Oh the poor dears:

The Richmond Federal Reserve Bank’s decision to fly the gay pride flag outside of its building, below the American flag, has outraged a Virginia lawmaker, who wants it removed.

In a letter to Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, Robert Marshall, a Republican state delegate, called the flag “a serious deficiency of judgment by your organization, one not limited to social issues,” according to the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Marshall claimed that the homosexual behavior “celebrated” by the bank “undermines the American economy” and is a felony in the state, the newspaper reported.

Hahah, this stupid man thinks that being gay is a “felony?” I can’t stop laughing.

Sally Green, the bank’s first vice president and chief operating officer, told the newspaper earlier this week that the bank is flying the flag “as an example of our commitment to the values of acceptance and inclusion.

In other words, “grow up, wingnut, and go do something productive for a change.”

Know who else is upset about this?  That is right, it’s the American Family Association’s “news” arm OneNewsNow, who has some sort of secret fundamentalist wingnut operative working across the street at some sort of portable trans fat stand called The Family Foundation:

Though The Family Foundation’s new office in Richmond has a beautiful view of the state capitol and the flags, the rainbow flag fluttering from the flagpole outside the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is also in view. Foundation president Victoria Cobb does not expect it to fly away any time soon.

“Our expectation is it’ll be flying all month,” she predicts. “We think the Federal Reserve ought to be focused on the economy rather than focusing on special rights.”

And Victoria just knows that deep inside the Fed building, they’ve stopped paying attention to the economy altogether in order to draw up designs for special gay-only parking spaces at country bible churches. I mean, she did say “special rights,” right? Nah, Victoria. We just want to have the freedoms people like you have, misuse and take for granted.

The AFA also has heard from a Federal Reserve employee who is also a fundamentalist, and it is upset!

Meanwhile, the Mississippi-based American Family Association has received a complaint from a Federal Reserve employee who objects to the flag and what it represents. In reference to the “gay pride” flag flying just below the American flag, the employee wrote in an email: “For the past five or six years, the homosexual agenda has been pushed down our throats. [The bank president and vice president] have initiated this agenda. This offends me as a Christian.”

Uh huh, hmm. Let’s just let Wonkette reply to that one:

Haha, these people are always talking about things being pushed down their throats. Fantasizing much, guys?

Much, they are, always.

Also, in that Wonkette post, Pride month is referred to as “National Gay and Lesbian and BLT Month,” to which I just say bravo!

It always sneaks up on me because down South, so many of our Pride celebrations have been moved to the month of October, due to the fact that the heat becomes overwhelming by June, which leads many of us to not want to do anything outside that doesn’t involve a swimming pool.  But it is June, which means that it’s time for Pride!

We have a lot of things to celebrate this year.  The tide has truly turned, as for the first time, a majority of the American people, in multiple polls, support true equal rights for gays and lesbians, all the way up to marriage.  People are starting to speak up and speak out like never before on behalf of gay kids, due to things like the “It Gets Better” project.  Celebrities and other well-known figures are coming out of the closet in areas once considered “The Final Frontier,” and even professional athletes are starting to express their support for the LGBT community.

But there remains much work to be done.  Teddy Partridge has an important piece up at FireDogLake which reminds us that, while we’re celebrating, we must remember that in certain very important ways, we still have disadvantages in this society that we must fight to fix.  For one thing, despite myths to the contrary, the LGBT community, on average, makes less money than the greater population.  Teddy points to an APA report on the socioeconomic status of the gay community:

Gay men earn up to 32 percent less than similarly qualified heterosexual men.

Up to 64 percent of transgender people report incomes below $25,000.

While 5.9 percent of the general population makes less than $10,000, 14 percent of LGBT individuals are within this income bracket.

Moreover, it sort of depends on where we live. In Tennessee, bigots just passed a big government bill designed to hurt the gay community, prohibiting cities from establishing their own nondiscrimination policies. And these problems still exist in many places across the country:

Termination of an employee based on sexual orientation remains legal in 31 American states.

Termination of an employee based on gender identity remains legal in 39 American states.

Up to 68 percent of individuals identifying as LGBT report experiencing employment discrimination.

Those are big numbers. And while there are many of us who are mobile enough to look at those numbers and say “screw it, I’ll move to a real state where we aren’t treated like crap,” many more of us simply don’t have that option.

This is without even getting into the differences that exist for LGBT youth, and the fact that, according to the same report, twenty-six percent of youth that come out to their parents are kicked out of their homes. ["Pro-family" parents are amazing, aren't they?]

Go read Teddy’s piece, and this month, as you are celebrating, however you are celebrating, if you are celebrating, keep in mind the good and the bad, the jobs finished and those yet to be tackled.

Via Patrick Fitzgerald at Ex-Gay Watch:

Tom Cantine: Herein lies the most obvious moral danger of religious faith. In taking themselves to be guided by divinely ordained commandments, theists may be tempted to relax the rigor with which they scrutinize their actions, and are thus capable of the most unspeakable atrocities. That is, secure in the faith that God wills a certain course of action, they may be prepared to disregard any suggestion (even from their own consciences) that this may not in fact be the morally correct thing to do. … Unfortunately, it is also often a tenet of faith that to question God is itself an immoral act, and so it can become especially difficult to correct a moral error once it has been made on these grounds. This is because the difference between questioning a command of God and questioning one’s own understanding of that command is a subtle one, not at all easily recognized, and harder yet when any doubt is seen as weakness of faith and therefore sinful in itself.

…This pride is uniquely difficult to identify, for it is well cloaked in the garb of pious humility. What makes it so elusive is that it appears as a faith in God, when in reality it is a misplaced faith in one’s own judgment. It may well be that God is just and perfect and incapable of error, but we most certainly are none of these things, and to act with the firm belief that one is in perfect harmony with God’s perfectly just wishes is to lose sight of that truth. Indeed, the person who acts in this way is guilty of the greatest pride, for she puts her moral judgment on a level with God’s. She claims to know with absolute certainty that which can be known only to God. The faith here, then, is not in God at all, but in the individual’s own reliability in knowing God, and if we understand idolatry as the sin of ascribing divine significance to a human artifact, the pride involved is idolatrous when the individual believes her knowledge to be perfect in this regard.

Maybe Peter LaBarbera* can go try to convert the Stanley Cup into an ex-gay or dress it up like a leatherdaddy:

The adventurous Stanley Cup will make its first appearance in a gay-themed event this weekend.

The Chicago Gay Hockey Association invited the Blackhawks to join Sunday’s Gay Pride Parade — and the team said yes. So did the Chicago Cubs, who will have their own float for the first time.

Blackhawks defenseman Brent Sopel and his wife, Kelly, will accompany the Cup on a float. Sopel, traded to Atlanta this week, is a father of three and said he’s not trying to make a statement.

“But everybody is a person, and we all have feelings,” he said.

That’s pretty cool. See, wingnuts? That’s how actual straight men who are actually comfortable with their actual sexuality act.

Happy pride, everybody.

(h/t Roy Edroso, who also says “Happy Pride”)

*Oh, secret message to Chicago pride-goers: If you see Peter, make out with the nearest acceptable person of the same gender lovingly and enthusiastically, right in front of him. He likes that.

The American Family Association continues to show that they have lost any semblance of a moral compass, if indeed they ever had one in the first place, by attacking 10 year-old Will Phillips, who is supposed to be the grand marshal of Northwest Arkansas’s pride parade. Phillips, you’ll remember, is the precocious kid who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, because he understands that the line “liberty and justice for all” doesn’t apply to LGBT Americans, at least not yet. Indeed, AFA president Tim Wildmon is invoking the words “child abuse” and accusing people of exploiting Will Phillips:

AFA President Tim Wildmon says,” It’ shameful that adults would abuse a brain-washed child in this way,” said AFA president Tim Wildmon. “He’ obviously just parroting the nonsense he’ been told by manipulative adults.For gay activists to trot out this child and make him the poster child for promoting unnatural sexual expression is a form of child abuse. “

To which I reply: It’s shameful that adults abuse children brainwashed into Christian fundamentalism the way they do. Those children obviously just parrot the nonsense they’ve been told by manipulative adults. For Christian fundamentalist activists to trot out their children and make them the poster children for promoting unseemly bigotry and hatred against entire portion of the population based on a stack of lies about who gay people are is child abuse, especially since, as we all know, many of their own children are gay. At least we don’t lie to them.

