Wednesday, November 5 – Monthly organizing meeting of the Gay Liberation Network. If you'd like to get involved in our work, please drop on by! 7 – 9 PM at Chicago's LGBT resource center, Gerber Hart Library, 1127 W. Granville Street, Chicago (just ½ block west of the "Granville" Red Line el stop). For more information call 773.209.1187
Saturday, November 8 – Protest against the honoring of gay-hater James Dobson by the Museum of Broadcast Communications, 5:30 – 7:30 PM in front of the Renaissance Hotel, 1 W. Wacker Drive, Chicago. See notice below for details.
Friday, November 14 -Gay Liberation Network live call-in show on CAN TV, 6:30-6:55 PM on Cable Channel 21 in Chicago. You can watch past shows on GLN's new YouTube Channel. Just go to: www.youtube.com/gayliberation
Tuesday, November 18 – Trial date for GLN's Andy Thayer, facing felony charges for a protest against President Bush. 10 AM, Cook County Courthouse, 5600 Old Orchard Road, Room 17, Skokie. See notice below for details.
Protest Focus on the Family's James Dobson in Chicago
He's AGAINST:
** Equal employment rights
** Equal housing rights
** Equal access to public accommodations
** Equal marriage rights
. . . for Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender people.
He uses his Religious Right broadcasting empire to push this hateful and discriminatory agenda.
. . . and Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications is foolishly honoring him with an award.
Protest against Focus on the Family's James Dobson in Chicago
5:30 PM - Saturday, Nov. 8th
Renaissance Chicago Hotel
1 W. Wacker Drive (at State Street)
The Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) is inducting religious right bigot James Dobson into its "Hall of Fame." Besides using his broadcast empire to lie about LGBT people, Dobson has been a leading proponent of taking away our rights, including heavily supporting California anti-gay referendum this November.
While open hate against many minority groups is fortunately less tolerated than in generations past, the MBC apparently thinks it's still open season on LGBT people.
Please contact the Museum and demand that they rescind this honor:
In the event of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran, dozens of Chicago area organizations have agreed to hold emergency protests at Chicago's Federal Plaza (corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets) at 5 PM on the day of the attack and 5 PM on the day after the attack.
Chicago Access Network Television and Chicago Indy Media were filming that night and as soon as their films are produced, we'll post news about how you can watch them...
Several speakers noted that hatred against gays and the violence it gives rise to isn't just something that occurred 10 years ago in a small western town, but continues to be a problem here in Chicago and elsewhere:
** Attorney Jon Erickson spoke about one of his clients, Alexander Ruppert, who was the victim of a particularly brutal gay bashing by Chicago Police in the Uptown neighborhood.
** Transgender activist June LaTrobe noted that several dozen LGBT people have been murdered in hate crimes in the United States since Matthew Shepard's murder, and that transgender people are disproportionately vtctims of these crimes.
** Greg Baird, the executive producer of a new documentary on Shepard, talked about how his murder changed attitudes towards LGBT people in the country.
** LGBT and immigrant rights activist Tania Unzueta of Radio Arte emphasized that LGBT people cannot be oblivious to the scapegoating of immigrants that is currently fashionable in many parts of the US – the successful scapegoating of any minority makes it easier for others to be attacked as well.
** GLN's Andy Thayer surveyed the changes and similariites in acceptance of LGBT's today versus 10 years ago, noting the areas in politics and lack of freedom for young LGBT's where we still have a lot of ground to cover.
** Keynote speaker Wayne Besen noted that Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications is set to reward one of America's premier haters, Focus on the Family's James Dobson, with an award on the evening of Saturday, November 8th. GLN is working with Besen's DumpDobson.org to protest the induction that night:
5:30 – 7:30 PM
Saturday, November 8th
Outside of the Chicago Renaissance Hotel
1 W. Wacker Drive
If you'd like to hear the background story on this issue, check out last week's Feast of Fools LGBT podcast interview with Besen and Thayer – just go to www.FeastofFools.net
GLN meets there the first Wednesday of each month. If you can't make tonight's meeting, but would still like to help out, please email us at LGBTliberation@aol.com– THANKS!
200 discuss high school for gay, lesbian, transgender youth in Chicago
CPS chief Arne Duncan expected to decide fate by Oct. 1
By Carlos Sadovi | Chicago Tribune reporter - LINK
September 19, 2008
Weeks after a proposal to open Chicago's first public high school catering to gay, lesbian and transgender youth was announced, about 200 people on Thursday met with administrators at the city's main gay social services center to discuss whether it's a good idea.
