Tag Archives: lds

What Do Mormons and Gays Have in Common?

After the Mormon Church-funded debacle that started California’s continuing Prop. 8 battle, you’d think that the Mormon and gay communities would have nothing in common except a passion for unusual underwear.

However, it turns out that neither Mormons nor gays can lead a Boy Scout troop.

In the ironic cycle of hate, a straight, married Mormon couple in North Carolina has been told they can’t be Cub Scout leaders.

According to NPR, a Presbyterian church was happy to have Jeremy and Jodi Stokes as Cub Scout leaders until officials there found out they are Mormons. They were told they would have to step down because the church does not consider them “real Christians”. (Mormons consider themselves to be Christians.)

The Boy Scouts of America requires its members to swear an oath of duty to God.

Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC, about 10 miles from Charlotte, has about 2,350 members according to its website. It is part of the Presbyterian Church in America, a conservative Evangelical denomination. Evangelicals have consistently criticized the LDS church.

The LDS Church has consistently criticized gays, among other minority groups.

The Boy Scouts of America has legally discriminated against gays for a decade. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the BSA has a constitutional right to exclude openly gay men from serving as troop leaders.

See how this big jamboree of hate works?

The Boy Scouts discriminate against gays and Mormons.

The Mormons discriminate against gays.

But Mormons and grown-up Boy Scouts are all welcomed into the gay community with open arms.

So, tell me. Who’s looking most Christian now?

There is a great movie about one young man’s battle against discrimination in the Boy Scouts called Scout’s Honor. You really should see it.

S.F. Asks Feds to Toss Prop. H8

San Francisco has asked a federal judge to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage, allying the city with a lawsuit that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

In papers filed Thursday night in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office argued that Proposition 8 was motivated by hatred of gays and lesbians and violates their constitutional right to be free of discrimination.

Although sponsors of the November ballot measure said they were trying to promote traditional marriage and protect children, “excluding same-sex couples from marriage does nothing to advance those goals,” Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart said in the 49-page brief.

Prop. 8′s “real aim was harming gays and lesbians and expressing moral disapproval of them,” Stewart said.

In arguing to throw out Prop. 8, Stewart cited the Supreme Court’s 1996 ruling that struck down Colorado’s ban on state and local gay-rights measures and said a law motivated by hostility toward gays and lesbians is unconstitutional.

Read the rest of the story in the SF Gate.

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Another Prop. H8 Protest Graphic

Swipe it and use it!

Minorities&H8

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Help Repeal Prop. 8

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Civil Rights Fail

failwhaleH8

Does Bigotry Look Better Topless?

nakedcarrieprejeanYou be the judge.

Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, whose anti-gay-marriage (or pro “opposite-sex”) marriage made her the darling of the religious right, and landed her a spot in a National Organization of Marriage ad, recently got naked for the camera..

According to Wikipedia, Prejean grew up in an evangelical Christian home in Vista, California. She is currently a senior at San Diego Christian College, a small, evangelical liberal arts college in El Cajon, California and attends The Rock Church, where she volunteers with their outreach ministries.

Alicia Jacobs, Entertainment Reporter at KVBC in Las Vegas, has reportedly seen all six of the photos and says some are much more revealing. Jacobs believes the pictures may have been taken after Carrie’s pageant-financed breast augmentation about six weeks ago.

I’d count this as another feather in NOM’s media cap. The thinly-disguised front for the Mormon Church, has pretty much screwed up everything they’ve touched recently. Audition tapes of the actors playing “concerned citizens” in their “The Storm is Coming” ad made Rachel Maddow’s show, and they gave their Two Million for Marriage campaign the “hip” acronym 2M4M, internet cruising slang for two men seeking a third for a good time. Now their spokesmodel is naked on the internet.

I’m thinking they need a new consultant.

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Miss California in New NOM Ad

Didn’t conservatives learn their media lessons about handling beauty queens with Sarah Palin?

Carrie Prejean, the Miss USA contestant from California who famously declared her opposition to same sex marriage on the pageant stage, will star in a new $1.5 million ad campaign funded by the National Organization for Marriage, a media front for the Mormon Church

The National Organziation for Marriage has scheduled a press conference with Prejean in Washington today to unveil the new ad, called “No Offense.”

