You’re no different than the fundamentalists you decry, except you disagree with your church (roman catholic church) on gay rights. But that disagreement gives them legitimacy as you wear your faith like gawdy jewelry, and appeal to the same sources they do in affirming them.

And where is this polling data? And I already explained that some movement isn’t coming from religious values, but secular ones. Those religious “values” aren’t particularly religious values, for one; and historically, only change when there’s a radical shift in secular public perception. Religion evolves to meet public attitudes so it can “survive”; that’s how it works. The roman catholic church didn’t consult the bible to discover the authenticity of evolution–instead, realizing it didn’t want to make the same mistake it did with galileo (and couldn’t) which scarred its reputation permanently, it adapted. Religion has been the protector of conservativism in maintaining traditional social values–hence the prominence of the role of ritual. Enlightenment values are responsible for just about every progressive social movement and right we have (whether it be free speech, freedom of religion–to feminism and the gay rights movement). Even the civil rights movement and the role churches played as a social network came about through the discovery of human dignity and basic moral equality of all men in the enlightenment as evidenced by each speech given by every civil rights leader…not, in saying that, quoting scripture, but the founders of this country.

But, to the original reporter…it helps to have your facts straight. The first gay march on Washington, D.C. was October 11, 1987, not 1977. It’s twenty year anniversary, not thirty. Just giving you a heads up.

Hell, I wasn’t more than five years old, and I still know that. It’s called research.

THE TRUTH: I don’t know. Neither do you. That’s okay.

If I thought someone did “know” I’d find out – some how. Nobody knows. When you understand that you can use your mind to create a beautiful life. Just think of the possibilities …

While my remarks were not directed at you but were in response to Tank, I am not at all surprised that you would take it upon yorself to respond to me in the dismissive and condescending manner in which you have.

I feel that your cavalier, I could give a good shit less attitude about other human beings, attitude precisely reflects the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church who committed horrible crimes and atrocities against mankind for the past two-thousand years and yet act as if there should be no need for them to apologize for any of their heinous actions.

I have no need to win the hearts and minds of people who let their personal childhood baggage hinder the movement

That’s a straw man my dear. My childhood experiences in no way hinders the movement. In fact, freed of the baggage of religion, I feel that I have been a far more effective tool in the movement than religious zealots like you,who feel that they must defend, at all costs, the castle, each and every time someone says anything that is perceived to be a threat to your religious freedom and right to blaspheme innocent people. I would suggest that it is your deeply held religious beliefs that do more harm to the movement than anything else.

besides we already have boo-hoo religion hurt me’s vote on this issue

For a person brought up in a religion that demands that respect be shown to it, you don’t show much of that respect for others, do you? I can see very clearly now how well the “Turn the other cheek” philosophy serves people like like yourself. It give you a second opportunity to give them another slap if the first one did not succeed in shutting them the fuck up.

Neither of the posters I responded to do anything no politics no activism so really who cares what they think

Do you have any factual proof of that? Are you having them tailed by a private investigator who reports to you on their comings and goings and their political activities? You’ve bugged their clothing? Concealed micro cameras in their homes. What? What?

They are either too apathetic or too scared to actually do the work of doing the outreach or having the uncomfortable conversations and crunching the data

You, no doubt, have a crystal ball that allows you to get into their minds and ascertain what their motivations or lack of them are. You must either be a psychic or psychiatrist. If the latter, where are your papers?

So feel free to tantrum and spend your time fantasizing about an America with no religion

I have a glorious fantasy. If we had no religions, we most likely would not have DOMA. If we had no religion, we most likely would not have had Prop. 8. If we had no religion, we probably would not have DADT. If we had no religion, we of the LGBT community would all be free to marry the partner of our choice in all 50 States of the Union. If we had no religion, bi-national, same-sex couples would be able to bring their spouses to America to be with them just like straight people…and just as you can. Are you beginning to get the picture yet?

I can guarantee you no one really cares what think

I kind of got that from the first sentence you wrote. What puzzles me, however, is that if this is really so, then why did you bother to respond to a post that was not directed at you?

You claim we’re broken, imitating the bigotry of scum like the most holy reverends Donnie McClurkin and Pat Robertson.

You say we’re do nothings because we post at Queerty. (And if that’s the case what are you doing here, little Church Lady. Your only activism consists in apologizing for other bigots like Obama, telling us to give him time and reminding us that he’s busy with his racist oil war in South Asia and playing lapdog to the looter rich.)

You claim that we had an awful time as children just like Dobson and that we’re extremists out to poison society, just like Palin.

You’re a 100% christian missionary and that’s 100% revolting. When we reply to your idiocies you invariably turn on the waterworks and claim we’re being mean to you and trying to suppress you right to be ignorant and superstitious (freedom of religion).

And that’s just the mild stuff. Anyone who disagrees with your mission to convert gay men is branded a child molester or someone deliberately trying to spread AIDS.

What a piece of offal you are, getsevenwithgaymen.