The Social Justice High School—Pride Campus would offer a college-preparatory curriculum in which students would take four years each of English and math, three years each of foreign languages and science, as well as fine arts and physical education, administrators said during the public hearing at the Center on Halsted on Chicago's North Side.
"[We want] to continue to provide a college-prep campus for students who are often overlooked," said Chad Weiden, an assistant principal at the Social Justice High School who would be the principal of Pride Campus. "Gay, lesbian and transgender students are often overlooked in our district. And this is a school for all students."
As a gay youth, Weiden said, he often experienced violence and fear at school.
But Andy Thayer, a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network, said he fears the Pride Campus could relieve Chicago Public School administrators of responsibility for making sure gay and lesbian students throughout the district are being treated respectfully.
"My fear is that the rest of the system will be let off the hook," Thayer said. "The notion that the Pride Campus is a silver bullet to set aside all needs of [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] youth is mistaken."
Administrators at the meeting said the Pride Campus would not segregate gay students because attendance is voluntary and the institution would be open to all students, regardless of their sexual orientation.
District chief executive Arne Duncan is expected to decide by Oct. 1 whether he wants to bring the proposal for Pride Campus to the board for a vote. If Duncan decides to go forward with the plan, there will be at least one more public hearing before the board votes on Oct. 22.
Backers of the school said that even if they receive the necessary approvals, they do not expect the school to open until 2012. A site for the school must still be determined.
The plan is being put forward by members of the Greater Lawndale Little Village High School for Social Justice.
Officials expect a school of up to 600 students, and those familiar with the project expect a high population of minorities.
csadovi@tribune.com
GLN's Andy Thayer,
Felony "Bush 4" Defendant,
Gets Trial Date
Andy Thayer, one of four activists arrested during an anti-war action against the January 7th visit of George Bush to Chicago, will go on trial November 18th, facing two felony counts of aggravated battery on a police officer – a deputy commander of Chicago's central business district. If found guilty, he faces up to seven years in prison and $25,000 fines.
Andy's jury trial begins at 10 AM, Tuesday, November 18th in Judge Haberkorn's courtroom (Room 107) at the Cook County Courthouse, 5600 Old Orchard Road, Skokie. Andy and his "Bush 4" co-defendants -- Buddy Bell, Jeff Pickert and Kevin Clark, would greatly appreciate your attendance at the trial (see public transportation directions at the bottom of this message).
On April 18th Kevin, Buddy and Jeff were tried on charges of disorderly conduct – Kevin and Buddy were found not guilty, and Jeff was found guilty and sentenced to 30 days supervision.
It's a supreme irony that we find ourselves defendants in alleged crimes against an officer who escorted (as opposed to arrested) President George W. Bush. We have a president who is directly responsible for the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis, 10s of thousands of Afghanis, and thousands of Americans. This president has deliberately broken laws against spying on Americans. In authorizing torture, he has committed offenses recognized by Nuremburg as crimes against humanity.
Rather than impeaching and trying Bush for these serious crimes, the alleged opposition in the Democratic leadership has participated in them. Rather than shunning this war criminal, Mayor Daley has greeted Bush with open arms on several occasions, eagerly lapping up Department of Homeland Security dollars for his police and money to militarize Chicago's schools.
We believe the felony charges leveled by Deputy Commander James Keating against Andy are political retribution for his years' long organizing against the civil liberties violations organized by Daley and his police. This use of policing powers for political aims is a crass abuse of authority.
Please show your opposition to the wars and the abuses of civil liberties that come with wars. Please attend the Tuesday, November 18th trial.
Finally, our deep thanks to all those who have already helped fund our legal defense and supported us in court
-- The Bush 4 Defendants
Kevin, Buddy, Jeff and Andy
PS Funds are still very much needed for our defense – anything you can give is much appreciated. Checks can be made payable to "8th Day Center for Justice" (write "Bush Protesters Legal Defense" in the memo section) and mail to:
8th Day Center For Justice
Attn: Bush Protesters Legal Defense
205 W. Monroe Street, 5th floor
Chicago, IL 60606
THANKS!
Public transportation directions to the courthouse in Skokie:
++ From the Northwest Side during rush hour, take the Blue Line "el" to the Irving Park stop, then take the #54A bus all the way to the courthouse.
