Same Sex Marriage

Will Clarence Thomas, speak, clear his throat or sit like a lump of coal waiting patiently for Scalia to whisper in his ear....

60% of people recently polled by ABC news say same sex marriage is okay in America. That same poll found that 80% of those under 30 support the idea. Those numbers should make it a done deal, right? Majority rules, right?

Well, not exactly. In the Land of the free, home of the brave, very few decisions are made by majority rule.

Proposition 8 and DOMA are before the United States Supreme Court today and despite the garbage rhetoric coming from FOX News, the Supreme Court is not a liberal court by any stretch of the imagination. If it was we wouldn't be stuck with last year's Citizens United ruling making corporations people.

For those of you who don't know, Prop 8 is the measure in California that revoked same sex marriage. DOMA stands for defense of marriage act. It was passed on the federal level back in 1996 and signed into law by a now repentant Bill Clinton. It says that marriage is only for men and women who marry each other. No boy-boy, or girl on girl unless its pornography for lesbian-loving straight men.

DOMA is like all those old sodomy laws that used to be on the books, outlawing oral or anal sex, but only gays and lesbians were charged and prosecuted. Straight couples doing exactly the same doggie style were never criminalized and cited, ever.

So today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments to overturn both laws. Actually one will be argued today and the other tomorrow. Regardless, it will make for an exciting week at the nation's highest court. Tickets to get inside were at a premium.

However, one ticket was scarfed up by a cousin of Chief Justice Roberts. Seems cuz is a lesbian and wants her big cousin to act like Ohio Senator Rob Portman and support his family. She says she wants to get married legally in the near future.

U.S. Supreme Court

Of course, no one has any idea what Chief Roberts is thinking, nor any of the other Associate Justices for that matter. Insiders will start guessing when they start asking questions during arguments.

Have to admit, I'm curious about how Justice Thomas will vote, especially since his own marriage to a white woman used to be illegal. Wonder if he will throw off his chains of servitude and vote like a proud Black man for a change.

The intellectual machinations of all the possible rulings in these two cases is mind boggling, so I'm just gonna pop some corn and wait for the outcome. I will say this, I don't see how the Court can frame this so narrowly that it won't take into account just how mobile our society is. In other words how can you make law that applies to one state but not another. I mean, if a couple is legally married in Omaha, they should also be legally married in Ohio, right?

It was like that in the interracial marriage ban, Loving vs Virginia. Once that law was struck down, it was made to apply to the whole country, not just Virginia. The same thing

should logically happen with Prop 8 and DOMA.

I honestly see it falling this way, Alito, Scalia and possibly Thomas will do what they always do. So will Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayer. I see Kennedy and Roberts as swing votes.

Open Note to Mitt Romney

Hey Mitt, “Thought You Said You a Bid-ness Man” 

Dude, I am totally and completely confused. You told us you was a bid-ness man and that we should vote for you because you know bid-ness and how to fix this economy and how to put us back to work.

So what, we supposed to do, take your word for it?

You been runnin' for president for damn near 10 years, and you've had this problem, whatever it is, since you were governor of Massachusetts. You didn't fix it in all this time and you want me to vote for you?

You want us to ignore the paper trail laid down by Bain Capital. You want us to ignore your record in the Massachusetts State House. You want us to pretend that your financials are in order based on a year of income tax returns.? 

 Are you really that arrogant and condescending to the rest of us that you think all you have to do is to tell us "no?"

C'mon man, you runnin' for president of the United States, not your local boy scout troop.

Where's the paper trail to prove your credit worthiness? You ain't even handin' out Vistaprint free bid-ness cards with your name on it, at this point in the campaign.

And then you send your equally clueless wife out to defend your actions on television and she proceeds to put both feet in her big mouth. “You People!?” Really? Sure she tells everybody how successful you are...how charitable you are to your church.....and we the people would see that if we looked at your financials.

Well, Homie, that is exactly what we tryin' to do....look at your financials...but you won't give em to us.

What kinda shit is that?

