Category Archives: gay rights

LOVE Will Conquer ALL

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I’ve spoken about being pro-equal rights. I’m a huge advocate for same-sex marriage. I’m a huge advocate for equal rights for all people…and animals. I’ve been very upset and angered by the hate I hear being preached during this very important time. On the 26th and 27th of this month the Supreme Court is hearing arguments for same-sex marriage. There is only one argument that I feel is worthy, and that is: people have an inalienable right to marry the person they love no matter of the gender.

It’s been hard for me to have a positive attitude during this time because I am so angered by the blatent ignorance and hate. But then I read this article by the NY Daily News:

“Jenna Wolfe and Stephanie Gosk of NBC come out as couple; reveal engagement and baby on the way”

NBC newscaster Jenna Wolfe is The Today show’s Sunday anchor. Wolfe said she and partner Gosk, a foreign correspondent at NBC, have been together three years, plan to wed and will have a baby by December. Here are some choice quotes from Wolfe’s blog and her appearance with Gosk on the Today show Wednesday morning:

“My girlfriend, Stephanie Gosk, and I are expecting a baby girl the end of August,” Wolfe, 39, wrote in the debut post for her new pregnancy blog.

“We felt like we wanted to share our adventures with a wide-eyed, little person,” she blogged. “The more we talked about it, the better the idea seemed.”

“We were constantly on the road, juggling a thousand balls at once,” she told the mag. “It’s a miracle we got it all together.”

“This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to us,”

“But I don’t want to bring my daughter into a world where I’m not comfortable telling everyone who I am and who her mother is.”

“The beauty is that we live in a time where there’s no need for secrecy.

“For a long time I had feared I would never have a child”.

“This baby doesn’t care that I was in phenomenal shape before getting pregnant. She doesn’t care that I had a near perfect diet. She made the first four months brutal for me … B-R-U-T-A-L.”

“There were days when all I could eat were Saltine crackers, Apple Jacks dry cereal and plain pasta,”

“As a kid, I would have chosen raising my adrenaline over raising children any day of the week. But then a funny thing happened on my way to adulthood … I grew up. I ran smack into the old nursery rhyme: “First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes Jenna pushing a baby carriage”

I didn’t attribute names to the quotes because they could be the words of any couple. These two are in love, they want to make a lifetime commitment to each other and share that with the world, and they want to raise their child together. It’s beautiful.

As I said before I’ve been down and angry about what I’ve heard as a result of the same-sex marriage hearing. But then I heard this…and I was reminded the love is beautiful, family is what matters, and people can scream hate at the top of their lungs, they can twist the word of God to work for them, they can try as hard as they possibly can to stop it…but LOVE will win. LOVE always finds a way.

In the darkness it’s hard to see the light…but light will come. Hate is dark…love is light. I have faith that LOVE will win, maybe not today…maybe not even in my lifetime…but LOVE will continue to grow, you can try and stop it but you will never stop people from finding each other—from loving each other—from supporting each other…LOVE will win.



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Rainbow Bright–Man Takes On Westboro Baptist Church

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The Westboro Baptist Church is probably the most deplorable congregation of people ever to walk the face of the Earth. They do nothing but spew hate speech and manipulate the minds of the ignorant and the young. What they preach doesn’t even make sense—but that doesn’t matter and this article isn’t about WBC. This article is about Aaron Jackson.
Aaron Jackson is the co-founder of Planting Peace, a non-profit aimed at providing sustainable initiatives to impoverished areas. Jackson says he was looking up the “church” on Google Earth when he noticed a ‘for sale’ sign on the house across the street from the “church” headquarters. That’s when he decided to buy it.
Planting Peace purchased the home and moved into the neighborhood. “[Westboro owns] the majority of the homes in the community, and I walk through the area every day, and I see them running in between each other’s houses,” Jackson said. “One day I was walking, and Shirley Phelps [one of Westboro's main spokespeople and the daughter of the church's leader, Fred Phelps] was on her four-wheeler. And I said, ‘Hey guys, how are you?’ And [she and her husband] responded, ‘Oh, we’re good. How are you?’ We had a short conversation, and she was extremely nice, and she made a joke and we all laughed.”

Shirley Phelps probably wasn’t laughing when Jackson decided to spruce up the house he bought. He decided to paint the exterior—not a strange thing to do when you purchase a home—but Jackson decided to paint the house a rainbow and use the home for LGBT rights headquarters. “The reason I haven’t gotten into the gay rights activism is because, in a sense, it’s almost silly — it’s 2013, are we really still in this position? It just seems ludicrous,” said Jackson. “But it is a real issue and kids are killing themselves. I’ve wanted to do something, and I knew when I saw that house for sale that it all came together. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a little crazy and there’s no red tape in my charity. When I want to do something, I do it.”
“We want this house to be a message that where there’s hate, there’s also love. But we also want to raise awareness and capital, and we want to put all that money into creating and sustaining anti-bullying programs, along with supporting anti-bullying programs that already exist,” he said. “Beyond the symbolic message of the home, [the house] will be utilized by volunteers to live here, and these volunteers will work on promoting equality anywhere in the world and managing these anti-bullying initiatives that we plan on creating.”

Jackson says he’s already noticed members of the church coming by to take pictures.

 



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Superman: Not Having Orson Scott Card’s Anti-Gay Nonsense

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This story, about Orson Scott Card signing on with DC Comics to be a recurring guest writer for a Superman comics series, was one of those posts that I kept putting off writing because I was sure that the story was going to develop. When it first struck my interest, it was just that many comic book stores were planning to boycott that specific title. Later, I read that the series lost its artist over the controversy. More recently, DC announced that it had put the project on hold.

