It would be more effective to do like the rightwingers do and get our people to simply telephone our senators and congressmen (etc) and give them a piece of our mind by phone.

Here it is, posted Tuesday: Leadership Summit Organizations Going Back to Community to Assess Next Steps on Marriage Equality in CA.

It was also posted under comment No. 72 on your original story.

I’ve never seen such shoddy “reporting” in my life. Let’s deconstruct this piece of crap, shall we?

Queerty:

“We shared with readers the words and frustration of activist Michael Petrelis, who called bullshit on the meeting for instituting a closed-door invite-only policy — the same anti-democratic organizing effort that sunk the No On Prop 8 effort……

“Organizers like parent-turned-activist Robin McGhee (pictured), who founded MITM, were going to share polling data with attendees, which was what the media was actually most hungry for (nevermind that the results may be inaccurate, given the recent California Supreme Court ruling on Prop 8).”

First and foremost: Sunday’s meeting was thrown open to any marriage equality activist or organizer who wanted to come. No one who showed up was turned away.

One small portion of the meeting – where internal polling data was discussed – was closed to press. This data will be shared over time with marriage equality organizers and activists all over the state in the coming months. And for those of you who assumes it’s being withheld from the general public because it’s “bad”, I can assure you it is not. It’s being withheld because the information is strategic and will inform and shape any campaign – whenever that may be – to come. How stupid would it be to give that to our opponents?

Queerty:

“The event was supposedly open to the press, except for all the alleged openness, the only videos we could find on YouTube from Fresno are clips of public spaces from Saturday’s rally and some from Sunday’s anti-equality reality by opponents; search for “Fresno Sunday” and there’s nothing. We also could not find any press photos from major news outlets from the Sunday event. If you can, please share the links.”

Bullshit. Go to UniteTheFight and this link.
http://unitethefight.blogspot......going.html

You will find a lot of the meeting (there was some technical difficulties, so the video isn’t great). In addition, the entire meeting, except for the polling data discussion, was videotaped by the event organizers.

As for there being no photos, I took thousands, both Saturday and Sunday. Go to this link to see nearly three hundred photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/c.....122277159/

Queerty:

“Meanwhile, we hear the Courage Campaign’s Rick Jacobs is calling around insisting he had nothing to do with Sunday’s closed-door meeting. And not to get too “conspiracy theory” on you, but one source with knowledge of the goings-on says Jacobs and the Courage Campaign organized an effort to flood Queerty’s original post with criticism of our report and leave positive notes for the organization, throwing the comment thread’s credibility into doubt.”

Really? It appears that “report” was as much of a hatchet job as this one. I doubt anyone needed to be “organized” to find it objectionable. Word gets around. Ever hear of Facebook?

As for the March On Washington, it was discussed briefly at Sunday’s meeting, but was by no means a focus of the organizers, who were overwhelmingly concerned with discussing strategy for achieving marriage equality for California

Marta Evry
Community Organizer
http://www.veniceforchange.com

As a college activist, I’m constantly frustrated that these things are not “people-run” but “group-run,” but it does facilitate navigating through bureaucratic bs.

I think that a lot of stuff contributed to the passing of Prop 8, including bad moves on the part of Equality California and other groups, but to place all of the blame on the organizational method is to completely ignore all of the other factors. “It’s hard to fault activists whose end goal is admirable, but how many times can we forgive and rationalize a strategy that’s proven to be weak and inadequate?” I hope that the people who organized against Prop 8 did it to their best (sure they didn’t). It wasn’t necessarily the strategy that was wrong, but the mistakes of the people within it. Chill out.

Not true.

Your response seems very bigoted, why are you so afraid of altertnative points of view?

Are you heterophobic?

For the record as a straight ally who attended all these events people should know there was a large proud contingent of straight people male and female there and in the highest level of planning all the events of the weekend. We marched, we met and the middle, we were at the leadership conference that was open to all activists, and we knocked on doors canvassing in one of the most homophobic places in the nation. Yeson8 does not speak for straights or even homophobes I suspect he is neither. If someone wants to be included in the is movement get involved in grassroots actions in your community. If you live in Ca. contact Courage Campaign email them and tell them I want to be an activist I live in _______ they will tell you what you can do or if you have an action you want to accomplish they will give you the training to accomplish it. Before you are opening your mouth to complain ask yourself “what activism am I doing” if the answer is nothing ask yourself “What am I willing to do in my community” If you are not making change in your community or trying to your complaints about those of us actually doing the often tiring at times frustrating work don’t mean a darn thing.

