"3-2-1 Countdown to Equality": In less than a week, one group of Americans gets to veto the basic rights of other Americans

by Ken

Let me say again that this shouldn't be happening. People's basic rights shouldn't be subject to anyone's vote. Do you think there's any chance that, say, the First Amendment could survive a trip through the ballot box? Not hardly. And yet respect for all citizens' basic rights is as central to democracy as the principle of majority rules; without it, all you've got is a tyranny of the majority.

But here we are, in the last week before crucial votes are to be held in Maine, Washington State, and Kalamazoo, MI. The issues are different in the three votes, but the same principle is at stake: Does one group of people get to vote away another group's basic rights?

Luckily, my friends and colleagues at the Courage Campaign have thought it through a bit more thoroughly, so I'm going to turn the floor over to them.

3-2-1 Countdown for Equality: No Bittersweet Victories

Progressives are closer than ever to a victory on health care reform. As 2009 comes to a close, we've moved forward on other issues. But what's looming up ahead could be a disappointment.

On Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009- less than a week away- there will be critical votes on on LGBT equality in three states: Washington State, Maine, and Michigan. With so much attention devoted to other issues in the political realm, bloggers have banded together to ensure we don't forget the ones with a firm deadline next week.

For that reason, we've joined with these three campaigns to put together a summary of who, what, and how. If you haven't heard of these campaigns, and/or haven't done anything yet to support them, please consider helping out. If you are a blogger please feel free to grab this content whole cloth and use it for your blog posts. Scroll down to the bottom to grab the formatted HTML to drop into a post.

Last year, as Obama and Democrats were winning across the country, we lost marriage equality in California. It was a bittersweet victory. Pitch in to make sure 2009 isn't a bittersweet year. Take action to support LGBT equality TODAY.

And they've provided the following breakdowns of the three votes:

WASHINGTON STATE

Who we are: Approve Referendum 71 is the campaign to preserve domestic partnerships in Washington State. By voting to approve, voters retain the domestic partnership laws that were passed during this year's legislative session, including using sick leave to care for a partner, adoption rights, insurance rights, and more.

What we need: We need phone bankers to get our supporters out to vote. Washington is an all mail-in ballot state, and we need to ensure our supporters put their ballots in the mail. Also, youth turnout is a critical component of our campaign, and youth turnout historically drops in off-year elections. So we need a lot of help to turn them out.

How you do it: Sign up here to make remote calls for Approve 71. We'll then contact you for a training, and you can make GOTV calls.

MAINE

Who we are: The No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign is working to protect Maine's recently-passed law legalizing marriage equality for same-sex couples. Our opponents have put the issue on the ballot for Nov 3, 2009. Because of Maine's early voting election laws, people are already voting at the polls, so we need help immediately to turn out our side at the polls.

What we need: We need you to devote a few hours to Call for Equality. Call for Equality is a virtual phonebank set up so that you can call Maine voters wherever you are. Much of Maine is rural, where canvassing isn't effective, so we need to reach these voters- along with other supporters- by phone. All you need is a phone and internet connection. No experience required! We'll provide the training, and all you need is a a few hours to help get a win in Maine.

How you do it: Click here to sign up for a training and your shift. There are lots of times available for your convenience.

[AND REMEMBER: DWT and our Blue America partners have an ActBlue page where you can contribute to No On 1/Protect Maine Equality.]

KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN

Who We Are: The Yes on Ordinance 1856 / One Kalamazoo campaign is working in Michigan to support the City Commission of Kalamazoo's twice approved ordinance for housing, employment, and public accommodation protections for gay and transgender residents. Opponents forced a public referendum on the ordinance so dedicated local volunteers, led by former Stonewall Democrats Executive Director Jon Hoadley, are working to ensure voters say YES to fairness and equality and keep Ordinance 1856.

