My point exactly; thank you for proving it.
Not related to LGTBQasfhkhsf rights, but to your individual political agenda. So you would use gay servicemembers to advance a gay agenda, but then turn right around and screw them because they’re military. How useful people are to you, aren’t they?

When I’m back from Afghanistan, I’ll consider going to New Zealand. Thanks for paying me.

Pay all the people that showed up for the “Marched on Washington” $3.00 each.

Matthew Shepard was murdered because cults and the politicians who pander to them promote hate speech and hate crimes to divert attention from wars and economic crises. It’s an old strategy. But to claim that the haters are universally followed is blindingly stupid and unrealistic. Most people disagree with promoting hate crimes and hate speech.

Scott is just not living in the real world if he thinks everyone hates us and Brian (The Original) is paranoid and a childish whiner, a really rotten combination.

Scott is also a liar. What I actually said is that “We are not hated, feared and disliked (with the exception of yourself). We’re scapegoated by hate groups including the cults and the Democrats and Republicans who cater to them. When politicians want to divert attention from their fuckups – wars, depressions, mass unemployment and homelessness, etc. they accuse us of being child molesters like Obama’s DoJ did defending Bill Clintons DOMA and DADT.” That’s not quite the impression Scott tried to create with his little cut and paste scam.

No. 23 • TeleUte83. Actually we should oppose enlistment by everyone in the US armed forces because they’re used in invasions and occupations to control oil that have civilian causality figures, at least in Iraq, in genocidal numbers.
We’ll all be better off when the US stops trying to steal oil and other resources around the world. Especially civilians in the victimized countries and the GIs whose lives are wasted to make Chevron-Texaco and Haliburton richer.

It’s just too bad if the right wing doesn’t like that. They’ve been running things too long and it time to fight back. If that frightens you TeleUte83 then Google Air New Zealand and book a flight.

Yeah… that’s a great way of winning respect for GLBTQjaksdhfkjasf soldiers, lobbying for them to be called home from their jobs. It really provides them with the justification for being just as patriotic and courageous as their straight buddies when gay groups are seen picketing for their return: “Save the faggots!”

If you’re pushing for gay rights, don’t go barking up every conservative tree asking for the bear to come down and pummel you.

Next activist, please…
Pragmatism now pre-requisite to being berated.

Did you really say this about gays:

“We are not hated, feared and disliked.” #20

Wow. That’s the dumbest thing I have ever read on Queerty. Congratulations.

That’s wild Bill. Kinda psychedelic wild, in fact. Smoke another joint and turn up the Pink Floyd. You’re a nut-job. A tired, old, burnt out nut job. Close the shades, too. You know, those black helicopters …..

Quit whining. It’s really irritating.

And don’t be so obstinately stupid. We are not hated, feared and disliked (with the exception of yourself). We’re scapegoated by hate groups including the cults and the Democrats and Republicans who cater to them. When politicians want to divert attention from their fuckups – wars, depressions, mass unemployment, and homelessness, etc. they accuse us of being child molesters like Obama’s DoJ did defending Bill Clintons DOMA and DADT.

Go hug Barney and tell him what a loving good little non-hater you are let the adults figure out how to get our equality and liberation. Attaboy.

I would like to know why you think anger-based-activism, a relic of the 1960s will work today? This is my Grandparents America anymore. Everything has changed. Like Barney Frank suggested, the NRA and AARP don’t do anything “angry” or demonstrate and they’ve done quite well.

People hate, fear or dislike us – how is anger going to change that? Do tell.

I don’t consider paid staff on any current organization to be activists except for legal defense groups like Lambda and the NCLR, who actually do useful work. Aside from the legal groups most of self-appointed leaders and official LGBT lobbyists are over-paid mouthpieces for the Democrats, siphoning off money and energy to elect Democrats and then paying themselves a big salary to go out to dinner with Dems and ‘lobby’ them. They’re parasites.
The ‘idea’ is mass action. An unremitting, persistent, relentless campaign of demonstrations, including civil disobedience and independent political action around something like the following program:

Inclusive anti-discrimination laws covering ourselves, minority groups, women and others that impose harsh fines and prison time on managers, landlords, service providers and others who discriminate. They should make it easy for us to sue and win large settlements.

