Brass ones, I tell you. This is going to be interesting. The Politico has the PDF of the subpoena. Ben Smith:
The gay soldiers arrested outside the White House protesting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will annouce today that they’re demanding that President Obama testify in their trial on minor civil disobedience charges.
Their novel argument: Obama himself called on gay rights advocates to pressure him, so they were just following orders.
The full text of the subpoena summary:
SUMMARY OF THE CASES
Lt. Dan Choi and Cpt. James Pietrangelo II are each charged with two counts of Failure to Obey a Lawful Order, pursuant to DC Municipal Regulations (18 DCMR 2000.2 (1995); these charges stem from arrests at the White House sidewalk, on two separate occasions, March 18, 2010 and April 20, 2010. They face a nonjury trial on both charges, on Wed., July 14, 2010, in Courtroom 120 of DC Superior Court. This Court is located at 500 Indiana Avenue, NW, in Washington, DC. These are relatively minor charges (the Defendants may only be fined, from $100 to $1000, and may not receive jail time for these infractions). However, the Defendants seek to use their trials to highlight the ongoing effects of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law and policy of the U.S. Armed Forces toward gay and lesbian servicemembers. They seek to compel the testimony of President Barack Obama who has, on several occasions as President and Commander in Chief (and previously as a Senator and Presidential Candidate) called on the LGBT community to “pressure” him to change the DADT law and policy, thus allowing gay servicemembers to serve their country openly and honorably.
The subpoena of the President is necessary for the defense to prove that Defendants were following and obeying lawful orders or directives by their President and Commander in Chief, and were therefore under an obligation and authority to act as they did in order to pressure him - in a non-violent, visible way - on this important public issue. In addition, these statements support the contention that Defendants were acting out of necessity, in order to prevent discrimination and greater harm to gay servicemembers now serving.
They explain why they are doing this below the fold.
SCOTUS is busy with the rulings today and it has now dealt a huge blow to the protectors of child-raping priests in the Vatican as a ruling came down today that could result in Pope Benedict taking the stand. (Raw Story):
Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases.
The Supreme Court effectively confirmed the decision of an appellate court to lift the Vatican’s immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest in the northwestern state of Oregon.
More on that immunity, which has been the hoped-for trump card in the Vatican’s pocket.
The lawsuit, filed by a plaintiff identified only as John Doe, claimed he was sexually abused on several occasions in the mid-1960s when he was 15 or 16 by a Roman Catholic priest named Father Andrew Ronan.
According to court documents, Ronan molested boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in Ireland and then in Chicago before his transfer to a church in Portland, Oregon, where he allegedly abused the victim who filed the lawsuit. Ronan died in 1992.
...The Vatican claimed immunity under a U.S. law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, that allows foreign states to avoid being sued in court.
But the law contains exceptions. The appeals court cited one of those, ruling the lawsuit has sufficiently alleged that Ronan was an employee of the Vatican acting within the scope of his employment under Oregon law.
Kate and I will mark six years of marriage on July 1—though both of us have to hold off on the real celebration until late July when we both take off for a long-deserved getaway to a place…heh…will share that some time later.
We married in Vancouver, BC Canada in 2004 (no, wrong guess, we’re not heading back there for our anniversary this year). The landscape has changed quite a bit in the U.S. when it comes to same-sex couples getting hitched. As things stand today—
Same-sex marriages are currently granted by five of the 50 states, one federal district, and one Indian tribe:
In Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., marriages for same-sex couples are legal and currently performed.
The Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon also grants same-sex marriage.
State(s) which previously granted same-sex marriage licenses.
In California, same-sex marriages were performed between June 16, 2008, and November 4, 2008, after the California Supreme Court held the statutes limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the state constitution; however, the California electorate then approved California Proposition 8, a voter initiative that made the ban part of California’s constitution. The California Supreme Court upheld the voter-approved constitutional ban. Today, all same-sex unions are given the benefits of marriage under California law, although only those performed as marriages before November 5, 2008, retain the designation “marriage”.[1] Proposition 8 is now being challenged in federal court in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
States which recognize same-sex marriage but do not grant same-sex marriage licenses:
In New York, Rhode Island, and Maryland, same-sex marriages are recognized, but not performed
Back when we decided to marry, there were no options stateside
open to us. The brief period when San Francisco issued marriage licenses (February 12 – March 11, 2004) had expired, and while Massachusetts began offering marriage to same-sex couples back in May of 2004, it was not yet possible for out-of-state residents to do so there (in 2008, the Commonwealth eventually repealed the 1913 law preventing this).
