California Voters Approve Gay-Marriage Ban

oh.. and dont forget those old fuddy duddys up in the balcony seats at the muppet show! Gay as Gooses! (never could see their hands!)

Human Rights Campaign

Dear Eric,

We've come to expect GOP candidates to call for a hateful constitutional amendment banning marriage equality. But we never expected them to support forming a commission to investigate pro-equality advocates like you and me.

I'm not making this up. Several of the GOP presidential candidates have now signed a pledge to appoint "a commission to investigate harassment" of anti-LGBT activists. It's part of a years-long effort by right-wing groups to protect their mega donors from being held accountable for their hateful views – and it's picking up speed. Fast.

This witch hunt commission would usher in a despicable era of anti-equality McCarthyism – and it's a sign of just how radical the right has become. We're fighting their hate with a grassroots campaign targeting anti-LGBT rhetoric, a media operation to debunk their lies, and a red-state bus tour to promote equality across the nation.

Every day, our groundbreaking work in schools and churches advances tolerance and acceptance. Our "Call it Out" campaign is targeting anti-LGBT hatred in local communities across the nation, and all eyes are on Maryland as the next target for marriage equality. We're battling anti-gay attacks from right-wing zealots and politicians alike, and walking the corridors of Capitol Hill to push for a repeal of the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act.

We started this multi-city tour in the backyard of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City and we're continuing onward to other red states throughout the Midwest and South where it's often tough for LGBT Americans to live openly. We're going state by state to deliver our message loud and clear: There is no community where intolerance is welcome. There is no slur we won't call out.

And – most importantly – there is no chance we'll let a hateful fringe tear down all that we've accomplished together in the last years, especially in New York where marriage equality is already under attack.

Eric, we can't afford to cede an inch. But only the support of thousands of people like you – at a pivotal moment like this – will give us the strength to drive this movement forward.

As we've learned time and again – from hate crimes legislation to DADT repeal to New York marriage equality – if we keep standing together, we'll get to our destination sooner than we think.

Let's go big,
Joe Solmonese
President

Comment: Hate breeds hate... the repugs think they can spread hate around from their pulpits and right wing news interviews and not be called up on it. Gays are not creating or spreading hate they are responding to preexisting hatreds that never seem to abate from generation to generation. And all is fair when/if this committee is formed to investigate gay hate maybe it can also turn its non partisan magnifying glass on the preexisting hate fabricated by these churches and right wing organizations and see who really is at fault! I think back to the hate I had to endure while I was a boy scout and this hate came directly from my scout leader who was a conservative church minister. This experience is one among many that has scarred my life. Yes, the same churches who are in bed with the unscrupulous greedy republicans.

Gays (I for one) are/am tired of being their punching bags, and kindling for their fag fires.

I left the republican party right after the last election and continue to garner zero respect for their homophobic institution. If the republicans can dish out the hate they can eat it too. Gays are not manufacturing hate, we are just feeding the religious "wrong's" hate back to them. (not all religious people are hateful)

The bible talks of "the great accuser", biblically defined as, one who accuses others of the thing they are guilty of to divert and distract attention away from their own evil nature.

So who is the one now possessed by this great accuser? And consider the hypocrisy in these churches? Today's religion is nothing but a canopy to hide and conceal their own sin, greed and guilt. These religious hypocrites go to church and get forgiven so they can continue to sin with a free pass...

Without love I am nothing... 1 Corinthians 13

Do the republicans think they have the right to hate without impunity, scrutiny and opposition?

This is a snapshot the joy, happiness and love that the state of Maine, the republicans and the catholic church deprived me and my soul mate of.

Nice video Rex. I can only imagine that gay marriages have the same ups and downs as heterosexual marriages so I would not take that as a reality video!
Not trying to discourage you from finding a sole mate but please don't expect a utopian marriage is all I am trying to say!

If you want a relationship as close to utopian as you can get then lower your standards a bit and I am sure that you can find someone that would love to try and make it work with you.
Life is not perfect and neither are our sole mates!

