Does Mormon Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Practice Human Sacrifice?

(Bloody human sacrifice in Ancient Mexico, that may, or may not, be just like the human sacrifices that the Mormons, may, or may not, perform; 16th-century illustration from a Codex).

"When this sign and portent was first seen, [they] were overcome with terror, weeping and shouting and crying out...These shouts and cries were accompanied by sacrifices of blood and of human beings, for this was their practice whenever they thought they were endangered by some calamity." — Not a quote from the Book of Mormon but from The Broken Spears, The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla

"The messengers went to the [temple]...The two captives were then sacrificed before his eyes: their breasts were torn open and the messengers were sprinkled with their blood. This was done because the messengers had completed a difficult mission: they had seen the gods...they had even conversed with the gods!" — Not a quote from Mormon Elder Brigham Young, but another from The Broken Spears

It was almost fifteen years ago that I was initiated into the religion of Santeria; it was a life-changing event, and though I am no longer really active in the religion I am ever grateful for the blessings and changes it brought to my life. As most everybody knows, Santeria is notorious for including the widely misunderstood practice of animal sacrifice. In truth, animal sacrifice is a somewhat disguised component of most of today's religions including the big three Abrahamic faiths, but it's usually considered something prettier and less controversial, like Easter dinner or Passover. Without going into it at great length, the offering of animals in Santeria is most definitely not an exercise in macabre animal cruelty, it's a respectful ritual act that connects worshippers with the mysteries of the life force in a graphic experience of communion. In most cases, though not all, the animals are cooked and eaten, just like that lamb you eat for Easter. It's definitely a challenging part of the religion for those of us who grew up around store-packaged meat, but it ultimately teaches humanity and the sacredness of life. No cute kittens — or human babies — are harmed. It's not some antisocial or Satanic worship of death and gore (and please note Satanism is a subset of somebody else's religion, and that would be Christianity), and despite the occasional slanderous B-movie or tabloid exposé, Santeros most certainly do not sacrifice people.

Anyway my initiation ceremony was a beautiful and transformative thing, altering my consciousness and the way my spirituality is wired like nothing else I have experienced. Two of the priestesses there were elders in the religion, a lesbian couple who I'll call R & R. One was Puertorican, the other non-Hispanic of Jewish ancestry. They were knowledgeable and experienced priestesses, and also very generous and giving people. New initiates are especially encouraged to visit the homes of elders in the religion during their first year, when they're walking around clothed in a protective and identifying total white. R & R were wonderfully welcoming to me; especially considering my own status among the small minority of non-Hispanic white people drawn to what is fundamentally a religion of the African diaspora.

It was probably at one of their ocha birthdays that we were all sitting around their living room in Manhattan. R & R were discussing a recent vacation. They had been out west, I think to Vegas with a side trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. They were regaling us with their visit to the huge Mormon Temple there. I don't remember which of these two Santeria priestesses, expert at the handy dispatch of a chicken, was doing most of the talking: "And we saw the altar! You know beneath that altar is where they do the secret human sacrifices." A hush went over the room. "Really. They do them right there! Oh they don't admit it, but everybody knows they do it." The other priests and priestesses in the room shook their heads and clucked their tongues. "How horrible!" everybody agreed.


(Above is the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City where Mitt Romney may, or may not, conduct his human sacrifices, if he performs them, which he may not.)

Two of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates are Mormons, one the allegedly moderate Jon Huntsman competing for last place; the other tabula rasa trojan horse not-so-moderate Mitt Romney competing for first. And it turns out that more people than my Santeria priestess friends think the Mormons have a human sacrifice problem. If you go to google and start typing "Mormon human", right after the prompt for "Mormon humanitarian efforts" pops up the prompt "Mormon human sacrifice."

It turns out that Evangelical Christians, a base of today's extremist Republican party, do not consider Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, actual Christians. And very many of them think the Mormon Church is up to no good at all. Researching this post I found websites devoted to accusing the Mormons of being the Illuminati, Freemasons, Kabbalistic Jews, Satanic homosexual child abusers, Jehovah's Witnesses, and, of course, Satanic sacrificers of human children.

I would say that the Mormons, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and the Republican party saddled with candidates that its base doesn't trust, have a big, big problem. Would you want your child to be kissed by Mitt Romney if you were worried he would afterwards snatch it up and hurl it onto an altar of blood-letting? I mean, hey, Wikipedia might explain that the doctrine of blood atonement doesn't mean modern Mormons have anything to do with something as bizarre as human sacrifice, but sites like "Real Mormon History" shout "Holy Murder" begging to differ.

So what's the truth?

Well, you know there's an old saying: you made your bed now you lie in it.

