This has been such an exciting week because the Federal court struck down the gay marriage ban (aka Prop 8) in California. This is a huge victory for Gay Rights in the state of California, and also for the entire country. Even-though the ruling was made in a California court by a California Judge, it still sets legal precedence. And legal precedence can be used and cited in any state, and even in a Federal court. Right after I got the good news, I stumbled upon a short youtube clip taken from one of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches. Call it fate or serendipity or a sign from a higher power, but either way, this wasn't just a random coincidence. It was very clear to me that I was meant to share it with my blog readers and frame it in the proper context so even those that have opposing views, can still see the logic in my argument.
I've heard this speech hundreds of times, and yet I still get chills every time I listen to it. I'm posting this video because I see a very present correlation to the fight for gay rights that's going on in this country right now. I think it's very sad that many of my fellow African Americans fought so hard for racial equality, but still can't see the injustice in denying equal rights to the GLBT community. I know there are some people that feel uneasy or even offended whenever the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's gets compared to the present day Gay Rights movement. And I'm sure some of those people would consider it complete heresy to even associate Dr. Martin Luther King with anything having to do with Gay Rights. If that's your belief, then fine... you're entitled to form your own opinion (even if that opinion is a product of ignorance perpetuated by hate and cloaked in intolerance lol). I'm not saying that one movement has a greater social relevance than the other because comparing the hardships of each is irrelevant. Although we've made huge progress on the road to racial equality, we're still not there yet. And the fight for Gay Rights has a long and hard road ahead that we must travel. I strongly believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would be a great ally to the GLBT community and would fight right along with us.
I challenge anyone who reads this, to watch the short clip, and then honestly tell me that they can't see the connection and how it can apply to the Gay Rights movement.
"The Mormon Proposition" details in devastating fashion the efforts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to help pass the 2008 California ballot measure that defined marriage as solely consisting of a union between a man and a woman. Writer/Co-Director Reed Cowan's film reveals a disturbing truth of the increasing overlap between church and state. This documentary is extremely well done and at times it even brought me to tears (which is EXTREMELY rare). I wish I could get every person in this country to watch this amazing documentary. I thought I knew everything that went on with proposition 8, but this film exposed a lot of new & shocking information that left me speechless. If this film doesn't move you, then you have to be a soleless heartless pitiful sociopath incapable of any human emotion... or a practicing Mormon (I'm only being facetious here, so please no hate mail).
The legal battle to declare Proposition 8 unconstitutional is currently underway, which means the ending to this story has yet to be written. Will we write an ending of triumph and redemption, or will we continue this story of intolerance and hate?
President Obama spoke at a White House reception marking GLBT Pride Month on June 22, 2010. I know some of his campaign promises concerning gay rights are taking a little longer than we would like, but I have absolute faith that he is going to fulfill every promise that he's made to the GLBT community. Watching this speech gave me chills at times because I realize just how close we are to equal rights and total equality, and I realize how monumental it is to have a sitting president publicly announce his support for ending ALL gay & lesbian discrimination. This president understands that religious ideology has no place in a democratic government. I hope and pray that, that type of government ended with George Bush, never to be seen or heard from again.