Why the Urgency: In the final weeks, the opposition has gone all out with aggressive disinformation and misleading red herrings to try to defeat the ordinance. This includes signs that say "No to Discrimination" (even though voting No actually supports continued discrimination of GLBT residents), transphobic door hangers and fliers, and now radio ads that falsely suggest that criminal behavior will become legal when this simply isn't true. The Yes on Ordinance 1856 supporters are better organized but many voters who want to vote for gay and transgender people are getting confused by the opposition.

How to Help:

1) Help the One Kalamazoo campaign raise a final $10,000 specifically dedicated to fight back against the lies on the local TV and radio airwaves and fully fund the campaign's final field and GOTV efforts.

Give here: http://www.actblue.com/page/3-2-1-countdown

2) If you live nearby and can physically volunteer in Kalamazoo sign up here. If you know anyone that lives in Kalamazoo, use the One Kalamazoo campaign's online canvass tool to remind those voters that they need to vote on November 3rd and vote YES on Ordinance 1856 to support equality for gay and transgender people.

Contact voters: http://www.onekalamazoo.com/tellfriends2

Netroots Contributes Over $1.14 Million For Maine Equality Battle

Thursday was a real feel good kind of day at Blue America; the money bomb we helped out with for Maine's No On 1 campaign was a huge success and their total is now over $1,140,000. Blue America is closing in on $10,000 for them. We gave away the Barbra Streisand DVDs and at the last minute a Florida bidder jumped in with a thousand dollars and walked away with the Joan Osborne platinum award.

It felt so good exchanging the award plaque with a huge fan of "One of Us" for a full day of radio ads for the whole state, that I have another offer... or two! A generous donor gave us a Lenny Kravitz multi-platinum award for Greatest Hits and it's spectacular. If someone wants to drop $1,000 into the Blue America No On 1 slot, the Lenny Kravitz award is your thank you from us. And they also gave us a Joss Stone gold record award for The Soul Sessions and that will go to the first person who donates $500. And for anyone who donates at least $30 today-- or at least for the first 30 people who do-- the thank you gift is an Ocean's Twelve CD.

And here's a little video the folks a the No On 1 campaign sent us, which added to all the good cheer around here:

Voting For Marriage Equality Starts Today In Maine

The Blue America PAC hasn't officially endorsed any candidates this year. We have a whole bunch we want to endorse but John, Digby, Ken and I are concentrating on Maine's No on 1 campaign for now. As of last night, the equality forces were ahead-- but only marginally. The Portland Press Herald is reporting that a new poll shows that 51.8% of people who plan to vote in November say they will vote no or are leaning in that direction and that 42.9% plan to vote yes, or are leaning that way. Just over 5% are undecided. Take a look at the newest TV spot they started running this week. We want to make sure it gets up on the air, not just in Portland, where the No on 1 vote is expected to sweep, but in places like Presque Isle, Eustis, Haynesville, Allagash and Millinocket, where there's still work to be done.



Today is the first day of early voting-- the most effective day we have left to get some real money to the folks on the grouund in Maine fighting the bigots who are trying to take away their rights and exclude gay men and women from society. Maine isn't an expensive media market. And it's a place where the good guys can win. This is what they can do with the cash that comes in:

$1,000 can blanket the state with radio ads for 1 day
$800 pays for one field organizer for a week
$720 would fund 20 canvasses in key counties around the state on a Saturday
$550 pays for one channel of cable for a day
$420 pays for one much needed field organizer for a week
$330 is 2 radio commercials to beat back their lies
$210 pays for 70 $3/day cell phones to talk to targeted voters
$137 will buy supplies for 4 door-to-door canvasses
$72 will pay for signage for visibility for one weekend on a targeted campus
$36 will fund supplies for one door-to-door canvass
$24 buys 20 yard signs for visibility

Something like 2,000 Mainers have actively volunteered on the campaign, engaging in activities ranging from phone banking, to leaflet drops, to door-to-door canvassing. To date, NO on 1 volunteers have made more than 270,000 phone calls and knocked on more than 13,500 doors throughout the state. The money we're asking you to consider donating today will go towards furnishing them with the tools they need as well as towards running TV and radio ads.


