Good news, handy lesbians, gays, and all other nice people: The two or three hundred most obnoxious Home Depot customers have decided to take their business elsewhere! So if you have any handy home projects you’ve been meaning to work on, this would be a good time to visit your local Home Depot and buy what you need. I was going to buy a couple of bookshelves next week, BUT MAYBE NOW I WILL WHITTLE THEM OUT OF WOOD, WITH TOOLS.
Also, give your local Home Depot a call and let the manager know how grateful you are for their support for the rights and happiness of ALL their customers.
Note to wingnuts: If you start going to Lowe’s or something, that’s fine, but they offer domestic partner benefits, so you run the risk that the money you spend on lumber to build your Home School Intelligunt Desine Classroom could potentially go to pay for health insurance benefits for one of their gay employees. Also, note to wingnuts doing home improvement projects in general: If you, in the course of fixin’ something, get a boo-boo, you need to know that ALL major drugstores (Walgreen’s, CVS, Rite Aid) are pretty decent supporters of LGBT equality, so you should probably abstain from purchasing any medicine for said boo-boo. AND if the boo-boo heals on its own without turning gangrenous and you find yourself hungry, you probably should avoid The Olive Garden, which is probably one of your favorite Fancy Places, because they’re pretty high on the equality list. And if you’re thirsty during your meal, continue to avoid all Coke and Pepsi products. AND SO ON. Click here to see all the things AFA wingnuts can’t do anymore, if they have an ounce of integrity.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote, “The war over gay rights in America and other modern nations has been largely won. Too many people have come out of the closet and will never go back in for the clock to be turned back.”
This trend towards acceptance has only accelerated since my column and may have reached a tipping point. New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote about a new Gallup Poll that found, for the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. Also, for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.
Blow attributes these advancements to LGBT people coming out and the realization that it is primarily weirdoes and socially stunted hypocrites who are obsessed or threatened by homosexuality.
“Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality,” wrote Blow. “Many heterosexual men see this, and they don’t want to be associated with it. It’ like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.”
Blow is correct. Normal, healthy, functional heterosexuals do not become paranoid or fixated on homosexuals. It is primarily people with sexual hang-ups, extreme religious indoctrination or deep, dark secrets that are preoccupied and consumed by the sexual orientation of others.
Of course, this does not mean that all supporters of civil rights for LGBT people are comfortable with the idea of gay sex. The good news is they don’t have to be. While speaking across the nation I have found an easy way of diffusing this issue. I ask the crowd to look at people they assume are heterosexual in the audience. Then, I ask if they would want to see all of the people they stared at having sexual intercourse.
The answer is inevitably and resoundingly, “No”. Then, I simply make the point that there are many people, heterosexual and homosexual, they would not want to witness in bed. And, they never have to unless they elect to do so — making any objections in terms of the “ick” factor moot. As simple as this sounds, it works and audiences “get it.”
Adding momentum to the LGBT struggle for equality is a cute McDonald’ television commercial in France that dealt with a teenager who had not yet told his father he was gay. The message of the campaign is, “come as you are, just leave a little fatter.” Okay, I added the last part.
While such an ad is not likely to air in the United States anytime soon, it does not have to in order to have a positive impact. Thanks to the Internet and talk shows, millions of people will see the ad and associate the message with their beloved Golden Arches.
Speaking of the impact of social media, in Newsweek, Joshua Alston made the case that websites such as Facebook are accelerating the demise of the closet. He wrote about the, “painstaking labor that goes into being secretly gay in the age of information sharing.” His advice to a friend who was outed by a seemingly innocuous tweet: “if you want to be in the closet, you can’t be on Facebook and Twitter.”
Crucial to the sudden surge of success is the falling of ugly stereotypes, such as the old canard that LGBT people are a threat to children. This week, the research journal, Pediatrics, published a study by Nanette Gartrell, a professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco and Henry Bos, a behavioral scientist at University of Amsterdam. The article discussed a landmark study that measured the long-term affects on children who were raised by lesbian parents.