For more info about issues concerning GLBT rights, please visit the sites below:
It's been a while since I've written a blog about something personal in my life. Here lately politics have consumed most of my attention, therefore my writing has shown that. But as I sit here in my room at 6am taking advantage of the quiet calm that dawn has presented me, I begin to reflect upon my personal relationships and how I interact within these relationships. The genuine connections I have with my family and close friends have always been extremely important to me. But being gay and closeted for my entire life up until I was 19 or 20 effected those relationships, and what parts of my personality I felt comfortable sharing with them. I loved and desperately needed these people in my life, and I thought if they knew who I really was then I'd lose them. So I learned how to compartmentalize different aspects of my personality and modify those characteristics that I thought might expose my secret. I became really good at analyzing people to figure out who they wanted me to be and what attributes they felt the most comfortable with. So in my head I thought that's who they wanted me to be, so in-turn I would try and portray that when I was around that person. After doing that for almost my whole life, I began to question every single thing about me and my personality. What was real and what was an act. After struggling with who I am and wrestling with self-hatred for all those years, somehow I finally found the courage admit to myself and to my friends that I was gay. I was so blessed to have amazing friends in my life that genuinely love and accepted me unconditionally. They have no idea how big of a role their acceptance played in making me feel good about myself for the first time in my life. Without Shante Mika and Jessie, I might be dead right now... no joke. Then about 4 years after I came out to my friends, my family finds out. I won't get into how they found out, but I will say it wasn't a pleasant situation, and probably one of the darkest periods in my life thus far. So after that pretty much everyone in my life knew about my sexuality, then there was no need for me to be so guarded, scared, and cautious anymore. I could just be me... right? Well that's what I thought at first, but things aren't like that at all. Let me explain: After building a personal relationship with someone throughout your whole life, you and that particular person have created a certain rapport with each other. The familiar way you two interact is what makes your relationship comfortable, so that's what you come to expect from that person. So now that I'm not closeted anymore, I don't feel comfortable putting on that act. So my relationships with those people becomes a huge dilemma. I don't know how to be "me" around them. I can feel that they're uncomfortable with my sexuality because they don't want to acknowledge it or talk about it. They want me to be the person they are use to, but they don't understand that that person wasn't me. So because of all that, I just try and keep my distance. I don't want to give them the chance to reject me. This is the case with a lot of my family right now (most, but NOTall). I have no idea how to act around them.
I'm not sure if I articulated my thoughts and feelings clearly in this post, but I hope that whoever reads this will get some kind of understanding out of it. This is a hard situation to put into words because there's so much emotion behind it. Maybe I'll do a video blog later on to try and explain things a little better. If you did pick up on the point I was trying to get across, then leave me a short comment or a private message to let me know.
Today I feel so very sad, tired, and somewhat defeated. My initial outrage and anger (that I felt when I first became aware of Uganda's gay death penalty bill) has slowly turned into angst on the cusp of despair. I grew up in a very rural extremely small White town in the south right in the heart of "The Bible Belt", so I'm very well aware of the homophobia that exist in most conservative and Christian households here, so I'm not at all naive about their beliefs and opinions about gays. I usually just chalk-it-up to ignorance, and continue living my life as open and honest as I can. I've always believed that my character as a person who happens to be gay, is a lot more effective in changing the minds of those that are homophobic, way better than any magazine article, movie, argument, debate, march, or protest can. By knowing someone who's gay, they can see them as a person with the same hopes and dreams as they have, and not just an issue to be for or against. But when I learned that an American "Christian" evangelical group were going back and forth to Uganda to aide them in committing the worst human rights atrocity in my lifetime, I began to lose my faith in the goodness of man and doubt the compassion and love in Christianity. I know this particular situation with Uganda involves only one of many religious organizations and/or churches, but I feel that a majority of those groups and churches share equal blame in this. By not speaking out against an injustice of this magnitude, it makes them culpable. The few that have came out with public statements are choosing their words very carefully so they can appear sympathetic to the gay community without admitting that their homophobia indirectly contributed to the creation of this "kill the gays" bill. The only thing that frustrates me just as much as homophobia is unacknowledged and/or unaddressed hypocrisy. And these people are pushing both buttons at once.
While I was reading the latest developments about this story, searching different blogs and established print media (on the web); I stumbled upon something that switched my anger into utter despair. I noticed that a majority of the comments that were left on all the African American targeted blogs were siding with Uganda's attempt to execute gays. That just blew me away. I really didn't expect that amount of hatred from my own race. A race that I'm proud to be a part of, a race that has first hand knowledge of how oppression and violent injustice feels. I just don't understand... why, or how this came to be. I would of never guessed that my race would ever under any circumstances, take on the role of the oppressor. I just can't get my head around that one. I've tried and tried and tried to make sense of it all, but disappointingly, it turns into a contest of futility. If I can't convince my own race to change and see things rationally, then what chances do I have to convince a whole country.
