“The Most Vile Assault On Teenagers Ever Concocted By Homosexuals…” What a lovely sentiment isn’t that?
Any of you out there reading this, please consider that the next time any of you have a heart to heart conversation with your relatives, friends, business acquaintances, or even neighbors regarding the subject of the LGBTQ community, please remember this salient point — there are those who wish the LGBTQ community ill or worse.
“Thank you Captain Obvious,” you say? Absolutely, I reply!
By the way, the above quote’s verbatim from the below embedded Family Research Council sponsored video and came directly from the lips of FRC head honcho and quite frankly head bigot — Tony Perkins.
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Look around you, please folks. Consider that those opposed to equality for the LGBTQ community are much better funded, better organized, and “deadly” intent on ridding the globe of gay persons and at any cost.
Sadly, the best weapon in their arsenal is the complacency of the LGBTQ community itself. Granted there are numerous vocal queer activists who work quite hard and rather effectively to fight for equality, the problem are the greater majority of LGBTQ persons who do not.
Every queer person out there should recognize this fact. Those persons, couples, or acquaintances whom are claiming to support equality rights, citing a donation to the Human Rights Campaign for example, and whom attend a Pride celebration annually- which seems to be the extent of their willingness to be proactive- are missing the larger perspective.
Equality rights are not in any shape of form guaranteed simply because same-sex marriage is slowly gaining ground or because openly gay & lesbian individuals are now allowed to service in the armed forces of the United States. That also holds true for polls that reveal a larger percentage of Americans find LGBTQ persons “acceptable.”
Here, let’s watch FRC’s marvelous video:
Had enough yet?
Before you jump up and claim that groups like FRC, Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Concerned Woman For America, and of course Americans for Truth about Homosexuality etc. are simply a noisy minority and are rapidly becoming irrelevant, take a look at the following chart prepared by Equality Matters:
In a report published Monday, Equality Matters reveals:
Up until 1962, gay sex between two consenting adults was a felony in every state in the United States. So-called “crime against nature” or “sodomy” laws — the term “sodomy” is a reference to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah — typically punished violators with lengthy prison sentences, fines, and even hard labor. Although these laws typically targeted gays and lesbians, some statutes were written broadly enough to cover any form of non-vaginal intercourse, including oral and anal sex between heterosexuals.
While many states moved to repeal their sodomy laws in the late 1900s, others — like Georgia — moved in the opposite direction. In the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy law, arguing that there was no “fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.”
After Bowers, several more states began moving towards decriminalizing private acts of gay sex between consenting adults. It wasn’t until 2003, however, that the Supreme Court finally reconsidered its position on sodomy laws.
In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Texas’ sodomy statute was unconstitutional, marking a major legal victory on the path towards LGBT equality. With the remainder of state sodomy laws technically invalidated by Lawrence, the LGBT community began to shift its focus. Alexis Agathocleous, staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, recently wrote:
Coming seventeen years after Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court’s seething antigay decision that upheld a Georgia sodomy law, Lawrence felt like a sea change. Laws actually criminalizing the community, many people assumed, were a relic of the past. And accordingly, the LGBT rights movement shifted gears: litigation, lobbying, advocacy, and resources in the years since Lawrence have overwhelmingly focused on civil institutions such as marriage and visibility in the mainstream media. In short, the mainstream LGBT community stopped talking about criminal justice.
Eight years later, however, eighteen states still refuse to rewrite their laws and take these anti-gay relics off their books, with countless LGBT Americans continuing to feel their devastating effects as a result. Several state legislatures and courts have exploited loopholes in the Lawrence decision, while others have simply refused to acknowledge the decision altogether.
Sobering data and statics actually.
Don’t scoff people. There absolutely are politico types who’d be unafraid to use those laws as a weapon against the equality rights of the LGBTQ community at large.
The folks at Equality Michigan verified that this gem, also from the Equality Matters Report, is very much a fact of life in Michigan:
In Michigan, the practice of charging and convicting gay men under the state’s “Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature” or “Gross Indecency” laws still exists, with violators facing the risk of having to register as sex offenders and prison sentences of up to 15 years. According to Rudy Serra, attorney and Chairman of the Executive Clemency Council for the State of Michigan, police officers continue to aggressively prosecute LGBT people without legal challenge:
The legislature still has not repealed the sodomy and gross indecency statutes, even after Lawrence v. Texas, and ultra-conservative (“strict constructionist”) judges still continue to enforce the “legislative intent” to criminalize gay sex, regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court says.
LGBT people in Michigan continue to be charged with crimes for public speech, in which they let another person know they are interested in private, unpaid sex with another adult. Bag-A-Fag (undercover decoy cop) operations, where police officers pretend to be gay men cruising for unpaid, consensual sex continue in Michigan. LGBT people are still at risk of spending 15 years in state prison for acts that are perfectly legal in most other states. [emphasis added]
Look — need I even point out that the so-called National Organization for Marriage, run by Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown, have taken it up themselves to eradicate same-sex marriage rights in ANY state. They’ve publicly stated this numerous times. Joe Jervis at Joe.My.God reported:
The latest edition of NOM’s summer hate bus tour kicked off today in Iowa with doomed GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty. Good As You has the list of the anti-gay hate group leaders featured in the photo.
The truth is that the by far the greatest challenge to our equality and our liberty is ourselves, the LGBTQ community.
I ask you, those of you reading this column … What is it going to take? People, LISTEN please! It’s really up to us to defend ourselves, our families, and our freedoms and the best way to start is to dispel these lies, this hateful propaganda foisted upon the American public by these so-called “loving” Christian groups and expose them for the hate mongers they truly are.
But the best defense? Its not the old cliche a really good offense, no — we as a queer community need to get unified and fast.
Pour a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, let’s have a conversation, shall we?