“We simply expected to find no difference in psychological adjustment between adolescents reared in lesbian families and the normative sample of age-matched controls,” says Gartrell. “I was surprised to find that on some measures we found higher levels of [psychological] competency and lower levels of behavioral problems. It wasn’t something I anticipated.”
Finally, The Human Rights Campaign reports that Kaiser Permanente updated its Patients’ Bill of Rights to fully protect LGBT patients and their families from discrimination. These changes make Kaiser Permanente the first large health network to have a fully inclusive non-discrimination policy for LGBT people.
Sure, full legal equality may take two decades and the battle against bigotry will last forever. But, there is no denying that the LGBT movement is on the move like never before. The homophobes are finally the minority and appearing more secluded and deluded by the day. It’ not time to crack open a bottle of champagne, but feel free to treat your self to a cold beer and appreciate the progress.
He’s even gotten one of his readers to cancel his policy! The reader wrote a letter to Progressive in which he admitted that his homophobia was programmed into him, rather than a result of any sort of rational thought:
The GLBT movement seeks to pursue a public campaign, whose primary goal is to re-define what I am naturally programmed to believe.
Too funny.
Anyway, so if you need car insurance, and you’re one of the ever-increasing masses of people who support LGBT equality, then give Progressive a call, I guess? Browsing the HRC Corporate Equality Index, I notice, though, that the average HRC rating for the entire insurance industry is a solid 88 out of 100, which makes Peter’s jihad even dumber.
If he had any integrity, he’d be encouraging his readers to go without insurance of any kind. Progressive scores a perfect 100, but so do these companies under the “insurance” heading:
AAA Northern California, Nevada, and Utah
Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America
The Allstate Corp. (Haha, you’d think with his undying love for Bam Bam, he would be issuing fatwas against Allstate. Maybe this is just a childish overreaction to a billing dispute Peter’s having with Progressive or something.)
Chubb Corp.
CNA Insurance
Esurance, Inc.
The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.
ING North America Insurance Corp.
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
MetLife
Nationwide
New York Life Insurance Co.
Pacific Life Insurance Co.
Prudential Financial Inc.
Sun-Life Financial, Inc.
Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund
So…yeah. State Farm and Mutual of Omaha score 80′s, so there’s room for improvement. The lowest score on the list of insurance companies is AEGON USA, which fully supports 40% of the Great Big Keeps-Peter’s-Bed-Wet-At-Night-Homosexical-Agenda.
Also, according to the HRC website, GEICO offers domestic partner benefits, so no gecko for the gay-hating wingnuts.
Again, AFTAH reader[s]: if you have an ounce of integrity, you’ll stop using most services, because most real companies are doing all they can to be inclusive, not out of any special love for the LGBT community, but because it’s good business. They really don’t care if three dingbats write them butt-hurt letters from their AOL accounts.
Oh wait, excuse me, Peter’s reader says their numbers are stronger than that:
Progressive Insurance: It may appear that I am merely one man … but my message resonates within the hearts and minds of millions, upon millions, of Americans who firmly believe what I believe. For every ONE GLBT member that you support, there are FOUR HUNDRED more of us, standing together, in opposition.
FOUR HUNDRED more? If there are 400 homophobes for every LGBT American citizen, that adds up to somewhere between five and twelve billion homophobic Americans, but then again, he might be using some kind of jacked up Creation Math, so we probably shouldn’t analyze it too hard.
Maybe they’re counting their multiple personalities.
It was thrilling to participate in the National Equality March (NEM) in Washington on Sunday. The event, although smaller than in past years, achieved the desired goal of drawing the nation’ attention to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration were also put on notice that an anxiety-filled GLBT community demanded action, not just flowery words.
While this was my third march, it was inspiring to see this event through the fresh eyes of Jamie, (left, in red) my partner. He is thirty years old and grew up in a small town in rural Nebraska (population 700). From his vantage point, the march was an extraordinarily life-affirming event. He shared the same look of awe and empowerment that was on the faces of the energetic youth in DC, who will one day become our leaders.
The NEM occurred over the objections of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), who said that the spectacle was a “waste of time.” If I were Frank, I’d be more concerned about not delivering on GLBT issues while the Democrats control Washington. This may cause disillusionment, leading some people to believe that voting is a “waste of time.”