So we went to Canada, where the province of British Columbia’s court ruled on July 8, 2003 that same sex couples could legally marry, and there was nothing precluding couples outside of the country to cross the border to get hitched. Incidentally, same-sex marriage was legally recognized in the provinces and territories as of the following dates:
10 June 2003: Ontario
8 July 2003: British Columbia
16 March 2004: Quebec
14 July 2004: Yukon territory
16 September 2004: Manitoba
24 September 2004: Nova Scotia
5 November 2004: Saskatchewan
21 December 2004: Newfoundland and Labrador
23 June 2005: New Brunswick
The rest came along with the enactment of the 20 July 2005 Civil Marriage Act: Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut territory, and the Northwest Territories
***
I shared the above historical reminder because Kate and I were out to dinner the other evening, and one of the hosts who we’re friendly with, who is openly gay, came over to chat us up about the big Elaine Marshall win. He also shared with us that he was getting engaged. Of course we all cooed over that, because he’s such a sweet guy. He asked us about a gay-friendly jeweler in town to look for a rings, so we talked about that for a bit.
He asked us about the when and how we got married, you know, some of the basic logistics of doing so in Canada, such as obtaining a license, where a civil ceremony is performed by a marriage commissioner (the equivalent of a justice of the peace, it currently costs $75 plus GST in B.C., paid directly to the MC). You can find a list of gay-friendly MCs here (hi to Pat Mitten, who performed ours)
Although Canada has no residency requirement for marriage, it does have one for divorce. At least one partner must reside in Canada for one year to be eligible for divorce. American courts, who do not recognize the marriage, are not likely to grant you a divorce.
But of course our young host doesn’t have to go to Canada—he and his partner have, as we’ve seen above, many more legal options available to them.
One of the other interesting questions that came up, and this leads to my Q of the Day, was about what kind of ceremony to have. The irony is that while same-sex couples can marry, there is no set way to get hitched - you can do it the traditional hetero way with the gowns, suits, bridesmaids, invitations - the full gamut, or you can create your own traditions, so we didn’t have a lot of advice for him except to ask what did he and his partner want.
We just shared our experience.
Neither of us wanted to deal with the stress of planning and executing a traditional wedding so our ceremony was pretty minimalist. We did it at a B&B, barefoot with the ceremony in the beautiful backyard garden.
The only guest was my brother, and we all went sightseeing in Vancouver the same day; he returned home and we stayed on for a few more days and enjoyed the diverse environs of the city.
My mom’s side of the family threw us a casual reception in the equally beautiful garden and backyard of my uncle’s Bed-Stuy Brooklyn home several months later.
Since June is the month of weddings for so many couples and our friend the restaurant host was fishing for ideas, here is my Q of the day.
Q of the day: For those of you who married - gay or straight - what kind of wedding ceremony did you have?
Traditional? Religious or not? Large or small number of guests? Were your parents onboard and present? Did you do the whole bridezilla shebang, or go the simple route?
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging about the fucking scary movement conservatives that are taking over the GOP. TPM reported on Sharron Angle’s affiliation with the Independent American Party, which TPM describes as “Christian conservative-cum-libertarian”, which is wingnut-ese for a co-commitment to patriarchy and white domination. Unsurprisingly, these are folks with high level fears of contamination from all sorts of scary Others. And they aren’t afraid to advertise it!
Independent American Party supporters could buy “Homophobia - No | Homonausea - Yes” bumper stickers for the special low price of $1.
To you or I, this may seem like a distinction without difference. But this is a very big deal for the Real American Men of the wingnutteria. To suggest that they experience “homophobia” is to suggest that they experience fear, and that is basically saying they aren’t men, but 6 foot tall vaginas with legs. So that breathless hysteria about homosexuality they express that looks exactly like fear is totally not fear.
To digress a bit, this mentality is basically an inescapable trap. When you fear being exposed as someone who has fears because this makes you less of a man, you’re in a constant state of fear, i.e. non-manhood. Which you have to desperately cover up, which creates more fearful behavior that you have to cover up. It’s a vicious cycle.
It’s been well-established the Angle is objectively pro-cavity and has resisted fluoride in the drinking water. People who are freaked out about this may be publicly cagey about why, but it’s well-known that they fear that fluoridation is a communist mind control plot. But the fear of invisible agents in the water out to get you doesn’t stop there! IAP published a 16-page advertising insert in various Nevada papers in 1994 that is basically a hate tract against gay people. If you follow this link, you can see the whole thing. TPM’s description:
Freedom is irrelevant. Assimilation is inevitable. Resistance is futile.
Yes, it’s pretty funny that the Family Research Council continues to believe that The Homosexual Agenda is all-powerful and all-consuming—a steamroller of epic proportions, crushing all Christianity out of our culture by our stealthiness
Read the crazy-*ss paranoia of FRC blogger Cynthia Hill, who believes that the success of Victory Fund candidates on June 8th signals armageddon for America.