I actually know some former Mormons who regret the church's repressive nature, but who remember their childhoods in the church, or their missionary year, with some fondness. Of course most of the gay former Mormons I know don't look back with anything less than a certain anger. There's a movie I heartily recommend called "Brigham City," that is a small-town crime story made by a Mormon director that is tremendously touching and humanizing. You come away watching this film getting something profound about the nature of community that seems to be of deep spiritual importance for Mormons. It's a beautiful film. It helped me to respect the many mysterious ways that spirit calls to people: some are called to religions that outsiders don't get. I don't challenge that at all; spirit is a beautiful and mysterious thing. I don't challenge anyone's right to follow a spiritual path of his or her own calling, including LDS Mormonism. I don't want my religious practices to be judged unfairly, and I can understand Mormons not wanting theirs to be judged unfairly either.

But here's what else I know: the Mormon Church has spent an untold fortune trying to deny the civil rights of lesbians and gays. They sunk an uncountable fortune into the at least temporarily successful effort (Prop 8) to repeal marriage equality in California. They are widely believed to be one of the main bankrollers of the anti-gay hate group NOM, "The National Organization for [sic] Marriage," that has quite successfully derailed marriage equality in a number of states. The Mormon church, as an organization, is hateful and bigoted: and like many Evangelical Christian churches and the Catholic church, doesn't understand or respect the difference between secular law and church law. The Mormon church and its allies are actively trying to deny equal rights to gay people....to match religious principles that people outside that church don't share. That is simply unforgivable: the separation of church and state should be absolute and inviolable.

Mitt Romney may be an former east-coast governor and alleged social moderate, but he is 100% behind his church's efforts to deny civil rights to lesbians and gays. He's also a sworn enemy of a woman's right to choose, and of family planning. His politics on the subject of marriage equality are no different than right-wing freakshows Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann. His views on immigration are horrible: he supports walling off the U.S. from Mexico (of course in true hypocritical fashion he's also reputed to have hired cheap undocumented workers to mow his lawn). Mitt Romney may or may not actually engage in human sacrifice — I wouldn't know the man, um, from Adam — but he certainly wants to sacrifice the rights of some Americans on the altar of his religious beliefs, and that is deeply, deeply troubling.

Is voting for people who want to deprive some Americans of their rights any worse than voting for people who might, or might not, secretly kill babies?

The evidence suggests that the idea that Mitt Romney and other Mormons are actively committing blood sacrifice of children or adults in the secret inner sanctuaries of their temples is nothing more than a crazy and delusional paranoid conspiracy theory, based on the all-too human tendency to demonize that which one does not understand. But hey, what do I know? They want to deny me civil rights, so maybe they do have a taste for human blood or maybe they don't. Maybe if their church joined the civilized world of respect for civil rights people wouldn't question their secret motivations.

Hey Mitt Romney, kiss my baby! You'll give it back, right? Right? As long as it's not gay?

(Any longtime readers will recognize part of this post is a retelling of a tale I told four years ago, during the last presidential cycle).

Love Triumphs.

I'll write about Islamophobia tomorrow. Today, love triumphed. Above, one of the first gay couples to get married today in New York City. God, am I gonna cry every time I look at my own blog now? (More pictures at Gawker, where I found this one.)

NY State Victory: Divorce Equality!

In a brilliant display of political maneuvering, and a stunning defeat for anti-gay bigots, New York's governor Cuomo succeeded last night in getting a marriage equality passed in the state's Republican-controlled State Senate. The previous governor had been unable to get a similar bill through two years ago when the State Senate was controlled by Democrats; this year's effort involved a massive behind the scenes push from marriage equality advocates, and the addition of somewhat redundant language that absolutely positively guaranteed religious institutions could hang on to bigoted practices if they so desired. Cuomo signed the bill into law almost immediately upon its passage.

Despite the massive lobbying efforts of hateful organizations like the National Organization for [sic] Marriage and New York's wretched Conservative Party, and despite rallies organized by bigoted religious fundamentalists (including one led by the lone Democratic Senate opponent Ruben Diaz, who is also a Pentacostal preacher), the bill passed with a several-vote majority: four brave Republicans bucked their party line and crossed over to support it. The NOMbies and their ilk tried again to inflict their backward beliefs and questionably selective interpretation of religion on our secular society and failed. Thank God decent people with a greater respect for the law and a more loving spiritual/religious philosophy prevailed.

And all of this on the Friday of Gay Pride Week, two days before one of the world's largest lesbian and gay pride parades takes to the streets of Manhattan. It's certainly something to celebrate, even if it's a local victory. This makes only six states where marriage of same-sex partners is recognized, and federal laws like DOMA and numerous state constitutional bans on marriage equality make anti-gay statutes still the law of the land as a whole.