“She is attacked viciously for having the courage to speak up for her truth and her values,” the group said in a press release. “But Carrie’s courage inspired a whole nation and a whole generation of young people because she chose to risk the Miss USA crown rather than be silent about her deepest moral values.”

I’m guessing that bravery had nothing to do with Carrie’s answer. She’s a highly groomed girl on the conservative pageant circuit who gave an audience-pleasing answer, with no consideration to the greater implication.

Carrie Prejean probably knows as much about the implications of Marriage Equality as a race horse knows about the implications of off-track betting.

According to the group, the ad will call “gay marriage advocates to account for their unwillingness to debate the real issue: gay marriage has consequences.”

The Miss California TV ad is the group’s second. Their first, called “A Gathering Storm,” ran in several states earlier and featured actors issuing ominous warnings about the threats posed by same-sex marriage.

If you remember, this ad backfired colossally when outtakes of the actors auditioning to play “concerned citizens” were released to the media.

While I’m sure the church wouldn’t have Carrie do the ad in her swimsuit, I’m hoping they’ll have her wear that funny underwear we keep hearing about.

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Marriage Equality and The Thomas Crown Affair

Today we can add New Hampshire to the list of places we can all get married: Connecticut, Iowa, and Massachusetts, with Vermont on the way (September 2009).

It looks like Maine will be next, as a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage is headed to a vote in the state house. The legislation moved forward with a vote of 11 to 3, and is looking like it will pass.

Californians are  still awaiting a State Supreme Court decision on the political travesty that was Proposition 8, a voter initiative that was largely driven and funded by out-of-state religious money.

Of course these religious organizations are already using scare tactics to try and spawn legislation in each of these states with the intent of rescinding the rights of same-sex couples to marry.

After all, same-sex marriage was already legal in California when Proposition 8 was placed on the ballot.

However, watching these states fall one-by-one, I get a little giddy.

It’s easier to move a small state than a large state. The more small states that continue to move toward marriage equality, the more the resources of organizations trying to thwart it will be diluted and rendered ineffective.

It feels a lot like the climatic scene in one of my favorite movies, The Thomas Crown Affair (yes, the remake, I confess). The police are set up in a museum in an attempt to capture an art theft suspect. He enters the museum carrying a briefcase, and dons a bowler. They hone in on him. But, suddenly, men appear everywhere dressed like him, all over the museum. There are so many dopplegangers that the police don’t know where to move next. The first time I saw this, I kept hopping up and down, I was so excited. It was brilliant then and it’s  still brilliant now.

I knew there was a reason I loved this movie. But I always thought it was about Rene Russo’s dance scene in that transparent black dress. I didn’t realize it was because of a political strategy.

(But, you didn’t think I could write about the dance scene without posting it, did you?)

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With a Tongue This Slippery, Rick Warren Would Make a Fine Lesbian

Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church, was at the center of a hornet’s nest of controversy when he was invited to deliver the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration.

LGBT groups howled in protest, because of Warren’s public anti-gay statements. At the center of the controversy was this interview with Steve Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, where Warren expressed his sentiments about gays marrying:

WARREN: The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that [some partnership rights] as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

BELIEFNET: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

WARREN: Oh , I do. For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jews – historically, marriage is a man and a woman.

Of course, no one in the LGBT community appreciated being likened to pedophiles, bigamists, or people committing incest, which wasn’t just an interpretation of what he said, it’s what he said.

Now, in an interview with Christianity Today, Warren talks about the backlash against his invitation to participate in the inauguration, and slips and slides around, parsing his language. Here’s his take on the interview exchange above:

In a Beliefnet interview, which was an hour long, Steve Waldman asked me about gay marriage. I said I believe marriage, that term, should be reserved for a man and a woman. I’m not saying same-sex couples don’t love each other. I gave some examples of what I think shouldn’t be considered to be marriage, like an older guy with a younger woman. Then [Waldman] said, “Are you saying that those are the same thing?” I said, “Oh sure.” It made it sound like I was equating homosexuality with pedophilia and incest. I don’t believe it, never have, and never would.

And just to futher confuse things, here’s Warren on Larry King Live a couple of nights ago, claiming he’s not against gay marriage:

However, just before the election, he made this video for his congregation, endorsing Proposition 8:

(Side note to Rick – next time, sit farther away from the camera, please.)

Will the real Rick Warren please stand up?

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Are Zoos Getting Gayer?

Sometimes the stuff in my inbox makes me shake my head in disbelief.

The Philadephia Zoo is having a Gay Community Day. This is apparently the first time the zoo has invited the LGBT community in its gates. Up until now, gays and lesbians have been sneaking in, dressed like straight people.

Sometime they’re even disguised as parents with children.

The zoo says the event, which will run from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. April 18, will provide a safe and welcoming environment for LGBT and ally individuals to experience the multitude of offerings at the nation’s oldest zoo.

I have to say, it’s going to be really neat for LGBT people to see wild animals through the bars like everybody else has been able to do all these 150 years.

I was just relieve to find out that “Gay Day at the Zoo” wasn’t another huge backward step in our civil rights. I was afraid the Mormon Church had banded with the Catholic Church to co-sponsor an initiative in Pennsylvania that would allow gays to be locked up annually and put on display for the God-fearing public to view.

I guess this follows the “Gay Day” at Disneyland trend, an marketing attempt to pull in those lucrative rainbow-colored dollars usually spent in gay and lesbian bars, on Olivia Cruises, at Village People reunion concerts, and at Home Depot.

(A special day makes more sense in Disneyland, where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell live, after all.)

But if that wasn’t enough gay zoo news, apparently a right-wing Polish politician is claiming his local zoo bought a “gay” elephant.

I don’t make this stuff up!

Michal Grzes, a counselor from the western city of Poznan, noted that the elephant, Ninio, prefers the company of other males, and challenged the zoo’s fiscal wisdom for acquiring him.

“We didn’t pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million U.S.) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there,” said Grzes, according to London’s Daily Mail. “We were supposed to have a herd,” Grzes continued, “but as Ninio prefers male friends over females, how will he produce offspring?” (With the help of a childless lesbian elephant, duh.)

Ninio, who is 10, has changed zoos three times in the past five years because of his aggressive behavior toward females, in contrast to his affectionate treatment of males. The head of the zoo contends that any conclusions about Ninio’s sexual orientation are premature because the elephant will not reach sexual maturity until age 14.

On his 14th birthday, the zoo plans to offer to take the elephant either dancing in a club or to a NASCAR race, and will wait to see which he chooses before trying to expand the herd.

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Iowa Makes Gay Marriage Look Normal

04iowaspanThis Associated Press photo by Steve Pope in the New York Times made me realize that Iowa is making gay marriage look so normal.

Maybe the country really is warming up to the idea of same-sex marriage, just not California style.

I love my home state, but rally and protest pictures taken of Prop. 8 celebrations, gatherings, and protests look much more flamboyant… we’re tattooed, pierced, androgynous, transgendered, butch, femme, in drag, wearing leathers, feathers, and sequins, and all-in-all more radical.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but I’m sure a good part of the country watches us on the news and finds us terrifying.

Iowa looks ’bout as scary as a church social. I’d let these good folk indoctrinate my children.

Read the story “Iowa court voids gay marriage ban” in the New York Times.

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About Milk, The Movie

Over the past year, I’ve made quite a few posts about Milk, beginning with the story of my walk around San Francisco’s City Hall. I thought you might want to check them out.

And of course, the Academy Awards and the aftermath:

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Best Academy Awards Speech Ever

‘nuf said.

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Listen All You Commie, Homo-Loving Sons of Guns

There was no finer place to be last night, listening to Sean Penn give his acceptance speech, than the Academy of Friends gala in San Francisco. The annual gala, which benefits a dozen HIV/AIDS service organizations in the Bay Area, was packed with revelers.

When Sean Penn was announced as Best Actor, the hall went wild. Men in tuxedos were literally leaping in the air. Just as quickly, the place quieted down to hear what he had to say.

I proceeded to cry through his entire acceptance speech… as if… well, I had won the damn award. I know this award is supposedly about the craft of acting and Penn’s skill as performer, but just want to say thanks to him for using his limited air time to stick up for all the same-sex couples in California who are, or would like to be, married.

There was plenty of excitement outside the gala. You can read about the reaction in The Castro here.