++ From the North Side, take the Red Line "el" to Howard Street, then take the 205 bus from the terminal bus station directly to the end of the line at the courthouse.
Anyone but Him
Gay activists fight James Dobson’s induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
Yvette Marie Dostatni (Dumont); Michael Murphy (Besen)
Ever since the National Radio Hall of Fame announced the list of nominees for its 2008 induction, chairman Bruce DuMont has been on the hot seat. The 16 candidates for four spots were revealed in April and there was plenty of indignation about who’d been left out and which current nominees should have been recognized long ago. The Reader’s Michael Miner, for example, wondered how Studs Terkel could have been overlooked. Other media mavens wanted to know why Steve Dahl and Howard Stern were just now being considered (neither of them made it this year, either). That’s the kind of heat DuMont expected—it goes with the territory.
But this month, with the ten-week public Internet voting period nearly over, he got wind of a more troubling protest. A statement arrived from the gay advocacy group Truth Wins Out, along with several hundred e-mails, demanding that the list be purged of a nominee no one had mentioned up to that point: Focus on the Family, the radio ministry of right-wing pundit James Dobson.
This is not a controversy DuMont needs. He’s been struggling for years to reopen the Museum of Broadcast Communications, which he founded in 1987 and ran from 1992 to 2003 at the Chicago Cultural Center. The museum’s new home at State and Kinzie has been stalled out in mid-rehab since May 2006. DuMont, who blames the state for withholding $6 million he says it promised him, continues his fund-raising efforts, and the $500-a-plate hall of fame induction dinner, scheduled for November 8 this year, is one of them. So he watched with concern as TWO rallied opposition to Dobson in the gay community and Dobson, who can reach 2.5 million supporters with a single e-mail blast, fought back.
The contest closed July 15 with more than 70,000 votes cast. When they were tallied, Focus on the Family had won the nationally syndicated broadcasters category, beating out Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Bob Costas, and Howard Stern. DuMont announced that the public had made its choice and the hall of fame would stand by it.
But it wasn’t over for the anti-Dobson forces. They’ve mounted a new campaign to get the museum to disqualify Focus on the Family before the induction.
Each year since 1992, the National Radio Hall of Fame has honored a few luminaries—people and programs, the living and the dead. The list of honorees stretches from Orson Welles to Car Talk. And Dobson’s hardly the first conservative to make it: past inductees include Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh. So DuMont says he was surprised at the fierce reaction. But TWO founder Wayne Besen states that while his group could have lived with a win by, say, Schlessinger, Dobson’s agenda—which includes curing homosexuality and lobbying against same-sex marriage (which he predicts will “bring the destruction of this nation and many others”)—makes Focus on the Family’s election intolerable.
“Dobson is a bigot who distorts scientific research and has poisoned the air in America,” says Besen, who’s been on Dobson watch for ten years and outed the head of Dobson’s “freedom from homosexuality” initiative, Exodus International (formerly Love Won Out), by catching him on camera in a gay bar. “This is not a right-left thing. This is about right and wrong,” Besen says. “Considering how airwaves have been abused to create hatred, how can you not have some sort of standard?”
DuMont says Dobson meets the requirement for induction. “Our only criterion is the number of years in the business—10 for national, 20 for regional. He’s been broadcasting more than 15 years on more than 3,000 stations. He’s qualified. There is no criterion for political philosophy. Never has been, never will be.”
The public vote that elected Dobson was something new. Past winners were selected by experts or members of the museum. But this year, Dumont says, they wanted to open it up. Recommendations (also from the public) were accepted all year, and a steering committee appointed by DuMont met in April to select the nominees from a list of 200 or so names. DuMont says that part of the process was confidential, but the names were promptly announced. He wonders why he didn’t hear objections earlier, and why Dobson’s opponents didn’t simply vote him out. “If you really wanted to stop Dr. Dobson and send a signal by voting for someone else, there was ample opportunity between May 1 and July 15.”
But Besen claims he didn’t hear about Dobson’s candidacy until two weeks before the voting ended. “I was at the Saint Louis Pride when I got the e-mail on my phone,” he says. “With hardly any time left, we scrambled, we did what we could.” Now he sees the induction as an opportunity to “tell the world who James Dobson really is—an extremist who doesn’t believe in separation of church and state” and who “has built his empire on the backs of gays and lesbians.” If the hall of fame goes ahead with the induction, Besen warns, “we’ll have a big protest outside their dinner.” He says he’s coming to Chicago in late August or September to plan the demonstration with local leaders.