The same rules of decency and privacy need to apply it homosexuals openly join the military.

Homosexuals haven’t cornered the market in ‘rights’, their fellow servicemen and women have rights too.

I’m SO tired of hearing all this “it’s a conspiracy! they’re keeping secrets!” bullshit. Guess what: if you don’t know about this stuff, YOU’RE NOT LOOKING. If you want to be “in the know,” then you SHOW UP and START DOING WORK. And to whomever said “they don’t make you a general on the first day,” you’re right — but only just barely. I showed up after Prop 8 passed, not having done anything before the election, and within just a few weeks of REAL, HARD WORK, and SHOWING UP to meetings, conferences, seminars, and social events, I was basically a few steps below a general.

Don’t expect people to go to YOU and hand you a hand-embossed invitation to the event. Instead, YOU should start showing up and participating, and then you’ll be invited to EVERYTHING. At last week’s rally in Los Angeles, there were no fewer than three dozen people handing out cards/stickers/fliers about upcoming grassroots group meetings. Did any of you bitching about this weekend actually TAKE any of them? Did any of you who went to MITM go to the tents and get information about those groups?

Here’s the real deal: the people who SHOW UP consistently, and actually volunteer to do work, instead of just breezing through a rally every six months, are the ones who get invited, and who MAKE THESE THINGS HAPPEN. It’s not some secret cabal of power gays doing all this. Robin McGehee was a nobody (relatively speaking, of course) before she decided to DO SOMETHING. And to get it done, she had to spend a hell of a lot of time actually planning, organizing, and SHOWING UP at other events and meetings to publicize her own event. YOU can do the same thing if you’re willing to, yes/gasp/crazy-I-know, GIVE UP YOUR WEEKENDS AND actually work at this!

It isn’t my scene but I will always show respect for this strength they showed. Strength I could never imagine you having.

All that happened way before my time, but I took the trouble to look it up. Why don’t you.

You seem to think military personel are somehow incapable of acting like adults in showers and bathrooms. I don’t know any gay folks who act all pervy in bath and locker rooms and it seems wierd that you are so very, very concerned about it.

You sure do bring up bathrooms a lot.

Seems to me showers and bathroom might give you more of a thrill than they do most others.

Are you Larry Craig?!

Sometimes separate IS equal.

Or do you think men and women should share locker rooms and bathroom facilities?

BTW everyone has an equal right to marry subject to identical qualifying conditions.

The only thing that has any slight ring of truth is the call to caution of the headline.

Historically the LGBT community *has* been ridiculously fractured. We’re very good at attacking each other (this post is a perfect example of that). I’m not suggesting that there shouldn’t be calling to task of leadership (while I don’t always agree with him, Michael Petrelis – who’s mentioned in this article – has been one of the watchdog voices working to hold leadership accountable). But, come on … how about getting your facts correct (for starters) and then how about trying to grow up and provide thoughtful, constructive commentary that can help us learn and work together.

I don’t disagree that the idea of a march on Washington in December needs more thought – the timing may not be optimal based on other things happening at that time, let alone the fact that it’s a holiday weekend so might garner less attention.

BUT the manner in which you have chosen to approach this is a clear representation of one reason the LGBT community has such a hard time garnering the support of the people whose support is more critical for our success than anything – that being everyone who’s NOT part of the community.

It is precisely this backbiting, childish, inaccurate stridency that repels.

And the other question, how are you supposed to know something you don’t know? If I wasn’t going to meet in the middle, I should know that the web site had info on the meeting? Again the presumptions that because you got the email, everyone did. Not true, I am really well connected and didn’t find out about the meeting until Thursday.

Also I saw the email from the “conveners” and it said specifically NO MEDIA. Not just for the polling part, no media period.

It would be really helpful if people didn’t presume to know what everyone’s experience is/was. You don’t know any more than what you accuse this site of, limited vision. You can’t know what you don’t know.

