Apparently, teaching children the virtues of monogamous, committed love is completely and totally immoral. 

Time for homeschooling trips to BDSM orgies, I guess.  Make sure to load the ball gags in the minivan!

In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, you don’t exactly expect the red carpet rolled out for LGBTs, but this alleged bold ejection from a local bar underscores the ease with which discrimination can and does occur.

Joseph: “I was in the back of the bar, Catch 22, and we were picking music by the jukebox and the female owner of the bar just kicked out my friends for dancing ‘too gay’...She proceeded to tell me that she was the owner of the bar and that if I’m to continue coming to her bar, that it’s not OK to be open because it’s not a gay bar and it never will be. And then she added that gay people disgust her.”

The folks at Catch 22 declined to comment other than to claim the incident didn’t occur, and that Joseph and his friends are welcome to return at any time.

Of course I’m now curious as to what defines “dancing too gay” in Tuscaloosa.

October 11 is National Coming Out Day.

We may be winning the culture war one day at a time (see the marriage equality ruling in Connecticut on Friday), but not everyone has the option of coming out of the closet in this country—
* Without ENDA, LGBT citizens can be fired from a job where there are no local anti-discrimination protections.
* We most certainly see members of the community get the crap beaten out of them—or worse—in many parts of the country, even Blue states.
* and it goes without saying if you have anti-gay parents and you're not yet 18 (or are dependent on them for support), coming out is probably a really bad idea unless you are prepared for the consequences of them taking the news badly.

That said, coming out is the most powerful thing one can do, but it cannot be done in isolation; straight allies have to be willing to publicly defend their gay friends and acquaintances.

* Support Equality organizations in your state, particularly if it is at risk for an amendment challenge as we see this time around in CA, AZ and FL. Give your time and money, if you can spare. In North Carolina, the organization at the grassroots level is Equality NC.

* Get involved. It's easy to write a check or complain  from the sidelines and the comfort of our keyboards about the effectiveness of those working locally and nationally on our behalf; it's another to come out, live out and work to make a difference—whether it's writing your representatives, grassroots activism, or making an effort to engage with your friends, neighbors and colleagues about equality issues.

* If you are straight and an ally, COME OUT. Support your gay friends and loved ones when you hear intolerant conversation, politely engage ignorance with information.

Each Coming Out Day I ask this Q of the Day:

Are you out to…
—your friends?
—your immediate family?
—your extended family?
—any/some/most of your colleagues at work?
—your boss?
—your doctors?
—your neighbors?

I'm happy to say that I can check off all of those today, but it took years of constantly coming out, choosing when “the right time” would be to come out to any of the above groups. It's a seemingly endless process, never easy, almost always awkward (since I'm an introvert to begin with). It's not like something that comes up in casual conversation, nor do you really want it to. But eventually kicking the door open beats life in the closet.

For my straight readers:
—are you “out” as an ally? 
—are you able to talk about gay friends or relatives with others?
—are you comfortable shooting down homophobes when they spout off during a conversation? PFLAG’s Straight for Equality produces a wonderful and entertaining education resource, “Guide To Being a Straight Ally” and it can be downloaded here. Take The Straight for Equality Pledge to support and be an advocate for LGBT civil equality. More below the fold, including videos.

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The latest ad from Protectmarriage.com throws the legal right for same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts as an example of the disaster that awaits the Golden State unless Prop 8 is passed. 

Little Girl: “Mom, guess what I learned in school today?”
Mother: “What, sweetie?”
Mother: “I learned how a prince married a prince and I can marry a princess.”
Professor Richard Peterson, Pepperdine University School of Law: “Think it can’t happen? It’s already happened. When Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, schools began teaching second graders that boys can marry boys. The courts ruled that parents had no legal right to object.
Voiceover: “Under California law, public schools instruct kids about marriage. Teaching children about gay marriage will happen here unless we pass Proposition 8. Vote Yes on 8.

OK, there are several problems with this ad…

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After a Florida middle school teacher uses ‘n*gger’ in the classroom to describe Barack Obama (and isn’t fired), who knows how this is all going to escalate. Wonder no more - look at what was tapped out on the keyboard of Bobby May, who is treasurer of the Buchanan County (Virginia) Republican Party and the (now-former) county’s representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team (h/t NotLarrySabato), in an article in the LAT:

A local newspaper columnist, in a spoof of Obama’s platform wrote in one recent piece that the Democrat would hire the rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black (a reference to a pro-Obama song by Ludacris), and divert more foreign aid to Africa so “the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.” He joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars o the U.S. flag “with a star and crescent logo,” an Islamic symbol, an that his policy on drugs would be to “raise taxes to pay for Obama’ inner-city political base.”