Okay, so you give to your church....good...great....but I got a problem with that too, seein' as how your church is the Mormon Church...the church that isn't sure if people like me are human and also was the major source of funding to keep same sex marriage from happening in California...you know that whole Prop 8 thing that's still going on out there.

Since you tithe to your church, I can only surmise that you are in favor of writing law discriminating against me and my people, the black ones as well as the gay ones.

Let me be totally honest with you, Mitt, I don't give a righteous damn about your lack of paper pushing skills. I don't really care about whether or not you hit the mark on your filings to the SEC.

What I care about is the complete and utter failure on your part to handle the peripheral bullshit surrounding your apparent ineptness to do the right thing. Why you got to lie?

If you can't handle the circus surrounding failure to release paperwork, paperwork that is done by nearly every other American citizen in some form or other, how the hell you gonna handle anything else that might crop up inside the Oval Office?

I mean, really, you're looking more and more Sarah Palinish every day that you allow this to drag on. I can almost see why Walnuts thought the snowbilly was a better choice for VP.

I saw one ad comparing you to Tricky Dick Nixon, but baby, don't flatter yourself...you ain't good enough to rate that comparison yet. Nixon was good.

You son, are inept, incompetent and completely in over your head.

You should consider dropping out of the race.

Another Crack in the Ole White Guy System

The Karmic corrections to the old white guy system of governance have come fast and furious this past week....

President Obama elevated a Black man, Charles F. Bolden Jr, to head NASA....He’s piloted the shuttle several times in the past....

Then a Black woman, Ursula Burns was tapped to run Fortune 500 company, Xerox....

Then Obama comes back again and nominates Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court..

She is Latina and the first to get the nomination....

This morning I listened as James Carville "debated" Ann Coulter about the nomination. It was little more than a snipe fest between two people who make their living playing a vanilla version of the dozens on television before a semi comatose audience.

During this pseudo-debate Coulter wondered aloud what the big deal was about Sotomayor being a Latina given the fact that the GOP already had appointed Latinos and Blacks to high office....

She failed to mention Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales by name....However she did mention Justice Clarence Thomas....

Failing to mention Gonzales points to the fact that even Republicans are embarrassed by this guy....

Otherwise Coulter would have jumped at the chance to bring him into the conversation...

And as for Thomas.....Bush’s third choice after the first two failed to pass confirmation....the man who stands firmly in the shadow of Justice Thurgood Marshall and has yet to offer so much as a thought without Justice Scalia’s approval......

Coulter should not have bothered to go there either since Thomas has lived his entire life hating the fact that he was born Black and demonstrates his self hate on every one of those very rare occasions where he opens his mouth to speak........

Thomas is not a source of pride for Blacks because he doesn’t see himself as Black...and neither do we....

I hope that Sotomayor gets a swift Congressional approval, she’s earned it.

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Prop 8 Stands

As much as I hate to admit it.....The California Court got it right....

They were never asked to decide about Gay marriage or a ban on such.....They were asked to make a very narrow decision involving legal semantics...

In other words....was the ban a revision or an amendment and who has the right...the people or the legislature...

That was the question....

The answer/decision was the people have the right to vote...

It never adjudicated the legality of gay marriage....That’s why the California Justices tried to have it both ways...upholding the ban....but allowing the 18,000 gay marriages to stand...

Like it or not...the Change is going to have to come from Washington...Until there is a federal move...the mismash of nonsensical state laws will prevail...

A two tiered system of civil rights laws cannot stand....it is simply unconstitutional....

It’s just a matter of time...

Smitherman vs the LGBT Community

I want to say up front that I am a "johnny-come-lately to this topic, basically because I have problems with both the LGBT community and the Black Community for the very reasons being debated, racism and homophobia.

I also have a problem with Mr. Smitherman...When he talks, I turn off, because I have yet to find him credible on any topic. I am mystified by his election to head the NAACP. I am mystified that so many others apparently find him to be a man worth following.

I found Jill Benavides comments after the meeting at City Hall to be patronizing, and condescendingly PC with regard to Smitherman. It was as if she were talking about a child. In other words..."let him have his temper tantrum, we love him anyway."

Having said all that......Let’s go there...shall we...

