You know, when you read the Declaration of Independence put forth by the Founding Fathers, you have to notice one fact.  There are no footnotes or asterisks that direct the reader to some subsection saying that “well, we didn’t mean it applies to this group or that”.  The most famous line is, of course, this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yes boys and girls, that is exactly how it’s written.  It’s not:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (see note 1), that they are endowed by their Creator (see note 2) with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Note 1: This may not apply to those Catholics; we just don’t get their religion.  Oh, and not the homos.  No offense, but ewww…  And not those Italians that come over here.  You know, looking all swarthy and all.  And don’t get us started on those crazy Indians!  We’ve got some smallpox blankets to take care of them!

Note 2: When we say “Creator”, we mean the good, PROTESTANT God.  We don’t mean a Catholic God, or some heathen race God like Ganesha or Mohammed or Zeus or Odin.  Nope, the only Creator we mean is our good, Protestant God.

So what does this mean?  It means that A) we are ALL meant to be able to pursue Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness and B) every person has the right to their own beliefs about their Creator.  It means that black people have the right to marry white people.  It means that people should be allowed to be hermits in a cave, or be the life of a party in downtown Manhattan.  It means that people are allowed to pursue Mormonism.  It means that people are allowed to howl at the moon, if that is their want for worship.  And it means that men should have the right to marry other men, and women should have the right to marry other women.  You see, it all comes down to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  I have been with my partner for over seventeen years.  But someone took away our rights of the pursuit of Happiness in a popularity contest back in 2004.

We should be granting rights, not taking them away.  Because honestly, no one person is better than another.  No one person’s rights should be granted when another person’s rights are taken away.  We are all equal.  We should all BE equal.  That is the way that our Founding Fathers wanted.

Wow… On the West Coast, there really are a few cities that you look towards for GLBT leadership.  Those cities are San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland (probably in that order – at least in my mind).  We have leadership in those cities that not only welcome the GLBT community, but help fight the ignorance and hate from those on the right.  But what’s going on in Seattle right now is scary as hell.

The City of Seattle has various groups that employees of the city can join.  One of those groups is the GLBTQF (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, and Friends) Club.  The city gives each of the groups $1,000 per year and allows employees to work on behalf of their group for two hours per month.  That’s all fine and dandy.  And then along comes Seattle City employee Philip Irvin.  He wanted to join the GLBTQF Club, but he was not allowed.  Why?  Because Philip is a fundamentalist who does not think that gays should be allowed to exist, much less have a club.  Obviously the GLBTQF Club is within their rights to refuse him entry.  After all – would you want to bring someone into your home that’s just going to yell at you endlessly?  No – that’s why we all moved out of our families homes!

Well Philip would not let it sit.  To “get even” with the group, he is suing the city and is asking to force the names of everyone in the GLBTQF Club to be named publicly.  He wants the names of ALL GLBTQ Seattle employees to be published so that everyone knows who they are and the City of Seattle almost went along with it, until a temporary injunction could be put into place.  If the names are released what are you going to do, Mr. Irvin?  Will these employees end up like Dr. George Tiller?  Haunted constantly, and then some whackjob goes and tries to assassinate them, too?

Think I’m a little out there?  Think again.  The rate of hate crimes – specifically murder – against GLBTQ folks is rising at an alarming rate.  Yeah. This is 2009, and people are still being racist, homophobic, murdering bastards.  So excuse me for NOT wanting to give out the names of the GLBTQF Club employees!

People are up in arms over the big DOMA flap, and rightly so.  Yes, there are the apologists, but it really appears that we have numbers on our side; the side that says the President and his DOJ is wrong for citing incest and child marriage in trying to fight against gay marriage.

Many people are trying to figure out what to do.  Yes, we have to vote with our pocketbooks; no more money for the DNC until a true apology comes.  Yes, the President made many of us feel somewhat better when he granted some limited rights to some LGBT government employees.  Even I was willing to give him a little bit of a break – until I re-read the brief and get angry again.  Still – what to do?

Dan Savage has come up with the BEST plan ever, and it won’t involve a million people on the Washington Mall this coming October.  No, actually it involves just 730 people per year.  You see, Savage’s idea is that every day, a GLBT couple goes to the White House and asks to talk to the President about DOMA.  Every day they are told they cannot meet with the President.  And every day they refuse to leave and are arrested and forcibly removed from the premises.  It would not take all that long to get someone’s attention with that kind of tactic!  The White House Press Corps would see couples arrested day in and day out – different couples every day, some everyday folks, some celebrities – and start hounding Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on DOMA.  And start hounding the President on DOMA.

That’s how you get things done.

My partner and I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart years ago.  Remember when Sam Walton was alive, and every single Wal-Mart commercial was about “Proudly American” and aimed to display products “Proudly Made in Ameria”?  Well of course all that died with Sam.  His heirs greatly expanded the company and said “Screw you, America!” when they started pushing for Chinese made products.  Our trade deficit?  A full 10% of it is one company trading with China.  Yeah, that would be Wal-Mart.  We see no reason to continue to give Wal-Mart money, while they send it overseas.

But the latest kicker is the CEO of Wal-Mart, and what he has done.  In Arkansas, where Wal-Mart is headquartered, and where they are petitioning to send gays and lesbians back a few decades by taking their children away, and preventing them from raising children, Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke has signed on as a petitioner.  Yes, that means that every dime you spend at Wal-Mart not only goes to China, but also pays the salary of a biggot.

Don’t get me wrong.  Mr. Duke certainly has every right to his freedom of expression, and can sign or petition anything.  I just don’t think the GLBTQ community needs to give the man, or his company, one more cent.