The columnist, Bobby May, is also treasurer of the Buchanan Count Republican Party and was listed in a July news release as the county’ representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team, though he said his column reflected his views alone, and he denied it was racist.

When they knew the sh*t was going to hit the fan, these were the statements released—first the standard non-apology mea culpa:

“I offer a sincere apology to anyone that I may have offended with anything that I’ve written when expressing my personal opinions. Effective immediately, I have resigned my position as McCain Campaign Buchanan County Chair.” —Bobby Lee May

And then McCain camp ran for cover:

obby Lee May’s comments about Barack Obama are offensive, insulting and have no place in political discourse. Mr. May’s comments in no way, shape or form reflect the views or opinions held by John McCain or his campaign. The McCain campaign wholeheartedly disavows Mr. May’s column. Mr. May is no longer a part of our campaign organization.” – Gail Gitcho, McCain mid-Atlantic spokesman

The fact of the matter is, people like May represent part of The Base of the GOP, the voters McCain is counting on to go to the polls for him. Why do I get the idea that if May had the common sense not to air his bigotry out in the public sphere, McCain and Co., if alerted privately, would have been content to have a racist, homophobic person heading up an effort on his behalf.

Let’s take a look at the whole horrible document below the fold.

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My wrap on last night’s debate included the clip of the exchange between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin on the topic of same-sex marriage. With a couple of hours of sleep now under my belt, I wanted to return to the matter. First of all, it’s noteworthy that the issue of marriage equality has largely been ignored by both presidential candidates, given that three marriage amendments are on the ballot (FL, CA, AZ). This debate presented an opportunity to have the vice presidential candidates speak about the issue to a huge, engaged audience.

Moderator Gwen Ifill couched the question this way, in order to point out that Palin signed a bill extending partner benefits in Alaska (she opposed this, but given the state’s high court decision, didn’t veto it).

Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?

Biden was first up, and did not hesitate in his response. The relevant nugget:

[I]n an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple...We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

He went on to state that the Obama/Biden ticket’s position is that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

This left Palin precious little wiggle room to differentiate herself other than to say she’s personally not a bigot.

But I also want to clarify, if there’s any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don’t agree with me on this issue.

But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.

Joe Biden’s answer boxed in Sarah Palin, forcing her to give a feeble, confusing answer that probably left her supporters on the far right unhappy. One—she holds the same position on marriage as Obama/Biden, so that was off the table. Two—it left her to use a “some of my best friends are gay” position, and acknowledged that gay and lesbian couples deserve some rights. [BTW, the Log Cabin Republicans have no basis to say that Palin’s comments reflect any evolutionary thinking on McCain/Palin’s part, it only raises the question of what rights they intend to deny gay couples. I eagerly await the delusional cheerleading reaction on the LCR blog.]

More after the jump.

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The economy’s in a meltdown, the troops are still fighting with no end in sight, but Elaine Donnelly and the The Center for Military Readiness have a laser focus on important matters. She is well aware that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is likely to go by the wayside, particularly if Obama is elected, and because the polling shows that most Americans in and out of the military see no good reason why gays and lesbians cannot openly serve.

The handwriting is on the wall for CMR, so what to do? Well, the doyenne of discrimination has decided to do a little Black Ops meeting with veterans service organizations (VSOs) to figure out how to turn up the Homosexual Terror Alert. Fortunately Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) received the secret memorandum on this briefing, and

you’ve got to read

the cloak and dagger BS. I’ve obtained a scan of the memo and transcribed it for your reading pleasure.

Because I admire your organization’s work in support of our nation’s armed forces, I am writing to ask you a question. The determined campaign to repeal the 1993 law stating that homosexuals are not eligible to serve in the military is gaining ground. In this critical battle over the culture of our military—the only one we have—do you care who wins?

Homosexual activists are pushing hard to impose their agenda on our military, regardless of the impact on morale and discipline. They are pleased that pro-defense and veterans organizations, which helped to pass the law in 1993, appear to be missing from the field this time. Organizations such as the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and the ACLU are well-funded and politically powerful, even though they have no arguments that withstand scrutiny.

Given your organization’s long-standing commitment to military readiness and the high standards and sound policy that promotes it, I hope I can count on you in joining CMR to defend the law regarding homosexual conduct in the military. We need to talk about what can be done, and why, face to face.

