Where Trump Rules Don't Apply

Lucky bastard, living in a blue state.  But those of us hanging on in red states need to put our envy and desperation to work.  There are people like Dylan Orr in Kentucky; they're just not in positions of power.  Yet.

Let's get them there.

Dennis Hartley at Hullabaloo:

This is why I love living in a city like Seattle:
[from an email I received from Seattle’s Labor Standards office]

Our Commitment to
Equity, Inclusion and Openness 

As Mayor Ed Murray stated last week, Seattle remains a city guided by the values of equity, inclusion and openness. “Seattle is a city that supports women and the LGBTQ community, that welcomes our Muslim brothers and sisters, that embraces immigrants and refugees, and that believes that Black Lives Matter.” 

As the Director of the Seattle Office of Labor Standards, and an openly transgender individual, I assure you that we in the Office of Labor Standards are deeply committed to upholding these values, and ensuring that we continue to be a supportive resource and partner to Seattle’s most vulnerable communities. We will re-double our efforts to advance labor standards through thoughtful community and business engagement, strategic enforcement and innovative policy development with a commitment to race and social justice. 

To our immigrant community partners, Mayor Ed Murray has promised that the City of Seattle will remain a welcoming city, committed to serving all the residents of Seattle regardless of their immigration status. Under a local law passed in 2003, Seattle city employees are NOT allowed to ask about people’s immigration status when providing city services, unless required by law or a court order. We in the Office of Labor Standards are proud to enforce labor standards for all of Seattle’s workers, regardless of immigration status. We also have strong anti-retaliation provisions across all our labor standards ordinances. 

If you have any questions about our work or services, feel free to contact us. We look forward to our continued work ahead. 

In solidarity, 

Dylan Orr
Director, Seattle Office of Labor Standards

We’re circling the wagons, folks. We have to stay strong.

 Right here in Kentucky, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray ran for U.S. Senate as an openly gay Democrat. And nobody cared about his sexuality.

Tiny progress, but I'll take it. And run with it.

Romney's Gay Confession: "I Am What I Am"

A friend writes:

Did you see Romney's big declaration today "I am what I am"?  Funny that the media has put a Popeye spin to it.  Were I Mr. Romney, I would be worried that more people heard "La Cage aux Folles" when they saw the headline.  Heaven knows, his -- and the Republican party's -- policies don't recognize other people's rights to be what they are.  Maybe someone should play the music for them????  :-)

La Cage Aux Folles - I Am What I Am Lyrics

I am what I am
I am my own special creation
So come take a look
Give me the hook or the ovation

It's my world that I want to take a little pride in
My world and it's not a place I have to hide in
Life's not worth a damn
Till you can say, "Hey world, I am what I am"

I am what I am
I don't want praise, I don't want pity
I bang my own drum
Some think it's noise, I think it's pretty

And so what, if I love each feather and each spangle
Why not try and see things from a different angle?
Your life is a sham till you can shout out loud
I am what I am

I am what I am
And what I am needs no excuses
I deal my own deck
Sometimes the ace
Sometimes the deuces

There's one life
And there's no return and no deposit
One life, so it's time to open up your closet
Life's not worth a damn till you can say
"Hey world, I am what I am"

Uploaded by Quartzoluxe on Mar 11, 2008

Black Lesbian Defeats Incumbent DINO in Nevada with No Money

I don't know whether this story flying under the radar is a sign that non-traditional candidates winning is now dog-bites-man, or a sign that Our Liberal Media still refuses to give such candidates any oxygen.

Either way, tell all your friends!

Down with Tyranny:

Which brings us to something remarkable that happened in Nevada, of all places, (June 12).

Short version: another out-of-touch, entrenched political scumbag, this time state Senator John Lee, had his ass handed to him... by an African-American lesbian with no money. John Lee was like the king of North Las Vegas and a grimy part of the state Democratic Machine. Everybody was backing him-- Harry Reid, the big lobbyists, all the politicians... everybody but the people. Patricia Spearman a gay minister won a landslide victory over him in Tuesday's primary-- and in a district so blue that no Republican even bothered to run. Have you noticed that those blue districts have been unkind to Republican-lite Democrats lately?