Americans should take a cold, hard look at the consequences of significant wins by openly lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) candidates in last night’s races. This is the fruition of that community’s methodical efforts to further homosexualize America. Their efforts, combined with this administration’s appointments of key federal positions of at least 101 LGBT aficionados, have largely been under the radar, but could predict critical damage to our rule of law. Think of it – we are electing people who ultimately see the Christian world view as the single, final barrier to their ultimate goal of acceptance and implementation of the homosexual agenda. If and when they dominate the legislatures, those who espouse Biblical principles then become the enemy and will surely be on the wrong end of law-making.
Um, does somebody have some domination fantasies maybe? Anyway, it’s always drama with these people–the “final barrier” to their “ultimate goal” of dominating the legislatures!
Reality check: There are about 7,000 state lawmakers in the U.S., and about 80 of them are openly gay or lesbian or bisexual–about 1% of the total. So chill out, Cynthia Hill. You’ll be fine. For now.
This post is a bit of LGBT inside baseball that has caused a bit of a stir, mostly because it has not been covered much in LGBT media to date - a major figure in the community is handling the crappy PR effort to spread BP’s propaganda and spin—and the question is whether there will be any blowback because of this association.
Hilary Rosen. The former honcho of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and now-former political director of Huff Post is knee-deep (or is it neck-deep) in this BP quagmire as part of its image clean-up effort, which surely pulls in big bucks for her.
After the spill, the company brought on crisis communicator Hilary Rosen, former Democratic congressional staffer, former chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, and a current editor-at-large for HuffingtonPost.com. Ms. Rosen heads the Washington-based office of U.K. communications firm the Brunswick Group. Public records are not yet available on the new Brunswick contract. Ms. Rosen declined to be interviewed on the record.
With the level of almost-certain criminality (the Obama DOJ is looking to press charges) and just plain brain-dead public statements by BP executives, Rosen, who has been MIA on CNN as a talking head since this development, surely has to consider the blowback because of her association with a company that is literally destroying the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people.
When HuffPost tossed her overboard, it was clear that it realized its aggressive coverage of BP was in conflict with Rosen’s new relationship with the oil giant.
“Hilary is no longer our Washington Editor at Large, a mutual decision we recently reached given her involvement with BP,” wrote Arianna Huffington in an email today, responding to a query from POLITICO. “However, we still have a great personal relationship. And, of course, Hilary’s work with BP has had zero effect on our coverage of the company or the disaster in the gulf. Comprehensive and hard-hitting, our coverage speaks for itself.”
And there’s reason to make that split. Rosen is not indirectly involved with BP—she’s hands-on working with the team to coach gaffe-prone BP CEO Tony Hayward.
Orchestrating the response is the Brunswick Group, whose Washington managing partner, Hilary Rosen, has connections throughout the city as the former head of the Recording Industry Association of America and from previous jobs that include working for Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat.
...The experts talk daily to plot strategy and dissect the day’s events. In prepping Hayward for his hearing, says one adviser, the basic message was: Don’t say anything you don’t know to be true.
It’s pretty hard to say that Brunswick and Rosen are succeeding in any respect. Bloomberg Businessweek bluntly said:
The bottom line: BP’s hiring binge of lawyers, lobbyists, and media experts to help it deal with angry demands from Washington may not be doing it much good.
And we thought that BP lobbyist was the worst job in America. It’s a piece of cake, compared to BP PR person.
After all the gaffes by Tony “I want my life back” Hayward, the company puts chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg in front of the mike and Svanberg talks about the “small people.”
Then BP eases Hayward out as the U.S. frontman for the emergency efforts and where does he go? To the Isle of Wight to watch his yacht, “Bob,” compete in the Round the Island Race, sponsored by JPMorgan Asset Management. (Is he flipping us off or does he really not get it?)
Hilary Rosen must be ready to take a dive into the Gulf.
The dilemma of pocketbook before principles—it’s a personal decision whether one engages in a professional relationship with a client regardless of the ethics of its practices—but it something worthy of discussion here, particularly because of the ties Hilary Rosen has to the LGBT community. Muckety, which maps out the connections of players of power and influence, shows us why this is relevant.
If The Huffington Post has seen fit to sever ties with Rosen over her relationship to BP, where does that leave HRC? Does the HRC/HRCF board have any problem with this (Rosen is on the HRCF board)? Surely some large donors might take issue.
I added this to the softball photo post, but it deserves its own entry. I’ve been offline a lot (don’t ask), but I found a few moments to post thoughts on the matter.
Ben Smith at The Politico reports that one of Kagan’s friends finally decided to put an end to the speculation.
“I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight,” said Sarah Walzer, Kagan’s roommate in law school and a close friend since then. “She dated men when we were in law school, we talked aboutmen—who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago – and she just didn’t find the right person.”
