Category Archives: Right Wingers

World AIDS Day

AIDS ribbon It's World AIDS Day. 

That's nice.

…and I'm reminded of some Black comic's comment about February being "African American History Month"…"typical…we get the shortest month."

Which is to say, one day to remember is woefully shy of the task. 

I remain angry at the homophobic, puritanical, punishing, sex-fearing, "christian" response to HIV-AIDS. And how long it took Ronald Reagan to even say the word "AIDS" (and that it took the death of a closeted movie star and a heroic Elizabeth Taylor to finally get him to utter it.) I remain angry at the idea of "innocent victims" of this disease. 

I remain angry at how little memory there is for how Gay people responded to this, growing up, growing together, growing institutions. How little memory there is for how Gay people fed and sheltered and cared for one another…and angry that my friends are still sero-converting in 2009.

I remain angry at how brutally expensive AIDS meds are in the U.S. (and how cheap they are elsewhere) while the nimrods and the bloviators and the moralizing hypocrites in the Congress (yeah…I'm talking to you Joe Lieberman!…you ugly asswipe!) squash a public option…the only real way to provide competition to the profit-seeking, blood-sucking insurance companies…that would provide healthcare coverage for every American citizen, just like every other industrialized nation in the world! 

Shame on the Senate. Shame on our elected officials. 

Shame on the churches who came so late to the aid of the neediest and who still foment discrimination against gay people.

And every time I hear another fear-mongering "news" report on H1N1 and the vast over-reaction to it (several thousand people die from the flu annually, H1N1 or not) and how people with HIV were shunned by their communities, deserted by their families and died in fear, it makes me want to break something. And it makes me wonder …it makes me sad… to think of how things might have been different if the reaction when "Gay cancer" first appeared had been anything approaching the H1N1 hysteria.

The Maine Idea

Boies "Basic constitutional rights cannot depend on the willingness of the electorate in any given state to end discrimination. If we were prepared to consign minority rights to a majority vote, there would be  no need for a constitution."  – David Boies

Ventura "You can't put a civil rights issue on the ballot and let the people decide. You have to have elected officials who have courage to make the right decision. If you left it up to the people, we'd have slavery, depending on how you worded it." – Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, responding to Maine's vote on CNN.

Buy Pepsi!

Pepsi bottle A group of religious conservatives, ever vigilant for another group or entity at which to wag a collective, scolding finger, have ratcheted up rhetoric aimed squarely at PepsiCo for its alleged support of "the homosexual agenda." 

The American Family Association, which has been promoting a boycott of Pepsi since January, said in a statement Tuesday it has secured more than 500,000 signatures from those pledging to stop buying Pepsi products, which include soft drinks, salty snacks, juices and oatmeal (as if there were anything less wholesome than oatmeal, for chrissake).

AFA's beef with Pepsi is for what it calls the company's financial support of groups promoting the "homosexual agenda." AFA points to two gay-rights groups in particular: Human Rights Campaign and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, better known by the acronym PFLAG

PepsiCo didn't respond to queries about the boycott, or whether it donates to these groups. But it does note on its website that it earned a top score, 100 percent, in HRC's 2009 Corporate Equality Index, an annual measure of gay-friendly employment policies. PepsiCo achieved the same score in the 2010 index, along with 305 other companies, according to HRC. PFLAG notes on its site that PepsiCo is among its corporate sponsors.

AFA will continue the boycott for as long as PepsiCo continues to support "a lifestyle that is extremely unhealthy and dangerous," said the group's president, Tim Wildmon, in a statement.

The Pepsi boycott seems to be having some effect within the Christian conservative community. Last month, the Westboro Baptist Church, of "God hates fags" fame, protested in downtown Atlanta with signs that read "God hates Diet Pepsi."

One question: Where's Coke?

Oh…and we should still tax "juice drinks" and soda as a means to support universal healthcare.

Defend Harry Hay’s Reputation at the National Equality March

As thousands of LGBT activists prepare to march on Washington, Harry Hay, one of the most important and beloved founders of the modern gay movement, is being used by right wing extremists as a bogeyman to destroy the career of Kevin Jennings, the Obama Administration's highly qualified Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. 
 
Most recently Sean Hannity has mounted the
attack
 
Harry Hay is being branded as a pederast and anyone who has ever spoken praise of Harry is being condemned as a supporter of pederasty. 
 
As one of the six heirs to the Estate of Harry Hay and John Burnside, I feel it incumbent upon myself to defend his reputation against the attacks that have become a staple of those members of the right-wing establishment who are bent on destabilizing the Obama Adminstration and destroying the careers of members of his administration through guilt by association. 
 

Let us make it clear: 

 

HARRY HAY WAS NEVER A MEMBER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN MAN BOY LOVE ASSOCIATION, known as NAMBLA. 

 
Harry n John - LaCresta - Timmons His defense of the organization at several points in his 90-year history of speaking truth to power was based on his experiences as a young teenager exploring the world of sexuality with older men, himself being the aggressor. These experiences were very positive for the young Harry and are described in Stuart Timmons’ excellent biography, The Trouble With Harry Hay. There are no records of the adult Mr. Hay ever having had sexual relations with under-aged youth. It is also innacurate to say, as it is frequently written, that NAMBLA promotes the “legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.” Hay agreed with NAMBLA that in many cases initiation into sexuality, as has been the case across cultures and millenia, is better suited to those with experience than with other youth who also have no knowledge of the complexities and responsibilities of sexuality. Hay also concurred with NAMBLA that age of consent laws are out of step with the age of sexual awakening and exploration. Harry Hay’s ideas concerning youth and sexuality were based on his desire to protect youth, not to exploit and abuse them. 
 
The second instance of his defense of NAMBLA was in 1994 at Stonewall 25: Spirit of Stonewall March in New York City. ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association had been granted NGO status by the UN theprevious year. As a result, the US Senate unanimously passed a motion sponsored by the right-wing senator Jesse Helms that the USA would withhold funds of more than 118 million dollars due to the UN and its sub-organizations unless the President of the USA could certify to the Congress that no agency of the United Nations "grants any official status, accreditation or recognition to any organization which promotes, condones or seeks the legalization of pedophilia or which includes as a subsidiary or member any such organization." On June 23, the week of the march, NAMBLA was expelled from ILGA, on the motion of the executive committee, and it was decided that "groups or associations whose predominant aim is to support or promote pedophilia are incompatible with the future development of ILGA." Hay felt that if the emerging gay movement allowed the outside to define it, outside forces would then control it. It was in this context that Hay was critical of ILGA’s position and stood in defense of NAMBLA. We again stand at a similar crossroads. 
 
It is morally and intellectually dishonest and patently false to reduce the life and work of Harry Hay to one of pederasty. He was a courageous hero who pioneered the movement for the equal rights of an entire class of people denied the basic civil rights guaranteed to them under the Constitution of the United States of America. A Dutch friend who spent some of his youth in a Japanese Concentration Camp in Indonesia told me recently that if Americans remain silent at this critical juncture in our history we will live to regret it. 
 
Speak out. Defend the reputation of our beloved Harry Hay. 
 
Bo and Cove Robert Croonquist aka Covelo 
 
(Seen on the left with friend, and White Crane publisher, Bo Young, right.)