Heres just some of the hardcore chirster bigotry you’ve spewed at Queerty.

http://www.queerty.com/morning.....-20090203/ People can to look at comment 7 where you assume the missionary position and bait tallskin, accusing him of being a pederast.

http://www.queerty.com/michael.....-20090327/ Go down to comment 254. This is where you claim there’s a plot by African American to AA gay men to spread HIV/AIDs. It’s pretty sick stuff. You surely don’t think that bigoted lies like that will make it easier for you to convert or seduce gay men to your bizarre, adopted lifestyle.

By the way there are lots of real Americans who violently disagree with your superstition and ignorance.

“Christianity…(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man.” Thomas Jefferson

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? …superstition, bigotry, and persecution.” James Madison

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity” Thomas Paine

“Lighthouses are more useful than churches” Benjamin Franklin

But never fear, Donnie McClurkin and Rich Warren agree with you about the importance of being the best little christer you can.

You’re straight, you’re an Obamabot, you do very little but lie and make bigoted comments and defend sell out Democrats. Your other comments are extraordinarily opaque (I’ll save you the trouble – that means you’re almost as smart as a turnip) and display not only ignorance about gay men and our lives but the typical bigotry of straight people who come here to tell us how to act and what to think. “Dipshit” indeed.

Why are you even here? The last thing we need it to be bothered by another lying jebbuz jumper.

I grew up in a time when we were all taught, hell, brainwashed into believing that we must respect everyone.

I was told to respect my parents, no matter whether they were right or wrong or how badly I was mistreated by them.

I was told to respect my teachers, even when they took it upon themselves to physically discipline us with their hands and wooden rulers with metal edge inserts.

I was told to respect my high school Principal, even when he removed his belt and gave me 25 lashes across my bare ass with it (yeah, the perve wanted to see my lilly white boy ass turn red) for taking a quarter out of the drawer of a teacher’s desk so I could buy myself a hot lunch at the cafeteria.

I was told to respect my Catholic Priest when he stood in the pulpit preaching bullshit, outright lies and propagating hatred against all the people he did not like.

I was told to respect my Sunday School teacher when he tried to brainwash us kids into believing that a man could survive in the belly of a fucking whale without light, food or oxygen.

I was told to respect the cop on the beat, who beat queers up simply for having the audacity to be sitting on the stoop and conversing with friends on a corner.

And last, but not least, I was told to respect God, even though no one could give me empiracal evidence of his existance.

The point is, it did not take me long to figure out that being told that I must respect people, even when they had done nothing to earn that respect, was simply another method of mind control. It also did not take me long to realize that I was surrounded by control freaks.

And once I fully realized that fact and began resisting that mind control, it did not take long before I was labeled as “rebellious” and a “problem child”. I pissed them off because I was no longer willing to let them control me and try to make me believe and do as they wanted me to.

I left home at the tender age of 14 to escape the religious Christian nuts who demanded that I think just like them. It was the best decision that I ever made.

Just acting on it according to official CATHOLIC dogma.

Religion doesn’t make homosexuality wrong religious extremist fundamentalists do.

“religion” isn’t but “RELIGION” is. The pathetic dance of justifying primitive false beliefs has begun.

They are as crazy as you are trying to push their ideology and trying to control how people think.

Right, because anyone who dares oppose toxic religious faith (most of them, including christianity and islam), is engaging in “thought control”. This isn’t about your right to assembly and religious freedoms, dippy. This is about religious memes poisoning the ability of others to live their lives freely and as they please. Yes, religion in the u.s. is practically synonymous with institutional bigotry.

When we stress freedom and families religious people slowly but surely in outreach open their minds.

That’s bullshit. Religious people in the u.s. (christians) do not open their minds to same sex marriage or even that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. You see a little movement on DADT, however. It isn’t religion that’s responsible for the change of heart either, but SECULAR values that are taking the place of bigoted religious ones. It’s moderates like you who do nothing to change the minds of those who are homophobic and attribute it to their religious faith. You are just a failed fundamentalist to them.

Telling Americans that we will take away their right to think and worship how they choose is a guarantee we will lose.

But who’s telling americans that? Huh? No one. Not even religion hurts is saying that. I think batshit stupid and HARMFUL ideas such as those found throughout christianity should be challenged, and the freedom to challenge them should be protected.

If you find religion distasteful then don’t practice it

It’s more than distasteful; it’s fucking UNETHICAL. REligious beliefs cause people to do bad things.

but polling numbers prove your ideas would be suicide for the movement.

Once again jousting at ideas NEVER PROPOSED because, at heart, you’re just as much a religionist as the rest of them.

If you don’t believe in God good for you but why be obsessive about it you need to convert everyone that makes you a fundamentalists nd who would want to be that?

This, right here, is the christian agenda. In this country where 80% of the people believe that the bible is the word of god, atheists are the target–they are the oppressed, not fundotard religionists. CHristians have declared war on atheists and have for centuries. They are the ones teaching their toxic beliefs to kids, indoctrinating them in their cult of memes, ruining their minds to dogma free judgment. And it is the RELIGIOUS who, and specifically christians in the u.s., who demand that everyone think just like them.

$1 billion has been spent to lobby and “convert” the politicians in the last 10 years – only 7 have converted. They were taught before they could “think.” Recognize that reality and we’ll make progress.