...The result has been an awkward dilemma for the traditional media, for whom reporting about homosexuality has always been considered to be off limits. Reporters and bloggers have debated, publicly and privately, the propriety of asking whether Kagan is gay. But Walzer – who has spoken regularly to the press this week – said that in a series of interviews with reporters she had been asked only obliquely about the nominee’s “social life.”
And that traditional media dilemma has been the most interesting thing to hear about, since Walzer confirms that the MSM has clearly been probing and dancing around the question with Kagan’s friends, but never asking about it directly. It points out the obvious—too many reporters/editors are squeamish because, when it comes down to it, they believe that asking about the personal life of someone they think may be gay is crossing some sort of line of propriety. A line that, of course, doesn’t exist when the person is straight.
Being gay is not bad, nor is it only about SEX, kinds of sex acts, etc. Is there mass MSM cognitive dissonance going on? Honest to god, how many times have we heard more gory details than we care to know about heterosexual newsmakers and their kinks, sex acts and accounts of adultery? Can we say, um,
John Edwards
? I didn’t see the media running from that one. They only kept a lid on it until it was confirmed, then then the reporting burst like a dam.
No media outlet could justify that inquiring about what one does in the bedroom is appropriate to ask a SCOTUS nominee, but if there are rumors floating around about whether one is or isn’t gay, why wouldn’t you want to ask that to clear the air?
That’s just asking about a demographic (and an official one in 2010 as one can indicate on the census whether you have a same-sex partner), such as religion, race, region of birth —all things that have been discussed widely as Kagan is being compared to sitting justices.
This is where some cultural growth is in order—printing a 17-year-old photo of Elena Kagan playing softball is juvenile. That photo was selected for a reason; it wasn’t random. Just ask, people.
I will say that the open secondary discussion—that if Kagan did identify as a lesbian privately but was closeted publicly could be a problem in some quarters of the LGBT community was interesting and healthy to have. What I saw less of is rumination of whether a straight ally would feel a need to be closeted in any way. I don’t think so, but in this political climate, a SCOTUS nominee should be prepared to be asked about views on LGBT rights, given cases are winding their way to the Supreme Court. Now, given the theatre that these nominations have turned into, the press is unlikely to get much of an answer other than to look through prior public statements or rulings, but we culturally have to get over the reluctance to “go there.”
Obviously the right wing was looking for a more salacious story about Kagan’s sex life to tie to any “pro-homosexual” views or opinions, but I seriously doubt a declaration of her heterosexuality will cause the fringe to pipe down. Again, watching how the MSM acts, paired with some of the squeamishness about sexual orientation by the left in this matter is a better barometer of whether LGBT issues are truly understood, and whether it does affect public political support (note, not personal support) when the game gets tough on legislation. It can explain why you see calls to backburner human rights legislation, and the WH bus driving over us because it may impact, say, midterm elections.
In a move that suggests the White House is feeling the heat on its slow-motion approach toward repealing DADT, it’s now resorted to trying to stop press coverage of direct actions.
As Ben Smith of The Politico notes in his post “Most transparent White House ever…”, closing Lafayette Park to the public during a demonstration is almost unheard of. Until now, when LGBT military veterans, including barista Autumn Sandeen, chained themselves to the White House fence today.
Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
People who have covered the White House for years tell me that’s an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests.
Yesterday, Barack Obama extended gay rights to gays for use in hospitals, both gay and straight. This unprecedented expansion of homosexuality into the personal lives of homosexuals has our right-leaning friends in a tizzy - and rightfully so!
I also don’t see why discrimination policy (or stem-cell policy, for that matter) should be set unilaterally by the president via funding protocols instead of by Congress, especially given The One’s increasing habit of bypassing the legislature to get things done. Granted, they can overrule him by passing a statute, but doing it this way protects Blue Dogs from a vote they may not want to take ahead of the midterms. To which I say: If you can’t handle the tough votes, don’t run.
I am curious, when did he become in charge of who may or may not visit you in the hospital?
Is this unnecessary federalization of hospital visitor lists part of that trillion-dollar fiasco known as Obamacare?
If not, shouldn’t Congress at least pass a bill approving this new-found power of the president?
Technically, he’s using Medicare to cram this through. I don’t think so, Beanie. Insurers are not supposed to dictate who may or may not visit you in the hospital.
Brilliant points all, which can only be answered one of two ways. The first is that Congress’ statutory authorization for Medicare and Medicaid already allows the executive branch significant leeway in setting funding conditions (see, for instance, Rust v. Sullivan, which determined that Title X funds could be used to fund anti-choice doctors). President Obama and HHS are using the same policy-setting mechanisms that have been in effect since the advent of Medicare/aid to make the same kinds of changes that prior administrations have made, and the only role Congress has is in taking away this power, not in authorizing (if it cares about it at all).
The other option is that President Obama just went super gay last night and decided to give all of the gays and lesbians in the country the right to go gay it up in Catholic hospitals because he hates Congress.