According to friends, the streets of the Village were full of celebration last night, even though the uber-gentrified neighborhood is the shadow of the gayborhood it once was: only investment bankers and celebrities can afford to live there these days. I'm looking forward to more street partying tonight, and to a triumphant pride parade tomorrow. But as real and joyful as this victory is, I feel called to qualify the celebratory tone.

While as long as the marriages of straight people are recognized and legally advantageous, it's only just that the marriages of gay people be treated equally under the law. But what about that institution of marriage? Those of us of a certain age can remember a time when marriage was rightfully derided as a outdated relic of the past. Its origins as a tradition are not actually in the glorification of love or the holy sanctification of family relationships, but in a bourgeois property relationship where women were turned into the property of men.

And for many of us, a fairytale picture of marriage as the pinnacle of human fulfillment does not jibe with reality. My parents divorced after fifteen or so years of marriage before I was ten. My mother's second marriage lasted a little over a year; and my father once described his second marriage as an "on-again off-again" thing. My father's father divorced my father's wife when he (inaccurately) questioned my father's paternity. My mother and my grandmother were both forced to retool their lives completely upon finding themselves single. While my mom worked when she was married, she had to find a new career that would support the two of us independently. My grandmother was forced to find work in the mid-1930s, no easy feat. And yet despite hardship and disappointment, I don't think either my mother or grandmother would have described their lives as lesser for having spent the greater parts of their lives unmarried.

Closer to home and modern times, I love my boyfriend very much and feel very lucky to be with him for the six or so years we've been together, but our relationship is what we make of it: I'm not sure how recognition by the state would change its trajectory or legitimize our intimacy.

It's not that I'm heartless: I've read those stories of many-decades-long gay partners finally being able to marry with a tear in my eye. During the brief period when marriage equality was the law in California, lesbian activist pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were able to marry in 2008 after being a couple for fifty-six years, a few months before Del Martin passed on at the age of 87. And yet I wonder what are the ramifications of the gay movement, which once described itself as the "gay liberation movement," now aiming at the much more earthbound target of equality through marriage rights.

As I recently wrote, I grew up knowing I was gay. I never fantasized about getting married. Since I was never interested in meeting "the right girl," that ritual held no power for me. While the times I have been single I usually longed for a steady relationship; but what I longed for was companionship and intimacy and deep friendship, not a ceremony of bells and lace, and not a piece of paper from the government. How will little gay boys in the future grow up? Will they feel unfulfilled if they're not married in white by their early twenties? And what about our new gay divorcees? Will gay people get married too often? Everybody thinks straight people who get married and divorced too often are losers. How will that change gay male culture, where promiscuity and serial monogamy seem more accepted as alternatives to life-long commitment?

There's a collective of queer activists called "Against Equality." While I don't endorse their views as a whole, I think they ask provocative, important questions. Here's an excerpt from their statement on marriage:

"When it comes to gay marriage, the times, they are a-confusing. For instance, we recently overhead some people extolling the virtues of marriage, and how it allowed them to finally join in family gatherings as respectable married people, instead of skulking in as shamefully unmarried partners. They reminisced about the joys of being able to walk up to coworkers and introduce their husbands, the sparkle of their wedding rings legitimizing their socially sanctioned and forever-to-be unions....

Gay marriage apes hetero privilege and allows everyone to forget that marriage ought not to be the guarantor of rights like health care. In their constant invoking of the “right” to gay marriage, mainstream gays and lesbians express a confused tangle of wishes and desires. They claim to contest the Right’s conservative ideology yet insist that they are more moral and hence more deserving than sluts like us. They claim that they simply want the famous 1000+ benefits but all of these, like the right to claim protection in cases of domestic violence, can be made available to non-marital relationships.

We wish that the GM crowd would simply cop to it: Their vision of marriage is the same as that of the Right, and far from creating FULL EQUALITY NOW! as so many insist (in all caps and exclamation marks, no less) gay marriage increases economic inequality by perpetuating a system which deems married beings more worthy of the basics like health care and economic rights."

It's food for thought. Marriage equality is an important social victory, but when it turns to divorce equality, perhaps we should remember that civil rights and the liberation and fulfillment of human spirit are not equivalent. What is that prize we're keeping our eyes on, anyway?

(That art above is a quick ten-minute Photoshop cut and paste job by me, courtesy of Google images and modern technology. That's Barbie's Change-of-Heart Ken and Marx's Sam Cobra tying the rainbow ribbon!)

If You Don't Support Gay Marriage, Don't Get Gay Married!

Last year in a landmark case in California, two well-known lawyers were hired to sue the State of California to overturn Proposition 8, a ballot measure banning marriage equality (poorly called "gay marriage" or "same-sex marriage"). The judge in the case, Vaughn Walker, ruled against Prop 8; it later turned out that the judge himself was gay. Today a judge threw out an attempt to void Judge Walker's ruling made by right-wing bigots who claimed Walker had a conflict of interest.

I followed the Boies-Olsen case that overturned Prop 8. Despite today's ruling, it returns to the legal limbo of appeal, so it's not likely that marriage equality will return to California immediately. It's even possible that the case will find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. But what's fascinating about the Boies-Olsen case against Prop 8 is how thorough and methodical it was. The opponents of allowing gay people the same civil rights that straight people have rely on quick soundbites to make their case. When challenged to actually defend their case in a court of law, it turns out they don't have one. It's worth tracking down some of the summaries of the case from last year. Because one by one, the Boies-Olsen team calmly and coolly destroys every argument made by people who are shown in the end to be basing their arguments solely on their own bigoted notions. And while American law allows people to hold bigoted notions, even proclaim them loudly and freely in church or the public square, it does not allow them to hold bigoted notions over actual civil rights. Well, at least in theory.

This is why the right wing organizations like the detestable National Organization For [sic] Marriage, or NOM, would like so desperately to squelch the California case: because for once it shows that all the emotional, misleading, and ultimately lying propaganda that they spew is so much dishonest cover for nothing that might actually provide a legal basis for the denial of gay couples their right to marry. The trial and its verdict showed that the religious-fundamentalist arguments of such people have no bearing on civil law. The trial basically stripped the bigots' lies bare. Which they hate, more than anything, being caught with all their fake love-the-sinner-I-don't-hate-anybody posturing exposed as nothing but the bigotry it is.

Here in New York we're allegedly one Republican state senator vote away from marriage equality. We've been down this path before, with sad and disappointing results, but this time the politicos swear we have a chance. Two Republicans and several conservative Democrats are allegedly already committed to vote yes. The new governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bloomberg have been applying pressure to legislators. Bloomberg, who bankrolled last year's Republican recapture of the State Senate, is now saying he'll donate to the reelection campaigns of any Republican legislators who vote in favor of marriage equality (NOM and the Conservative Party who endorsed racist horse-fucker Carl Paladino last year are threatening to unseat any such Republicans). Friday is apparently the deadline for a vote.

It would be nice to see marriage equality come to New York in June, marked as Lesbian and Gay Pride Month. A happy ending is not guaranteed: finding that last vote is gonna be difficult. And frankly, should anybody be voting on the rights of minorities? There's a certain injustice in that in and of itself. And how about the irony of the "small government" advocates many of the rightwingers claim to be here advocating that the government stand in the way of civil rights? Remember that to the teabaggers, "freedom" means doing what they say.

Anyway, cross your fingers.

NOM Inspires Simple Message: Death to Gays!

"The Solution To Gay Marriage" is death, according to this disgusting sign recently carried to an anti-marriage equality rally in Indianapolis sponsored by the so-called National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a fundamentalist Christian group that seeks to subborn U.S. civil law to biblical teaching. While this sign is not an official NOM sign, its call to lynch gays for seeking the civil right of marriage is crystal clear.

NOM is in the vanguard of rightwing organizations fighting efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. It's bankrolled by the Catholic and Mormon churches, and has poured millions of dollars into legal challenges in a number of states. But as the Prop 8 trial in California shows, despite all NOM's talk about only being interested in preserving the special nature of heterosexual marriage, it really comes down to sheer anti-gay hatred and bigotry. Now, with NOM on tour where all its supporters aren't so coached in the dainties of obfuscation and false logic, the masks are off and the hoods are on. This sign, evoking Old Testament law (the only one selectively remembered by this calibre of bigot), is the honest brutal logic of NOM's campaign.

So far NOM has failed to distance itself from this hateful grotesquery, just as the Republican party has failed to distance itself from the racist and xenophobic displays of their teabagging right flank. So much for that pitiful lie of compassionate conservatism.

(Photograph from Bilerico blog, thanks to JMG for the tip)

Echoes of a Past Life - Holes & Poles

The argument by right-wing fundamentalists -- and some not so right-wing ones -- that marriage should be the exclusive provenance of heterosexuals because of the fruitful nature of the one man + one woman pairing reminded me of this polemic I wrote back in my Pagan days. Pagans, I suppose that means Wiccans particularly, celebrate the holiday of Beltane on May Day with a enjoyably pastoral frolic in an open field: a tall pole, fastened with long colored ribbons, is implanted in the ground. Participants are lined up boy-girl-boy-girl in a circle around the pole, and holding the ends of the ribbons dance around it in a circular, weaving pattern, winding the ribbons down the length of the pole in an interlocking lattice and raising a whole lot of energy. It's enjoyable but insufferably metaphoric for the literal minded, and it becomes one of those unbearably Freudian exercises that my queer Pagan friends were always trying to figure out how to reclaim in a less overtly heterosexual manner.

It turns out that even though Paganism may seem like a left-of-center religion, that's not always the case. But as straight Pagans might find divine validation in this celebration of heterosexual union just as straight Christians find divine validation in Adam and Eve, the untidy presence of Adam and Steve seems to crash the party and suddenly the metaphor isn't so perfect. The response of the intolerant is to insist that everybody fall in line and end the discussion, casting out and condemning the parts of the equation that don't fit; hopefully the response of the rest of us is to check our assumptions and expand our understanding of the complexity of the human experience.

In retrospect I'm left asking a fundamental question about my argument: is fertility only the product of difference? I'm not sure I've gone far enough here in questioning that dualistic assumption. Anyway, here's the original article. It's another piece from Our Pagan Times, the newsletter of New York's open Pagan circle New Moon, and that's my sorry pseudonym.

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Holes, Poles & The God/dess
by Moonchild
from Our Pagan Times, Vol. 2 No 6 (#16), June 9992 [1992]

Last month in OPT, Beth Goldstein's article "Beltane and You: An Engendered Approach," examined and defended one form of traditional approach to celebrating Beltane with a May pole. In addressing the problem that this ritual might entail for non-heterosexual participants, the article posited that sex is one thing, beautiful in its diverse possibilities, and fertility--reproduction--is another, beautiful in its unique heterosexuality. In essence, that the heterosexual imagery of such a Wiccan maypole shouldn't prevent those who are not heterosexual from fully participating in and appreciating the meaning of such a ritual done in the "traditional" manner.

It is my opinion--and I recognize this is an opinion not held by all homosexuals--that the maypole ritual as practiced by much of the Wiccan community is a limiting view of sexuality and fertility; and that the Freudian excesses of such a maypole ritual are not only potentially heterosexist but deforming to the understanding of a profound cosmic truth.

I am an exclusively homosexual man. Although in part this has to do with what I like to do in bed, it far more has something to do with who I am. What makes me different from straight people is not only--repeat not only--that I like to rub genitals and mucous membranes in different combination than straight people, but a profound interpretation of my place in the cosmic picture. Simply put, the Goddess didn't breath this life into me to enable me to make babies. Sure, my sperm could presumably help make babies as well as any man's, and certainly there are many gay people who do parent children. But if we accept that the Goddess is immanent in all life, and that the key to The Mystery is within us, and my life is not about reproduction of babies, where does that leave me, and my kind, on Beltane? Certainly not celebrating someone else's potentials.

Beth's article defines the realm of sexuality as "Heterosexuality Homosexuality, Bisexuality, Autoeroticism and Psychodrama," and the realm of fertility and reproduction as the Sacred Fucking-for-Pregnancy of Male and Female. Yet for me, homosexuality is not merely a question of what one likes to do (or not do) with penises and vaginas, and certainly not the equivalent of masturbation or psychodrama (phone sex?). Perhaps most important of all, it is certainly not a choice, though the decision to express it may well be one. It is, rather, a life-shaping force.

Beth says that regardless of sexuality men and women can and should be able to take "traditional" roles on Beltane with no internal contradictions. I say that these "traditional" roles are, in fact, potentially insulting to lesbians and gays, and the product of a giant pole-in-hole metaphor run amok.

Fertility exists at the point of balance between the Divine Male and Female, between the light and the dark, the earth and the sky, the cosmic force and form. This fertility exists on all realms and planes from the merest physical reproduction to the sweep of the winds and brilliance of lightning to the magical mental spark that creates symphonies. The ability to create is the miraculous interplay of difference. The physical replication of bodies by the interplay of male and female is only one of billion fruits of this fertile possibility. With us, too, lies the ability to turn the inner differences all of us possess--which sometimes manifest as the inner maleness and femaleness--into a fertile dance of explosive power and creativity. What this means is that to choose, as a symbol, the particular miracle of heterosexual reproduction is to make, in effect, a political choice. And to make this choice is to potentially exclude others whose choices are shaped by different realities.

It may be that for certain desired effect such a choice is made. That is not a problem, if the making of that choices is stated. The problem arises when we begin to make that choice for others. Should we decided that Beltane celebrates strictly physical reproduction then our celebration needs to speak to each participant in a way that fills her or him with the Divine. The Freudian pole/hole thing of many modern Wiccans just doesn't work for me.

When we deal with each other as Pagan brothers and sisters in this grand and gorgeously motley brood, it is incumbent upon us to speak clearly of all possibilities. Those of us who are blessed with heterosexuality will find our gifts and use them, and sometimes to the exclusion of homosexuals. The same is true of those of us blessed with homosexuality, or the shades in between. The Goddess blesses us with a divine ability to mold our Pagan religious practices to be true to our own hearts, and this is indeed the duty of us all. But there are times and places to come together and find the common ground, and hopefully that is the space New Moon aspires to.

Hatred rules the day in New York

Marriage equality was voted down in New York State yesterday. I watched at work as heroic senator after heroic senator gave incredibly moving testimonials about why marriage equality ("gay marriage") should be passed. Only one senator had the guts to speak against it. Yet in the end, it wasn't even close, 38 opposed and only 24 in favor.

Here is one of the amazing courageous voices:


But somehow speeches like this one weren't enough to touch the hardened hearts of an apparent majority of politicians who love their hatred more than their constituents.

So gay people are good enough to pay these senators' salaries. Good enough to pay disproportionately high amounts of taxes that go from relatively rich downstate areas to relieve the bankrupt and backwards upstate areas. But not not enough to get the same civil rights that straight people enjoy. Not a single republican voted for the measure, and 8 democrats also opposed it, mostly from Queens here in NYC. Our corrupt republican Mayor Bloomberg -- who was just reelected with a lot of gay support -- claims to support marriage equality but gives hundreds of thousands of his own dollars to upstate republicans who oppose it is fully culpable here.

I have no plans to get married; I'm not sure it's the best choice of goals as a community. But this hurts. Hatred rules the day once more.

Why I won't be going to the October 11 March on Washington

Disappointed at President Obama's apparent failure to immediately fulfill many of his campaign promises in the sphere of LGBT rights, gay organizations have hastily coalesced around a new March on Washington for this October 11, 2009. The march is called "The March for Equality," and has been organized without the coalition-building and platform-exploration that marked the previous efforts. Although I proudly attended all of the previous national gay marches on Washington starting in 1979, I will not be attending this one.

Today, September 12, a right-wing white racist demonstration descended on Washington to express its opposition to President Obama. Below are three photos from this demonstration, which reportedly drew a hate-filled racist mob tens of thousands strong. In these photos, plain for all to see, are expressed shocking racism and ignorance, profound intolerance, and active calls for the violent overthrow of our first African-American president. I have neglected to post the photos that show signs saying things like "We came unarmed...this time" and "where's my gun."





The gay community has been drifting rightwards for some time. I don't know if it's the ill-advised campaign for marriage equality (which I support abstractly), or its surprising embrace of Hillary Clinton's more right-wing campaign during the democratic primary, but today's gay activists seem self-obsessed, narrow-minded, and strategically adrift.

I am disappointed that everything we hoped and prayed and voted for about Obama last year has come crashing into reality. The intensified war in Afghanistan, the difficulty of healthcare reform, economic recovery for the banks and corporations without recovery for regular people, and the failure of LGBT legislation to advance have all been wakeup calls about the strength of right-wing resistance to the will of the people expressed last November. In some of these spheres I disagree profoundly with Obama; but in others I cannot fault him.

The gay establishment has been quick to suggest Obama's failures on LGBT advancement are evidence of dishonesty and betrayal. Blogs have been filled with angry rants suggesting he is bigoted and beholden to right-wing Christians.

However, the summer of discontent over healthcare reform--frankly an issue I place in higher import over "DADT reform" (allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces--who the FUCK would want to do THAT!), ENDA (employment non-discimination), hate crimes legislation, or ending DOMA (the vile Defense of Marriage Act signed by Bill Clinton enshrining hatred of homosexuality into law)--has shown a massive not-yet-violent civil war waging in this country between the forces of white racist ignorance and right-wing reaction on one side, and the vast majority of regular people of all colors and sexual orientations on the other.

Now is not the time for the lesbian and gay community to take to the streets against Obama, effectively swelling the ranks of the wrong side of this social and cultural civil war. Although it might be argued that the demands of the October 11 march are not right-wing like the demands of this weekend's racist lynchmob dress rehearsal, I believe this distinction will be ultimately lost. I think it's also fairly guaranteed that the October 11 march will be overwhelmingly white, thus further edging the consciousness of a rightward drifting community away from what should be unifying themes of social justice.