Anti-hate crime and hate speech laws that provide for harsh sentences for the thugs who commit violence and the priests, ministers, imams, pastors, rabbis and bigot-catering politicians who promote violence.

A crash program to deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic worldwide that includes provisions for social services and meds as needed and a Manhattan Project approach to finding a cure.

Support for LGBT soldiers by joining the antiwar movement in calling or the total, permanent and immediate withdrawal of all US troops, mercenaries and spy agencies to home bases in the US preparatory to demobilization.

A crash program to provide housing, medical and social services for GLBT youth tossed onto the street by sick christian parents and closing the snake pit runs by sadistic christians that utilize torture to ‘cure’ GLBT children and young people and sexually abuse them.

A law forbidding priests, imams, rabbis, ministers and pastors from approaching children unless they’re accompanied by security guards to prevent clerical rape.

Laws to end the tax exemptions which make us unfairly pay the taxes for bigoted cults and a law secularizing their schools.

Etc.

I am not willing to call HRC’s strategy to ensure Joe’s paycheck a gay rights strategy. A “strategy” for self-enrichment at the expense of equality cannot be called a strategy, not even a self destructive one. It is an anti-strategy.

We need a strategy. I’m with Andrew on that. A strategy that will get everyone involved because they suddenly believe they can win. I don’t care from whom it comes. The idea is far more important than the person (or number of people) who gives birth to it.

A conference is great, if the established ‘activists’ who get invited are willing to put away their baggage. If they’re unwilling to admit that their efforts thus far have been Sisyphean at best (foolishly/willfully futile at worst), then they have no part in the room. They won’t be able to look past their egos to come up with something that can win. It will just become strategy-by-committee, and we won’t be any better off.

Again: The idea is more important that the leaders. So far, there isn’t an idea.

There’s been a strategy in place since the 90′s but it’s been limited to spineless support for Democrats and Republicans led by overpaid sellouts like HRC and EQCA. That’s a self destructive strategy because those are the twin parties of war and bigotry and are run by lapdogs of the looter class.

If you didn’t have your head up your ass you’d have been aware that it’s a very real but self destructive strategy and that myself and lots of other leftists and activists have been saying so for years.

We won’t win by offering rewards or lobbying or any other bizarre schemes that adapt to system. We can’t win if we play by their rules. We’ll win when we adopt a mass action strategy with cutting edge but very reasonable demands that the will not grant, attract powerful allies like unions and minority communities and move to challenge the looter class on the only question that matters – the question of state power.

The ultimate goal is to ask who owns the government and then ask how to create a better one.

Mass action around reasonable demands that they can’t meet is both the tool to pose the question of how to create a better government and the engine to create that better government.

A national conference of activists is a key step in the right direction.

I don’t know about EEA making that call, but I agree with you. We have been without a strategy for a long time. Too many who make a living off the LGBT Community do not want to win, because their salaries and perks would end.

I would go one step further and offer a “reward” for a winning strategy. Mske it worth it for some of our best minds to try to solve the problem, instead of live off it.

It seems to me that the best thing is to spend that money and use that enormous mailing list to call a national conference of activists who can begin to reverse the losses and start winning for a change. To do that we’ll have to be independent of front groups for the two bigot parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

What we need is to build a national coalition of activists with a mass action perspective who can organize with a thoroughly democratic internal structure that operates as much as possible without paid functionaries, with a leadership elected on the basis of their political perspective, subject to easy recall and paid a modest stipend.

It’d be best if that conference were called by the EAA, and if not we’ll just have to wait on events to call one.

You can contact EAA at info@equalityacrossamerica.org

We need his “Dallitude” (his words, not mine) to tell us oh-so-subtly that his recently resigned march co-directors didn’t need to paid more than minimum wage.

I already his smug, arrogant self.

Maine could have used all $260,000. It would have been better spent.

The National Equality March cost $50 million. If we can believe their numbers that 200,000 people went to DC, maybe 100,000 had to spend $500 in travel/lodging expenses. That’s $50 million in LGBT resources. For what?

At least when HRC wastes $50 million we get a campaign speech from the President. Oh, and those stickers.

Tell the IRS to investigate Cleve Jones – again.