Meanwhile we have something nice to offer to donors today. The first 9 people who kick in at least $30 at the Blue America '10 page each wins a special DVD of Barbra Streisand's spectacular 1966 television special Color Me Barbra (which includes a rare poster). And if that wasn't fabulous enough, we also have something pretty mind-blowing for the person who donates the most by 6AM (PT) tomorrow. The picture is above. It's a gorgeous Joan Osborne RIAA custom double platinum award for both Relish and "One of Us." It's rare, collectible, unique and... well, what a gift it would make for anyone who you happen to know who went bonkers over the song below! And, more important, what an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Maine!

Some Gays Still Believe The Hope And Change Stuff-- Buy Into Obama's Hot Air On Don't Ask Don't Tell

No one threw rotten eggs

As he can always be counted on to do, Obama-who-is-better-than-Bush gave a real purty speech for 3,000 gays, lesbians and friends at the annual Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington last night. The repetition of his old campaign promise to end Don't Ask Don't Tell-- plus an acknowledgment that it's taking longer than people expected-- was enough for many in the audience, excited to even be engaged by the president after 8 years of malevolent homophobia from the White House. Obama said, basically, "Trust me." And many of them-- noting that at least he wasn't Louie Gohmert or Jason Caffetz-- were happy to fall right in line. But not all.

Cleve Jones, a pioneer activist and creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, said Obama delivered a brilliant speech, but added "it lacked the answer to our most pressing question, which is when."

"He repeated his promises that he's made to us before, but he did not indicate when he would accomplish these goals and we've been waiting for a while now," said Jones, an organizer of a major gay-rights rally expected to draw thousands of gay and lesbian activists to the National Mall on Sunday.

Obama also called on Congress to repeal the Defense Of Marriage Act, which limits how state, local and federal bodies can recognize partnerships and determine benefits. He also called for a law to extend benefits to domestic partners.

He expressed strong support for the Human Rights Campaign agenda-- ending discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people-- but stopped short of laying out a detailed plan for how to get there.

...Obama also addressed those who do not favor advancing gay rights. A recent Pew Research Center poll asked about homosexual behavior, and about half said it is morally wrong. "There's still laws to change and there's still hearts to open," Obama said.

Many gays see right through that kind of bullshit and point out that blacks would still be slaves if we had waited for the same kinds of narrow-minded bigots, who are the most homophobic today, to open their hearts to blacks in the 1860s. Obama's in a tough place. If he doesn't deliver for gays by the time of the midterm elections, donations and voter enthusiasm will fall off appreciably. Having appointed a gay lawyer, David Huebner, ambassador to New Zealand won't cut it-- and passing the same anti-hate crimes bill every few months is going to wear thin sooner or later too.

Bil Browning, a blogger for Bilerico Project, a Web site aimed at a gay audience, said moments after the speech ended that the site was flooded with critical comments by people who said they had heard nothing new. “I could have watched one of his old campaign speeches and heard the same thing,” one wrote.

Even inside the room, reaction was mixed. Terry Penrod, a real estate agent from Columbus, Ohio, said some gay rights advocates were being impatient with the president, while Raj Malthotra, 29, a management consultant from Washington, said he thought the speech was a rehash of Mr. Obama’s past promises.

“For him, it’s buy more time until he needs our votes again,” Mr. Malthotra said.

...“An opportunity was missed tonight,” Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which represents gay and lesbian soldiers, said in a statement afterward.

Mr. Obama spoke for about 20 minutes inside the packed Washington Convention Center; outside, a small band of protesters on the sidewalk carried banners urging the president to live up to his promises. Among them was Mark Katzenberger, a software trainer from San Francisco, who said that despite his disillusionment with Mr. Obama, he would probably vote for him again.

Capturing the feeling of many in the gay community, Mr. Katzenberger said, “Even our friends sometimes need a kick in the butt.”

Gays and their allies will have to fight and win their own battles. At least Obama won't be fighting against them. Right now the biggest battle is in Maine, where right-wing religious fanatics and bigots are trying to overturn the state's hard-won equality rights. That campaign is the only endorsement Blue America '10 has made so far.