Note: I normally can control my temper, but this really pisses me off.

The AFA has been pushing their right-wing hate-filled bigoted agenda for YEARS.  So now that gays and lesbians have a chance to be PROTECTED under the law for people who try to hurt/bash/endanger/kill them for simply being gay, the AFA is up in arms.  And the tactics that they are using are DISGUSTING.

Take a look at the link the AFA just sent out.  Go ahead, read the list.  Congress is protecting sexual orientation in hate crimes legislation.  But the AFA drags out a list of not only sexual orientations (which, they include “heterosexuality” in their list of the “perverted” things being protected – go figure, morons!), but sexual activities, most of which nobody except the perverts at the AFA think about.  I mean, who in the hell sits around thinking about “klismaphilia” besides the AFA?  Do they get off on this kind of stuff?

As a gay man, and as someone who has been a VICTIM of a crime due to my sexual orientation, I take massive offense to Wildmon and his actions.  Reverend Don, you stupid fucking hate-peddler: until you have been chased down the road and beaten with baseball bats simply because someone thinks you were gay, you can shut the fuck up.

I have to admit it.  Amazon.com has gotten “sexy”.  They have the new Kindle, and have even gotten me to come back as a customer after five years.  They did some things a few years back that really ticked me off, and I left them for BUY.com and other places.

But today, I think I’m ready to once again close my Amazon.com account.  Damn the Kindle, damn the sexiness, damn the convenience.  Sometimes you have to stand up for your principals.  And as an aspiring writer, that includes censorship.  Take a read at the latest about what’s going on at Amazon.com regarding books for the GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning) community.  They have arbitrarily decided some items are “adult” in nature, while other clearly adult items are out there and proudly displayed and ranked.

Take the new amazing book by Dr. Nathanial Frank, “Unfriendly Fire: How the gay ban undermines the military and weakens America”.  I have not read it yet, but it is on my reading list.  It has been moved because someone at Amazon thinks it is “objectionable”.  The book listing here here; you’ll notice that the “sales ranking” is gone.  And doing a search for this exact title puts it WAY down on the list; even from Amazon’s own “suggest while you type” feature shows it.

The book

Book information

Okay – now comes the insane think that Amazon is doing.  I did a search for “vagina”, which Amazon’s useful suggestion search finished for me.  One of the first products that came up was this one.

And here is its product information, INCLUDING how well it ranks against other “VAGINA” personal sex toys.

How on Earth is Amazon justifying this?  This is utterly rediculous…  Time to cancel my account!

As promised, Vermont’s Republican  Governor Jim Douglas vetoed civil marriage equality for all Vermont residents.  But this morning, the Vermont House and Senate have both voted to override the veto.  This means Vermont is the fourth state to guarantee equal protection to gays and lesbians.  No longer are gays and lesbians second-class citizens in Vermont.  Vermont becomes the fourth state, behind Massachusettes, Connecticut, and Iowa to legalize marriage.

As I posted previously, those biggoted “Christians” will say whatever they can to stop equality from going forth.  Religion has been used to justify killing, jihads, the repression of women, and the like over the years, and it will be turned to in the future, to justify discrimination and repression.  It’s sad.  Religion is such a beautiful thing, but people like Don Wildmon and his ilk lie (which, of course, is against a commandment he is supposed to be teaching!) to the public, scaring them into subservience.  As I heard one of his ilk say, “I don’t like what Obama’s doing”.  When I asked what specific they objected to, they said, “I don’t know.  I just know I don’t like it.”

So it’s wonderful to see truth and justice win out twice in one week.  But it makes me think of the injustice done throughout other states, like my beloved Oregon, like one BlueOregon.com contributor posted recently on their site.  It made me go and find the actual text of the current Oregon Constitution.  In it, the very first statement is:

Section 1. Natural rights inherent in people. We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right: that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.

That first statement is powerful.  “We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right…” That, to me, says that every single Oregonian has the same rights as every other Oregonian.  But the people of Oregon actually undid that, specifically for gays and lesbians when this was added to the Constitution:

Section 5a. Policy regarding marriage. It is the policy of Oregon, and its political subdivisions, that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage. [Created through initiative petition filed March 2, 2004, and adopted by the people Nov. 2, 2004]

It is truly sad.  A document that is there to insure the rights and responsibilities of all people, and the singling out of a specific group for discrimination.  How right would it be if that article read this way instead?

Section 5a. Policy regarding marriage. It is the policy of Oregon, and its political subdivisions, that only a marriage between one WHITE man and one WHITE woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage. [Created through initiative petition filed March 2, 2004, and adopted by the people Nov. 2, 2004]

People would be up in arms, would they not?  Because that is discrimination against people of color, saying that only “white folks” can get married.  How very true.  So the very basis of Section 5a of the Oregon Constitution is shameful, and should be removed.  And according to Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight.com, that could easily happen today, in Oregon, in 2009.

What if they were doing a gay bashing experiment in the bar that you frequented, and you didn’t know?  ABC did this (click here), and in some ways the findings were surprising.  In others, let’s just say I’ve heard it myself when out on the town…

Oh this is something that I just about blew my top over…  So the religious right isn’t happy enough that McCain is ignoring their calls to start yabbering about like George W. Bush did on Gay Marriage, so what do they do now?  They equate smoking with being gay.  Yeah, like it’s a bad habit or something.  And not only that, but they are calling for it to be BANNED.  After all, if you can support a ban on smoking, then ban all other bad habits!  Stupid hypocrites.

Just so this doesn’t get taken down too soon, I took a nice little screenshot to hold on to – just in case…  I’m just surprised they didn’t put a big red circle with a slash through it on the pink triangle they used!!!!