This is good news.

I should explain, in case you’re wondering: “Who is Orson Scott Card?” or, better yet: “Wasn’t he that nice man who wrote Ender’s Game?”

Orson Scott Card is a writer. I really enjoyed reading Ender’s Game—as a ten-year-old, it was nice to read a book about a young, intelligent protagonist. The writer had clearly put a lot of thought into how young, highly intelligent children thought.

OSC is also a Mormon, and well-known for his strong anti-gay political views. Now, I once read an article suggesting that no one should avoid OSC’s work for his political commentary and activism, because he is a Mormon, and that opposition to gay rights (including marriage equality) has long been a part of LDS policy. Basically, the writer (of an article which I read years ago and was unable to relocate) said: “His religion is anti-gay, so if you’re going to avoid him for sharing that view, you should avoid everyone of his religion, which would be impractical.”

Guys, that’s nonsense. For one thing, I’ve had Mormon friends who are totally fine with gay rights, and who support marriage equality. Similarly, I’ve had Catholic friends whose views on gays and gay marriage are totally at odds with the Vatican’s (and they’re not isolated exceptions—more than half of US Catholics support the legalization of same-sex marriage).

There is a difference between being a part of an organized religion and holding all of the same beliefs—particularly social and political beliefs. There is also a difference between holding a belief and being a vocal commentator on the subject. Now, if you do hold a belief (such as a stance regarding marriage equality) and use whatever status or spotlight that you acquire to speak on it, do not be surprised if your views impact your financial ventures.

Personally, I’d rather watch five of my dollars burn than give a business like Chick-fil-A one red cent. That’s my right and my choice. I no longer purchase anything from Papa John’s or Domino’s because of their oppositions to Obamacare (narrowing all of my non-grocery store pizza purchases to Pizza Hut). I do not give money to the Boy Scouts and I will not make any purchase that might lead to Orson Scott Card making a profit.

While OSC has always been wrong, morally, on the issue of gay rights, the tide of public opinion in the US is now turning against him. A DC Comics project shelved because his involvement was too controversial. Enders Game is getting a theatrical release, but some of the film’s producers do not want OSC involved in the film’s promotion, concerned that his involvement would be the touch of death to ticket sales.

I know that, no matter how much I loved the novel a decade and a half ago, I will certainly not be seeing the film—until it becomes available for me to view, for free.

Thank you, DC Comics, for putting your OSC project on hold. Let’s keep it that way. I have no doubt that Superman would approve.



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Awesome Grandma Has Had Enough Of Your Anti-Gay Rhetoric

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You guys may have read this story a few weeks ago (and yes, I used the same picture as the previous article did, because it’s perfect).

A twenty-year-old young man (and Reddit user) came out to his conservative grandmother, and their relationship was stronger than any anti-gay leanings or beliefs that she might have previously held. For months, she was uncomfortable at her church because of the pastor’s strong anti-LGBT leanings.

A high school boy is gay and his family attends the same church as the grandmother in question, and his parents wrote a letter to the pastor asking him what to do. The pastor read the letter to the congregation (and outing someone is a dick move on its own, but especially in that context), and said that they would all work together to address the “problem.”

The grandmother of the Reddit poster (who is not related to the gay high schooler) stood up and said: “There are a lot of problems here, and him being gay is not one of them.” She apologized to the boy and walked out. She was later told that her taking a brave stand like that might help to give other unhappy members of the congregation the courage to voice their disapproval of the pastor’s anti-LGBT stances (or even possibly to leave for a different church, if I understand how church congregations operate).

That is such a sweet story. And that grandmother is brave. I mean, really. How many people hear people say awful things and don’t speak up? How much harder must it be to speak up in opposition to a person in a position of religious authority?

More and more people, families, and religious congregations are realizing that anti-gay legislation, prejudice, and stances are on the wrong (and losing) side of history. Better yet, many are realizing that that position is morally wrong.

I’ll admit that I may have some mixed feelings about Christian organizations shifting to be openly inclusive of the LGBT community. It’s not surprising, exactly—any culture or religion that lasts adapts to survive, and Christianity has certainly done so over the years.

Contrary to the beliefs of certain insane people on the fringes of the Religious Right, my being gay and my being Pagan does not mean that I go to bed each night fondly dreaming of the downfall of Christianity. I do like pluralism and I would like to see people look for religions other than the religion of their parents. And there is something to be said for religions that were already fine with gays to start with as opposed to religious bodies that are just recently coming around to gays (and sometimes out of self-preservation).

That said, I want to live in a world in which anyone who is LGBT (or straight, obviously) has no conflict between his or her family, religious path, and sexual orientation. There is enough suffering in the world without religion, which should be a source of strength and peace, becoming an instrument of shame, doubt, and self-loathing.

 

PS: I said “anti-gay” rather than “homophobic” because “anti-gay” seems more accurate. A lot of us are accustomed to using the terms interchangeably, but they do mean different things. “I don’t want a gay roommate or gay guys using the same gym or bathroom,” sounds pretty homophobic. People who freak out when they realize that they’re at a party with a bunch of gay guys are homophobic. Anti-gay is a personal, religious, or political stance against gay people, gay sex, or gay rights (or, more generally, LGBT people, the sex that they may or may not have, and the rights which they possess which may or may not be protected under the law). Anti-gay sentiment and homophobia may frequently accompany the same people, but not always, and the terms have distinct meanings. Someone could have anti-gay beliefs and have no instinctive fear or unease around gay people, while someone could support gay rights in theory while being very uncomfortable around the LGBT community.



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