Bloggers who watched the speech, Joe Sudbay, Andrew Sullivan and John Aravosis seemed substantially less than impressed. Joe: "The expectations were very high. The president spoke for approximately 25 minutes. And, tonight, he did not deliver anything new or exciting. He did not assuage our concerns. I'm sure HRC is happy. This was a big night for the institution. But, I'm not sure what it did for the movement-- or HRC's actual mission of full equality."

Today's gay rights march in Washington (see photo above) couldn't be termed "pro-Obama."

"Dollar for dollar, Maine is the cheapest way to deliver a stinging defeat to the Wingnuts this year"

"It's easy to silo issues and to view the Maine campaign solely as an LGBT campaign. But, it's more than that. It is about generating momentum for the progressive movement."

-- Jesse Connolly ("a straight ally who believes strongly in equality for all"), campaign manager for "NO on 1/Project Maine Equality," blogging Friday on OpenLeft

by Ken

The quote at the top of this post comes from our friend Lane Hudson, who's referring of course  to the upcoming referendum in which the forces of darkness are pouring shitloads of money into Maine to try to persuade voters to repeal the law passed by the state legislature legalizing same-sex marriage. (I understand that Lane is going to be guest-posting about it here this weekend.)

It's getting down to the wire, and there's a lot of nervousness now. As "NO on 1/Project Maine Equality" campaign manager Jesse Connolly points out in the OpenLeft blogpost quoted above, "The same cast of characters is running the same campaign in Maine that succeeded in California."

The loons and thugs of the Far, Far Right, as you've no doubt noticed, seem to have forgotten their ancient mantra about keeping government off people's backs. On their issues they want government all over people's backs. I have to guess it's the rigidity hatefulness and misery of their own parched existences that make it so desperately important to them to do everything in their power to force their notions of proper conduct on people who think frankly that they're full of it.

As we've pointed out frequently here, one exceedingly terrible thing about this referendum movement is that it's legitimizing the idea of putting people's basic rights to a vote. A true democracy has to be irreducibly committed to respecting and protecting the rights of its minorities, and unfortunately putting those rights to a vote tends to have the opposite effect. For all sorts of unfortunate reasons, too many people are all too willing to strip away other people's rights.

Anyone who reads DWT probably doesn't need to be told that the Far, Far Right right now feels that it's fighting for its life, and will do anything it can to continue bullying other people into being told how to live their lives. To allow them to defeat us in Maine would be a nightmare for the personal rights of all Americans. Whereas a victory in Maine, as Jesse Connolly notes above, would provide a much-needed morale boost as well as a momentum-builder for pushback against the rampaging bigots and theocrats, as Jesse Connolly,

That's a pretty stark contrast. Then factor in Lane's brilliant formulation:

"Dollar for dollar, Maine is the cheapest way to deliver a stinging defeat to the Wingnuts this year."

If you want to help, you can contribute much-needed dollars to the "NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality" on our ActBlue page. You can get more information and look for other ways to pitch in -- there's a Volunteer Vacation Program, and I've been hearing that out-of-staters are eligible for phone-bank service -- in Jesse Connolly's OpenLeft post and on the NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality website.


A NOTE FOR NEW YORKERS (AND BOSTONITES TOO)

There's a local fund-raising event coming up, on Thursday, October 1, with "special guests" including Reps. Barney Frank and Jerry Nadler and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

(Perhaps I should have said "for rich New Yorkers." I actually checked out the prices this afternoon and discovered that the $250 tickets are sold out, but you can still buy in for $500 or $1000. If you're feeling more generous than that, you could also be a "sponsor" or a chair" Gulp.)

There's also a Boston event, on Tuersday, October 6.

#

There's more to the battle for LGBT basic human rights than same-sex marriage

Bobby Griffith (Ryan Kenney) tries to survive the "Christian" intolerance of his mother (Sigourney Weaver) in the Lifetime movie Prayers for Bobby. Amid the public outpouring prompted by the TV movie were too many indications that teens all over the country still think of suicide as a "solution" to the "problem" of being gay.