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Bonded in Faith, With Love and Understanding

This is how it should be:

Douglas Hunter, Mormon filmmaker, set out to make a documentary about same-sex marriage. He ended up focusing his lens on a lesbian Episcopal priest in Pasadena. The unintended results of his work were a friendship with The Rev. Susan Russell and a new understanding of gays and lesbians.

Read the whole story, by Duke Helfand, in the Los Angeles Times.

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Rape Always A Hate Crime, Four Arrests in Rape of California Lesbian

This morning brings the news that all four of the suspects wanted in the gang-rape of a 28-year-old Richmond woman have been arrested. (Story here.)

Following this story in the news has been painful and I made a conscious decision not to write about it until now.

I’m still not able to say why that is.

“Lesbian raped.” The phrase, and the stories, have been loaded with implication.

News reports have said that she was raped because of a rainbow sticker on her car, that her attackers made reference to her sexual orientation during the attack.

Police are calling it a hate crime.

And yet isn’t all rape a hate crime?

I understand that hate crimes have special implications in the eyes of the law. But let’s be clear about this: Rape is a crime about power, disrespect, and humiliation. It’s been used to debase women – and their entire families – in times of war. Babies and grandmothers have been raped. Disabled women and girls have been raped. Lesbians have certainly been raped.

It’s not about sex and it never was.

Rape is always a hate crime.

That said, my heart goes out to this young woman.

A trust fund has been established for her by Community Violence Solutions (formerly Rape Crisis).

Find it in your heart to contribute to this fund.

Make checks payable to “Community Violence Solutions.”

In the memo portion of the check, please write “Richmond Jane Doe.”
Checks can be sent to this address:
Attention: Ms. Jo Ann Douglas
Community Violence Solutions
2101 Van Ness Avenue
San Pablo, CA 94806

So, as 2009 begins, the question is hanging in the air: Are hate crimes on the rise?

With increased visibility and political presence, are the haters hating us more? Is it open season on the LGBT community?

From a more positive perspective, is any increase because we’ve become less ashamed reporters and better advocates for ourselves? Is law enforcement more aware and responsive, quicker to understand the implications of hate crimes?

It’s hard to know.

But I know that from my point of view, it doesn’t feel like a safe world right now. It doesn’t feel as safe as it did last year.

While the 2008 presidential elections brought us so much hope, they also brought lots of hatred and fear-mongering aimed at the LGBT community.

I have to wonder if all of the discussion and news coverage about California’s Proposition 8, and other similar ballot initiatives, helped contribute to the year’s spate of hate crimes.

More importantly, in their quest to preserve marriage as “an institution reserved for one man and one woman,” did any of these groups – the Mormon Church, the Catholic organizations – even stop to consider the violence is the inevitable by-product of publicly organized discrimination and hate?

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Stonewall 2.0: Our Time Has Come

I don’t want to jump on the blame wagon, but the No On 8 campaign that recently organized to oppose the passage of Proposition 8 in California just plain lacked energy. There are plenty of articles out there picking apart the players and analyzing each political move. I don’t want to do that. I just want to say what I’m feeling in the aftermath.

This was a banner year for political campaigns. President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign taught all of us what a youth-quake looks like. It was innovative, organized, inspiring, and technological.

In contrast, No On 8 looked staid and old.

In our queer quest to be socially accepted we’ve acted like arrivistes. We didn’t want to make social waves or spectacles of ourselves. We treated this referendum like it was an issue that could be solved through fundraising, cocktail parties, polite conversation, and tasteful bumperstickers.

We forgot the political actions that helped establish the basic rights we now have – marches, rallies, flyers, handbills, concerts, meetings – and ignored their modern equivalents.

We tried to match our political attackers dollar-for-dollar. We fought this battle though television ads when we should have been in the streets where the press coverage would have been free.

We didn’t do the things we’re good at. Historically, gay people make good, colorful press images (Mormons, not so much).

We needed candlelight marches with all the lesbian mommies and gay daddies. We needed to dance in the streets with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. We needed that giant rainbow flag wrapped around California’s capitol building, and we needed a NCLR drill team. We needed to make noise.

But, young people didn’t believe Prop. H8 could pass in liberal California and gay people underestimated the rallying power of the conservative opposition.

