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Keith Olberman Takes Straights to Task Over Gay Marriage Vote

I have never understood why the African-American community joined forces with the religious right to campaign for intolerance and discrimination in our country.  It seems to me the height of hypocrisy. Our country began with the creed that all men were created equal.  Then (at least in theory) all women too (except for the equal pay thing).  Then African-Americans were given legal status as full human beings, rather than property.  Previously they had been counted as a fraction of a person.  Then African-Americans were given the right to vote, and now see the dream of their inspirational leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., realized in the election of Barack Obama.  But that’s the end of the dream for black people, apparently.  All men (and women) (of any color) are created equal, but not the gays.  It is the African-American (and Latino) turnout in California that is cited as the cause of the passage of the anti-gay marriage proposal, Proposition 8.  And so here’s must-see: Keith Olbmerman’s reaction to the vote on Proposition 8 in California, where he takes heterosexual America, and the African-American community in particular, to task for their vote:

It’s Not the Heat. It’s the Homophobia.

July is apparently Hate Month across America. Is it just me, or is the summer heat really bringing out America’s inner bigot? Maybe it’s not the heat. It’s the homophobia. I submit to you evidence of the rising fever of intolerance toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons:

Here in Georgia, news broke this week of the firings of two public servants: a transgender woman and a lesbian. On Tuesday, former Sandy Springs Police Lieutenant Trudi Vaughan told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she was fired because she was female and gay. Apparently you have to be male and heterosexual to properly fulfill Vaughan’s role as the supervisor of the city’s special operations officers, including the narcotics, anti-gang and SWAT teams. She was fired on July 16 and announced her intention to contest her termination and file a lawsuit claiming discrimination on July 22.

Vandy Beth Glen

The very next day, Lambda Legal issued a press release announcing its intent to sue the Georgia General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Council on behalf of Vandy Beth Glen, a transgender woman, who was fired after two years of service as a legal editor and proofreader. The federal lawsuit asserts that Glenn was fired in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee, because it treated her differently due to her female gender identity and her nonconformity with gender stereotypes. Glen told her supervisor, who told Legislative Counsel Sewell Brumby. Brumby reportedly fired Glenn, telling her that her gender identity disorder was “immoral” and her presence in the office would make other employees “uncomfortable.” (Read my post on Glen’s firing for more detail.) But it’s not just Georgia suffering from summer homophobia and transphobia. It gets worse.

Just over the Georgia state line in Anderson, South Carolina, an 18-year-old went to the Anderson County Sheriff’s office and filed two complaints against his father on Wednesday, July 16. Referred to only as “the teen” in an article published in the Independent Mail, his incident report stated that he was punched by his father Wednesday afternoon. He had returned home to get some clothes. He had left the house on P Street Sunday, July 13, after his father attacked him with a baseball bat. Reportedly, the incident began when “the teen” returned home from a gay pride parade. During the assault, his 49-year-old father yelled, cursed, swung a baseball bat, prayed and tried to “cast the demon of homosexuality out of him,” according to the Independent Mail. Maybe there’s something in the air in Anderson. The Independent Mail also reported this week that farm animals have been the targets of drive-by shootings in the area.

Angie Zapata

Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman in Greeley, Colorado, was found murdered in her apartment on July 17. She died of wounds to the head and face. Family and friends believe her murder was a hate crime. At her funeral on Wednesday, the officiating minister began the service with one of those awkward, gender-neutralizing statements generally reserved for closeted queers. His uncomfortable approach to Zapata’s funeral service was described in an article by The Greeley Tribune:

Senior pastor Joe Sanchez solemnly stepped up to the front of the congregation, greeted those in attendance, and with a strong and commanding voice, offered his deep condolences. “We are here to celebrate the life of a person, the life of a person cut down in the prime of their life. What can I tell you in this situation, it never feels good to come before a congregation like yourself to express what we feel about a young person that is taken from in the prime of their life.” (Emphasis added.)

Jimmy Lee Dean

Also on July 17, a Texas man was pistol-whipped with a 9mm Glock handgun, kicked and stomped by two attackers who used anti-gay epithets before, during and after the attack. Jimmy Lee Dean, 42, was brutally assaulted in a gay neighborhood where he had lived for 20 years. The Dallas Voice reports that the Dallas Police Department has classified the incident as a hate crime for FBI reporting purposes, adding that it was unclear whether the crime would be prosecuted as such. Dean’s two attackers are so far only charged with aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony. The men admitted to police that they chose Dean’s neighborhood because they thought it would be easier to rob a gay man. Dean survived the attack, which was reported in graphic detail by the Dallas Voice. If you are sensitive to graphic violence, you will want to skip this excerpt from the article:

Dean reportedly suffered a broken jaw and vertebrae, as well as several other facial fractures and severe swelling. Witnesses reported that after the beating, his nose was attached only by a piece of skin. Dean’s injuries were so bad that police were unable to interview or identify him for days after the attack. On Tuesday, July 22, a spokesman for Parkland Memorial Hospital said Dean’s condition had been upgraded to fair, meaning he was no longer in intensive care.

