This is f*cking rich -- Reid and Obama playing hot potato over DADT.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid speaking at a press conference Monday said he has no plans to introduce a bill to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" in the Senate.How many Senators do Dems need to have in the Senate to find ONE willing to sponsor repeal of a policy that even conservatives say needs to go. It's time to cut the crap, close the wallets. Clearly our "leadership" doesn't understand we mean it when we say "No Delay, No Excuses." I'm with Mike Rogers on this one:"I haven't identified any sponsors," he said. "My hope is that it can be done administratively."
How long we are expected to wait? To what end do we support the Administration without knowing anything of its plan (and worse, its lack of action)? Do we wait until after the 2010 midterms to 'protect our majority'? Do we wait until the end of 2012 after he is reelected? Or do we wait until the 2014 midterms to keep Congress? Perhaps we are expected to wait until year 7 of his administration (assuming he hasn't tossed aside so many supporters that he loses). Perhaps they will ask us to hold off until 2017, because, after all, we don't want to lose the White House.Sean Bugg isn't impressed at all by Reid's statement today. He's also calling for the fundraising spigot to be turned off. They seem unwilling to listen to anything else:Let's look at exactly what we are asking for:
1. DADT: Repeal of a law that Congress passed and the President signed to shaft gays.
2. DOMA: Repeal of a law that Congress passed and the President signed to shaft gays.
3. ENDA: Job protections that leave us without protection from housing, lending or public accommodation discrimination.(Hate crimes don't count. Not one life has been saved by them and I want protections before my skull is bashed in on a sidewalk. Plus, does anyone really think the increased funds for local law enforcemen t will go to protect gays where the protections are needed most? And as Frank Rich said "fighting AIDS is not a get-out-of-homophobia-free card." )
No doubt that Obama is (was?) better than the alternative, however it was simply not necessary to submit to the Court what is the most harmful (and hurtful) governmental attack on us as a people that I have seen in my lifetime, without an explanation.
I have been angry -- and rightfully so -- at Obama over the past few weeks. I'm even angrier at this idiocy from Reid. Seventy percent -- more than two-thirds -- of Americans support repealing DADT. A majority of freaking evangelicalsicals support repealing DADT, for god's sake, but Reid wants to pussyfoot around it like it's a radioactive turd from Chernobyl?If Harry Reid and, frankly, Nancy Pelosi, are the best options that Democrats have to offer us as gays and lesbians at this point, then it's time to turn off the financial spigot. You may not have the option or desire to support an Republican alternative, but if the best Reid, et al, can offer us on LGBT issues is cowardice, then at least let us offer apathy in return.
From the Nashville Scene:
Kelvin Denton was shot twice on May 27 -- once in the nose and once in the neck -- after police say Terron Taylor, 18, learned Denton was not a biological woman. Denton fled and was found near the Whitehaven Community Center. She was taken to the Med in critical condition, but survived. Today Denton is being held on $500,000 bond and will appear in court to face charges of attempted murder in the 2nd degree.This is actually an improvement, since D'Andre Blake was released on a $20,000 bond for allegedly shooting another transgendered woman in 2006. A court date has yet to be set in this case.
In Memphis, Tennessee, the press doesn't acknowledge transgender people's new names; we don't set bail high for those who are accused of killing trans people -- even police get in on beating trans people, and can't solve her crime when the police beaten trans woman is killed on the streets a few months later.
My life, and the lives of my trans peers, are often seen as not being worth much. This view that trans lives arent't very valuable seems a particularly acute problem for folk in Memphis, Tennessee.
~~~~~
Related:
* Trans Panic : The License to Kill
* Yet Another T rans Woman Shot In Memphis, Tennessee
* Pam's House Blend Tag: Duanna Johnson
We are tabling at Capital Pride in Maryland, as we usually get great response from the LGBT community (particularly the HIV/AIDS community that gets such relief from medical marijuana). We sent out an email to our membership lists asking for volunteers for the table.
From a recipient named Fuzzy Myers, we got this response:
WHAT DOES NORML HAVE TO DO WITH GAY PRIDE? I SMOKE JOINTS NOT DICKS! TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST AND I AM CANCELING ALL MY CONTRIBUTIONS.
We're glad to remove Fuzzy from our lists; we don't want to be associated with people like him. However, Fuzzy ought to know that without the hard work of gay activists like Dennis Peron, there would be no such thing as a "medical marijuana state" and we'd wouldn't be hearing Gov. Schwarzenegger calling for a debate over legalization.
In 1978, a glaucoma sufferer named Robert Randall sued the federal government over his use of marijuana. His was the first successful "medical necessity" defense for the use of marijuana, and it led the feds to create the "Investigative New Drug" program where the feds would grow pot at the University of Mississippi and mail it to patients who qualified for this new drug.
Twenty-eight patients were soon enrolled in the program. But then as the early 1980's rolled around, along came HIV/AIDS. The first sufferers of the disease found that marijuana helped cure their wasting syndrome and gave them back enough appetite to eat and quelled the nausea enough to keep it down. Soon, thousands of applications were flooding the federal government, and realizing that tens or hundreds of thousands of people smoking legal government medical marijuana would be the death knell of marijuana prohibition, President George H.W. Bush closed off the program to new applicants in 1992. (The existing patients were grandfathered in and to this day, the four remaining living patients receive a tin of 300 government joints per month.)
The shuttering of the Investigative New Drug program forced a young friend of San Francisco councilman Harvey Milk to turn elsewhere. Dennis Peron, a young gay man, worked to pass medical marijuana initiatives in San Francisco and soon had opened up America's first dispensary, operating outside California and Federal law, but tolerated by the San Francisco authorities.
As the mid-90's approached, Peron had the support of many and enough financial backing to begin a statewide initiative campaign to legalize medical marijuana in California, Proposition 215, which passed in November of 1996. California's success led to more states in the west legalizing marijuana for medicinal use by the end of the decade, and as this decade rolls along, medical marijuana has spread to New England and the Great Lakes.
Medical marijuana, of course, has been the crack in the wall of ignorance and propaganda, and its success is why we are seeing politicians, columnists, and media figures increasingly calling for a debate on legalization outright. So to a large degree, I owe my job and we owe our success as a movement to gay activists like Dennis Peron.
(Speaking of media figures, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 is doing a weeklong special on marijuana legalization. A CNN cameraman was at our medical marijuana meeting on Saturday and interviewed Oregon NORML's executive director, my friend Madeline Martinez, on Sunday. The segments should be on the Wednesday AC360, and with luck, you'll catch a bit of me speaking or maybe one of my grap graphs in the report.)
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