The level of acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships in this nation, and even here in this traditionally conservative state of Florida, has increased dramatically just in the last ten years. But the passage of Florida Proposition 2 yesterday is a cold, suffocating reminder that the old prejudices are still alive. My joy and pride in the victory of President-Elect Barack Obama have been lamentably diminished by the news that the majority of my fellow Floridians believe it necessary to insert into the state constitution discrimination aimed at my loving relationship.
Do I take this personally? Yes. Of course. I am a gay woman who has been living for 10 years with my partner. We are committed to our relationship. We are a family. We pay our taxes. We work and play and contribute to our state financially. We support our local businesses with our earnings. We pay the same level and number of taxes as any other Floridian in our economic bracket. Yet we have just been told that we are CONSTITUTIONALLY uninvited to share in one of the most fundamental relationships entered into by human beings.
They are afraid. I am disenfranchised and discounted. No one wins in this. But they are right to be afraid. I am still here. And I am damn mad.
My partner has worked for many years doing public relations for various singer/songwriters, both well-known and unknown. One of the fantastic talents she has become acquainted with over those years is the incomparable Janis Ian. This is a woman who was breaking barriers and making social waves before she was in high school. “Society’s Child”. “At 17″. Today she lives in the Nashville area with her wife, Patricia Snyder.
This afternoon we received an email from Janis regarding “Joe the Bigot.”
It was a nice, big sign.
When we got up this morning, it was gone. Worse yet, last night someone or someones had gone up and down the street next to ours, tearing down Obama signs and writing “nigger-lover” and other obscenities on people’s homes and cars. Admittedly, they defaced one McCain sign, but the rest were Obama. My assumption is that these hooligans are so stupid they actually thought “Hey let’s tear down a McCain sign - they’ll think it’s just vandalism then!”
Not surprising that it comes from the Bible Belt area. I was born to and raised by Eastern Kentuckians, and I lived for 20 years in South Central Kentucky, just a few hours from Nashville. The staggering beauty of the mountains and valleys would almost make one forget the dark underbelly of the past. Then you pick up the faint whiff of something old and moldy… the musty smell of something that’s been around too long without enough exposure to the sunlight. It sometimes makes it hard to breathe. This history making election year is exposing some of that mold and mildew to the daylight. And it isn’t a pretty thing. But it requires the dark. It can’t live long once it has been laid bare in the light.
From a rally in Albuquerque on the 6th. Listen to the supporter yell ‘terrorist’ when McCain asks who the ‘real’ Barabk Obama is. Chilling. More chilling? McCain’s response. Nothing.
In the Washington Post today is a chilling column by Dana Milbank. Although astute followers of this election season are already aware of the covert racism and hatred that is encoded in the speeches of John McCain and Sarah Palin, in Clearwater, I’m sorry to say, the true bigotry of the McCain/Palin campaign and its supporters reared its ugly head. From the Milbank column:
… Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
and
The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of “Palin Power” and “Sarahcuda” T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. “One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” she said. (”Boooo!” said the crowd.) “And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’ ” she continued. (”Boooo!” the crowd repeated.)
“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.
Palin is no real hockey mom anymore. But she is a pit bull. One who was not raised well to work with others. The cocktail waitress winks and the coy, suggestive head tilting from someone who seeks the second highest office in our nation has been embarassing to me as a woman. But the cold, calculating attacks and innuendoed affirmation for bigotry and hatred that she is spilling forth is purely chilling.
Doing some from the hip damage control, Mike Huckabee defended the statements he made over 15 years ago that those with AIDS should be isolated away from the general public, as well as statements that homosexuality is a sinful and aberrant state (a belief he still maintains, by the way). He also opposed increased federal spending in the fight against HIV/AIDS, calling for the Hollywood rich to empty their own coffers for that purpose instead.
Huckabee stands by his earlier statements, claiming that at the time we did not know much about the transmission facts of HIV/AIDS — even though he made those statements after Magic Johnson went public with his HIV status and the CDC had made it elementarily clear that casual contact did not transmit the virus. At that time the only viable reasons one would have for making such stupid comments was rampant homophobia, Southern Baptist theistic dogma and/or an unwillingness to heed educated and informed opinion. Whatever combination of those “reasons” Huckabee holds onto they ring a little too much with the Bush bell for my tastes.
An area family is finding out the hard way that the Republican party has a bit of trouble with people telling their own stories. The Frost family was the first to receive a volley of fire from the GOP for their own personal story on the value of SCHIP. Now a St. Petersburg area family is steeling themselves against a similar attack.
The Boehners, whose daughter was born with a heart valve defect, relied on the SCHIP program for financial assistance with the surgery necessary to save their child’s life. They told their story to Congress. They told their story in an ad for support for the measure. Now that ad is being decried as a “despicable ad that exploits a two-year-old girl with a serious heart ailment.” Telling one’s own truth about how one has benefited from a disputed insurance program is exploitation? Since when? If the persons who have actually benefited from the program in question can’t validly relate that benefit, then who exactly can?
Will Matthews, a spokesman for USAction in Washington, defended his group’s decision to characterize Boehner’s comments as an attack on the family.
“We see it as here’s a little girl who relies on SCHIP … and the Republicans can’t get past the political imagery to see the real story,” Matthews said.
I disagree, Mr. Matthews. The Republicans are well able to get past the political imagery. They are embarassed at being blindsided by honest, personal stories. They attack rather than address the issue at hand — the value of the program.
According to Switched.com, hackers got onto Ann Coulter’s site yesterday, leaving a beautiful letter; arguably the only honest thing that has been on her site since its inception.
I’ve been participating in a charade for nearly eleven years, now. Quite frankly, I’m sick of it. You have all been a part of a sick joke that I began considering shortly after first getting on the air. At first, it was quite interesting to see how people would react when I would use twisted logic and poorly masked bigotry.
The letter is not on her site now. (Yes, I checked… gagging all the while) I woulda paid money to see it there! Read more after the jump.
