Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Friday, April 23, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Strange Fruit

Andrea Lafferty takes time out to pick on Muslims, and other Friday midday news briefs

Kentucky Supreme Court Nixes Public Aid To Religious School - Discriminate against gays all you want, but don't expect to get lgbt tax money for the courtesy.

DADT protesters are 'starved for attention', says he who only has attention b/c of his war on gays - Pot, meet kettle. I bet Matt Barber googles his name every night to see who is talking about him.

Graham's Disinvitation Proof That Our Military Is Run By "Fundamentalist Muslims and Homosexual Activists" - Say what you want but if you disrespect ANY our fighting men and women, you are not being persecuted for facing the consequences. Andrea Lafferty adds her two cents in this piece. I guess one can't pick on lgbts all of the time.

Kevin Keller debuts as first openly gay character in Archie's Veronica Comics - And silly me thought they would explore the Moose/Dilton friendship.

Karen Ocamb Offers Good Background on The Kooky Traditional Values Coalition - More info on the hate group the Traditional Values Coalition.

South Carolina Black Pride celebrates its fifth anniversary with ‘Nothing But Love’

South Carolina’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender of color community will be out and proud when SC Black Pride celebrate its fifth anniversary on June 24-27.

According to Sheila R. Hudson SC Black Pride Assistant Pride Director & Program Coordinator, the theme, “Nothing But Love” is very appropriate.

‘The broad motivation for this year’s South Carolina Black Pride is summed up by our theme, “Nothing But Love,” she said. “Despite those who claim Black LGBT citizens are ‘not natural,’ we stand up for and are driven by ‘nothing but love’ in all that we do. We deserve ‘nothing but love’ for being who we are and for the enormous contributions we make to South Carolina and American society.”

“Today is a life that we as a people have awakened to a new century, new ideas, new hope and new beginnings,” said Niece Brooks, SC Black Pride Vice President & Pride Director.

This year brings new faces to the SC Black Pride Board as well as new ideas to unite the community, including fundraisers, a film festival, and a family fun day.

The Family Fun Day, to be held on June 12th at Woodland Park, is a new idea that addresses the needs of an under served segment of South Carolina’s lgbt of color community - same gender loving households with children.

According to a report co-created by the National Black Justice Coalition and the Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

• many African-American same-sex couples are raising children, including biological and nonbiological children,

• black female same-sex households are as likely as black married opposite-sex households to live with a least one child of an adult parent, and

• Sumter, SC is one of the top 10 cities in the country for black same-sex households raising children.

Organizers feel that the Family Fun Day is crucial to show support to these families.

Pride Week in June will culminate with a Community Expo at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and this will be a kind of a return to home for SC Black Pride because the organization held its first expo at the convention center. There will be food and entertainment, including a special observance of the late author E. Lynn Harris. Harris, who passed away last year, was the best selling author of many book dealing with the lives of the lgbt community of color, including Invisible Life, Just As I Am, and This Too Will Pass.

“Our purpose is to celebrate the often subjugated creativity, beauty, dignity, and brilliance of South Carolina’s Black LGBT community,” says Dr. Todd Shaw, Chair, of the SC Black Pride Committee. “The double whammies of racism and homophobia attack we same-gender loving sisters and brothers. And now’s the time the Black community understand how much we contribute to the larger freedom struggle and the larger society understand how much we contribute as loving mothers, fathers, teachers, preachers, and young leaders.”

Organizers anticipate a record 5,000 attendees to this year’s events.

All are welcomed and SC Black Pride is looking for more volunteers. To learn more about this Pride’s many empowering events (including becoming a vendor or a volunteer and advertising in the Pride Guide), refer to:

South Carolina Black Pride
P.O. Box 8191
Columbia, SC 29202

or contact info@southcarolinablackpride.com

or Niece Brooks at (803) 608-5652

2010 SC Black Pride Events
(All events are in Columbia, South Carolina and are subject to change)

*** Pre-Pride Events ***

Saturday, April 24
A Sexy Evening of Elegance: For the Ladies and Their Friends,
$10 Admission
Clarion Hotel Downtown, 1615 Gervais Street, Columbia, SC, 29201; Music by D.J. Kelley-Kel, cash bar and Hor d’ourves, among many other surprises! 9 p.m. – 2 a.m.; $10 at the door.