This is all happening via an American Family Association e-mail action alert, to try to cow the mayor of Fayetteville, Arkansas, into rescinding his proclamation for the event, and Will’s mom views them (quite rightly, considering the people involved) as a threat to her family.

Two ways you can help:

1. Visit the Facebook page for the city of Fayetteville and leave supportive messages.

2. Contact Fayetteville’s public officials with nice, positive messages of support. You and I are well aware that the e-mails sent from AFA subscribers will contain a level of venom which is directly converse to their reading level. This is a time for catching flies with sugar, as they say.

Ward 1, Position 1 Adella Gray (479) 442-4958 ward1_pos1@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 1, Position 2 Brenda Thiel (479) 442-3095 bthiel@cox.net

Ward 2, Position 1 Kyle Cook (479) 521-7632 ward2_pos1@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 2, Position 2 Matthew Petty (479) 595-8303 (Email preferred) citycouncil (at) matthewpetty (dot) org

Mayor Lioneld Jordan (479) 575-8330 mayor@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 3, Position 1 Robert K. Rhoads (479) 973-5200 rrhoads@hallestill.com

Ward 3, Position 2 Bobby Ferrell (479) 442-3535 ward3_pos2@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 4, Position 1 Shirley Lucas (479) 442-4612 ward4_pos1@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 4, Position 2 Sarah Lewis (479) 263-2087 sarahelainelewis@gmail.com

Fayetteville is a great town, if you’re not aware, and Arkansas is not all anti-gay. Give Fayetteville and the Phillips family the support they need, because it’s never a good day when a band of rabid extremists attacks your child.

More at AfterElton and Pam’s House Blend.

Ever since the widely reported flotilla incident, people of good will have been having vociferous disagreements on whether what Israel did was right or wrong, the legality and morality of the Gaza blockade, the safety of Israeli families, and the like. In fact, Wayne Besen and I have been having an academic match on the subject for the past week. The key word there, of course, is academic. It’s not a reflection of biases against Israelis or Palestinians or anything of the sort.

That being said, this is stupid and completely beside the point:

Organizers of Madrid’s pride parade, scheduled for the beginning of next month, have announced that they are cancelling the invitation of Israeli representatives slated to appear there, Ynet learned Monday.

The Israeli delegation, made up of members of the LGBT association and the Foreign Ministry, was scheduled to run an Israeli “bus” in the parade, for the first time since its establishment.

But the delegation has recently received hints from Spain that their arrival may cause anger among local pro-Palestinian groups, which may require excess security and, more importantly, cause a lot of embarrassment.

(…)

Community reps expressed their deep disappointment by Madrid’s decision. Chairman of the LGBT Union in Israel, Mike Hamel told Ynet, “We regret the fact that the pride organizations in Madrid have decided to focus on issues that have nothing to do with the community. The Union was invited as a non-political organization. This is a missed opportunity for dialogue.”

Regardless of one’s opinions on the flotilla incident, let’s be clear: One of the things Israel has going for it is that it is indeed the bastion of tolerance and liberalism in the region, as it pertains to the LGBT community. In fact, Israel runs circles around the United States when it comes to their progress on gay rights.

Also, of note: the Israeli participation was from the Tel Aviv Municipality, as part of their push to shine a light on their progressive, gay friendly city. This is not the Netanyahu government’s project. This would be like disinviting San Francisco from an international event because the Obama administration did something the organizers didn’t like. It has absolutely nothing to do with the greater point of the pride celebration, and it does nothing to further the cause of equality for LGBT people.

One of the themes that’s come up in the conversations I’ve had with people since the flotilla incident is nuance. Obviously some of the groups involved in Madrid pride have serious problems with what Israel has done in the past few weeks. That’s okay. There are ways to express that in appropriate places without blacklisting Israelis as people. However, for a freaking PRIDE EVENT, which is premised on the idea of “everyone is welcome and accepted as they are,” people should be able to do that without also feeling the need to throw the Israeli gay community under the bus. It’s especially stupid, considering the fact that, in the world of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Israel’s gay community is at the forefront working within their country to provide aid, advocacy and protection to Palestinians, and more specifically, to LGBT Palestinians:

All three organizations that advocate and support homosexual Palestinians are headquartered in Israel. On an individual level, the Israeli gay community often hides gay Palestinians from the Israeli authorities, for fear that they will be sent back to their home communities where they are ostracized and threatened for their sexual preferences. From the website GlobalGayz.com:

Since Palestine is a very homophobic culture many Palestinian gays and lesbians are forced against their cultural and religious will to hide in Israel where homosexuality is much more acceptable and, indeed, protected.

