yet when it comes to what we are beginning to see now - state legislators introducing bills to actually punish clerks and government employees for legally issuing same-sex marriage licenses, FRC isn't so concerned by people's livelihoods (emphasis on important part of FRC's statement added by me):

Where's the resistance to same-sex "marriage?" A better question might be: where isn't it? While the Left is busy telling the media that Americans have "moved on" from marriage, conservatives everywhere are proving them wrong. In several states, the backlash to the courts' overreach on marriage is sprouting up in legislative committees faster than reporters can cover them. Even the New York Times is finally admitting that the wave of opposition isn't subsiding in states where out-of-control judges swung their gavels like sledgehammers against voter-approved marriage laws.

By large numbers, leaders are firing back with all kinds of legislation to stop the spread of court-imposed same-sex "marriage" at their borders, including some bills that take aim at officials who act against the will of the people.

In Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, Republicans are moving quickly on measures that would penalize any government employee caught issuing same-sex "marriage" licenses -- regardless of the courts' orders. - January 30, 2015

Shouldn't FRC be as concerned for the freedom and livelihoods of employees who may actually want to issue same-sex marriage licenses in accordance to their beliefs or, at the very least, or want to follow the law.

Or perhaps this idea of "religious freedom" is yet another dodge perpetrated by FRC and other so-called morality groups. Perhaps this is about what it's always been about  - keeping the lgbt community under heel via the exploitation of fear and religious beliefs.

This idea of the preservation of "religious freedom" is merely the latest code phrase.

In the 70s, they claimed to stand against lgbt equality because they wanted to "protect the children."

In the 80s, it was all about exploiting the HIV/AIDS crisis.

In the 90s, they screamed about "special rights."

And in the years afterward, it was about "protecting the definition of marriage."

Now, it's all about religious freedom; the newest buzzword used to mask old prejudices.

This ado isn't about religious freedom any more than it was about "protecting the children" or stopping "special rights" or "saving marriage."

It's about the unfortunate special ability to wrap up old rotten prejudices in new clean packages and continue to sell them to America.