Eric --

Democrats have racked up three more critical wins in special elections tonight.

In the final two Wisconsin recalls, Democrats handily defeated two hard core Tea Partiers – one of whom is so extreme, she actually compared public education to “the regime of the Nazi’s.”

These two wins mean Democrats have officially won a majority of the Wisconsin recall campaigns. Democrats won five out of the nine recall races, including several in some of the most conservative districts in the state.

Then tonight in Maine, Democrats won a critical victory against a GOP special election candidate handpicked by Republican officials desperate to prop up Governor LePage’s extreme agenda.

All three of these seats could have fallen to the Republicans; instead, Democrats swept all three races.

Republicans are finally on the defensive over their radical agenda against working families, seniors, and society’s most vulnerable.

The wins in Wisconsin are especially gratifying because in both races, we were defending Democratic members of the Wisconsin 14, who bravely broke quorum and fought tooth and nail to stop Scott Walker’s radical assault on working families.

Republicans went all-out to defeat Senators Holperin and Wirch, hoping to send the message that Democrats shouldn’t fight back in the face of GOP extremism.

Instead, we sent a different message tonight: when Democrats stand strongly for progressive values, the American people stand with them.

That’s a message no one should forget.

Sincerely,

Michael Sargeant
Executive Director
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

p.s. Wins like these prove that Americans are turning against GOP extremism.

Comment: You can donate here...


https://secure.dlccweb.com/o/6377/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=7069

My standards are not that high... but when fighting an uphill battle against a society that is often hateful, cruel and unloving, even the bottom of the barrel seems unobtainable.

i will like to know you more than this

Perhaps we should not insult apes by comparing them to humans...

The Gay Marriage Disgrace

In support of gay marriage, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked for "one logical reason" why it should be denied.

Why are we pretending we don't know what the issue is. It's about morality, Governor.

History has shown that some great nations and empires have gone through the same three basic stages: prosperity, corruption and immorality, and destruction.

The U.S. was, and perhaps still is, the most prosperous nation on earth. That corruption has become rampant in our time is evidenced by the conduct of employees of such institutions as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Enron, etc., and many government officials.

And you don't have to dig too deep to see the decline in today's moral standards. All you need is to watch a few episodes of TV shows from the 1950s and compare the language and demeanor to those of TV shows of the 21st Century; it's like day and night.

Movies today, fugetaboutit! There are no constraints in the movies; anything goes.

(Please note, vile TV shows and movies, per se, are not the problem. It's their acceptance by the public that are symptoms of a morally degraded society. By the same token, rampant corporate and government corruption is a symptom of a corrupt population.)

But here's the strange difference between the decline of honesty and the decline of morality. When it comes to the decline in honesty, people complain about corporate executives and government officials. But when it comes to the decline in morality, you always here the same stupid remark: We've come a along way.

Yes, we've certainly come a long way.

We've already gone through the first two stages that preceded the demise of some great civilizations: prosperity and moral decline. And we've begun our slide into the third stage, a financially unstable abyss, the likes of which we've never experienced. And no one knows how to fix it.

After all those years of prosperity, you'd thing we would have become good at sound financial planning, the way doctors become better doctors, engineers become better engineers, etc., after years of being in practice. But, it's as if we've suddenly become financial morons. The "experts" can't even agree on what the solution is, let alone implement one.

What does this tell you? It should tell you that we were never prosperous because of our cunning intelligence or brilliance, in the first place.

Is the connection between moral decay and calamity just a coincidence?

In 1980, the Democratic Party became the first major political party in the U.S. to endorse a homosexual rights platform. That same year, David McReynolds was the first openly gay man to run for President in the U.S.

