No April Fool

I wish it was an April fools joke, but it's not a joke...just a lot of fools.  I remember back (how many?) years ago when I marched to the California state capitol with my friends Ellen and Shelly, who were about to embark on a bus tour of the country trying to raise awareness of same sex marriage by talking with people everywhere they went and sharing their story, together more than 30 years, raising a family together, but legal strangers to each other.

I remember at that rally there was a couple of women who were in a committed relationship, but one was from Canada and one from the U.S. The Canadian's visa was expiring and could not be renewed since she was no longer a student.  Her partner's mother was very ill and she was being put in the position of having to either move to Canada to be with her partner, or stay in the U.S. to be with her mother.

There were more heartbreaking stories told to the small crowd (nobody in the community was much interested) before they boarded the bus and set off for Washington, D.C.

Never in my (or their) wildest dreams did I think that in just a few years, marriage would be legal in California and that one by one, other states would follow suit so that now in more than half of the states gay marriage is legal.  Across the country supporters of gay marriage come out in large numbers, gay and straight. 

With laws prohibiting discrimination in housing and employment, it seemed that finally the world had shifted and that it was now OK to be openly gay and that the majority of citizens in this country were realizing that allowing gays and lesbians to exist openly was not going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it.

But I underestimated the depth of the fear and hatred in the minds of extremists (who still claim Obama is an illegal alien).  Right now there is an initiative gathering signatures to be placed on the ballot in Caliafornia (I find it hard to believe it will get enough...but these days you never know!).  It's called the "Sodomite Suppression Act" and demands that gays and lesbians “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.” It requires that anyone “who espouses sodomistic propaganda” be barred from public office and be prohibited from receiving government benefits or being employed by the state. Furthermore, anyone caught disseminating “sodomistic propaganda” to minors would be fined “$1 million per occurrence, and/or imprisoned up to 10 years, and/or expelled from the boundaries of the state of California for up to life."

I'd really like to think this is an April Fools joke, but no.  Attorney Matthew McLaughlin is dead serious.  Maybe he got the idea from the 'kill the gays' bill recently overturned in Uganda.

I haven't seen so much anti-gay frothing at the mouth as I have seen lately.

In Texas there are no less than twenty pending bills regarding aspects of discrimination against gays in that state.

• Six bills, including two proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution, would allow businesses, government workers and other individuals to use religion to justify discrimination.
• Five bills would sweep away nondiscrimination protections passed by municipal and other local governments.
• Six bills openly seek to subvert any court ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution.
• Three bills would turn transgender people into criminals if they use a restroom that is appropriate to their gender identity. They would also turn employers and building managers essentially into bathroom police who must — under threat of fines and criminal prosecution — verify the gender of individuals using their restrooms.

In Indiana, Governor Pence has just legalized discrimination and is starting to pay the price for that knee jerk action.  Arkansas is considering a similar bill.

Every potential GOP candidate for the presidency in 2016 has endorsed the Indiana bill, except for Chris Christie and Rand Paul who have not yet commented.

Glen Beck suggests that "attacks on such laws will lead to people being placed in concentration camps and killed."

Everybody is yelling about religious freedom.  Where, I ask, were those people when they wanted to build a mosque near the site of 9/11?  Amazing how you can twist things when it's YOUR religion in question.

I ache for the country whenever I read anything or see the news.  I ask those fundamentalist God fearin' Christians who hate gays so much .....  What would Jesus do????

VSE V (not very) PORYADKE

Google Translator tells me that the above transliteration from the cyrillic script to the Western alphabet means "everything's fine."  The "not so" was something I added.

With all the really important news of the day this week, such as Anthony Weiner's weiner, it may have escaped your attention that things are not fine in Russia.  In fact they are very much not fine.

I have been thinking back to the possibly terrible thing I did to one of the guides on our Russian trip, innocent that I was at the time

.

It was toward the end of the trip and I was sitting alone in the front part of the ship, with nobody around except this one tour guide.  She had not been our regular tour guide, though we had her for a special tour and we had listened to her giving some of the educational lectures throughout the voyage.

My "gay dar" kicked in whenever I saw her and I had the feeling she might be a lesbian, though of course I would never have asked her.

But there we were, just the two of us and I had the opportunity to ask what I'd been curious about throughout our travels around the country -- what was life like for the gay community in Russia.