Then, after the referendum passed, we took to the streets.

In a matter of days, young LGBT folk organized the marches and rallies that should have happened before Nov. 4.

We needed text messages, MySpace and Facebook pages, we needed sneakers on the streets.

We needed a dose of that hope that was flowing all over the place.

Jennifer Chrisler is the executive director of Family Equality Council, the national organization working to ensure equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) families.

She wrote a great essay for The Huffington Post called “Stonewall 2.0: It’s What We Make of It.” You can read it here.

Let’s keep the energy going, okay?

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Jack Black as Jesus? Prop. 8 – The Musical!

The Proposition 8 battle has prompted this star-studded music video.

Written by Marc Shaiman and directed by Adam Shankman, the piece shows gay marriage backers and foes debating the issue in song against the backdrop of a Sacramento community college theater.

Jack Black appears as Jesus, who takes part in some mediation. By the end of the video, everyone seems to oppose Prop. 8.

Some of the cast names: The “Proposition 8′ers and The People That Follow Them” include John C. Reilly as Prop 8 Leader; Allison Janney as Prop 8 Leader’s #1 Wife; Kathy Najimy as Prop 8 Leader’s #2 Wife; Jenifer Lewis as Riffing Prop 8′er; Craig Robinson as A Preacher; and Rashida Jones, Lake Bell and Sarah Chalke as Scary Catholic School Girls From Hell.

Thanks to funnyordie.com!

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The Steaming Stew of Prop. H8 Aftermath

Organizers of the No On 8 campaign, which sought to defend same-sex marriage in California from Proposition 8, a referendum that passed by a narrow margin, are being criticized for the loss. (The legality of the referendum will be reviewed by the State Supreme Court).

In the December 16th issue of The Advocate, Ben Ehrenreich writes this story, Anatomy of a Failed Campaign and Dan Savage discusses how a lack of outreach to the African American community (including gays and lesbians of color) affected the outcome in this essay, The “No on Prop 8″ Campaign, Race, and Responsibility. The Los Angeles Times is in on the action with a follow-up to The Advocate piece, No on Proposition 8 Campaign Official Defends Strategy.

To me, it felt like No On 8 was run like an old-school campaign. The updates and “buzz” were all about money, air time, and polls. Frankly, I think we drowned in our own analytics and sterility. Where was the emotion and outcry we’ve experienced in these weeks following the election? This is what we could have used before the vote.

(Hindsight is the clearest sight, right?)

Honestly, I think there was complacency in the LGBT community about the immediate threat the initiative posed, and many people thought that writing a check was enough. People who couldn’t write a check gave lip-service and bumper space to their No On 8 stance, but there was little gathering, rallying, or organizing of the type that has happened since Nov. 4.

Now we’ve finally got the attention of the nation, and we’ve finally got the attention of our own community members.

I think the biggest question shouldn’t be “who can we blame?” but rather “how do we keep this momentum going?

Note: My favorite outcomes of this whole mess? That would be the $60,000 that’s been donated to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in the name of Thomas Monson, President of the Mormon Church (LDS). You can read about it here, and the fact that the Mormon Church is now considering its involvement in the Prop. 8 campaign to be a public relations disaster. (You think mebbe?)

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Mormons Getting Probed

latexThe California Fair Political Practices Commission is opening an investigation into a complaint alleging the Mormon church failed to report non-monetary contributions to the Yes on 8 campaign, a state official has said.

The sworn complaint by a group called Californians Against Hate contends the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints organized phone banks from Utah and Idaho and sent direct mail to voters.

The complaint, filed four days after the passage of Proposition 8, the referendum that seeks to end gay marriage in the state (but has yet to be legally decided), also alleges the Utah-based church transported people to California to walk precincts and distributed thousands of lawn signs and other campaign materials. The church is also accused of establishing Web sites and producing commercials and other video broadcasts geared toward nonmembers.

Californians Against Hate has also organized boycotts of businesses that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign. If the FPPC determines fault, the Mormon church – whose members contributed more than $20 million to the campaign – could be fined up to $5,000 per violatio.

Maybe that money could be used to build a taller, more solid wall to separate church and state.

Read the press release on the Californians Against Hate website.

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