The year 1980 was certainly a period of great milestones in the history of gays in this country. But there was another milestone in 1980 that many have forgotten, as described by an article on New York magazine's NYMag.com, an excerpt of which reads:

"In early 1980 a young gay man in New York City contracted an unusual illness that defied diagnosis. Upon his death an autopsy revealed that he had suffered from toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by cell-invading parasites. Joel Weisman, a Los Angeles doctor, noticed that a number of his patients -- all homosexuals -- were suffering from an illness he diagnosed as cytomegalovirus (CMV). Five suspicious cases of pneumocystis in Los Angeles were reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta ... In the summer of 1981, physicians in New York City found 26 gay patients suffering from Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare form of skin cancer. Normally, these were treatable afflictions, but in each case the patient's immune system was abnormally, mysteriously, suppressed. By the end of the summer the CDC was aware of 70 more cases of Kaposi's and pneumocystis in New York and California. The victims were young , white, gay males, and 40 percent of them had died. The CDC announced that the 'fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle' and the disease."

By 1982, the disease responsible for the above cases was named GRID -- Gay-related immune deficiency. Only after gays complained about the stigma attached to the name GRID, the disease was renamed to AIDS.

By the end of 2008, the total number of deaths, according to the CDC, of people in the U.S. diagnosed with AIDS was over 617,000.

An epidemic that has its origins in a lifestyle, and is still predominant in that lifestyle to this day, is unprecedented in history. What's particularly odd is that AIDS existed globally and in this country before the 1980s, but the epidemic in this country did not begin until 1980.

So, instead of recognizing the history of moral decay, we have a Governor of a great state such as New York with the gall to make speeches as if it's a moral obligation to support a base lifestyle, and as if the passage of his gay marriage bill was a noble act. What an absolute disgrace.

We must rid ourselves of such politicians and get back to the values that made this a great nation. We've witnessed prosperity and we've witnessed financial collapse. You don't have to be a Bible scholar to see the connection between a nation's success and its Bible-based traditional values.

Some people seem to be under the impression that God's existence depends on their belief in His existence. That's like thinking the IRS will not exist if I believe it doesn't exist. Either way, you'll pay your taxes. It's just a question of whether you'll pay voluntarily or involuntarily.

You may have the free will to believe or not to believe in God, but God runs the world in either case. Our politicians can obviously not pull us out of this financial mess, maybe it's time to start thinking of a Higher Authority. The first step would be to get rid of all politicians who have completely lost their moral compass.

It kind of reminds me of monkeys in a barrel especially when you mentioned the bottom of the barrel!



If you have ever studied apes you would see how much they are like us, that is why we have so many problems. We are animals!

Maybe religion is the problem!

there is the conservative side of me that does not want doctors to be in the business of killing people or to see themselves in any role other than preserving life and making it better

I wanted to add this to my last post but I could not find it at the time! I think it is a great video that everyone should at least think about, there are a few good scientist that speak on the matter.

Why don't you get into the bushes rl and scratch a few nuts out of the dirt? Is there some gap in your perception such that you can't see that we are Divine.

I guess you must see Bernini's Saint Theresa just as you might an anthill. Or read Salammbo as you would the instructions on a microwave dinner carton.

You do know, surely, that only those who already believe in our lowly origin will bother viewing a video with a title like that. So it's a waste of their time as well unless they are in need of constant reassurance.

What exactly is it that gives you a buzz out of some "scientists" speaking about our lowly origin?

Thanks for posting this RL.. Our evident humble origins save us from the arrogant assumption that all life is not connected though evolution.

Anyone still clinging to creationism in this day and age they are simply disingenuous and close minded to a fault. To borrow a phrase from the bible... "their minds are singed with a hot iron"...

What I get from seeing how close we are to apes is that we are not as special as we may have been taught. Don't get me wrong because I think that all of you are special to me but not in a divine way but in a empathetic way!

Seeing this is why I think we have all the problems that we do. People can not help that they are not perfect because they are full of what nature has dealt them. The many different degrees of emotions and other degrees of brain function make us all so different! We can not help our mental appearance no more than we can help our physical appearance.

I think that it is more complicated than this but I think that you may see my point.

That is why we may need to lower our standards because if you are as smart as you seem to be, finding a sole mate may never come.

Some animals mate for life and this is not too much of an unreasonable request for a human to ask for out of life. True it may not come but will it be for a lack of faith, believing, societal roadblocks or because that so many failures caused one to give up.