Religion is the only thing that makes gay wrong. Religion is just a stupid idea to own people who do not think. Get them.

Religion is also an excuse, a cover if you will, to make bigotry, hatred and discrimination socially and legally acceptable.

The proof of that is to be seen all around us and we have lived with that all of our lives.

Heart by heart? Mind by mind?

The wooden beads on my abacus have developed dry rot and turned to dust while I was counting over the years.

But hey, that’s okay. There’s not that many “crossovers” that I can’t count them on the fingers of one hand. ;P

Naw, you’re wrong. Scratch a bigot and you’ll find superstition and ignorance and scratch a leading politician and you’ll find the same. They inextricably intertwined. You can’t fight one with out finding the other in the same enemy trenches.

And you’re mainly right about lobbying. It’s pretty ineffective.

But you’re wrong about marches, by which I mean a concerted, permanent campaign of mass actions whether local, regional or national. They work.

When you say It isn’t politics you need to change, it’s minds, minds that have been brainwashed into believing “gay is wrong” I presume you’re talking about bigots like Obama, the Clintons, Palin, McCain, Reid and Pelosi and most of the Congress irrespective of party. Obama, a religious nut case, is directly responsible, along with the catholic cult, Warren’s southern baptists and the morons for defeating our chances to preserve SSM in California based on Obama’s bigoted comment that “gawd’s in the mix”.

The politics of bigotry are a permanent mixture of bigoted cults and bigoted politicians acting against the GLBT communities. That’s not going to change. Religion is the enemy and so are the politicians who back it up with bigoted laws and bribes like those issued by Joshua Dubois, Obama’s bigoted ordained Minister of Pandering, who arranged campaign interventions with scum like the Reverends Donnie McClurkin and Rick Warren.

German christers after they changed their minds… [img]http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:iKnzObaRD_HD8M:http://liberalslikechrist.org/.....er.jpg/img

Religion is the only thing that makes gays wrong. Religion is story, not fact. there are 1800 different religions – all claiming to be “right.” They each believe they are the right one. They also ALL believe GAY is WRONG. If you really care about fairness, start there.

Gays suffer from both shame and consequences – laws (equal rights) will handle the consequences… what are you going to do about the shame? Ignoring it doesn’t work.

Religion works when it is not challenged. Progress requires education and knowledge. If you want to do something positive for gay rights recognize what has caused ALL the hardship and pain – RELIGION. Not republicans, conservatives, bigots etc., but, religion.

You will need to think about this. If you actually do think about it – welcome to the living, thinking part of humanity. Now, go wake up some more people.

I am gay and I am not wrong. Religion hurts.

Too many commentors here seem to think that everything was cheap and easy for everyone in 93. It wasn’t the economy wasn’t in good shape then either and we managed to scrape together the money to get our asses to Washington. It can be done. So much negativity here.

A MOW and local marches to support it are all valuable parts of the fight we have to make.

If we don’t win Federally, we don’t win. I’m not willing to accept that my LGBT brothers and sisters in Utah and Florida will be permanently excluded from rights. Federal protections will expose the hateful and regressive result of the State by State strategy and force States to recognize marriages regardless of where they are performed. I also see our fight to be way beyond Marriage Equality, a right I don’t see myself ever needing. We need the whole package of Federal protections.

Until then we’ve got a march to build.

Equality or else…

I think the message of this march is important: to show Americans that true equality will only happen on a federal level.

Let’s go!

A recent study claimed that more than $1 billion has been spent on lobbying efforts for GLBT in the last 10 years ($100 million just on CA Prop 8) and during that time only 7 politicians had changed their minds. (I will find a copy of the study and Post the link).

We are wasting our money lobbying and marching. There is only one thing in the entire world that makes “gay” WRONG – it is religion. If you want rights you need to make that ‘wrong’ go away. You are fighting the wrong battle. It isn’t politics you need to change, it’s minds, minds that have been brainwashed into believing “gay is wrong.”

Until you fix that, it’s all a big waste of time and energy.

And what evidence do you have to prove your wild assertion?

I 100% agree with you. However, THE MOST EFFECTIVE FORM OF LOBBYING OCCURS AT HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t live in DC, so mind telling me how you can support a march on DC and stand by this statement. The two are COMPLETELY contradictory, and the fact that you can’t realize that means you are unfit to lead. You remind me of one of those CEOs, that makes 5 million to run a 10 billion deficit in a company, that can’t use his own common sense to fix things. Unfortunately, the gay movement is not GM, Obama isn’t going to wait for it to need bankruptcy protection then replace its leaders with more competent ones.

Politicians motivated by superstition and ignorance, i.e., religion, and by the hustler sleaze factor preeminent in the ‘careers’ of the Clintons, Pelosi, Frank, the Bushes, Reid and Obama are just as dangerous as pigs like Der Papenfuehrer and Rick Warren.

They all pander to redneck bigots, catholic bigots and moron bigots and other bigots.

Marching on Washington misses the pint – religion is the target, not politicians. Religion is the only thing in the world that makes gays “wrong.” wake up. If you’re going to fight, fight the right battle.