Democratic state Sen. John Lee was defeated in a stunning upset Tuesday by political newcomer Patricia Spearman despite having a huge money advantage and the backing of the Democratic establishment.

With about 90 percent of the precincts reporting in Senate District 1, Spearman, a gay minister, had more than 60 percent of the vote to top the incumbent from North Las Vegas, Lee raised more than $200,000 for his re-election bid, dwarfing Spearman's estimated $13,000 fund-raising take.

But he was targeted by environmentalists and conservationists upset over Lee's sponsorship of 2011 bill that paved the way for Nevada to withdraw from a partnership with California that governs development and environmental regulations at Lake Tahoe.

Lee, who has served in the Senate since 2004, also ran afoul of the more liberal members of the Democratic Party for opposing a 2009 domestic partnership law that extended rights to cohabitating gay and heterosexual couples. Lee also opposed a failed Democratic plan last year to raise taxes.

And, by the way, Pastor Spearman is the vice-chairwoman for the Stonewall Democrats of Southern Nevada. She's savvy and she's another harbinger of big changes that are coming to this country, changes for the better.

Your Newest Unsung Heroes

From Pass The Doucheys:

Marcus Bachman must be twisting in his shorts at this……. news is emerging out of Norway of a heroic lesbian couple who not only rescued Utoya campers by boat during Anders Breivik’s rampage, they returned to the island FOUR TIMES to spirit away terrified campers. Via JoeMyGod and Just Out:

Hege Dalen and her partner Toril Hansen were eating supper in the camping area opposite Utoya [sic.] island when they started hearing gunshots and screaming….

Dalen and Hansen drove their boat to the island, and fished out of the water people who were in shock and young people who were injured and transported them ashore. Every now and then bullets almost hit the boat.

Since they couldn’t fit everyone into the boat all at once, they returned to the island four times. They might have saved as much as forty people from the clutches of the killer.

Cue the right-wing homophobes and conspiracy theorist nutbags to start screaming that the story is a plant for the gay Sharia agenda in 5..4..3..2..1.

Liberals celebrate as genuine heroes all those who risk or sacrifice themselves to save others.

Fuck You, Rand Paul: Out and Proud Jim Gray is Lexington's New Mayor

Live-blogging from Media Czech here.

The coolest aspect of the many cool aspects of Jim Gray's victory is that his homosexuality was never a major issue. Mayor-elect Jim Gray has been vice-mayor for four years since receiving the most votes in the 2006 at-large city council race. He has been a consistent and persistent critic of corrupt Mayor Jim Newberry, especially on the destructive catastrophe of Centrepointe, better known as the Cock-and-Balls Tower.

Gray is no dirty fucking hippie, being the owner of Gray Construction and a strong proponent of economic development.

But he is also a proven voice of reason and a breath of fresh air.

Ya dun good, Lexington.

Boomers Didn't Invent Teh Gay

Oh, alright, fine, we didn't invent sex, either. Although we did vastly improve it.

Seriously, it's long past time we all acknowledged that as long as there have been cocks, mouths, cunts, fingers and assholes, human beings have found an infinite number of ways to combine them to create sexual pleasure.

Yet historians of early America continue to insist - in increasingly shrill tones - that our forefathers in long-term same-sex situations remained celibate. And Larry Kramer is fed up with it.

No, there was no right word for it that you wanted to use for it if you were doing it. Buggery and sodomy connoted anal penetration and thus were, in many places, punishable by death.

That does not mean that men did not know they were gay (to use today's word), know what to do with their cocks, know when they were smitten with other men, know where to go to find them, know what it meant to get violently rejected, or the reverse, find a friend, in other words, the whole gestalt, to use another of today's terms. A penis has never been something that you pick up and put down and put away idly without consideration.

When both US News and the New Yorker ran pieces on the 400th anniversary of Jamestown in 2007, they were both so annoyingly ignorant of the fact that almost all of its inhabitants were men that I submitted my thoughts to both magazines.

Read the whole thing.