Out of all the arguments, articles, books, pundit sparring, cable news segments, and verbal jousting for and against Gay marriage; no one has captured and conveyed the thoughts and feelings of frustration from the Gay community better than MSNBC's Keith Olberman. I'm a loyal viewer of his show, but somehow this clip got by me. It was taken from a show he did a couple months back right after California passed Prop 8. His heartfelt plea was just as eloquent as it was profound. Watch and see for your self:
Here's a clip that exposes the hypocrisy of denying basic human rights from Gay & Lesbian couples. It takes the logic and arguments from the anti Gay marriage movement, and uses it against them. Before I watched this video, I had never thought about it that way. But, it makes perfect sense. See for yourself and let me know if you agree.
As I watch what's going on in our country played out in every current form of media you can think of, I began to see something in the human spirit that's very dark, evil, and innately insecure. Proposition 8 in California is a bill that says marriage can only be defined as one man and one woman, which basically says that if you're gay and you and your partner want to enter into matrimony, you're out of luck. I've struggled for years and years trying to understand what makes people want to persecute, oppress, and exclude their fellow human beings for not believing as they believe, or hate people because their skin pigment is different from theirs. It's amazing to me that they see nothing wrong with this. Throughout history, this same type of evil has occurred over and over again... but we've learned absolutely NOTHING from it. Nothing at all. I'm 100% sure that this gay marriage ban will be looked at as a major injustice years, maybe even decades from now. It will be seen in the same light as slavery and the holocaust. But I'm here now... we're living in the time we're living in. Sure time will bring us justice, but we don't have to wait. We've seen this same story play out a million times, and it all ends in the same way. With all of our knowledge, and with our ability to reach and communicate, and share ideas with people all over the world, we are still just as ignorant as those slave owners were in 1654, just as ignorant as Hitler and Nazi Germany was in 1933, just as ignorant as those who took part in the Salem witch trials in 1692, just as ignorant as those who supported segregation during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950's, just as ignorant as those who supported apartheid in South Africa in 1948. We learned all of this in 3rd grade. There are countless movies, books, articles, and documentaries about every one of those events... but for some reason, we're not connecting the dots. So I ask a very simple question. WHY? Some of you may say religion bears most of the blame, but I think it's a lot deeper than just religion. I believe human insecurity is the root of it all. Insecurity is a dark, evil and dangerous emotion that can cause humans to do horrible and terrible things to each other. Insecurity defies any and all logic. Insecure people feed off of each others negative energy. For some reason, they crave the feeling of superiority. They have to exclude and opress anyone that's unlike them, in order to feed that craving. They seek out "easy targets", and use whatever amunition they can find, to justify their sick behavior (like religion). Then it snowballs from there into something ugly and evil because they don't realize that negativity will never fill that void of insecurity. It boggles the mind that these so called religious leaders and organizations are spending their time and money and focusing their attention on the personal lives of two consenting adults that are in love and want to get married, and happens to be of the same gender. Who I love and who I marry, has nothing to do with them. My right to marry will in no way affect any aspect of their life. With everything that's going on in the world like famine, homelessness, desize, etc., why would they want to focus on what two consenting adults do in their personal life. They have to see the hypocrisy of it all. Nobody is that dumb. I guess I'll call it "willful-ignorance"... and I call them DUMB ASS IGNORANT ASSHOLES. Legal gay marriage will happen sooner or later anyway, so let's fast forward through all this bullshit, and accept the inevatible.
Visit www.whiteknot.org for more information. This country just elected it's first African American president. If we can do that, we can do anything.