OK. I’ll only give you five full descriptions from his list; you can surf over to read about the rest. David Mixner’s no stranger to power lists. The best-selling author, civil rights and AIDS activist, political strategist and former advisor to Bill Clinton was once named by Newsweek as the most powerful gay man in America.
With that in mind, here’s how he conjured up his selections, meant for generating fun discussion.
Oh, this posting will be fun and sure to result in some debate. Often very powerful and influential political Lesbians are left off the usual national LGBT publications lists. No doubt many will question some of my choices and rankings. Others will question why a male is putting together such a list. You can have fun debating both of those points in the comments section.
To create this list, I eliminated anyone from the entertainment and sports community and focused totally on national politics and grassroots. So that leaves off such influential but not exclusively political heavy weights like Kate Clinton, Cynthia Nixon, Melissa Etheridge and Ellen DeGeneres. Some such as Nancy Sutley, who has a major position in the Obama team is lower in the list because she is not that active in LGBT issues or politics despite her powerful position.
Who do you think made the top 5? Oy, here you go…
1. Rachel Maddow: Who can argue with this influential and powerful commentator being number one? With her MSNBC perch, she reaches millions and doesn’t shy away from being a Lesbian and covering LGBT stories. Her own journey is an amazing story and gives new definition to LGBT power.
2. Congresswomen Tammy Baldwin: Having been in Congress for a decade as an open Lesbian, she has developed a significant power base and respect in the United States House of Representatives. Representing Wisconsin’s second district, she has become a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and is a major point person in the House on LGBT legislation.
3. Hilary Rosen: Without a doubt, one of the most powerful behind the scenes political power brokers in Washington, DC. Rosen’s list of friends reads like a “who’s who” in American politics both in Washington and the entertainment industry. As a television commentator, she has earned the respect of many in the nation’s capital. Is there anyone she doesn’t know?
4. Pam Spaulding: Charismatic, kind and powerful are the words to describe Pam Spaulding. Her site, Pam’sHouseBlend.com, has become one of the most well-read and influential blogs in America. Quick with breaking stories, unapologetically liberal and a champion of Transgender rights, she is known for her lack of patience in freedom for LGBT people. Her influence will only grow.
5. Randi Weingarten: As president of the American Federation of Teachers, she is the most powerful open LGBT person in American labor. She is known to be a fierce advocate for her members and fighting for LGBT rights in the American labor movement.
The rest of the top 20 makes me squirm uncomfortably because many of them certainly should rank higher than your blogmistress. And no, I didn’t slip David some scratch; in fact we have yet to meet.
6. Speaker Christine Quinn
7. Mayor Annise Parker
8. Rea Carey
9. Urvashi Vaid
10. Dr. Marjorie Hill
11. Kerry Eleveld
12. Robin McGeehee
13. Torie Osborn
14. Nancy Sutley
15. Kate Kendall
16. Sheila Kuehl
17. Karen Ocamb
18. Elizabeth Birch
19. Lorri Jean
20. Coya Artichoker
Pam posted yesterday on this extraordinary—-yet unsurprising, since this is a long-standing tactic used by white Southerners to exclude black students—-story on how, rather than go to a prom with lesbian guests, the students at Itawamba Agricultural High School went to a private prom that Constance McMillen and her date weren’t invited to. What’s interesting to me is how deftly the parents and school administrators exploited the worst tendencies of adolescents, namely their willingness to crush any sign of non-conformity and blame the victim for it. The Facebook page Constance, Quit Yer Crying made their views clear—-regardless of whether or not hating people for gay is reasonable, standing up for your rights is “crying”. Never mind that there’s nothing whinier than saying that the prom is supposed to be the best night of your life and that no one should interrupt that with their demands to be treated like a human being.
Obviously, the adults in this situation are mentally children themselves. And the whole thing has been an ugly peek into the conservative mindset, and not only how hateful, childish wingnut adults teach their children to hate, but how to put together a disingenuous argument to bundle up your unrestrained bigotry into something that sounds more reasonable. This was on full display in the comments section of this blog that posted on the whole debacle. A commenter who claims to be a student at the high school—-and there’s no reason to doubt this—-defended the conspiracy to have a whole ‘nother prom just so Constance couldn’t go.
**Open Minded Readers Only**
I am a senior at IAHS, and I’ve known Constance for the last 6 years. Please hear our side of the story before you decide on our fate.
Already learning the art of whining about the “liberal media”, and other whines about how straight white Christians are the most oppressed people on the planet evah!
The reason the senior class boycotted the actual prom was not because we hate gays.
Empty disavowals of bigotry used to excuse unbelievable acts of bigotry.