I am writing to invite you and other concerned organizations’ leaders to a private, off-the-record briefing to discuss this critically important national security issue. Please join us at the CMR office in Washington DC:

Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008
Where: CMR Conference Room, 1615 L Street,  NW, Suite 650
Time: 12:00-2:30 PM (Light lunch will be served)
RSVP: Executive Director Tommy Sears, 202/347/5333, tommy@cmrlink.org

Due to this issue’s urgency, this invitation is not transferrable to casual observers, interns or other non-executive support staff. This PowerPoint briefing, which includes short video excerpts of the July 23 House Armed Services Committee hearing on gays in the military, will cover everything you need to know to provide the type of principled, engaged leadership that only you can give. I would welcome new ideas and commitment that could turn the situation around.

We are not without advantages. On our side we have the 1993 law, several court decisions declaring the law constitutional (the most recent in June, 2008), credible facts, common sense, and, I believe, majority support among men and women in uniform.

There are so many outlandish things about this memo and Donnelly’s bluster, considering the sitcom-worthy performance she gave earlier this year at the House hearings on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  More below the fold.

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How did I miss this batsh*ttery from the Christian Civic League of Maine’s Mike Heath? Since he’s had little success in preventing the advance of The Homosexual Agenda in his part of the world, he’s looking to expand his horizons —teh gayz are responsible for the debacle on Wall Street! I kid you not. (PageOneQ):

Christian fundamentalists are suggesting gays and lesbians are to blame for Wall Street’s woes, a frequently made charge in the wake of national calamities.

In a September 25th blog post titled ‘The Nation Will Right Itself If It Fixes Sex’, Christian Civil League of Maine Executive Director Michael Heath writes that the financial crisis facing Wall Street is a symptom of America’s sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.

“Our crisis is a symptom, not the cause,” writes Michael Heath. “I am not saying I know whether this financial crisis is God’s judgment or not. It is not for me to know that definitively.”

Heath has a list of issues that he wants Maine’s politicians to address to get right with God and, ostensibly, financially strengthen the state in some manner.

  1. Put Maine on record as being against abortion the nanosecond the Supreme Court releases the Roe shackle.
  2. Defund the Family Planning Association of Maine.
  3. Amend Maine’s Constitution to define Marriage.
  4. Eliminate domestic partnerships and ignore pleas to create civil unions.
  5. Unleash Maine’s private sector to make Maine energy independent.
  6. End discrimination against private religious schools and homeschools.

If we did that in 2009 I think God would crack a smile.

Daddy Dobson hasn’t weighed in on the news that John McCain supports his socially out, professionally closeted gay chief of staff Mark Buse, who was honored with BlogActive’s Roy Cohn Award last week. Mike Signorile added to the Buse news when two former boyfriends of Buse came forward to discuss Buse’s lobbying and close relationship to the McCains. Mike noted that the story here is about the hypocrisy of the professional anti-gay, personal homosexualist McCain:

What else does the reality of Mark Buse’s life say about John McCain? Does he see his own chief of staff, someone he has known now for 20 years, as someone who should have no rights, no hate crimes protections, and no employment protection in the private sector? Does he see his own loyal chief of staff as someone who should be hounded by Christian conservatives, pressured to enter damaging “conversion” therapy programs, and made a target of violence that is inspired by the hate spewed by agents of intolerance?

Professional homophobe Bishop Harry Jackson, never one to shy away from a media opportunity, beat Daddy D to the punch in reacting to this hypocrisy.

“That’s the reason why this little thing was leaked,” says Jackson. “The pro-gay, anti-church groups see themselves in a death-lock in a war—and they hope to create a sense of disunity among Christians around [the question] ‘can we really trust McCain?’”

According to Jackson, the announced “outing” of Buse is a calculated political move. “I think this attack has come at this moment because of the issues of marriage amendments in these states and the issue of a pro-family agenda,” the pastor suggests. “And I wish [McCain] was more engaged positively, because he’s getting the negative attack no matter what.”

Jackson believes it is important to speak out against all forms of immorality, but that Christians also have a responsibility “not to let the character of Jesus and the message of the gospel be misrepresented as bigoted, homophobic, and narrow.”

The Family Research Council and Focus on the Family both declined to comment on the story.

Gee, why haven’t Tony Perkins or James Dobson started bleating their outrage at the professional anti-gay, personal homosexualist John McCain? Those folks have big-time Hair Trigger Press Release Syndrome on just about every other topic. They have

no comment

on whether employing openly gay ho-mo-sexuals.