Saturday, May 22nd
Young, Gifted, and Black: A Mini Film Festival 7 - 9 pm.,
Free Admission
University of South Carolina Campus, room 112, Sloan College, 911 Pickens Street, 29201, Free Admission but donations accepted.

Saturday, June 5th
“A Beautiful People Party (Co-Ed), 9 p.m. - 2 a.m.,
$10 admission
Club H2O, 220 State Street, West Columbia, SC, 29619; Music by D.J. Kelley-Kel; 9 p.m. – 2 a.m.; $10 at the door.

Saturday, June 12th
Play Day at the Park, 11 a.m.
Woodland Park, 6500 Olde Knight Parkway, Columbia, SC, 29209; Free Food, Family Fun, Games, & Sports; 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Free Admission

*** Pride Week ***
Thursday, June 24th
Welcome Reception, Free Admission
2000 Watermark Place, Columbia, SC 29210; cash bar and live entertainment; 7-9 p.m.;
Free Admission.

Friday, June 25th
MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) HIV Prevention Institute
"Evidence That Demands Action", Banquet and Conference Center, 1066 Sunset Blvd, West Columbia, SC , 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 pm,
$25 registration includes meals and materials but scholarships available. Please make checks or Postal Money Order payable to AID Upstate and mail to the attention of: Matt Jenkins S.C. DHEC, STD/HIV Division 1751 Calhoun St. Columbia, SC 29201 For additional information please contact Ra’Shawn Flournoy at 1-888-232-2310 or Matt Jenkins at (803) 898-0898

5th Anniversary Town Hall Dialogue - “Looking Back to Move Forward: Progress and the Black LGBT Community in South Carolina
University of South Carolina, Law School Auditorium, 701 Main Street, Columbia, SC, 29208; short film/presentation and panel discussion; 6 – 8:30 p.m.; Free Admission.

Saturday, June 26th
Community Expo! Free Admission
Vendors, Entertainment, Door Prizes
Columbia Metropolitan Community Convention Center, 1101 Lincoln St
Presidential Ballroom, Family entertainment, food, vendors; 11 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.; Free Admission.

(Featuring an observance of the 55th Birthday of E.Lynn Harris by Terreance Dean, Stanley Bennett Clay, and James Earl Hardy, co-authors of Visible Lives: Three Short Stories in Tribute to E. Lynn Harris. Panel moderated by Clarence Nero, author of The Temptation of Desire)

Sunday, June 27th
Community Worship Service, Free Admission, 3 p.m.
Presided by
Pastor Rashawn Flournoy, Freedom Worship Church of Columbia in conjunction with other affirming congregations of South Carolina. 7900 Nell Street, Columbia, SC, 29223 (Iglesia Luterana Manantial De); Free Admission.

Those wanting information on vendor rates at the Expo as well as ad rates for the 2010 Pride Guide can go here to the 2010_SC Black Pride Sponsorship package

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Andrea Lafferty - I'm proud to be a member of a hate group

From my online buddy Jeremy Hooper comes an interesting comment from the Traditional Values Coalition's Andrea Lafferty.

She was commenting on the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated her group as one of 12 anti-gay hate groups:

The SPLC is the group that wrote a memo used by Obama’s Homeland Security Department claiming that veterans and pro-lifers were dangerous to national security.

Actually, it is a badge of honor for TVC to be listed by the SPLC as a “hate group.” It proves we’re effective in challenging liberalism, socialism, and the LGBT agenda.

That comment about SPLC writing memo a for the Obama Administration is a lie. But since when do you expect a hate group to be truthful. Now it's important to establish what SPLC constitutes as an anti-gay hate group:

Opposition to equal rights for homosexuals has been a central theme of Christian Right organizing and fundraising for the past three decades – a period that parallels the fundamentalist movement's rise to political power.