"In Indiana . . . we have no hate crimes protections or employment, housing, public accommodations, or even hospital visitation rights. . . . It's a completely different world that several on the coasts just don't get."

-- Bil Browning, on The Bilerico Report yesterday

by Ken

There is, as I'm sure you know, an important vote coming up in Maine, where the usual forces of reaction are trying to overturn their legislature's historic legalization of same-sex marriage, which was to have taken effect this month but has been put on hold pending the homophobes' November 3 referendum on "Proposition 1," which would vaporize the new law.

The "Vote No on 1" campaign is important for a number of reasons, not least -- in my view -- because it's a simply horrible idea to put people's basic human rights up for a vote (it has often been suggested that if the rights guaranteed us by the Constitution's Bill of Rights were put to a vote, odds are that we would lose them), and an even worse idea to have them voted down. (But isn't democracy by definition "majority rule?" you ask. No, democracy is majority rule with protection for minority rights.)

So please don't let anything that follows suggest that I'm anything less than 100 percent in favor of the gallant and necessary struggle being waged by Mainers in their No On 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign. It's just too easy to let the bigots who are sick of them damn homes have their way by casting a simple vote of hate.

And wherever else there are comparable battles against those forces of bigotry and reaction, yes, of course, it's crucial to fight them.

Still and all, I read something yesterday that I haven't been able to get out of my head. It was a lament by Bil Browning, founder and editor-in-chief of The Bilerico Report -- the source of the quote at the top of this post. I have a bad feeling that the situation in Indiana is far more representative of the country as a whole than that in the places where LGBT people do have those basic protections Bil mentions: hate crimes protections and employment, housing, public accommodations, and hospital visitation rights. Here's the part I especially want you to read:

The View From Here

The last positive thing to happen in Indiana was the overturn of the sodomy laws. We have no hate crimes protections or employment, housing, public accommodations, or even hospital visitation rights. Two gay men or women together are often still denied hotel rooms, apartments, or - as in the case in Louisville recently - a McDonald's sandwich. It's a completely different world that several on the coasts just don't get.

Years ago when I was gang raped and went to the police, I was told "Men don't get raped and you're gay so you probably wanted it. You should be glad we don't arrest you for sodomy."

While state law requires police agencies to monitor and report cases that "could be" hate crimes (to see if we need a hate crimes law, of course!), but rarely do. Indianapolis, for example, reported a big fat zero for years until we made a huge stink about it on Bilerico-Indiana and other local blogs.

Employment vs Marriage in the Heartland

Both Jerame [Davis, Bilerico's co-owner and webmaster] and I have lost jobs for being out and active in the community. Yet, while we're pushing strongly for ENDA [the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act] on Bilerico Project, what big blog from a coastal state is matching us for ENDA coverage? Those states already have those protections and could care less about ENDA mostly. They've got theirs.

We have a large crowd of transgender and middle American readers who do care about protections we don't have. I've begged for other blogs to pick up Jillian Weiss' Daily ENDA updates targeting legislators. No one has. (We have it as a middle column item so you can see the last 7 posts in case you missed one. It's at the top of the main page.)

Only Pam's House Blend - from a southern state even if it is coastal - has stayed on ENDA with anything more than lip service to news tidbits. What has been the big focus instead? Maine. California. Marriage.

What has marriage done for Indiana? Well, it lost us hate crimes protections and employment protections to start with. All of our dollars sent to the state org has been used to fight off an amendment for years now without any progress on basic rights. We've been stuck playing defense instead of offense - spending thousands of dollars and untold man hours - every time another coastal state with protections we don't have takes a step forward for their citizens.

Let's be clear: Bilerico supports all the pro-LGBT initiatives as actively as it can. But Bil is clearly frustrated, verging on desperate, that LGBT activists don't seem to hear what he and people in places like Indiana are saying: that where they are, people can be ridiculed, harassed, and fired for being LGBT, can have crimes against them ignored by law enforcement, can be denied housing, medical visitation rights, and so on.