She was flustered, muttered something how "those people" had their own clubs, and she fled as quickly as she could.  I never found out, of course, if she was part of "those people" but watching what has been going on in Russia recently, I understand the look of panic on her face as she fled.  That may have answered my unasked question after all.

Russia has recently passed laws allowing the police to arrest tourists and foreign nationals suspected of being gay and outlawing "homosexual propaganda" as pornography.  The legislation is vague but its intent is clear: It is now "illegal to spread information about non-traditional sexual behavior" to minors (under 18), and there are hefty fines for those who disobey. Foreigners are also subject to fines and can be deported.  Recently four Dutch tourists were jailed under this law. 

Just when the Pope has come out saying it's OK to be gay (just don't do anything gay!), the Russian government has stepped up the attacks on gay people in that country.  A call for a boycott of the Olympics, to be held in Russia was deemed unfair to athletes who would be hurt by being unable to participate, and now there is instead a call for a boycott of Russian vodka as a protest.

But the scene in Russia is really serious for gay people. Gay rights marches are routinely broken up and scenes of police detaining activists, sometimes before demonstrations even begin, are commonplace. Activists of the Moscow Gay Pride movement were detained in Moscow for holding an unsanctioned rally and for "promoting untraditional sexual relations." (They were later released.) Gay pride participants were badly beaten during clashes with anti-gay demonstrators in St. Petersburg last month, with Russian police arresting dozens of people.

 

In May, a 23-year old man was allegedly murdered in the city of Volgograd on the Victory Day holiday. A suspect reportedly told police the victim was killed because he was gay. In June, Russian investigators said another man in Kamchatka was also murdered because he was gay. It's all part of Putin's agenda of promoting "conservative values" (sound familiar?) and some 88% of the population agree with him.

Russian Neo-Nazis, calling themselves "crime fighers" are luring gay male teens, kidnap and torture them, photographing the torture.  Some of these attacks take place in bright daylight in front of the public and the police, who ignore what is going on.

"We do not like homosexuals," the leader of one local gathering explained, according to a HuffPost translation. "If it was up to me, I'd kill them but the government doesn't allow that." 

"I think practically all gay men -- pedophiles," he later explained. "Once you've crossed over once, you can cross over again. Today he likes boys, and then it'll be children. They're not suitable for life in society."

In some parts of our own country, things are looking up for gays and lesbians...not everywhere, but in a growing number of places.  More and more straight people are looking at their gay neighbors and seeing them as just everyday people and accepting them for who they are.

But there are still places in the world where to be gay is to be a target for beatings, arrest, torture, and even death.  Uganda hasn't quite passed the "kill the gays" bill, but it is still very much under consideration. The bill would still contain a penalty of lifetime imprisonment for homosexuality. Anyone who doesn't report a homosexual within 24 hours faces three years imprisonment. And the clauses which cover supposed 'advocacy of homosexuality' could conceivably lead to both lawyers defending gay people or parliamentarians proposing changes to the law facing charges. Any landlord renting to gay people could be accused of running a brothel.

There is little you or I can do from the comfort of our living rooms about the violence in Uganda or in Russia, but perhaps participating in the vodka ban will at least send a message to somebody in Russia.  Although Stolichnaya is one of the most popular vodka brands in the U.S., owners and managers at gay bars across the nation are pouring out their last drops of Stoli and vowing to stop buying bottles indefinitely.

I'm glad my mother doesn't drink Stoli.  I don't want to tell her she's going to have to give up her nightly vodka and tonic.  But before I refill her vodka stash, I will make sure that whatever brand I buy was not made in Russia.

Fortunately, though there is still antipathy among the population in general toward the gay community in Ukraine, rules are loosening up and clubs are allowed to exist and pride marches have taken place peacefully. There is even an openly gay man serving as Minister of Internal Affairs in the country, though members of parliament still consider gays as "sexual perverts."

But I won't worry (too much) about our upcoming trip.

The World Gone Mad

I had one way this was going to go, but then I started doing some reading on the internet and it may be quite different. In either case it's kind of a "what in the world is happening to us?" kind of question.

Anybody watch The Today Show and see the "sell your house" lady, Barbara Corcoran being asked a question about what to do if you're trying to sell your house but you live next door to an eyesore, a guy who has junk cars all over his yard and a house in disrepair. I thought Al Roker would drop his teeth when she said 'Well, if it was me, I'd probably take a gun and shoot the guy." Roker went on at great length about how she was only kidding.