For Christian Right leaders, the gay rights movement and its so-called "homosexual agenda" are the prime culprits in the destruction of American society and culture. In the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the battle against gay rights is essentially a "second civil war" to put control of the U.S. government in the right hands, meaning those who reject gay rights.

The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing homosexuals as "perverts" with "filthy habits" who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and "convert" them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging "facts" about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the "bestial" black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.

Would this comment from TVC head Lou Sheldon at a 2006 religious right conference do?:

Sheldon demanded laws that treat homosexuality as "a social disorder." Decrying the term "homosexual" as the brainchild of a 20th-century German psychologist obviously sympathetic to gays, Sheldon implored the conferees to return to the 18th century's superior diction. "The word used in America [then] was 'perverted'," he noted. When Sheldon was asked by an audience member what to call homosexuals, he shot out of his chair and shouted, "Call them what they are -- sodomites!"

Of course Lafferty conveniently didn't mention her father's outburst in her screed. Jeremy lists a couple of other things that Lafferty neglected to mention:

Andrea and her father (TVC prez Lou Sheldon) have willingly set up shot atop this contentious volcano. If Andrea wants to get TVC off of it, then Andrea can vow to be better. She can vow to stop saying that being gay is equivalent to schtooping a toaster. She can stop calling an important piece of legislation the "Barney Frank She-Male Shower Bill." She can stop referring to a collection of transgender people as a "freak show." She can stop putting Jesus on Wanted posters as a way to pit that particular religious figure against gays who support hate crime protections. She can stop directing her worker bees to Photoshop a smiling Barack Obama in front of the burning WTC towers or onto a Nazi propaganda poster. TVC can stop flipping Congressional exchanges so that they are made more convenient for their self-serving purposes. She can stop being untruthful.

And let's not forget TVC's tasteless need to attack the transgender community (amongst other things, call them "she-males"), which I have talked about on several occasions via their fight against ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) but best be illustrated by this awful graphic:

In addition, there was the time when the Traditional Values Coalition:

claimed that the passage of ENDA would lead to the sexual abuse of disabled veterans,

continued to intentionally mix the term "sexual orientation" with "paraphilias" in another attempt to lie about ENDA,

used bad research in YET another attempt to lie about ENDA, including distorting marketing statistics,

made a tacky attack on Obama appointee Kevin Jennings and actor Tom Cruise,

claimed that a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a bad idea by asking, amongst other silly questions, how would the military " handle sodomy in battlefield situations,"

kept a bad study regarding gays and pedophilia on its web page even after a researcher complained about his work being distorted in the study AND telling an outright lie about testimony during Congressional hearings regarding hate crimes legislation. The lie was so bad, it was easily refuted via transcript, which Jeremy Hooper did when he broke the story.

Bottom line - Andrea Lafferty saying that she is proud to be a member of a hate group is a like a cannibal bragging about his table manners.

Big hat tip to Goodasyou.org

Barney Frank, GetEqual, and other interesting Thursday midday news briefs

Shocker: Rep. Frank has contrarian opinions which he's not afraid to share - Naturally Frank totally disagrees with GetEqual's actions. I recently wrote a piece about those actions garnering some ugly comments (a few racially insensitive), but the point of my post was to ask is GetEqual's actions simply venting or will it lead to positive action in the community in other fights for lgbt equality.
And now I pose a new question. Say that GetEqual's actions do cause there to be an immediacy with ENDA hearings. What happens next? We all know the religious right's game plan of exploiting ignorance of the transgender community to kill ENDA. Will direction action tactics be successful during the hearings or can they be seen as counterproductive? I am not devaluing anyone's actions to garner lgbt equality but critical questions need to be asked, period.

Govt softens anti-homosexuality Bill - Not bad. But I'm a cynic. Until this bil is totally killed, I ain't popping any champagne yet.

Hate Group MassResistance Wigging Out Over Massachusetts Governor’s Race - Massachusetts hate group Mass Resistance is asking conservatives to stay home on election day. Promises, promises.