Nowhere on either side of this clueless conversation has the Black LGBT community been talked about or included in the conversation. Smitherman talked about his one white gay male NAACP member, as if having one represents all. That is the same way the white LGBT community talks about Blacks...you know..."some of my best friends are....."

The conversation that took place at City Hall obscures the fact that Black gays and lesbians are totally invisible in Cincinnati. And it’s like that across the country. Much of it due to the queer hatred within the Black community, in addition to the racism in the LGBT community

As Black people..we spend most of our lives being beaten up because of the color of our skin. It’s been a very difficult road to electing our first Black president. We have been killed for simply wanting to be treated equally. Laws were passed to make that happen, yet it’s still a problem in 2009, and you have only to look at two recent incidents of men, white men, killing their families and police for fear of a Black man in the White House.

You’ve got white governors talking of secession...that has got to be the ultimate in white flight..think about it...the same thing happens when a black family moves into a previously all white neighborhood...still....that’s not past history...that’s last week....

Now compound skin color with being gay or lesbian and you go from being beaten down on a national level to somebody, maybe your own brother, sister, mother, father, neighborhood, kicking your ass because you’re a sissy or you’re a bulldagger. You get tired of being a target, you get tired of being called names....for Black gays and lesbians...being called a nigger is not much different than being called queer or fag or bulldagger.

Trust me, you’re not going to run out and join the very community organizations that want you dead...

The white LGBT community doesn’t feel it’s racist, but it is no different, really than liberal whites who like using that.."some of my best friends are....." phrase. Blacks are not taken seriously within the LGBT community, usually being dismissed with a patronizing pat on the top of our fuzzy little heads, with a "thank you for coming...but we know better, what’s good for you..."

The prop 8 vote in California exposed the LGBT racism, when it was erroneously reported that Blacks were the reason it passed....Blacks gays and lesbians who took to the streets to protest the vote, were attacked by white gays and lesbians.....called niggers among other things....The white LGBT community has yet to apologize for their assumptions during that time...

Being Black gay and lesbian means you’re caught up between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Not feeling accepted by anyone can be a very lonely way to grow up and to live.

Smitherman and the NAACP need to realize that there have always been Black gays and lesbians active within his organization and the civil rights movement. What they need to do is to recognize that the NAACP and other Black organizations are also not inclusive organizations working for all Blacks.

There is no mention of the devastation of HIV/AIDS on the Black Community. In fact Smitherman as a straight man is probably more susceptible to getting the virus than any gay black man at this stage, not because he is gay or down-lo, but because Black straight women are the ones being infected at record breaking rates.

Black women are sleeping with down-lo men and taking the germ back to their straight boyfriends...

And why are men down-lo...because they stand to be judged not men, if they come out..being labeled soft is worse than being called a nigger in the Black community. Witness the death a couple of weeks ago of a 12 year old Black youth, who hanged himself, after being repeatedly called a fag at school.

Why was he called a fag, or labeled soft.....he liked school and his mother taught him to comport himself like a gentleman...he was not gay, by the way....just a clean cut little boy...dead...

It is killing our community...yet....I hear nothing from the NAACP about this massive problem. If the women die...who is going to bear your sons? Or will any white or J-Lo looking Latina woman do?

It is no proof of your so called inclusive tendencies if all you can talk about is one gay white boy as a member. Remember, he can always go back to his community in which by birth he is a master of the universe.

Black gays and lesbians must go home to the same hate that they suffer from in the streets.

The entire Smitherman statement left women out the conversation, altogether. That is typical of the misogyny that also permeates the Black Community.

So, to put an end to this ramble.....

NAACP....you need to talk to Black gays and lesbians first.....you need to address the number one killer of Black people in this country and the world....second only to gun violence...which is another problem in and of itself...

Opening the tent to include all Black people will send a bigger message than a useless conversation with white gay and lesbian organizations with issues of their own to deal with..

It doesn’t matter who turns out to support what....until we recognize the problem within our own community, we will be having this worthless conversation in 2010, 2011, 2012.....