It's long, but well worth your time. I have only a couple of complaints:

1) At times, Kramer veers dangerously close to arguing that everyone in history who is not categorically and undeniably heterosexual is ipso facto homosexual, a tendency that undermines his otherwise strong case, and

2) Kramer appears to be guilty of the same denial of which he accuses historians when he fails to even mention the likelihood of homosexual sex between women in pre-20th-century America. Gertrude Stein was a pioneer in many ways, but in physically loving another woman I imagine she was upholding a longstanding New World tradition.

But Kramer's larger point, that what we now call "being gay" has been an integral part of American society and culture for 400 years, and that denying the historicity of gay Americans feeds and supports fear, hatred and marginalization of gays, is solid and important.

It's just sex, people. As long as it happens between consenting adults, and avoids harm to other adults, children, animals and antique furniture, it's legal, Constitutional and historical.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Ernie Fletcher Gay?

Unfortunately, probably not. But under the New Rule that those who publicly bash gays or otherwise demonstrate blatant homophobia have thus proven they are closeted, self-hating homosexuals, Incumbent Republican Governor Fletcher has outed himself.

As Sam Wise at BlueGrassRoots puts it:

He's sunk this low. Soon-to-be-ex-governor Ernie Fletcher is now gay-bashing Steve Beshear. Never mind that he's not gay, that doesn't matter.
I am glad that our state will soon be rid of this crooked, hate-mongering, lying sack.
From today's Courier Journal blog:

"We reported earlier today that it looked like Gov. Ernie Fletcher was banking on the immigration if he were to salvage his reelection. We were wrong. It's gays.

After the Republican Party of Kentucky sent out robo-calls telling voters they better vote for Fletcher if they didn't want Kentucky to become another San Francisco, Republicans went on the road to hammer Democrat Steve Beshear and his running mate Dan Mongiardo for an endorsement they received from C-Fair, which supports equal rights for gays and lesbians.

At a campaign rally at the Kentucky Horse Park tonight in Lexington, Fletcher running mate Robbie Rudolph may have implied the Democratic ticket was gay when he asked the crowd, "Do you want a couple of San Francisco treats or do you want to reelect Gov. Ernie Fletcher?"Attorney General candidate Stan Lee referred to Beshear and Mongiardo as "San Francisco treats" as well."

I know no one needs any further motivation to not become complacent these last few days, but conduct like this by Fletcher continues to provide plenty of motivation to those who are disgusted with Fletcher to take nothing for granted. This kind of gay-bashing childish behavior should earn an especially severe rejection at the polls, one that will serve as a statement to future politicians. That statement will be that Kentuckians want real leaders, not cowardly hate-mongers who want to demonize any Kentucky minority.

Kentucky Democrats may be dropping like flies from schadenfreude overdose, but we're not cruel. So, to help our obviously pained Governor, I propose an intervention:

Ernie, sweetie: Being in the closet is nothing to be ashamed of. We all understand that some people feel it's necessary. But acceptable closet behavior includes discretion.

You and Robbie understand discretion, right? Your self-hatred must remain unspoken. The moment you express your self-hatred in public gay-bashing, your secret's out.

Public gaybashing = homophobia = closet.

But don't worry; the record-breaking rejection Kentucky voters are about to drop on your ass has nothing to do with your orientation.

And that's your real legacy, Ernie: Incompetence and corruption so blatant and thorough that even the last-minute revelation of your closeted homosexuality has virtually no effect.

Love to Glenna.

56 hours, 30 minutes until the polls close in Western Kentucky.

Cross-posted at Watching Those We Chose.

Compassion for the Hypocrite

No, I have no sympathy, emphathy or compassion for hypocrites, especially of the lying, republican, homophobic, hate-mongering variety.

But in response to Larry Craig's interview this week with Matt Lauer, Andrew Sullivan wrote a provocative column about the social pressure and cultural distortions that create a self-hating creature like Larry Craig.

If you want an argument for why the cause for gay visibility, dignity and equality is necessary and indeed noble, just watch that interview again.
Craig was seeking in that toilet stall a connection, a shard of intimacy, that the world would not give him, or that he could not give himself. No one should have to live without that intimacy and dignity - no one. Living a life like that - a deeply lonely, compromised, painful interior existence - is a very sophisticated form of hell. No human can keep it up for ever. No human should have to keep it up for ever.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.