Five Minutes of Geography ? (tags)
The late Lenny Bruce once joked that the radical Right's fears about ? shock! ? sex education in the public schools were unfounded because schoolkids weren't going to come home and tell their parents, "Today at school we learned five minutes of geography and ten minutes of cocksucking." The modern-day radical Right's campaign to get rid of SB 48, a bill recently passed by the California legislature to require middle and high schools to teach the role and contributions of Queer Americans (along with Pacific Islanders and people with disabilities), is driven by a similar paranoia and a disbelief that there even are such things as Queer people ? and so far the Queer community's response to the attack on SB 48 is all too faithfully copied from the losing campaign against Proposition 8: a "coalition" made up mostly of straight people and a whiny argument about how we supposedly need "role models" to keep from drinking, drugging or suiciding.
SB 48 Referendum: THE Epic Struggle for Queer Rights in California (tags)
Roland Palencia, executive director of the Queer lobbying group Equality California (EQCA), calls the radical Right's attempt to get rid of the FAIR Education Act, also known as SB 48, "the greatest threat in years to LGBT [Queer] Californians." The Act adds Queer people, people with disabilities and Pacific Islanders to the list of communities whose "role and contributions" to American and Californian history and society must be acknowledged in lessons and textbooks used by the California public schools. Radical-Right activists, including some of the same people who successfully eliminated marriage equality in California via Proposition 8, plan to make it a referendum on the very existence and legitimacy of the Queer community and will likely wage an ugly campaign based on many negative stereotypes of Queer people. Palencia's group is fighting back by setting up a broad, mostly non-Queer coalition, and he, EQCA regional field director George Zander and openly Queer San Diego Unified School District board member Kevin Beiser spoke at the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club August 25 to mobilize its members to join the campaign and help organize the grand coalition.
The vote of the New York legislature to legally recognize same-sex marriage has produced a backlash of unexpected ferocity and scope. It comes from an Iowa-based organization called THE FAMiLY LEADER (that's the way it's printed on their logo) and it's called "The Marriage Vow." It's a far-reaching set of principles that goes beyond attacking same-sex marriage and supporting a Federal Marriage Amendment to ban it nationwide. It targets African-Americans in particular and says Black children born during the slave era were more likely to be raised by their mother and father than African-American infants born since Obama's election. It also calls for bans on adultery, "quickie" divorces, Sharia Islam and laws that don't conform to the Judeo-Christian agenda. The aim of its authors is to get all the current candidates for President to sign it ? and two Republicans, Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, already have.
A Meanness in This World (tags)
The January 8 shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and murder of federal judge John Roll and five other people in Tucson, Arizona has been blamed on a lone nut, and both wings of the corporate media — center-Right and far-Right — have fallen over each other to absolve the ultra-Rightists of talk radio, Fox News and the Tea Party of blame for the alleged shooter’s actions. Nonsense. Not only did Sarah Palin’s Web page specifically “target” Congressmember Giffords for defeat last April — a piece of hysterical rhetoric Giffords called Palin out on at the time — but the radical Right’s incessant propaganda on talk radio and Fox News, with its ceaseless calls not only to defeat but “eliminate” its “enemies,” created a national climate that ensured that the killer’s madness took the form it did and his delusions led him to attack two individuals that had already been the targets of radical-Right bullying and harassment.
Pride Rally Reveals Queer Community’s Divisions Over Obama (tags)
The July 16 San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender pride rally, which opened the city's weekend of Pride events, revealed the deep-seated divisions within the Queer community over President Obama and the proper way of organizing. Stuart Milk, nephew of Queer martyr Harvey Milk, said he'd attended a meeting at the White House at which Obama endorsed virtually the entire agenda of the Queer rights movement — but Fresno-based activist Robin McGehee said that doesn't matter. McGehee and San Diego Transgender activist Autumn Sandeen, who joined together for a direct-action campaign against the White House over Obama's failure to seek repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that keeps openly Queer people from serving in the U.S. military, said that the Queer community should use nonviolent civil disobedience to confront Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and other Democratic politicians who aren't delivering on their promises to the Queer community.