And I have to agree that an awful lot of LGBT activists, engaged in their important labors, aren't hearing. I hear strategic talk of how crucial the Maine vote is because financial donors need to see "wins" to open their wallets. Which I'm sure is true. I hear endless arguments about whether 2010 or 2012 is the better year for a Prop 8 repeal drive in California. Which I guess is a question that has to be asked. I've heard an argument that sort of addresses concerns like Bil's: that the situation in places like Indiana will only be fixed by eventual federal legislation, and that won't happen until a national "tipping point" happens on the marriage issue. Which I think is maybe true.

I don't claim to have deep insight into the rights and wrongs of cutting-edge LGBT strategy. But I do know that somebody's got to hear what people like Bil are saying.

I'm as guilty as anyone of marveling at the transformation in American attitudes toward homosexuality and homosexuals, which has unquestionably been extraordinary. We see a level of acceptance now that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago, maybe even 10. But (a) the change has been very unequally distributed geographically, and (b) as we've known, the hard-core minority, principally the hard-core pseudo-religious, who just about define their existence by homo-hating, will fight to the death, or nearly so, to preserve the demonology of their cosmos.

My take on the transformation in American attitudes is that as more and more Americans become aware that they are personally acquainted with LGBT people who aren't in any respect different from anybody else -- some swell, some awful, and lots in between, all of this having nothing to do with their sexual orientation -- they have come to see their LGBT relatives, friends, neighbors, and coworkers in a human rather than an abstract way.

Just to pick one glaringly obvious example: the incredibly passionate loyalty Rachel Maddow has developed in the short time she has been doing her MSNBC show. Oh sure, if you visit the wingnut precincts of the Internet, you'll find the expected rabid filth about her sexual orientation, but those are the unreconstructed, and probably unreconstructable, mental left-behinds. Rachel's viewers love her because she is stupendously good at what she does: incredibly smart, hard-working, blunt, principled, funny, respectful, and empathetic. I'm tempted to say charismatic, because it does seem to be true in TV that there is a "grabbing" quality you either have or you don't, but charisma is a tricky business, and I don't want to get into that. I think Rachel's viewers identify with her, and feel that she's speaking for us. My guess is that she still has viewers who don't know that she's a lesbian, because except on specific issues involving that, it doesn't matter. She has earned viewers' trust and even love by being who she is.

In January I wrote about the huge public outpouring prompted by Lifetime's TV movie version of the book Prayers for Bobby, about a mother who gets about as monstrous a wake-up call as a parent can get when her adored oldest child, her son Bobby, commits suicide, in good part because he can't escape her church-mandated homophobia, which in turn prompts the devastated Mary to reexamine her, and her church's, basic beliefs. [In this clip, a bereaved Mary (Sigourney Weaver) tells her story publicly.]

I noted in particular the outpouring of personal stories on the LIfetime website: from writers who had known people who went through the "should I kill myself because I'm gay?" agony, from writers who had themselves gone through it, and most importantly from teenagers WHO WERE GOING THROUGH IT AT THAT TIME. Back then it seemed marvelous that all those people had been reached by this wonderful "reach out" tool to show them that they're not alone and that they don't actually have a "problem," that it's the people who torment and demean them who do. Obviously this was especially true in the case of the young people contemplating such drastic action. There's no question in my mind that Prayers for Bobby saved lives -- and I hope will continue to on DVD.

But look at it the other way: that in our "enlightened" time, all over the country there are teenagers who think that suicide is not only a reasonable solution, but possibly the best solution, to the "problem" of being LGBT. How do we live with that?

In the matter of sexual harassment, laws have changed to the point where, at least in my workplace, we have mandatory annual training sessions, taken very seriously by our management (no doubt in part because of fear of lawsuits), trying to develop sensitivity to the issue, and if nothing else strict compliance as to what we can and can't say and do. But in most places you can still say or do anything, on up to firing, to anyone whose sexual orientation is "different." How do we live with that?

#