Black women, Black Church and Down-lo Men

Are apparently to blame for the defeat of proposition 8 in California, according to New York Times Op-ed columnist, Charles M. Blow. Prop 8, for those of you who don’t know, is the law passed in California banning gay marriage.

Following the vote on election day, white gays and others erroneously faulted blacks for the vote after exit polls showed that 70% of blacks favored the ban. Subsequent reports however, showed that blacks actually made up a very small part of the coalition of voters who voted to ban gay marriage, for which white gays, who turned violent against black gays, during their demonstrations post election day, indiscriminately tossing around the N-word, have yet to apologize.

In his piece today, Blow did a closer look at the situation and came up with some interesting reasons as to why blacks, overall, don’t favor gay marriage. You can read his article here.

To briefly summarize Mr. Blow, the LGBT community should target black women, if they want to change the community mind set against homosexual marriage. His reasoning is that black women overwhelmingly outnumber black men when it comes to voting and going to church. The black church, Blow reasons, is the cause of conservative thinking among black women. So in Blow's opinion, white gays should target black women.

This conservative mind set is the main cause of homophobia within the community. Blow also states that since black women have trouble finding and keeping a man, they are probably not really happy with men marrying other men. In other words, black women don’t like competition. He also sights black women anger with black men who date and marry white women three times more than black women marry white men. Going outside the race for nooky has long been a thorn in the side of black women, according to Mr. Blow.

Blow also notes that black women’s anger is another reason why men who are on the down-lo, don’t want to discuss it with their female sex partners. This lack of communication is the reason behind the growing number of straight black women who are contracting the HIV/AIDs virus.

Blow concluded that white gays need to make the argument one about health rather than sexuality or civil rights, because basically when it comes to black men, the church and white women, black women don’t want to hear it.

Questions I Need Answered...

1. Why is Bush still in office? In light of these extraordinary circumstances that we're living now, why don’t we just buy out his contract and officially sideline him?

Better yet, why don’t we impeach him? If we can impeach a president for getting his swerve on in the oval office with an intern and lying about it, why are we not pursuing the war crimes allegations against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft? They lied to start their war. They’ve attempted to gut the US Constitution. They’ve literally trashed America economically. There are so many grounds, yet only Dennis Kucinich is working to make it happen.

Nancy Pelosi should be handed her head for refusing to pursue the matter. Now it looks like Bush may be working up to pardoning his cronies in crime. The question lingers...can he also pardon himself? And will he?

2. Will wall street CEOs really forego their bonuses this year as Obama has asked? I doubt it. They have stashed so much cash that they don’t have to live in the real world anymore.

3. Who broke Ann Coulter’s jaw? Reports are flying that her mouth is wired shut because of some undisclosed accident...To quote Sofia from The Color Purple.....

”day is a gawd!”

4. What is Mike Huckabee smoking? He says the LGBT community is not being physically brutalized, or getting it’s head bashed in like blacks, therefore gays have no argument. Hmmmm I wonder if he is willing to say that to the faces of the families of all the young men and women who have been killed this year alone, for no other reason than their classmates’ or neighbors’ perception that they are gay? How many transgenders have to die before Huckabee and his ilk understand that there is a problem in this country....LGBT hate crimes are kind of like black on black crime...invisible and not important to “real world America.”


5. Still with Mike HuckaBuck...What’s he snorting along with the smoke? Hucky also says that California prop 8 did not ban gay marriage. He says it simply strengthens the traditional definition of marriage.

6. Why is Ken Blackwell returning to relevance? Don’t republicans understand that he is part of the problem?

7. Are there any black republicans left in the party beside Blackwell, and Michael Steele? And does the Goofy Ole Party really think that installing a black chairman will bring blacks rushing back to the party of Lincoln?

8.With everyone celebrating our suddenly post racial society..why is the main stream media still virtually an all white entity at the top and at night? Seems that one black face usually in a back up role...as in “good evening, I’m_____________ and, so and so is off tonight.” is enough.

9. Why aren’t black women comedians considered good enough or versatile enough to work on Saturday Night Live?

10. How can anyone even consider claiming that Prince is homophobic. I mean, girlfriend has more high heels, make up and booty-out pants than I have owned in my entire life, please. Leave him alone!