I think it’s safe to say that if you’re LGBT, the vast majority of people in Fulton, Mississippi think you’re lower than dirt. For young Itawamba Agricultural High School student Constance McMillen, who merely wanted to take her same-sex date to the school prom, it has been a lesson in just how damn evil some of her neighbors are.
McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.
“They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”
Last week McMillen asked one of the students organizing the prom for details about the event, and was directed to the country club. “It hurts my feelings,” McMillen says.
Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”
In a community that invoked the bible and Christian beliefs in condemning Constance, these homophobes clearly chucked the sacred tome when it comes to loving thy neighbor, hospitality, and general decency without a second thought. To think that Fulton not only displayed rank homophobia, it raised the bar of evil by sending learning-disabled students to the fake prom, clearly labeling them “others.” I challenge any of these “Christians” in Fulton to cite where in the bible Jesus teaches that the physically or mentally challenged deserve to be outcasts.
This social hellhole isn’t even worthy of a boycott, since no gay person or ally would want to drive through this evil place to begin with. For Constance, one can only hope for a scholarship to get the hell out of there to attend college in an environment where she can thrive. Leave the evil behind, gain strength, knowledge and, should you want to challenge the hate, return to reclaim your space with others ready to fight homophobia in the darkest of places.
Fulton, Mississippi has earned its stripes as the cruelest town in America, by treating one of its young residents as a pariah for no good reason that the God they claim to worship can imagine. I do hope there is no adultery or fornication going on in Fulton. The bible had a lot to say about that.
UPDATE: More evil in Fulton, from Firedoglake’s Lisa Derrick @ LaFiga; the proud homophobic students grin at how they pulled off their straights-only prom with photos posted on public FB and Flickr pages.
I can see some of the same dresses in these pictures posted by different students.
With the clear support for repeal of DADT in almost every demographic imaginable, and clear calls for repeal from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, and the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, it’s almost incomprehensible that this Administration, through its Department of Justice, is continuing to defend the constitutionality of the law. Joe @ Americablog:
DOJ had to go the extra mile to show just how valid the DADT law is. It’s hard to miss the section titled:
Because Congress Could Rationally Have Concluded That The DADT Policy Is Necessary To Maintain Unit Cohesion, Accommodate Personal Privacy, and Reduce Sexual Tension For Military Effectiveness, LCR’s Facial Due Process Challenge Fails
They only right-wing talking point they left out is the “we’re in two wars” argument.
It’s incredible that the administration cannot even respond to questions about strategy for repeal - see Barney Frank’s statement calling for the Obama administration to come clean about its intent:
[T]he Administration has been ambiguous about it, and that ambiguity has allowed some to interpret Secretary Gates’ argument for a delay in implementation as a delay in adopting the legislation. I believe that the Administration should make clear that it supports legislative action this year, and that while implementation is being worked out, it will carry out the policy in the way it was originally intended, which would reduce the number of discharges, in my view, by over 90%.”
Joe hits the nail on the head here:
I’m sure the usual apologists will jump to the defense of the Obama administration, even as it becomes more and more clear that the Obama administration has no intention of working to repeal DADT, or enacting ENDA, or repealing DOMA. This also begs the question of what the DOJ’s LGBT liaison, Matt Nosanchuk, does all day. Didn’t this set off some warning bells? Perhaps he has as much sway as the LGBT liaison at the White House, Brian Bond—which isn’t much.
Speaking of Bond, this is what he said back in November 2009when I interviewed him at the Equality NC Annual Conference:
Again, this president has not backtracked on any of his commitments; and at some point the bloggers and the readers there I hope they will trust this president and work with him, work with us to achieve true equality. We’re working on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…we’re working on ENDA; you’re going to see mark up in the House next week on ENDA. These are important pieces of equality legislation for our community.
...The reality is, in some situations there are going to be times when you’re going to have to trust us because there are some things that you can’t necessarily put the specific timeline out there. Again, this is a president that means what he says and does what he says.
So which part of the above makes any sense to you, given we have an administration that alternately sends out negative messages such as this brief or doesn’t even respond to queries from Barney Frank about when the President plans to push for legislative repeal? I guess it depends on what this admin defines as “means what he says and does what he says.”
Perhaps that definition has been cleared up by Obama DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler, who went to court to repeatedly cite quotes from retired Gen. Colin Powell’s 1993 statements about gays in the military—views he has since very publicly reversed. WTF?
“This is pretty shocking,” said Richard Socarides, the White House liaison to the gay community under President Bill Clinton. “When Powell said this 18 years ago, it was inflammatory and incendiary. ... [Powell]’s now said this stuff isn’t even true anymore.”
This is ridiculous. And if you think I’m reading too much into this pantomime BS the White House is doing, take a look at Tuesday’s White House briefing that landed in my inbox, where Robert Gibbs does yet another tap dance that proves President Barack Obama has no problem letting the LGBT community twist in the wind on this. Kerry Eleveld of The Advocate tried yet again to extract something resembling an answer from Gibbs.
