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????