Apparently Corcoran didn't get the "ix-nay on the illing-kay" memo after the Arizona shootings.

I don't doubt that Corcoran wasn't really advocating going out and shooting a neighbor because you don't like how he keeps his property.

Sadly that is not what people are trying to make happen in the state of South Dakota.

I couldn't believe it when I read the article this morning.

South Dakota's HB1171, scheduled to be voted on in the House tomorrow, would expand the legal definition of justifiable homicide in the state. The measure legalizes the killing of abortion providers by saying a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" an unborn fetus. The bill has already passed committee, by a vote of 9-3 (9 Republicans and 3 Democrats of course).

As someone wrote today, "Apparently they believe that passing through the birth canal destroys all right to life."

In the meantime, those wacky Republicans (you know--the guys that were going to make jobs a priority) are trying to change the definition of rape and to exclude from any federal funding for abortion women whose pregancy occurs as a result of "forcible rape," a legal term that includes the following categories of rape: date rape, gang rape, marital rape or spousal rape, incestual rape, child sexual abuse, prison rape, acquaintance rape, war rape and statutory rape. Apparently to qualify for "forcible rape," there has to be a police report filed, so if you want to have an abortion and you would like the government to foot the bill then you need to provide proof that you were raped or be a minor in a situation where it might be dangerous for you to report the rape or your caregiver could hurt you further.

All potential rape victims, please be advised to know your legal rights and responsibillities before the rape occurs and try to keep your wits about you afterwards so that you cross all the Ts and dot all the Is so that if a child is conceived, you have a possibility of having government assistance, if needed, for an abortion. This is especially important for those under the age of 13.

But what is really bugging me today, given the Marriage Equality gathering I went to yesterday, is what's happening in Uganda. I have a special interest in Uganda, now that I sponsor a young girl there and it frustrates me, somewhat, to know that I can never discuss this with her, given that I sponsor her through a religious organization.

Because I have an interest in Uganda, I watched an hour long program about the anti-gay campaign going on in that country. I did a lot of reading after that, so I've lost the place where I read that the country had a more lenient view of homosexuality until American evangelicals visited the country and spoke at a conference called "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda."

One of the ministers was Scott Lively, a pastor from Springfield, MA who believes that countries like Uganda can still protect themselves from the scourge of the gay agenda. (Gosh darn it...where is that document? I've been promoting gay rights for decades and I've still never seen the gay agenda.)

Lively told the conference's audience that "even though the majority of homosexuals are not oriented towards young people, there's a significant number who are. And when they see a child from a broken home, it's like they have a flashing neon sign over their head."

The message was embraced by Pastor Martin Ssempa, the "star" (for lack of a better word) of this report from Uganda.

"Anal licking!," he shouts, directing the crowd's attention to the images of hardcore gay pornography that he's projecting via his laptop. "That is what they are doing in the privacy of their bedrooms."

"Everything having to do with eating of the poo-poo…heterosexuals do not eat the poo-poo," Ssempa said. "And if they do, they are misguided, they are not real heterosexuals. We don't practice, that's an abomination. It's like sex with a dog, sex with a cow; it's evil."

The crowd gets worked up, more and more disgusted by the images they are seeing.

Pastor Ssempa's campaign resulted in the introduction of The Anti-Homosexual Bill of 2009. The bill creates a new category of crime called "Aggravated Homosexuality," which calls for death by hanging for gays or lesbians who have sex with anyone under 18 and for so-called "serial offenders."

The bill also calls for seven years in prison for "attempt to commit homosexuality," five years for landlords who knowingly house gays, three years for anyone, including parents, who fail to hand gay children over to the police within 24 hours and the extradition of gay Ugandans living abroad.

A man in the film said that if he learned that his daughter was lesbian, he would take a gun and kill her himself.

The anti-gay sentiment resulted in the death of gay rights activist David Kato, who was outed as gay by a local newspaper. (I'm not 100% certain, but I think Kato was the gay activist being interviewed in the film I saw...a lovely man, who knew that his life was in danger)

The editor of the newspaper who outed Mr. Kato made an incredible statement: "We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality, not for the public to attack them."

All of these things have been done by God-fearing Christians and I sincerely hope that they do fear God because I don't imagine that He is going to be ecstatic about their un-Christian attitude towards their fellow human beings.

I don't know exactly what Jesus would do, but I am pretty sure he wouldn't be supporting any of these actions.