El Paso's GLBTQ Center

Further south in El Paso, Texas, the LGBT community was preparing to celebrate the grand opening of the new GLBTQ Center downtown last week. The opening went on as planned last Thursday, July 17, despite an attack on the director of the center, Charles Sloane, who was kicked and hit in the head as his attackers yelled, “Faggot!” in the lobby of the Center on Monday, July 14. There was a second assault, also in downtown El Paso, that same day.

In the bright summer sunshine of south Florida, several Wilton Manors residents spent last Friday scrubbing anti-gay graffiti off their homes and cars. The Sun-Sentinal reported that the incidents are being tagged a hate crime by police, who apparently used their finely tuned investigative skills to deduce that spray-painting the words “gay” and “fag” on someone’s home is not neighborly.

Father Louis Braxton was beaten trying to stop an attack on a transgender woman.

Alessandra-Michelle Carver, a 21-year-old transgender woman, was brutally attacked and repeatedly beaten in the Astoria section of Queens, New York on Monday, July 7. The attack was reported on July 16 by the Queens Courier newspaper. Also attacked was a priest who tried to help her. Father Louis Braxton runs a shelter for gay and transgender youth called Carmen’s Place. It was on Steinway Street in front of the shelter where the attack on Carver took place.

If all this hate is not enough to make you break out into a sweat, there’s plenty more out there. A Google search for “hate crime” and the words gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual returned 96,700 results today. It’s really hot out there. And if we can’t stand the heat, perhaps we should get out of the closet and work for understanding, acceptance and equal rights.

You Too Can Join the Sit-in Against Hate Crime on YouTube

YouTube users are posting videos in honor of 15-year-old hate crime victim Larry King in hopes of raising awareness of homophobia.  The continuous stream of videos includes video blogs, a message from Lizzy the Lezzy and Gary the Gay, a clip of Ellen Degeneres discussing the incident on her show, and many more.  By viewing the stream, users help keep the tribute at the top of YouTube’s list.  At this writing, the stream has been at the top of the list for more than 24 hours.   You can also post your own tribute and chat with other viewers.

With the attention YouTube gets from other media, perhaps this gimmick will finally prompt news organizations to pay more attention to victims of homophobia.  Even though Larry was shot at school, the incident received virtually no national news coverage.  Just a few days after he was shot, a college campus shooting was the top story nationwide.  Perhaps Larry’s death was not considered newsworthy because only one young man died.  Or perhaps it was because his skin is brown.  Or perhaps it was because he was gay.  No matter the reason, there’s no excuse for a lack of concern when a 15-year-old boy is murdered simply because he is gay.  There’s no excuse for continuing to tolerate gay-hate-baiting by our politicians and our preachers.  Ever since Karl Rove and company turned “gay marriage” into a talking point, conservative pundits, politicos and fundamentalist preachers have pulled no punches in their attempts to demonize and marginalize the queer community.  It’s time for this country to change the tone.  It’s time to return to a respect for our differences, or at least respect for human life.  It’s too late for Larry King, but outrage can be changed into action, and action against hate crime would be a welcomed change of pace.

You can learn more about Larry, see photos and videos,  and contribute to a memorial fund at his family’s tribute site at rememberlarry.com.  The YouTube streaming sit in URL is http://youtube.com/stream?s=1785069568.

Phelps Family Won’t Let Heath Ledger Rest in Peace

Fred Phelps and his family cult are at it again. His Westboro Baptist Church announced their intention to protest at actor Heath Ledger’s U.S. memorial services. The actor, who was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday, is expected to be buried in his native Australia.

Classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Westboro Baptist Church has picketed thousands of LGBT events, including funerals. The Topeka, Kansas group has more recently turned its rage toward the U.S. military, protesting the funerals of soldiers killed in action in Iraq. Their clearly irrational “rationale” is that God is punishing America for being tolerant of gays and lesbians by killing U.S. soldiers with IEDs.