By the way, Harry, it’s not an attack if the person in question is not in the closet. The only people in the dark are the voters (and contributor$) outside the Beltway that you and the professional “Christian” set call your Base. We’re only shining a light on the reality in DC, and the games the Republicans play when they need to lie down with the dogs of your flea-ridden movement.

By the way, Mike Signorile has yet another former Buse boyfriend who’s ready to go on his show and spill more details. We’ll keep you in the loop.

Kate and I went to the NC Pride parade today, and it was definitely the largest turnout we’ve seen. There was a lot of Obama support out there (right: this was my favorite T-shirt of the day). We marched in the Obama Pride section this time around. It was a wild assortment of progressive allies, members of the LGBT community, and very strong corporate support (Suntrust, US Air, Bank of America, Best Buy, Glaxo, to name a few).

We had a flock of unhinged fundies this year. Operation Save America and Flip Benham didn’t show, but it looks like one of the local black churches sent out some members with handmade signs with tired “wages of sin” kind of phrases on them. They just stood silently. By contrast, the most vocal and unhinged fundies were white, that was kind of odd; I’m not sure what’s going on there. I should note that there were more gay-affirming churches of all denominations marching in the parade than ever before.

I wonder what the hateful crowd thought about that.

Anyway, I was accosted by one young woman bearing a message of damnation on a pizza box who wanted to save me, so naturally I had to go over and film her. It was hilarious - her schtick was that Obama wasn’t going to save us from the hellfire. I asked her why she wasn’t out there protesting divorce. This got her briefly off message, then the cops told me to move along. Here’s the video of her and the rest of the reality-challenged nutcases:

A slideshow of other photos from Pride and more fundie footage are over at my pad.

Condi sure as hell would have been a more credible pick than the train wreck from Wasilla, even with Dr. Rice’s role in the Iraq debacle and Bush’s

McCain’s inner circle argued “furiously” for Rice to be his running mate instead of one-time top contenders Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty. However, according to the RNC source, persistent rumors about Rice’s sexual orientation took her out of the running. “In Washington circles,” the source said, “it’s just assumed Rice is gay and nobody really cares. But in the glare of the media spotlight, those rumors were bound to get magnified a thousandfold and the mainstream media would have had an excuse to reveal the facts that would have caused conniption fits among the Republican base.”

Rice, as Provost of Stanford University long before she was on the Bush cabinet, jointly owned a California house and held a line of credit with documentary filmmaker Randy Bean, with whom Rice has said she bonded over a “mutual love of football.”

“Whether or not her relationship with Bean means Condi is light in the loafers is not the point,” the source added. “It’s hard to prove one way or another. The fact is that by the time the media finished dissecting it, not a Christian conservative in the country would have gone to the polls in November and that’s ultimately what nixed the Rice candidacy.”

Note the anonymous source makes a reference to “light in the loafers”—huh? How does that refer to a lesbian? Shouldn’t it be more like “heavy in the Manolo Blahniks?”

Mike Signorile:

Many of you will remember back to September of last year when Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler broke the news on my show that Condi Rice owned a home with another woman.

He’d written a biography of Rice, and I surely wasn’t his first interview (though I was in that first dozen or so, probably, since it was the week the book was published). And yet, I was the first one to ask about some curious facts he’d unearthed and which were prominent in his introduction and then later in the book, regarding Rice’s ownership of a home with a woman described as her closest female friend, Randy Bean, a Democrat and filmmaker who worked at Stanford. The two had actually owned the home with Rice’s other best friend, a gay man who worked in the Clinton administration, Coit D. Blacker, a Stanford professor, who eventually sold his share to the two women. Even if Rice and the also-unmarried Bean weren’t in a relationship, the fact that her second closest friend is a gay man (and also a Democrat) was quite fascinating.

Also:
* LCR chides ‘gay left’ for discussing John McCain’s gay chief of staff

The fainting couch is needed for Scott Tucker over at the Log Cabin Republican’s weblog BlogCabin. He’s worked up over the reporting by Michelangelo Signorile and Mike Rogers about John McCain’s professionally closeted Senate chief of staff Mark Buse and the hypocrisy it represents, given the Republican nominee’s public anti-gay position on every major issue related to LGBT rights. (BTW, Mike Signorile has audio of an interview by Lisa Keen with yet another former Buse boyfriend who has gone on the record.)

The title of the post sums up the dilemma of the Log Cabin Republicans— “The Politics of Personal Destruction at its Worst.”