I know I said I wouldn't get too political on this blog (which is supposed to be a lighthearted look into pop culture), but I feel this issue is important enough to veer into the world of politics just this one time. I feel justified in doing this because the line dividing pop culture from politics seem to be disappearing currently anyway (sign of the time we live in I guess).
I'm perplexed over President Obama's choice of Pastor Rick Warren to do the invocation at his inauguration. Here's a little back-story about Rick Warren: He's an evangelical preacher with a HUGE following. He has very outspoken anti-gay views. Earlier this year he lead the charge to pass proposition 8 in California, which repealed an earlier judicial decision to legally recognize gay marriage in that state. This homophobic bigot has also equated homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality in numerous interviews and sermons. Despite all this, his church boasts having the 3rd largest congregation in the US with a seating capacity of 3,500. He built a $20 million dollar student ministry facility called the Refinery. It houses the middle school (Wildside) and high school (HSM) consisting of nearly 1,500 students. He is most famously known for a book he wrote called "The Purpose Driven Life" which has sold over 20 million copies, becoming one of the best selling non-fiction books of all time. That's what makes this man so dangerous to anyone that believes in civil rights, and the separation of church and state. He's not some lone backwoods nutcase living out in the woods somewhere in West Virginia. He's an opportunistic religious leader with the ear of white middle America. Whenever I would hear people talk about how polarized this country is, I really didn't give it much thought. I chalked it up to media hype, and republican spin... but this whole situation with Rick Warren opened my eyes to a dark and glib reality. There's a huge force of Christian Evangelicals that are growing in number as we speak. They want to impose their beliefs and way of life on everyone living in the US. And they think anyone that's not straight white and Christian doesn't deserve any rights or protection under this government. I'm sure I made my opinion of Pastor Warren very clear. So you might ask, what am I perplexed over? I obviously disagree with this man, and his perversion Christianity... so you'd think I'd be 100% against and strongly opposed to Obama choosing him to speak at his inauguration? ...right? Well, not exactly... and here's why:
When Obama announced his decision to run for president, I really didn't know much about him. I knew he was a Senator, and I remembered what a great speech he gave during the Democratic convention back in 2004 when John Kerry was running. Other than that, I didn't know a thing about this man or his beliefs. The more I found out about him, and the more I found out about his politics, I instantly switched my whole attitude about politics from absolute cynicism, to energized optimism. I made it my business to do anything I could to help this man get in office. I happily volunteered at the local Democratic office every chance I got. I wholeheartedly believe in this man and his ability to lead this country in the right direction. When Obama won the election, he said something that made a whole lot of sense, and it was so simple and so true, it made me think why haven't I heard this before from any politician. He said that although a majority of America cast their vote for him, he still had a great number of Americans that voted the other way. He then went on to say that he's not going to be President to just the "blue states" and all who voted for him, but all of America. He said he wanted his office to be as inclusive and diverse as our country is. That means that we need to listen to those we agree with, as well as the ones we disagree with. That's what a true democracy is supposed to be. We're still extremely polarized in this country, but ignoring a particular group just gives them more power and more of a reason to separate themselves from us. In a way it legitimizes their cause. So even-though I don't agree with Pastor Rick Warren, he has very strong influence with middle America. And the way our economy is looking, we can't afford to ostracize anyone.
I think we need to change the way we look at politics. We're so use to the "status quo", of how our government and elected officials operate, that we think that is the way it should be done. For instance, everyone has made such a big deal over Obama's staff choices. He has women, men, Democrats, Republicans, Blacks, Whites, Asians, etc etc. He's picking the people that he thinks are best qualified for whatever position. Previous Presidents have always picked only staff members from their political party, and family members, and even people that they owe a favor to. We've seen this happen that way for so long, that we're blinded to the ugliness of it.
Ok, there's my "two cents" (lol). In conclusion, I strongly disagree with all of Pastor Warren's religious and political views, but I think President Obama made a wise choice in choosing him. He's reaching out to a huge Evangelical community, and showing them and all Americans a lesson in love and togetherness.