Phelps’ church posted a bulletin on one of its many hate Websites announcing their intention to picket the actor’s U.S. memorial services, because he portrayed a gay cowboy in the ground-breaking film Brokeback Mountain. Heath Ledger was not a homosexual; he just played one in the movies.

And again, the media is covering Phelps’ announcement as a “church’s” protest. Yet Westboro Baptist “Church” is attended only by members of Fred Phelps’ immediate family. (Read my post about the Showtime documentary Fall from Grace for a full rant on the Phelps clan.) Just because Phelps twists the pages of the bible, picking and choosing the passages to follow, doesn’t make him a minister and doesn’t make his family a church. There is a more accurate term for Westboro. It’s clearly a cult built around the rage and abuse of one father, from which only four of his 13 children managed to escape.

From all media accounts (which, in their own right, have gone way overboard in sensationalizing the actor’s death), Heath Ledger was a tolerant man. His love for his daughter and family were obvious. If only those who were moved by Ledger’s art were less tolerant of the kind of hate and hurt that the Phelps family plans to interject into the actor’s memory. May Heath rest in peace.

Ga. Legislature May Detour Hate Crimes Legislation

In an article published yesterday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that efforts to restore hate crimes protection in Georgia may be out of reach in the upcoming 2008 session. Georgia’s original hate crimes law, passed in 2000 under Democratic leadership, was thrown out by the state Supreme Court in 2004 due to “vague” wording. State Senator Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) proposed a bill to restore the law last year, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee but never made it to the Senate floor. Instead, Georgia’s Republican-led Senate opted for a measure by newbie Sen. Bill Cowsert (R-Athens), which simply proposed study on the issue. Cowsert’s study group has met twice, with no one speaking in objection to including LGBT Georgians in any hate crimes bill. The director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and groups representing police chiefs, prosecutors and sheriff’s departments all expressed support for hate crimes protection at a November hearing.

Meanwhile, Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson has said he is not inclined to address the issue. Sen. Cowsert told the AJC that including LGBT citizens “could be a factor” in whether or not the legislature will support a bill. And Sadie Fields of the Georgia Christian Alliance, a leading voice of anti-gay hate during Georgia’s marriage amendment debate in 2004, told the AJC that “We definitely would oppose any legislation that included sexual orientation.” Poor Sadie. If she only had a heart.

Among the excuses Republicans use to justify excluding the LGBT community from hate crimes protection is a concern that such a law would have a “chilling effect” on a church’s ability to preach hate from the pulpit. It would seem that such hate speech is chilling in its own regard. But that argument is a red herring. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), all but five states (Georgia among them) have figured out how to punish hate without silencing speech, even if it’s hateful speech. In fact the AJC article quotes ADL Lawyer David Barkey that Georgia already has laws in place that distinguish between freedom of speech and criminal acts. (Unfortunately, Georgia is not in such limited company when it comes to specific hate crime protection for the LGBT community: 14 of the 45 states that do have some measure of hate crime protection did not include sexual orientation in their laws. Only 11 states include gender identity. See ADL’s state hate crime comparison chart for the details.)

The other Republican argument is equally hollow. We’ve all heard it before: crime is crime. It’s already illegal. They make no effort to explain, then, why law enforcement and prosecutors overwhelmingly want a hate crimes law. And the right-wing pot has no qualms calling the kettle black when it comes to specific punishment for flag-burning. If we follow their logic, flag-burning is destruction of property–already a crime. Why then have Republicans always postured for extra punishment just because that property is the American Flag?

If you look behind the curtain, you can see such Republican wizardry for what it is: just a bunch of old white guys trying to look strong and powerful, turning the knobs and pulling the levers of religion to suit their own agenda. Homophobia is an effective diversion, in lieue of a strong economy, affordable and accessible healthcare, schools that make America competitive for the future, or a foreign policy that foster respect rather than distrust and disdain. Republicans continue to attempt to hold on to power through fear and exclusion, rather than effective governance. The right wing wants Georgia and the nation to follow them down this yellow brick road again. Please. Don’t make me get the flying monkeys.

Fall From Grace a Prophetic Title for Showtime Documentary

We’re not in Kansas anymore. If only Fred Phelps had a heart. I TiVO’d K. Ryan Jones’ documentary about Phelps, Fall from Grace, which premiered last night on Showtime, (and will air five more showings on its networks as well as on-demand availability). Watching it over coffee this morning was a rude awakening. Seeing so much hate was so vile, I thought I would throw up my Cream of Wheat. Fred Phelps is pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, a congregation that consists only of his immediate family, according to the documentary. The Phelps family began picketing to publicize their hatred of homosexuals in the spring of 1991. In the 16+ years since, they have staged more than 22,000 protests, most targeting GLBT events and gatherings.