11. WTF? Gossip site, Media Take Out is reporting that Whitney and Bobbie are getting remarried. I guess the album ain’t comin’ out is it?


12. Why don’t people just chill with the second guessing of our president elect? We trusted enough to vote for him....Please, let him get into office, before we try to cut him off at his knees, or build statutes in his honor. He’s got to go to work first..

Cincinnati Rally Against Prop 8

Today is an absolutely miserable day in the Queen City. It’s an upside down day with the morning being warmer than the evening will be. Temperatures started falling amidst a chill rain almost as soon as daylight broke over the eastern horizon today.

Never the less I went down to City Hall, at the prescribed hour, to see if anyone was going to turn up for the planned prop 8 solidarity rally. I am happy to report that almost 1000 rainbow clad people braved the icey wind driven rain to take part in nationwide protests against the California vote that banned gay marriage in the sunshine state. The temperature at 1:30pm was 39-degrees and dropping.

The demonstration was orderly and pleasant as protests go. Mounted police were on hand to keep the peace, but the trio of 5-0 Mounties hung around for about 10 minutes before resuming their patrols. Nothing for them to police at the rally. There were several speeches and a moment of silence at 2pm in solidarity with protestors across the country. It was a good day. The numbers in attendance would seem to indicate that more people might have shown up if the weather had only cooperated.

I was troubled by the number of blacks who turned out....besides me...I saw just one other person of color. There may have been more, but everyone was covered, protected from the rain, so it was hard to see just who was who.

I also want to know where all these folks were when Ohio passed its ban on gay marriage back in 2004. You can read about it here. Ohio was the 38th state to enact such legislation and it passed here, almost unnoticed. I wrote about it back then because some of Ohio’s courts were interpreting the law to circumvent domestic violence and common law governance to the detriment of women. The Ohio Supreme Court, however, has since answered those questions.

But to date, no one has taken the State of Ohio to task for writing discrimination into the State Constitution. You will recall that Cincinnati tried it several years ago, too. That amendment passed, then was repealed, due in part to the city losing business and money because of its stated discrimination against the LGBT community.

Maybe the group that gathered today can turn its attention to Ohio and the laws making some of us second class citizens, right here in the Buckeye state. Or maybe, even better, we can all turn our attention on the coming administration in Washington....

Nothing like an executive order or congressional law to make all laws uniform on the issue, rather than the current cross pattern of state laws that exist now.

Obama called everyone to action...so be it...let’s get busy!

Picketing Obama’s Grandmother’s Funeral

Some call him the crypt keeper.....I just call him a low life son of a bitch. Fred Phelps ( he’s no reverend- a reverend is a man of God), has reared his ugly head again. He and his followers are gathering to picket Obama’s grandmother’s funeral in Hawaii. You can read the flyer here.

Phelps has long been a thorn in the side of the LGBT community. I wrote about him a couple of years ago when he started picketing military funerals.

It’s time that the right wing conservative pseudo-Christians, both white and black, start to understand that this stuff is not acceptable.

Similarly, the Mormon Church and it’s support for Proposition 8 in California is also not acceptable. Marriage is a civil union, not a religious one. Marriage can be blessed or sanctioned in the church, but its binding is governed by law and the courts. Separation of church and state is a constitutional right. And as such, we are all equal under the constitution.

Any church that doesn’t pay taxes yet continues to politic, should be stripped of it’s 501C status, period. And that includes ANY church whose pastor stood in the pulpit and preached against Prop 8 and rallied his/her followers to oppose any type of legislation or socio-legal measure.

I’m not saying to censure churches or pastors...I am saying that if a church chooses to politic, or its pastor chooses to use his pulpit in an attempt to effect social change, then it should be made to relinquish it’s “special rights.”

We’re all equal here...pay taxes...first amendment.....don’t pay taxes...obey the law and shut up.

I would really feel better if someone or two would just take Phelps and his followers behind a tree and beat the holy crap out of them. But imposing the law would work better and get their attention. The best way to hurt a bigot....all bigots, religious or otherwise, is in the pocket book.