Q Over successive weeks, Congressman Barney Frank has asked the White House to clarify whether it would like to see legislative action taken this year on “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He’s said that direction from the White House has been muddled, and then at one point said that you guys were actually sort of ducking whether or not you wanted to see legislation action taken on repeal. Would the President like to see that law—
MR. GIBBS: Well, Carol, I would just say this, I don’t think what Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates have enunciated on this appears muddled to anyone. I don’t—there is a process that’s in place to move forward on the President’s commitment to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
I don’t—Admiral Mullen is the first chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sit up in front of Congress and say that the law ought to be repealed—not somebody who is retired, not somebody who is long past their commitment of serving their country, but somebody who sat up there and said that. And Secretary Gates and the commission at the Pentagon have taken some important steps.
We’re following that process. We’ll see where the legislative road takes us as we continue to build support to keep the commitment that the President has made.
Q So the President would feel perfectly comfortable letting the next Congress take that up?
MR. GIBBS: Well, again, we’re going to follow the process and the path that are underway with the clear direction that the President has given to repeal this.
Well what is the damned process? We don’t even know where the legislative road is, let alone what direction it is going. What does the President intend to tell Congress to do, if anything, and what is the timeline, since he suggested in the State of the Union that DADT was as good as gone this year?
Does Gibbs need his lips oiled like the Tin Man to utter what the administration intends to do when asked a direct question? Mixed messages and dodges like this have generated strong responses from SLDN and HRC. They are below the fold, as well as some speculation on my part—and some fresh video—as well as a few things readers to look out for going forward.
Jesus H. Christ—Admiral Mullen has a handful now. The free-flowing ignorance of Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway, who surely has gay service members bunking in with hetero ones, is ready for some same-sex segregation. They’ve already seen each other naked, General.
The Marine Corps’ top officer said March 25 that even if the ban on openly-serving gays in the services is lifted, he would draw the line at forcing heterosexual Marines to bunk with gays on base.
“We want to continue (two-person rooms), but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it,” Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway told Military.com during an exclusive interview at the Pentagon. “And to me that means we have to build BEQs (bachelor enlisted quarters) and have single rooms.”
And what do you know, Military.com goes to military “expert” Elaine Donnelly:
“In this case, I would want to reserve the right of a Marine that thinks he or she wouldn’t want to [share a room with a homosexual]. And again that’s the overwhelming … number of people that say that they wouldn’t like to do so.” Conway said the Corps billets two-to-a-room—unique today among the services—because it believes it’s good for unit cohesion. But if a gay Marine sharing a room with a straight one has the opposite effect, the Corps will adopt the single-room standard of the other services.
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said the question is whether the military, without a ban on gays serving openly, will opt for mixing gays and heterosexual troops in the same facilities or have “separate but equal” facilities.
“That’s what [Conway] seems to be advocating here,” she said. This is something the working group established by Gates to look at repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should address up front, Donnelly said.
In no time flat, The Palm Center sent out a release with other generals with common sense, noting that there would be more disturbance of unit cohesion with a clearly homophobic move like this.
Richard H. Kohn, a prominent military historian who was faculty at the Army and National War Colleges, and was Chief of Air Force History for the U.S. Air Force, said that “segregating Marines, as Gen. Conway envisions, might undermine the very cohesion he and other opponents of change say they are trying to protect.” Kohn said that “the proper response to a question on the issue is to defer any statement until the Ham-Johnson group reports,” referring to the year-long Pentagon Working Group. Kohn is currently Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Retired Marine General Carl Mundy, one of Conway’s predecessors as Commandant of the U.S Marine Corps, opposes openly gay service, but recently said that if repeal is going to happen, “the easiest way to deal with it is to make it as simple as possible. The last thing you even want to think about is creating separate facilities or separate groups or separate meeting places or having four kinds of showers — one of straight women, lesbians, straight men and gay men. That would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”
Other top generals have noted that uniformity is what’s needed for this policy change, and that divided leadership and separate rules or facilities will make the transition harder, not easier. In a 2009 op-ed in the Washington Post, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Shalikashvili, said mixed messages from leadership could be toxic, and that it was crucial for top leaders to communicate consistent signals that the force is capable of carrying out new orders. “Given the inevitability of change,” he wrote, “it will be important for senior leaders to send clear signals of support to the rank and file. Every general officer knows that mixed signals undermine leadership. Indeed, studies show that when organizations implement controversial change, signals from the top must be clear.” Gen. Shalikashvili wrote that when senior officers oppose the inevitable, their messages “could cause the very disruptions they predict.”