And it looks like the locals will be there. “Just because Dobson’s got ratings doesn’t mean he’s worthy,” argues Andy Thayer, cofounder of the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network. “This is a man who has ranged himself against the civil rights of a whole group of Americans. If it comes to the actual induction, we are going to be protesting.”
Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois says his group will meet with TWO and determine what its role will be. “I think it’s unfortunate that someone like James Dobson, who demonizes, distorts, and lies, is inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame,” Garcia says. “He’s not a broadcast entertainer, he’s not a journalist. I understand an open process, but the hall of fame should be for people who excel.” Garcia says he finds this especially disturbing because he has “great respect” for the museum. “I think they contribute to Chicago and the country,” he says. “It’s unfortunate that they’re caught in this controversy.”
Meanwhile, Focus on the Family issued a press release that says its victory (“the first religious program to receive such an honor”) shows that “Dr. Dobson’s influence is as strong as ever in the hearts of his fans, as well as in the culture.”
According to DuMont, things had been looking up before this tempest descended. He has a plan for proceeding on the building, despite the lack of state money, by leasing the first floor to commercial tenants and turning the fourth into a special-events space. He says a written commitment from a donor is imminent, after which he’ll only need to raise an additional $4 million to finish the $23 million project.
“We are nearing the goal line,” he says. “But this controversy doesn’t help. We need to put it in context. The people who nominated are not the MBC board. And the voting was done by the public.” As for the protesters: “Do they want me to undo the votes? Their principal objection is to what Dr. Dobson says. We don’t un-nominate people because of their political persuasion.”
Equal Marriage Rights for LGBT People!
"Separate but equal" vs. Full Marriage Equality
In Memory of Del Martin
August 1, 2008 - Stop the Threat of a War on Iran - Join us as Chicago joins 50+ other cities in a day of protest against a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran.
June 18, 2008 - They torture, they maim, they murder with impunity. The military in Iraq? No, cops in our home town. On June 19 Demand Accountability for Brutal Cops.
06-25-2008 - Windy City Times - Groups address police brutality
06-25-2008 - Windy City Times - March highlights Boystown tensions
06-01-2008 - Agence France Presse - Russian gays defy ban, more arrests at Moscow protests [pictures]
05-21-2008 - Windy City Times - Activists mark day against homophobia
05-17-2008 - Daily Herald - California gay marriage ruling will affect Illinois
05-12-2008 - Petrelis Files Blogspot - Chicago, NY, SF: May 16-17 Actions for Gay Russians
05-09-2008 - Workers Vanguard - Chicago Gay Liberation Network Activist Targeted - Drop Charges Against Andy Thayer!
05-07-2008 - Windy City Times - Anti-same-sex marriage referendum push fails
05-04-2008 - Windy City Times - LGBTs rally on May Day
05-01-2008 - Medill Reports Chicago - Different backgrounds, one goal
04-23-2008 - Windy City Times - LGBTs part of May 1 immigration march
03-26-2008 - Windy City Times - Anti-War Advocates Get Creative
03-19-2008 - Chicago Tribune - Iraq war protesters make selves heard in Chicago and elsewhere on anniversary of invasion Downtown rally, march mimic events nationwide
03-12-2008 - Windy City Times - GLN to protest ‘ex-gay' publisher
03-07-2008 - Queerty.com - Protest For Ex-Gay Publisher [picture]
01-08-2008 - Chicago Sun Times - 4 war protesters arrested after attempt to stop Bush motorcade
"Friday's New York Times is reporting that multiple U.S. officials have stated that the Israeli military carried out what seemed to be a 'rehearsal' for a strike directed at Iran's nuclear facilities."
– The Raw Story
If Israel Attacks Iran…
by Andy Thayer, co-founder, Gay Liberation Network (Chicago)
…all organizations that consider themselves part of the peace movement in the United States must call for the immediate end of U.S. aid to Israel. Those organizations which fail to do so should be made pariahs, and considered to be no longer part of the peace movement.
If Israel pre-emptively attacks Iran, we can be assured that it will have done so with the permission, if not encouragement, of that master of pre-emptive war, George Bush. Israel would not jeopardize its billions in annual U.S. military and economic aid without first getting permission from the White House. A counter-attack of the peace movement demanding an immediate end to this aid should be our first order of business.