After the tragic victory of Prop 8 in California, repealing marriage equality in that state, it was suggested that this defeat for gays was the "fault" of California's black population. While statistically later debunked, this notion has stuck in the white gay popular imagination. Obama's complex position at the time--clear opposition to Prop 8 combined with opposition to gay marriage in favor of full civil equality expressed as domestic partnerships--has confused gay activists.

Quite aside from these concerns I think this march is also not going to actually do any favors for its avowed agenda. I believe it was the last MOW I went to that was overwhelming dominated by the gay lobby group "Human Rights Campaign." The HRC is known for advocating for LGBT rights without ever using the words "gay" or "lesbian." NONE of their hundreds of thousands of placards for that last march mentioned our identity openly. HRC is assimiliationist in the worst way: seeing equality marked by the number of cocktail parties they're invited to. It is ironic that the people behind the current march initiated their plans with a posture of militancy and outrage. Now that their organization is under way, their sloganeering is equally timid and closeted, and their fundraising is marked by some peculiar efforts to stay within certain tax codes. While quite a few LGBT organizations have now issued paper endorsements of this October 11 MOW, I am not convinced that the force of the internets will be enough to replace the organizing efforts and grass-roots outreach that marked previous efforts. As a principal organizer of a failed potemkin-village mass demonstration for LGBT rights in 1984 (a story I will tell someday), I know that enthusiasm is not a replacement for organizing skill and vast numbers of ordinary people.

There are many battlefronts for gay activists: fighting marriage equality repeal attempts in the states where equality has been won, for example. At best the MOW is a diversion away from these, and at worst a massive misalignment of our community. I'm not suggesting that our community be silent about its own demands, but I am very clear that we must do so in manner with long-term strategic benefits.

If the Obama adminstration is defeated by the right-wing white mob with the assistance of the gay community, that mob will thank the gay community only briefly for its assistance before it offers us our own special kick to the curb.

Boy Crazy!

My pal Candy Samples is back with a new video and it's super hot! Jesse helped Candy and Allan write the song, and once again he and I are cast members. If you like the song, you can buy it on Amazon or iTunes!

There are some serious costume changes and the song is catchy as hell. Candy is now my favorite drag queen EVER.

Barack Obama For President

New York's primary in the 2008 presidential election cycle is part of "Super Duper Tuesday" on February 5. After much consideration, I have finally decided to cast my vote for Barack Obama on the Democratic Party ticket, and I urge readers to do the same.

It must be said right off that the Democratic Party is twin partner to the Republican Party, and as long as Americans are shackled to the good-cop-bad-cop routine with which these two corrupt bastions of American imperialism have enforced the will of the mlitary-industrial complex for the greater part of this country's history, we will be repeating an endless cycle of tragedy and disappointment, leading, eventually, to some disastrous collapse of self-avowed democracy to dictatorial despotism. However, someone will win the 2008 elections, and, however sad the fact might be, that person will not be cast up from the ranks of the righteous. That person will not even be a radical reformist in the mold of congressman Dennis Kucinich, nor a third-party critic like former Democrat Cynthia McKinney. That person will be a Democrat or Republican, and I believe that we are all better off--especially given the future composition of the Supreme Court--that that person be a Democrat. In a field of Democrats I believe the best choice is Senator Obama.

Barack Obama is not perfect. As for the global dominance of American capitalism and imperialism, from foreign interventionism including unquestioned bolstering of the State of Israel, to the ridiculous privatization of health and government services, to the tragic repressive waste that is so-called war on drugs, Obama's allegiance to the status quo is writ plainly and clearly. I do not argue that he is a revolutionary, nor even on the order of social heroes of the past who likewise shared a commitment to American capitalism despite their heroic challenges to the worst of American excess like the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

Sadly many of the reasons to vote for Obama are negatives. The biggest of these is to deter NY Senator and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. At this writing Clinton and Obama are engaged in a somewhat bizarre LBJ vs MLK role-playing exercise. If Obama is no MLK, Clinton is unfortunately all too LBJ-like, and that should concern anyone whose priority is the swift removal of US troops from Iraq. The ugly race-baiting spectacle, complete with rambling threats by the former president Clinton himself and somewhat bizarre faux-folksy calls for solidarity with the Clintons from millionaire founder of BET Bob Johnson, reminds me, for one, of the worst of the Clinton years. Having suffered through America's self-inflicted Bushite nightmare I worry we have remembered only the good parts of Clinton's era and not the bad.

Speaking of millionaires, born-again populist, former senator and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards also represents an acceptable alternative to four more years of the Clintons or Republicans, but currently it seems unlikely that his trajectory is anything other than downward.