1. A victory in CA next year will lead the way to more ballot box victories in more states.

2. Separate is never equal, and LGBT people are still facing real discrimination in CA.

3. Without a Presidential race next year, I don’t see why we can’t multitask and focus on CA, NY, ME, and whatever other states are facing big LGBT related elections.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to gobble up all the resources that should go to other states. I just think we can do a better job in running successful campaigns in all these states.

I’m all for a campaign on it, but I really want to know where all that energy was when the rest of the states were fighting far more draconian measures.

@Alec: I understand that. However, this isn’t a lost cause. But if we lose momentum and compete for resources in 2012 against a ton of redistricted legislative races and a BIG Presidential campaign, we may get crowded out. And besides, we’re talking about people’s civil rights. Why wait any longer?

I’m so sick and tired of this garbage. As so many of us (and btw, we’re doing this on our own, NOT b/c Rick Jacobs told us to!) are coming forward to tell the truth on what happened over the weekend, all Queerty does is attack us. Why can’t they just ask any of us who were actually there on what happened? It’s nice that they talked to Brandon Santo, but why did they leave him until the very end while continuing with this rumor-mongering sh*t?

Again, the only “closed session” was the part covering poll data. And because the poll may help us in forming a campaign plan, we can’t let the opposition (Yes on H8/NOM) get its dirty hands on it! If Queerty had bothered to show up, they would have known that AND covered all the rest of the meeting.

Oh yes, and once more only about 3 minutes of the meeting covered the March in DC. We focused on repealing Prop H8 in CA, so it’s utterly ridiculous to act like we all secretly plotted to do a march in DC and take over the entire LGBT rights movement in one fell swoop.

I guess @getreal is right. Queerty and a few commenters here would rather do a bunch of “armchair quarterbacking” than get involved. If y’all don’t like what happened last year, then stop repeating the same damn mistakes! Get involved, BE the grassroots, and help us organize this campaign for gawd sake!

Why the hell would we want to have wide-open, internet-broadcast meetings about strategy and polling data? That is giving information to the opposition, and it is nothing less than surrendering the election.

To win a campaign, someone needs to be in charge. Someone needs to make decisions. And the information those decisions are based upon simply cannot be shared universally.

Polling shows us which messages work, and which ones don’t. Why would we give that information to our opponents? Trust me, they read this website, too. And I cannot understand why anyone would propose that we broadcast our strategy to the other side. Why raise $20-40 million for a campaign if we going to intentionally throw the contest?

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:16:30 GMT

A Former Israeli education minister has accused the US secretary of state and Israeli Foreign Minster of having a sexual relationship.

Limor Livnat, who is an Israeli Knesset (parliament) member, has told Benjamin Netanyahu that Condoleezza Rice and Tzipi Livni have sexual affairs.

Meanwhile, an American newspaper has quoted Rice as saying that she is a lesbian and has bought her partner an apartment in New York in order to engage in sexual conduct.

My partner has never had a relationship with a man, Rice said.

http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.a.....=351020202

@Larry & @Alec: But hold on, let’s remember that many of those fundie wingnuts may not turn out in 2010 as well. And with either Gavin Newsom or Jerry Brown on top of the Democratic ticket that year as well as likely ballot initiatives to legalize marijuana and repeal the 2/3 budget rule, we may see more progressives turn out who will also vote to repeal H8. There are many factors to consider here. And while I can’t go into details with the polling, all I can say is we’re currently in a dead heat and there are things we can easily do to bump up our numbers over 50%.

So why not 2010?

Care to name just one victory? One? There are none. Sure, you can stand here and say Iowa, MA, ME, NH, CT, NJ, VT are all “gay” victories. However, they really WERE NOT. They were human rights victories that were led primarily by allies based on human rights.

They were not gay led victories. There has never really been a gay led victory. As long as we keep putting clowns (I’m sorry I mean drag queens) and half naked men running through the streets of NYC in order to “promote gay awareness” the only thing we really promote what-so-fing-ever is the ability for the straight white male (who still dominates this country) to raise an objection and point at the streets when they need support for that objection.

If others have permits for the same weekend, you guys did an incredibly poor job of pre-planning.

Step aside old activists – let a few younger people in the door. They may be less likely to F*^k anything up, as you have done ALREADY.