A new war on Iran would regionalize the existing Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with devastating results for both attacked and attacker. With three times the population of Iraq, Iran would be no push-over to U.S. and/or Israeli aggression.
With their own nuclear arsenals, Israel and the U.S. can claim no moral high ground over Iran, whether or not that country possesses a nuclear weapons program. Indeed, surrounded by nuclear-armed Pakistan and India on the east, nuclear-armed Russia to the north, nuclear-armed Israel to the west, U.S. nuclear-armed carrier groups cruising the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean to the south, and a history of U.S. aggression against their nation, Iran's rulers understandably might be considering a nuclear arms program. Even so, Bushite "evidence" for such a program is even thinner gruel than that used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
With no one in the mainstream media noticing, alleged peace candidate Barack Obama has been worse than AWOL about the threat of war on Iran. As early as September 2004 the freshman Senator was advocating bombing Iran, and last fall, invading Pakistan. Most recently he gave a red meat address to the far-right American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) shortly after Clinton ended her White House bid, a speech that far-right politicos in Israel could only interpret as an Obama green light for just about any policy they might choose to pursue.
For anyone paying attention, Obama's anti-war credentials were incredibly weak to begin with. His vaunted anti-war speech at a peace rally at Chicago's Federal Plaza in the fall of 2002 was followed by absolute silence as the Bush administration beat the war drums in the run up to the March 19, 2003 invasion – indeed he subsequently voted for almost every Bush war appropriation bill that he was present in the Senate for.
During the New Hampshire primary campaign, the "peace candidate" committed to a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq, regardless of what the Iraqi people themselves might have to say about that (they're overwhelmingly opposed to it, but their Quisling government will no doubt cut such a deal before the end of this year).
In 1968, Richard Nixon promised that he had "a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam" – a position that was actually to the left of his Democratic opponent. Four years earlier, as a writer for the Left Business Observer put it, "LBJ campaigned as the peace candidate in 1964, and ended up killing a million Indochinese."
As a great statesman once said, "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
"Hope" that a President Obama will bring "change" to the U.S. mission of promoting war and oppression in the Middle East is absurdly naive. Both political parties are congenitally incapable of actively fighting against a wider Middle East war.
The only time that a U.S. war has been "pre-emptively" ended has been a generation ago when millions of people around the world protested and then took direct action against it. THAT should be our model for how we can end the present wars, and stop a new war on Iran.
The writer is a co-founder of the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network (www.GayLiberation.net), and as such, has been able to observe Barack Obama's betrayals of his anti-war and LGBT supporters up close.
* The speech was wiped off of his website and remained so well after his coming out party at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. In the run-up to the DNC, several national reporters contacted Chicago peace activists such as myself trying to get transcripts, audio or video clips of that speech, but Obama Ministry of Truth had disappeared all such embarrassing evidence until the war had a 25% approval rating. The speech itself was one of the weakest at that 2002 rally, and focussed not on opposing war, but choosing one's wars better — he endorsed the Afghanistan war which, as we've seen recently, is challenging Iraq as the American failure of the decade.
Letters to the Editor
Philadelphia Gay News
Dear Editor:
The rant of David Benkof is a brazen attack upon equality coming from a gay man who has the chutzpah to tell the rest of us to steer clear of the marriage issue since it offends traditionalists. Benkof is a self-described "non-practicing" gay, due to religious belief.
Even the Republican chief justice of the California Supreme Court, Ronald George, had the historical sensitivity to liken discrimination against gays to the Jim Crow segregation he witnessed as a young man traveling through the American South. Unlike Benkof, George recognizes a denial of equality when he sees it.
No one who wishes to adhere to "traditional" thinking about marriage is prohibited from doing so following the California court ruling. No one who wants to ask a Catholic priest or Jewish rabbi to perform a "traditional" marriage of one man and one woman is prohibited from doing so. Even Benkof is free to write and publish his offensive, but protected, rant against gay civil equality.
Benkof writes that teachers holding "traditional" views might be forced to teach against their belief when addressing students on California marriage law. So be it. Anti-gay bigots, along with racists and anti-woman pharmacists, can always seek other employment.
Like the Sun shining down on a California beach, there is enough equality for everyone. Except for those wanting to exercise the "right" to discriminate.
Truly yours,
BOB SCHWARTZ
Gay Liberation Network, Chicago
"What does unchangeable skin color have to do....with changeable sexual orientation?"