Sitting clean-shaven (forbidden by God: Leviticus 19:27) before the camera in his Golden Girls sweat suit, no doubt weaved of many fibers (forbidden by God: Leviticus 19:19), Phelps cloaks his hate in religion. He spells out his biblical justification literally, quoting Leviticus 18:22 (including clarifying the exact punctuation). “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind SEMICOLON it is abomination.”

Apparently that’s all the bible-reading Phelps did. He missed the PARAGRAPH later in the chapter, where it says, ” “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart COLON ‘thou shalt not in any way rebuke thy neighbor COMMA and not suffer sin upon him PERIOD.” Then, in the next PARAGRAPH, the bible emphasizes the point: “Thou shalt no avenge COMMA nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people COMMA but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself COLON I am the Lord.”

I will leave biblical scholars to debate interpretation of Leviticus, that tool of intolerance. I will leave it to ministers to justify why some Leviticus Laws are to be followed and others can be ignored. I will pause only to point out that the recently published Bible study guide, Study New Testament for Gay, Lesbian, Bi, and Transgender, is just the most recent scholarly challenge to literal Leviticus interpretation. Dr. Ann Nyland, an ancient Greek language scholar and lexicographer, indicates that “arsenokoites,” the Greek word assumed to mean homosexual, actually has a range of meanings, including one who anally penetrates another (whether female or male)–but can also mean a rapist, a murderer or an extortionist. She also asserts that the fabled fall of Sodom and Gomorrah was due to angels having sex with humans, not homosexuality.

What I found unbelievable in “Fall from Grace” was the disapproval of Phelps by other ministers. In the film, the Reverend Jeff Gannon, pastor of the Wichita, Kansas Chapel Hill Fellowship, (a different Jeff Gannon than the former gay prostitute-turned-conservative-blogger) said he “feels bad because Phelps gives Christians a bad name.” Yet Gannon and thousands of Christians like him do little to oppose their church’s official policies of intolerance, exclusion and condemnation of the LGBT community. Injustice is everywhere in the majority of Christian denominations. Dr. Martin Luther King warned us from a Birmingham jail cell more than 40 years ago: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The injustice afflicted on LGBT Americans has recently threatened a different just cause: support for American troops in Iraq. The Phelps family has found a new target for their rage, and it is the right wing’s revered military forces. Phelps believes that homosexuals are taking over the U.S. military and the nation, and that soldiers killed in action in Iraq are proof of God’s vengeance. Phelps says God hates fags and is punishing America for allowing homosexuality to exist. He makes his point with protests at the funerals of American troops killed in Iraq.

While most Americans sat passively by for Phelps’ ranting against “fags,” his disrespect for American troops prompted a little more action. In May 2006, President Bush signed an amendment to U.S. law that prohibits protests within 300 feet of military funerals at national cemeteries and outlaws them altogether for an hour before and an hour after the service. In April 2007, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a similar state law. Other states added their own restrictions, including Kentucky and North Dakota. I did a little research and was unable to find any similar protections for funerals for gays and lesbians, another common Phelps family tactic. America tolerates homophobia.

But Phelps’ agenda seems more sinister than simple homophobia. In the documentary, Phelps declares that America is doomed. His son Timothy tells us his family’s goal is to “put the cup of God’s fury to the lips of this nation and make them drink.” The pickets signs are the writing on the wall. Their messages include “Fags are worthy of death,” and “USA=Fag Nation.” In case you fail to make the connection, others are clearer, such as “Thank God for 9/11.” He has stoked his rage, building a firestorm of hate toward his own country.

What we learn from Jones’ documentary is that Phelps’ rage runs deep. Two of his 13 children are interviewed by phone for the film, and recount vicious beatings from their father. Yet only four of his 13 children left the family and their church, a testimony to the power of his personality. There have been other “religious” men with similar holds on their families and followers, like Jim Jones, for example. It’s called a cult.

“Fall from Grace” is an important film. It should be required viewing for the Christian right. They should have to face what their hate helped create. It should be required viewing for the LGBT community. We should understand the danger that faces us, lest we choose to donate a dollar at Pride or join HRC and assume the fight for acceptance and inclusion is handled. It should be required viewing for any American who has fallen for the social conservative agenda.

I’ll close this post after one more dip in the quotationspage.com well. The Reverend Ralph W. Sockman said, “The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.”