Capitol Hill Blue Forums We shall overcome

One slightly off topic point to Rick's view on access to college education. Loans aren't hard to get just for mortgages and Big Three Auto companies My girlfriend has a kid in college right now. The loan was fairly easy to get a year ago, but even then the credit was tightening. I don't have much hope that it won't tighten more this year and next. And even without being able to add my income to the various forms (hey, MO voted a gay marriage ban into our state constitution in 2004), my girlfriend still makes too much for many grant programs.

Back on topic, I believe gay issues in general are gaining traction and will continue to. I remember back in the nineties when the Hawaiian gay-marriage/union cases hit my radar. At that time there were many(maybe even a majority) in the gay community who weren't convinced that the battle for gay-marriage was worth fighting. Even as recently as 2004, polls indicated a narrow nationwide support for gay marriage bans. How many swing-states had amendments on the ballots that year? I know it was more than just Missouri - and most of them passed, if I recall correctly, by significant margins. So, we have gone from ambivalence in the community and majorities of "straights" opposing gay marriage to an increasing acceptance of gay marriage and even more acceptance of civil-unions. It's happening, slowly maybe, but it is happening.

This just in:
How did this happen?


You sound like my Dad, rick. Who, BTW I spoke to on the phone last night (alert the media!). He has no clue what life is like for people beneath him because he refuses to look down. They are, after all, beneath him.

I'll never forget sitting in the emergency room at two in the morning with him, the night my brother got his back broken in a car accident. Bro was getting tractioned, I was virtually in shock, and Dad was carrying on a tirade about fat people. "Look at that woman" he said loudly enough for that woman to hear. "It's disGUSSting. There's no excuse for that kind of fatness."

Some people are indeed beneath you. They're not as smart as you, not as industrious, not as good-looking, they don't speak as well . . . Though you may not immediately think of it this way - these are all handicaps. They will never succeed if we insist on setting the bar insurmountably high. We have to lower our expectations.

If you're having trouble figuring out how they fit into your world, then surely you can understand why so many str8 people have trouble figuring out how you fit into theirs.

Yikes Rick. The anger can be a positive, but the bashing isn't. The fact that Prop 8 passed does not negate the fact that gays are much more accepted in society than they ever have been. Let's remember that we are a minority within every other minority. We come in every age, color, shape and size and even within our own racial groups we are the minority (we are the minorities minority). I think we have explored nearly every possible reason why Prop 8 passed. I'm not sure that picking poor, uneducated, fertile straight people as the next enemy is the the best choice of target for our anger.

The real enemies are the leaders of the groups that get their followers to support their ideas AND the ignorance that allows that to happen. It seems that most everyone now knows or is related to an openly gay person. I can just as easily see the people in your example sitting on the porch talking about how it just seems wrong to tell Uncle Ray or Mike and Tom down the block (the ones with the beautiful lawn) that they can't get married.

There are still closeted gays out there too. They may have secretly voted 'no' in the booth but the reason they are closeted is that they likely know people who hate gays and I'm sure their conversations with those people never include supporting equal rights. I have already mentioned the gay guy I met election night who voted "yes". We won't really understand the reason until we actually talk to the people who voted yes, but, like I said, I'm not hearing anyone admit that they did.

This may be heresy but I also think that some members of the gay community have started to believe the glowing statistics about us. Not all of us are more educated, nice, creative, rich and loving people. So, even if everyone knows someone who is gay, they don't necessarily like or value them, in fact, the gay person they know may reinforce all the negatives they already feel toward the community.

Despite all the time and energy we've spent trying to pinpoint who to blame, I don't think we will ever have a cut and dried answer. One thing I'm realizing is that, the more time we spend pointing fingers, the less time we spend educating. The more time we spend digging into this, the more we discover that everyone could be perceived as our enemy. We've already pinned this on Mormons, Catholics, Blacks, Latinos, Asians and even some gays. We are not going to find THE ENEMY. We need to progess and work on making people understand why this was wrong - there are some we will never persuade, we have to accept that, and move on to the people who we can.

Having said all that, I stick to my guns that, in my experience, I, as an openly gay man, am much more accepted now than any other time in my life.

Wow Steve, I think your dad is my cousin! We're related and didn't even know it!

Jeffro - had I a hat, I would doff it.

I'm going to juxtapose these two sentences and allow them to stand on their own merit:

That's good rick. Now look at the difference between the two statements. In the first, the enemy is identified as a condition. In the second, we are admonished not to personify that condition.

It wasn't that long ago that sexual predation was endemic to Negroes. And, isn't AIDS the "Gay" disease?

Uh, okay. Ignorance does not always equal uneducated, and I have always put the responsibility on the religious leaders. I have said it before and I will say it again, gay issues would not be the issues they are without religion. I,am, in fact, pointing my finger at religion and the leaders as a root cause (I don't think that makes my statements contradictory or hypocritical). Religion is a good target for the anger, but the followers are not a good place to attack. We will likely not change the opinion of the preachers who have made bazillions of dollars by denigrating gay people - I'm not convinced that even they believe what they say half the time, they just know it works. They count on it.

I am saying we need to educate not attack.

You're good stereoman.

How many trophies did you win for your high school debate team?

Why isn't it a "good place" to "attack" "the followers." Can not "they" think for themselves?

I really don't see the difference: