Pride & Opinions

Our old buddy Fred Phelps and his inbred Westboro Baptist Church congregation seem to be up to their old tricks again.

This time the family business attempted to travel to Canada but were turned away when the pickup truck they arrived at the border in was covered with their usual form of hate speech.  Phelps’ clan got creative in their subversive activity, shipping their paraphernalia to Canada by courier and driving through without a problem.

Why are they in Canada you might ask?

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I’m not the type to live in fear - never have been.  In fact, I have only one true fear in life at all.  My fear is that when I die I will be forgotten as though my life did not matter in the first place.  In other words, I’m scared of not making a true impact, a difference, in the world around me.

When I first learned of the Gay American Heroes Project it was one of those "why didn’t someone think of this sooner?" moments.  There have been so many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people killed in hate crimes and all too often those news stories are buried on some back page below the fold.  the Gay American Heroes Project founder Scott Hall couldn’t accept that and decided to do something about it. 

By building a national memorial to GLBT hate crime victims, Hall hopes to see to it that no member of the GLBT who is killed because of their sexual identity is ever forgotten, and it seems as though his idea his catching on.

• Chad Allen (actor)
• Alan Cumming (actor, director)
• Barney Frank (U.S. Representative)
• Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live)
• Robert Gant (Queer as Folk)
• Iman (supermodel)
• Cyndi Lauper (singer, activist)
• Christopher Rice (author, A Density of Souls)
• Sgt Eric Alva (gay U.S. Marine)

A Final Note from Michael:  It is hard to believe that a memorial of this nature has never been done before, but with the diligent efforts of men and women like Scott Hall, perhaps we will bring new light to the senseless murders of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender family.  It is only through education that we can affect change, and only by raising our voices in unison as a community that we can ever hope to stand up and be counted.

I encourage each and every person reading this - regardless of your sexual identity - to visit the Gay American Heroes Project web site and learn more.  If you are able, I hope you will support the organization in any way possible. 

In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . .
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

If we do not speak up for ourselves, who will?

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Tags: gay american heroes project gay lesbian bisexual trans transgender hate crime matthew sheppard scott hall glbt hate crime memorial

Ahmet Yildiz was a gorgeous 26 year old physics student from Istanbul, Turkey. He was on the fast track toward large scale success in his field, as evidenced by the information on his Wiki page.

He was also gay.

I say was because Ahmet was murdered when he left a cafe near the Bosphorus Strait a few days ago. After being shot he tried to get away from his attackers but died in the hospital after losing control and crashing his car before he could get help.

According to his friends, Ahmet Yildiz was the victim of an honor killing.

Ahmet was a member of the gay rights group Lambda Istanbul, that was closed down earlier this year by the government of Turkey for “immoral” behavior.

Stories like this serve only to remind me that for as far as we have come as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, we are still at risk each and every day just for being who we are. The more we secure a place in the world, the more people will try to secure our place in the cemetery.

Hatred and bigotry run strong through the veins of many, and it will always be so. Jesse Jackson gets caught on a hot microphone saying that he wanted to cut Barak Obama’s nuts off for talking down to black people and in the same conversation uses the word nigger.

Let me be absolutely clear at this point – I hate the word. Living in the south it is one that I hear all too often and there is no positive connotation whatsoever, no matter who it is that is talking. My point is that Jackson was complaining about Obama “talking down to black people” and then turned around and said that horrible word that is the quintessential example of talking down to black people.

It isn’t any different than gay people embracing and using terms like “queer”, “fag”, “fudge packer”, etc., I guess. Personally I don’t like any of them.

All I know right now is that yet another young, promising gay guy is now dead from what appears to be a hate crime and it pisses me off that we are still too hung up in this country on somebody using a bad word to even notice.

You want to know the impact Ahmet had on his field of study?  Do a Google image search for his name and you’ll see photo after photo of him accepting awards for his work.  Do the same for Jesse Jackson.  All you’ll find is photo after photo of him saying the same shit he’s been spouting since he started riding the coat tails of real civil rights pioneers.

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