Second Attempt to Recall Adams Fails - Y'all ain't getting rid of this gay mayor. Deal with it.

Senate confirms openly lesbian judge - Ass kickingly awesome!

Black pastor declares war on Democractic party over gay rights while I laugh my ass off

According to the right-wing One News Now, a black pastor is starting a new political action group because he says the Democratic party doesn't really represent black Americans:

Bishop E.W. Jackson, Sr., has set up the Stand America PAC to challenge members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Jackson tells OneNewsNow that that contingent of lawmakers does not represent black Americans.

"They are pro-abortion, they are pro-homosexuality, they are pro-gay marriage -- and the black community doesn't agree with any of these things...and it is time [those lawmakers] were challenged," he vows. "[O]ur PAC is going to challenge them, recruit candidates, and ultimately see to it that they are defeated, and that the black community has an alternative leadership to look to."

In other words, E.W. Jackson is aiming to be another Harry Jackson, i.e. a black leader claiming to speak for black folks against the Democratic party while surreptitiously propped up by right-wing (i.e. white) money.

Which will probably be the reason that other in his own head and the press releases on the right, this announcement will go over like a burp of an infant - cute and funny but ultimately meaningless.

Granted, I'm sure he will catch attention with the remark about abortion and homosexuality. Folks in the anti-abortion movement have been trying to gain a strong foothold in the black community.

But it's the comment about homosexuality where Jackson fails. He should have just stuck to gay marriage. You see, usually when a black leader of Jackson's, shall we say ilk, talks about homosexuality in the black community, they usually confine the argument to gay marriage.

And that is because they know that the issue of what the African-American community on the whole feels about homosexuality is complex.

Oh sure, you hear voices telling you how black folks don't agree with homosexuality and how blacks "resent gays," but allow me to let you in on a secret that I'm beginning to discover:

What has been said and believed about blacks and gays isn't necessarily the entire story.

Unfortunately this hasn't been explored as much as it should have and it speaks to how the black community has been shortchanged in regards to media coverage of our issues. Folk on both sides of the spectrum seem to be content with offering inaccurate generalizations of the black community on the whole rather than exploring the intricacies behind the feelings of the black community regarding homosexuality.

But back to Jackson - another reason why he will probably fail is because he doesn't provide any adequate solutions. It's not that the black community are beholden to the Democratic party. Like any other sensible group in the country, we align ourselves with those who we feel can get us to where we need to be.

And frankly I don't see the GOP being that party with its covert support of birthers, tea baggers, Dittoheads and Beckites.

So long story short, Jackson's announcement is cute and amusing but personally, I prefer the baby burp.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

How to scare the bejesus out of Christians with a failed game plan

When I saw this Family Research Council graphic about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA - which would simply provide workplace protection for lgbts), it reminded me of something that I couldn't put my finger on.

Then, thanks to People for the American Way, it hit me. Remember this:

That graphic was featured during a Congressional debate over hate crimes legislation (although not the last one) and it claimed that if sexual orientation was added to existing hate crimes legislation, pastors would be arrested in the pulpits for declaring homosexuality to be a sin.

As we all know, sexual orientation was added to hate crimes legislation last year and since that time, guess how many pastors have been arrested?

None. Nada. Zip. Not even that zany preacher on the corner in my neighborhood who gives sermons to the rush of traffic.

In other words, religious right groups told an outright lie when they claimed that hate crimes legislation would lead to the arrest of pastors.

Now usually when someone tells a tale which turns out to be false, they have the good taste not to use the same lie in a different battle.

But good taste has never been the religious right's forte.

According to People for the American Way:

You really have to marvel at the Religious Right's strategy in opposing ENDA as they seem intent on using the exact same playbook they used against hate crimes legislation despite the fact that their anti-hate crimes strategy failed and their dire predictions about hate crimes spelling the end of religious liberty have been proven demonstrably false.

How long will it be before legitimate Christians realize that the Family Research Council and other religious right groups are running a game on them with their constant cries of wolf?

Related posts:

Family Research Council getting extremely 'scary' about ENDA