Frank believes that instead of marching, GLBT people should organize more efficiently and effectively by becoming more like the National Rifle Association (NRA) or the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
He is correct that we should organize into a political force, but get real. The GLBT movement can’t be compared to organizations that possess immense constituencies. Botox notwithstanding, we all grow old and that is why AARP has thirty-five million members. America loves guns, which is why even city slickers like John Kerry and Mitt Romney feel compelled to purchase varmint guns and tromp though the fields to whack squirrels. (Read More)
On October 10, 2009, President Barack Obama spoke to the Human Rights Campaign about GLBT issues. On Oct. 11, 2009, Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director, Wayne Besen, commented on the speech and the National Equality March that took place later that day.
Be warned: Those new National Organization for Marriage anti-GLBT actor auditions videos Wayne reported about this week are gone. NOM noticed that its evil ruse had been exposed and demanded that YouTube take them down. Even a clip of a recent MSNBC Rachel Maddow clip that included the audition tapes is gone. NOM’s reason: copyright infringement.
YouTube has to develop a bigger pair. The fact that a national organization is working to deny equality under law to millions of certain citizens makes the story newsworthy. Showing at least excerpts is fair use — under law.
Why are people so afraid of the anti-equality crowd? It’s so obvious that the organized fundies are the ones to fear. NOM was willing to lie, manipulate, and terrify the ignorant segment of the public, low-info types who can be compelled en masse to do what is right for their brand of Christianity, but wrong for anyone who really believes in basic American ideals. The tactic is cynical, selfish, immoral, and destructive. And it works: Remember Proposition 8?
At HuffPo, Lambda Legal’s Evan Wolfson provides a description opf the ads and refutes their vicious claims, so that at least some of those unable to view the outrage can see clearly the threat with which we are dealing. It’s a long excerpt, but it is an important one:
Consider what the actors in the NOM ad pretend to be:
A doctor who wants to discriminate against her patients, despite civil rights laws and medical ethics that the California Supreme Court upheld – in a case having nothing to do with marriage.
An officer of a New Jersey group that for years voluntarily operated a beachside pavilion with special tax-breaks that required it be open to the public – but then tried to turn down a lesbian couple. The case did not turn on marriage, since New Jersey doesn’t yet allow gay couples to marry, but, rather, basic civil rights laws about open access to public accommodations.
A Massachusetts parent who sought to dictate public school curriculum about the diverse families children will need to be aware of to thrive in a diverse world, and then wanted to remove her child from classes in a way that would have disrupted class and imposed unreasonable burdens on the school and other kids.
The law in California, as elsewhere, is that doctors can’t discriminatorily refuse to treat patients ‚Äî Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, gay or non-gay; that has nothing to do with marriage, and yet NOM incites fear. The law in New Jersey, as elsewhere, says that organizations running public accommodations such as restaurants or rental halls cannot discriminatorily exclude people ‚Äî African American, Latino, or Asian, gay or non-gay; that has nothing to do with marriage, and yet NOM says that the discriminators are somehow the victims. The law in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, of course allows parents to teach their kids whatever they want, and even to send them to private schools or do home-schooling. The law also rightly sets rules for determining public school curriculum without having every parent, or special interest with an agenda, coming in and imposing their views on everyone else’s kids ‚Äî yours or mine, gay or non-gay.
I encourage you to read Wolfson’s entire piece — he has worked on the front lines of this fight and knows the terrain. And he’s a lawyer.
National Organization for Marriage may believe that its copyright trumps our right to know the truth, but the group is wrong. Here is an opportunity to dtake action and do some good: Anyone with a thirst for a truly equal US will share descriptions of the ad — along with the truth about marriage equality and the fact that is is no threat to anyone, save those who need legal supremacy — with everyone they know. It is particularly urgent that we talk with those who question the need for civil-marriage equality. If we can’t trust YouTube to stand up to transmit the truth, we must do it.
Here is a debate between NOM’s Maggie Gallagher and Human Rights Campaign Joe Solmonese on CNN’s “Hardball,” where the HRC chief handily obliterates his opponent’s position using truth and fact.
A couple of weeks ago 