Mark Buse has been openly gay for years and has acknowledged as much.  So the notion that he has been “outed” is simply false.  But secondly–and this is the bigger point–this political stunt by Mike Rogers just proves what Log Cabin has been saying for years.  John McCain is an inclusive Republican who hires the best people, regardless of sexual orientation.

Then what is the “personal destruction” you are talking about? If Buse is out, then discussing the fact that Mark Buse is gay shouldn’t be of any consequence—unless there is something wrong with being out of the closet to the Republican base.

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Yeah, baby. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is on fire with this batsh*t crazy letter to frantic supporters of the Cali marriage amendment. When this measure is defeated, he warns that the prisons will be overrun with fundies.

The unhinged letter is below the fold.

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So, apparently, Republicans are having their coming out party in Hollywood. 

When I look upon the faces of these oppressed, who you may recognize from such blockbusters as Transformers, X-Men: The Last Stand and Live Free or Die Hard, I can only think about how they, like gays and lesbians, blacks and Hispanics, had to face the brutal slings and arrows of discrimination and bigotry. 

Much like black Americans in the 1960s forced to sit at posh lunch counters and be served well-cooked meals as they were forced to awkwardly defend their appreciation of Martin Luther King, Jr. - sometimes with raised voices - Hollywood Republicans know what discrimination is. 

Much like a homosexual person in the 1980s, the very revelation of a Republican’s status in their Hollywood community leads to mass speculation and concern over what they’re going to wear to their next premiere. 

Like any number of Hispanic citizens, Hollywood Republicans frequently face the erroneous assumption that they’re other Republicans, or that they know a Republican because they happened to be from the same state.  It’s also frequently assumed that they know where all the good Republican restaurants are.

Let us have a moment of silence for the last great class of victims in our society - whiny multimillionaire conservatives who can demand their own trailers for bit parts in indie movies.  Did we fight so long and so hard for it to come to this?  I think not.

Today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show Mike Rogers and Mike S. revealed yet another hypocrite within the ranks of the McCain campaign, his gay chief of staff Mark Buse.

Over the past month I’ve been contacted by three different individuals (two of them members of the Log Cabin Republicans) claiming that McCain’s Senate chief of state, Mark Buse, is gay. None of these individuals would be quoted by name, though each described Buse as being rather “open” to those around him and to his family – in a “glass closet” rather than deeply undercover or trying to appear heterosexual.

Then I was contacted in recent weeks by 46-year-old Brian Davis, an Arizona resident, who told me about his intimate relationship with Mark Buse (confirmed by his mother, as well as by a long-time friend), and who decided he needed to tell the truth about Buse, on the record, in light of John McCain’s dramatic shift to the ideological religious right in this election and his choice of Sarah Palin, starlet of the evangelical movement, as a running mate. (Repeated calls to Mark Buse’s office and calls and email to McCain’s communications office in the Senate regarding this story were unreturned. Mike Rogers, the blogger and activist who revealed the truth about Senator Larry Craig and others in politics, today reports this same reality about Mark Buse that I report here, with separate, independent sourcing.)

And Mike Rogers has the video of his delivery of the award to Buse’s office; that’s a bit later. What is newsworthy about Buse is that he has served as a lobbyist (McCain’s swimming in them, huh?) and is socially out, but professionally closeted.

Within a year of Davis’s move to DC, he and Buse broke up, Davis explained, after Buse turned to him one morning in bed and said, “Brian, I’m not in love with you anymore.” Davis was heartbroken. He says Buse left him for another man –- the man he says Buse now lives with today. But Davis got over it in time, and remained in touch with Buse, having a friendly relationship, and checking in on the phone or seeing one another every few years. The video below is from 2000, on the weekend of The Millennium March on Washington for GLBT rights. Davis attended the march, though Buse, he says, did not, and would not do something that public. (In the video, Davis is holding the camera, in the mirror; Buse is the man who eventually hides behind a pillar). The last time Davis says he spoke with Buse was in 2003.

...What else does the reality of Mark Buse’s life say about John McCain? Does he see his own chief of staff, someone he has known now for 20 years, as someone who should have no rights, no hate crimes protections, and no employment protection in the private sector? Does he see his own loyal chief of staff as someone who should be hounded by Christian conservatives, pressured to enter damaging “conversion” therapy programs, and made a target of violence that is inspired by the hate spewed by agents of intolerance?

There is so much more great reporting by Mike Signorile on this story. Please click over for the rest..

Next, Mike Rogers and the award presentation.

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