Graphic courtesy of Box Turtle Bulletin
These are the words of Peter LaBarbera, who operates a web-based group out of his house in suburban Chicago called "Americans for Truth about Homosexuality." He and others of his ilk attempt to discredit the natural comparison people make between the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s and today's gay rights movement by suggesting that, though African-Americans have no choice being who they are, gays and lesbians can "change" if they "choose."
There are two things wrong with LaBarbera's tendentious distinction, both damning. First, he fails to understand that the comparison of black and gay struggles gets its purchase because it is based on the similarity in types of discrimination (housing, jobs, social acceptance, violence, etc.) the two groups have historically experienced at the hands of bigots, not on whatever it is about the victims, gay or black, that provokes such discrimination. No one, least of all gay activists who know their history, has ever argued that black and gay struggles for equality are the same; suggestive and important similarities do not constitute an identity.
Second, even if we grant for the sake of argument that sexual orientation is "changeable," whatever that might mean, and people have a "choice" in the matter, LaBarbera's argument collapses. For if his distinction between the two struggles based on "changeability" points out a genuine difference, then by the same reasoning any fight against, say, religious discrimination as a fight for civil rights would suffer by comparison to the black struggle because anyone can change her religion! Of course, such a conclusion is absurd and it's equally absurd in the case of the gay rights struggle.
So what really does LaBarbera's argument amount to? He is prepared to concede that LGBT people suffer discrimination because of who they are (though he maintains that reports of discrimination are wildly exaggerated by his special bugaboo, the "homosexual lobby"). But---and this constitutes his special form of bigotry---he insists that such discrimination does not matter. It shouldn't count, and if politicians had any spine, he contends, they would see to it that it didn't count, instead of always caving to the "homosexual lobby" by granting "special rights." LGBT people have no claim to any group rights against discrimination because, based on LaBarbera's Christian beliefs, they're living in "sin" and ought to be changing themselves into heterosexuals instead of agitating for equal rights. (In fact, LaBarbera often comes very close to saying that any victimization LGBT people suffer they bring on themselves by their sexually "aberrant" behavior). African-Americans, on the other hand, are entitled to such rights, he thinks, because they are both historical victims of bigotry and are not as a group defined as "sinful."
This is the key. What it boils down to, according to LaBarbera's twisted logic, is that two groups can both be victims of discrimination but only one deserves our sympathy and the protection of law while the other deserves our censure because its members are living in "sin." In the African-American case racist bigotry is rightly condemned and its flagrant expression considered immoral and often illegal. But what can LaBarbera say against bigotry directed at LGBT people? At best he must be ambivalent about it, or at worst supportive. After all, if prejudice as an expression of social coercion, or even full-breasted hate, prompts a gay guy to change his "sinful ways" or at least feel guilty about them, how bad can it really be?
LaBarbera's opinions have a very troubled pedigree. What's interesting and instructive and even creepy is that white racists in the past, claiming the mantle of Christianity, pointed to biblical passages about the "sons of Ham," etc. to justify slavery, condemn interracial marriage, and in general justify their racism. These precedents should be an embarrassment for LaBarbera, who, as an heir to such racists, routinely considers LGBT people fair game, grist for the mill, for the same selective use of biblical passages when he attacks their struggle for legal equality and social acceptance.
We have to make sure that the Peter LaBarberas of the world are, and are perceived to be, as much on the wrong side of history as those bible-quoting racists of the past were.
ROGER FRASER
International Campaign to Stop Executions in Iran
Our Iranian friends in the Iranian Queer Organization (www.irqo.net) have asked people around the world to sign an on-line petition protesting the continuing use of the death penalty against gays and others in their country. Given the current threat of a United States military attack on Iran, we strongly suggest that those signing from the U.S. also say in the "comments" section that they very much oppose such an attack. To sign the petition, please go to:
June 29, 2008 - Gay Pride Parade 2008 - California Great Bear Republic Resurrected in the Midwest - Anti-Gay Fascists Successfully Confronted at Chicago Gay Pride Parade
"Formed in response to three September '98 anti-gay bashings in the "Boy's Town" neighborhood…[we] respond to all serious hate crimes, no matter which scapegoated group is targeted. We will actively seek out and work with individuals and organizations in other communities to assist them in responding to hate crimes that target them. Only by the active involvement of grass roots people from all communities can we isolate the bigots and thus lessen hate crimes."
-- from the GLN/CABN founding statement
Gay Liberation Network
(formerly Chicago Anti-Bashing Network)
a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Direct Action Group
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