...Nathaniel Frank, Senior Research Fellow at the Palm Center, said Conway’s plan is inconsistent with research on gays in the military. “Decades of research, including all of the conclusions of the 1993 RAND study, shows that separating gays and straights is a bad idea,” he said. “RAND found that creating policies that are applied only to one group of people or to accommodate the prejudices of another group of people only undercut the larger mission of a unified, integrated force.”
“Efforts to lift the ban were blocked by a 1993 Congressional amendment introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. Those who fought the law say Mr. Helms, who died in 2008, perpetuated decades of discrimination. But just as the ban has disappeared, the curators of Mr. Helms’s legacy are trying to touch up the relevant history. Some want him seen as a savior to those with AIDS and a defender of gay rights. Despite Mr. Helms’s storied opposition to ‘a homosexual lifestyle,’ the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C., is challenging the idea that he was a “homophobe” or obstructive in the AIDS fight.
According to the center’s Web site, ‘It was Senator Helms who worked most tirelessly to protect the very principles of freedom that homosexuals are denied in many other nations.’ John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center Foundation, recently disputed an editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian that vilified Mr. Helms for his role in the ban. Mr. Dodd argued that ‘two million Africans were alive’ because of the senator’s work fighting H.I.V.”
W.T.F. are they smoking? Helms fought needle exchanges and other programs to curb the spread of the disease; all of his homophobic bigotry was raised just last year when Elizabeth Dole tried to have an AIDS relief bill named after the deceased former senator.
Helms didn’t soften his stance about fighting AIDS at home among people who acquired the infection through homosexual activity.
“I don’t have any idea on changing my views on that kind of activity, which is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States,” Helms said.
He also famously opposed Roberta Achtenberg’s nomination to be assistant secretary for fair housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, saying:
“she’s a damn lesbian. I’m not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.”
That hardly sounds like a gay rights champion.
***
I would watch good old Jesse back in the day when he was a commentator on WRAL in Raleigh. I remember as a child listening to him rail on race on our black and white TV. I wondered why this man was so hateful. You didn’t have to be an adult to get the clear message that he didn’t like black folks encroaching on his lily-white world. They belonged in their place.
And those nasty homos…Jesse had no use for them, except when he hired “good fags” to run racist campaigns like Arthur Finkelstein, who worked with Jesse Helms on his Senate run against Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990. That was the campaign with the infamous “white hands commercial” by political consultant Alex Castellanos showing a close up pair of a flannel-shirtsleeved white hands crumpling a termination notice, with an ominous voiceover explaining that a well-deserved job went to someone else because of affirmative action. This appealed to the blue collar, textile working folks in the rural areas, and Helms won handily.
Brass ones, I tell you. This is going to be interesting. The Politico has the PDF of the subpoena. Ben Smith:SUMMARY OF THE CASES
SCOTUS is busy with the rulings today and it has now dealt a huge blow to the protectors of child-raping priests in the Vatican as a ruling came down today that could result in Pope Benedict taking the stand. (
He asked us about the when and how we got married, you know, some of the 
My mom’s side of the family threw us a casual reception in the equally beautiful garden and backyard of my uncle’s Bed-Stuy Brooklyn home several months later.
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging about the fucking scary 
Hilary Rosen
And there’s reason to make that split. Rosen is not indirectly involved with BP—she’s hands-on working with the team to coach gaffe-prone BP CEO Tony Hayward.
No media outlet could justify that inquiring about what one does in the bedroom is appropriate to ask a SCOTUS nominee, but if there are rumors floating around about whether one is or isn’t gay, why wouldn’t you want to ask that to clear the air?
Yesterday, Barack Obama extended gay rights to gays for use in hospitals, both gay and straight. This unprecedented expansion of homosexuality into the personal lives of homosexuals has our right-leaning friends in a tizzy - and rightfully so!
1. Rachel Maddow: Who can argue with this influential and powerful commentator being number one? With her MSNBC perch, she reaches millions and doesn’t shy away from being a Lesbian and covering LGBT stories. Her own journey is an amazing story and gives new definition to LGBT power. 
I think it’s safe to say that if you’re LGBT, the vast majority of people in 
these pics from two different FB pages. Hmmmm….guess there was a prom after all. Constance and seven others were not invited.
Again, this president has not backtracked on any of his commitments; and at some point the bloggers and the readers there I hope they will trust this president and work with him, work with us to achieve true equality. We’re working on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…we’re working on ENDA; you’re going to see mark up in the House next week on ENDA. These are important pieces of equality legislation for our community.
Q Over successive weeks, Congressman Barney Frank has asked the White House to clarify whether it would like to see legislative action taken this year on “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He’s said that direction from the White House has been muddled, and then at one point said that you guys were actually sort of ducking whether or not you wanted to see legislation action taken on repeal. Would the President like to see that law—
Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said the question is whether the military, without a ban on gays serving openly, will opt for mixing gays and heterosexual troops in the same facilities or have “separate but equal” facilities.