As everybody knows Barack Hussein Obama is the child of a white American woman and black man from Kenya. His upbringing was anything but typical (for non-Hawaiians or non-Indonesians that is): growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He is a lawyer, and a veteran of something he calls community organizing in Chicago. While not in national office at the time, he vocally opposed the US attack on Iraq from the beginning. He can be an inspiring speaker. His calls for change and hope do seem genuine and refreshing, and while I'm not particularly interested in building bridges with Republicans, his promise to unify and heal the sectarianism of the recent past feels like something more than just another election-year political bromide.

Obama does not support gay marriage, and handled the appearance by gospel singer and arguably anti-gay preacher Donnie McClurkin at a campaign event clumsily. But at his appearance at that ground-breaking candidates forum sponsored by Logo months back, I felt what he did say in support of gay civil rights was heartfelt and less equivocal than Clinton.

Obama seems to genuinely oppose the war in Iraq, and seems to raise questions about the whole idea of the "war on terror." But he clearly does not oppose American intervention abroad. His critique of the war is not as solid as that of say, Kucinich, or even perhaps the now-dropped out of the race Eeyore candidate Governor Bill Richardson. But his opposition to the war seems much clearer than that of Senator Clinton, who I believe would prolong and deepen it, much like LBJ did back in the 1960s.

It's widely reported that African-Americans are concerned that Barack Obama is setting himself up for assassination. It's hard to argue with that. The deep deep racism of many white Americans would seem to virtually guarantee that Obama would become a target of violence at some point. One can only pray--and I guess I mean that literally!--that such a fear doesn't come to pass. But it's because of that racism that I think Obama offers the most hope for me.

Harold Washington was Chicago's first--and only, so far--African-American mayor. Chicago was and is segregated in ugly ugly ways. But Washington's tenure, cut short by a heart attack, changed Chicago, and changed Chicagoans, for the better, in ways both subtle and dramatic. While Condoleeza Rice proves there's nothing inherently better about having black faces in government, I believe that Obama offers us the kind of opportunity for fundamental change in attitude, a fundamental blow against racism, that Harold Washington wound up being in Chicago. Jesse Jackson was a flawed candidate, though I worked on his presidential campaign back in the 1980s; my first political steps outside the tiny world of sectarian socialism. Jackson proved to be too complex a figure, too unable to transcend his personal baggage. Al Sharpton was a flawed candidate, and despite the knee-jerk racist reaction he is met with by most white Americans, he made many principled and admirable stands; but his campaign never transcended that of an outsider, like today's Kucinich or Gravel. Racism didn't end with Harold Washington, and it won't end with Obama. Indeed the backlash will likely be ugly. But the hour is late, and every we step we take as a nation so dyed in the wool of racism out of this ugly caldron is a step toward our redemption.

It is unnecessary, I think, to engage in the fruitless argument over whether women or African-Americans have suffered more or are more deserving of fronting our attack against the Republican monstrosity. Let us look to the individuals offering to lead the charge and this time, the man of mixed racial heritage is my choice.

For the Republican machine must be defeated. Huckabee, a likable opponent of scientific reality, a gregarious foe of gays and non-Christians, as ignorant about foreign affairs as he is committed to his religious faith, offers the logical extension of Bush's evangelical champions and must be defeated. Giuliani, a dislikable bully and opportunist, is a would-be dictator, a fear-monger, and deeply, deeply corrupt, must be defeated. Romney, a slimy, corrupt and disengenuous opportunist, must be defeated. McCain, a doddering militarist, a veteran war criminal, and lapdog of the Republican establishment, must be defeated.

For all these reasons, you can hold your nose, you can cross your fingers, you can apply for an immigration visa to the country of your choice, you can stockpile arms in preparation for civil war, you can redouble your commitment to revolution or to spiritual purity, but the only choice for now, for this dismal reality, is to vote for Barack Obama for president. May God have mercy.

God save us from giuliani time

So republican presidential hopeful and would-be dictator of New York City Rudy Giuliani has threatened, in the words of a NYT letter writer, the American public with "voting for him or dying". Apparently despite the fact that 9/11 happened while republicans were in office locally and nationally, he thinks somehow the bumbling tragedy of Bush's Iraq war is actually preventing the so-called terrorists from attacking us again. Such a fool.

He has also now repudiated his own support of civil unions for gay couples. Saying some religious claptrap about marriage being a sacred bond between a man and a woman, this drag-wearing gasbag who has been married three times and cheated on all his wives somehow thinks he's more entitled to privilege than monogamous gay life partners. Such pandering to the backwards red-staters. Such bigotry and hipocrisy. Should American fools actually vote him into office they will deserve what they get.

It's somehow actually shocking to me that Republicans--and half the country, apparently--live in his dreamworld of lies, corruption and hipocrisy.
Me, I choose differently.