Like their counterparts worldwide, the Israeli gay community is one of the most progressive and left-wing in the country. One Israeli gay rights organization, Black Laundry, describes itself as “a direct action group of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and others against the occupation and for social justice.”

The organizers of Madrid’s pride celebration should be ashamed of themselves. If it requires more security, get more security. It’s not as if gays have ever dealt with situations like that before. (/sarcasm)

As I said before, people of good will and honest intentions can disagree on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will continue to do so until either the conflict is resolved or the end of time, whichever comes first. But the very spirit of the movement for LGBT equality is endangered when nations which are extremely friendly to LGBT people are punished for unrelated political reasons. He’s free to speak for himself and correct me, but I have a feeling that, though we disagree on many other things about that part of the world, Wayne would agree with me on this one.

(h/t Dan Blatt, who is actually also mostly right about this.)

From Andy at UK Gay News:

Imagine. Gay Pride in Jamaica. The words of William Urich, the chair of InterPride Committee on International GLBTI Human Rights, on the first public Pride even on the Caribbean island which was staged yesterday.

“Yesterday was an amazing day, here in Montego Bay,” he told UK Gay News. “My eyes well up at the very thought of the day’s outstanding and astounding success.”

Officially, it was the Walk for Tolerance from Howard Cooke Park, along Howard Cooke Boulevard and ending on the beach.The Rev. Nancy Wilson and Rev. Pat Bumgardner (pictured) the Metropolitan Community Church were on-hand for the march. Congratulations for the brave Jamaicans and MCC for creating positive steps for change in this country.

Last year, we helped launch a boycott against the homophobic island nation. Although the boycott is officially over and did not accomplish what we had hoped, it did raise awareness of the plight of LGBT Jamaicans. As for me – I’m personally still boycotting. Although, with more efforts, such as this, maybe I will one day visit this island. I certainly hope so.

Ex-gay activist James Hartline has convinced San Diego council member Ruth Sterling to retract her support for San Diego LGBT Pride.

Without substantiation and without attending an event, Sterling wrote to the event organizers: “Never having seen one of your parades/celebrations I was shocked and shaken to my core to learn of the lewd and lascivious behavior and unconscionable activities portrayed.”

The mayor and pro-equality activists subsequently criticized Sterling for caving in so easily to Hartline’s unsubstantiated bigotry.

Hat tip: Pam Spaulding

Gay journalist Chris Crain‘s blog observed last month that in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the world’s gay pride parade has been ruined by an annual onslaught of some 2 million people, among them foreign tourists and violent heterosexual carousers and gangs, that have scared away the resident gay population.

Overwhelmed by enormous crowds, police were unable to stop an antigay murder at the Parada last year and a drug-related death this year.

The author of the post concludes that the Parada’s failure to articulate a clear message has turned the event into a meaningless party for people with no commitment to equality:

It was big and utterly pointless. It was a tragic search for pleasure in vain, and a moment which made a beautiful sense of life and purpose appear worthless in the end. It left nothing behind but questions. It made none of us feel prouder, or more secure. It taught us nothing, and betrayed a sense that we have learned nothing.

I get emails from American gays fairly often which tell me of a rising level of disgust at gay politics in the United States. To many of them, it is run by a group of hacks who lack vision and courage, who cater to politicians of both parties that have no qualms about throwing us overboard. And these critics are not outraged so much as ready to turn their backs on something that was once an inspiring movement full of hope and joy. One of them, an activist who started in the 1980s, wrote me that she felt like she was watching “my baby, all grown up, just laying there dying and I can’t do anything about it.

The writer’s leap of logic from Brazilian carnival to U.S. activists is a stretch; he seems to ignore the growth of gay religious organizations, pro-marriage groups, anti-violence groups, and gay employee groups, and gay sports and fitness groups.

But Exodus International’s “ex-gay” executive vice president Randy Thomas — who opposes hate-crime laws, pro-equality political messages, and sexual health education — makes a far greater leap in logic: (Read More)