Prop 622 passed, 15-14
Proposition 622 passed at the City-Council this evening, 15-14. My councilor, Patrice Abduallah voted for the ordinance. And we’re on the fox news at 10 again.
I’m very tired, and I’m going to bed.
People outside of Indianapolis coming here to tell us how to live
One of the things that needs to be pointed out about Proposition 622 is that many of the people opposing it don’t live in Indianapolis and wouldn’t be affected by it.
For example, in today’s Indy Star, there are several letters from people opposing this ordinance. One of them is from Eric Miller, the director of Advance America. It’s signed Indianapolis, but Eric doesn’t live here in Indy. Neither does the guy who wrote the letter signed from Avon, Indiana.
And neither did half the people who got up to speak at the first City-County Council Committee meeting to discuss Prop. 622. Many of them were bussed in from around the state by the aforementioned Miller. The city-county council caught on to this eventually, and at the second hearing, they made people state their address or township before speaking to highlight that the testimony needed to be coming from residents. About half the opposition who planned to speak stepped down, because they were busted.
The city-county council members made it clear that they were only considering letters and phone calls from their own constituents, so the American Family Association, a group that is based outside Indianapolis, is pouring money into the Indiana Family Institute (also based outside Indy) to fund robot phone calls to blanket the houses of people in Indianapolis, asking them to do the dirty work of calling the council for them.
Don’t let people outside Indianapolis tell you how to live your life or conduct your business. Email your councilors (you can contact them through this form from Indiana Equality — a group that lives and works right here!!)
I’m blogging because Fox 59 News is filming me right now
The News came to talk to us about Proposition 622, and I’m doing an action shot right now where they’re filming me at the computer, so I have do something. So I’m writing this blog entry. Say hi to the news!!
I’ll be on Fox 59 news tomorrow night at 10 p.m., so don’t forget to record it. Spike was a hit with Kara, the reporter, and Scott, the cameraguy, so he’ll probably show up on TV, too.
Bush Illegally spies on US Citizens
According to the New York Times, and later also reported by the Washington Post:
Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
One of the groups they’re spying on the QUAKERS, and other local anti-war organizations. The Quakers are pacifists, people. They believe in NOT blowing shit up.
The Quakers are one of thousands of organizations on a 400 page list (that’s 400 pages not 400 groups) that the Administration has been spying on inside the United States. All of them are left-wing organizations.
None of the investigated are right-wing groups. You know, right-wing ones, like the guys who bombed the Olympic park and abortion clinics. Like the ones who sent Anthrax to the Democratic leadership. The ones who blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building. The ones who keep killing doctors. Yeah, nobody’s investigating them. I feel so safe.
Wagging the dog: supreme court nomination to hide plame investigation
The inquiry into the leaking of a CIA agent’s identity is set to wrap up this week, so the President was quick to nominate a supreme court justice to distract the press from the coming scandal when White House officials will be indicted. Especially since there is new information that Bush and Cheney were actively involved in the Plame outing.
As someone in the blogosphere anticipated… “Hello, President Hastert!” Hee hee.
Delay scandal widening; fissures in GOP party are starting to show
Quote from CBSNews.com, with internal links to wikipedia for more information on the players in the wide-scale GOP corruption:
The indictment sent a shock wave through the GOP establishment, which is already reeling from a swath of criminal and ethics investigations. Three individuals, eight corporations and two political action committees connected to DeLay have been indicted as a result of the probe. In addition, the government’s top procurement official, David Safavian, was arrested in September for obstructing a criminal investigation into uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a close DeLay ally. Abramoff himself is under criminal investigation for defrauding Indian tribes and was indicted for wire fraud in Florida in a separate case. Top White House aides, including Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, have been targeted by a special prosecutor investigating the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Representative Duke Cunningham announced he would not run for re-election after overselling his house for $700,000 to a military industry lobbyist; he too has been indicted. FDA chief Lester Crawford resigned unexpectedly after just two months on the job, possibly because of failure to report his wife’s sizable pharmaceutical-industry holdings. And DeLay’s Senate counterpart, Bill Frist, is battling possible insider-trading charges for dumping millions in HCA stock, a company founded by his father and run by his brother, weeks before it plunged in value. The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into Frist and HCA in September.
“The fact that Tom DeLay is under criminal indictment and Senate majority leader Bill Frist is under criminal investigation is a historic first,” says Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). “This demonstrates the culture of corruption among the Congressional leadership that has become a cancer on our country.”
Fleshing out that tidbit about David Safavian a bit more: he was the White House’s top federal procurement official, and was in the midst of the lucrative Gulf Coast rebuilding plans when he had to resign to be arrested for the obstruction of justice charge. He’s responsible for giving some of the no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other companies with a track record of corruption. So you know about how the government money for Katrina relief is going to be spent.
Also, Abramoff has links to organized crime, and a mob murder investigation: “3 Arrested in Killing of Businessman With Whom Abramoff Feuded.”
All of these guys have sleazy scandals, and all of them are interconnected, with Delay at the top greasing the wheels with dirty money… for a complete picture of how wide the corruption spreads, read “Beyond Delay: the 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress” by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Bush: Worst Disaster to Hit US
Indeed.
Invictus
Oh holy crap. Timothy McVeigh decided to release as his “final words” before execution the poem “Invictus” which I’ve had on my website in my favorite poem section for five years. I come up at the top of some search engines, so I’ve had almost two hundred thousand hits on this page since this afternoon. If you’re looking for right-wing conspiracy theories and paranoia, don’t look for them here; I believe in logic, reason, and ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people.’
England’s Notice Of Revocation Of Independence
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
Gay/Straight Marriages and the Georges tragedy
This is in regards to Ruth Holladay’s recent column on the Georges murder tragedy. (excerpted below)
I think we as a community, and Ruth Holladay, need to separate our issues here, because we’re talking about several different issues as though they’re a single issue.
- We’re talking about people, regardless of their orientation, being honest with their partners (and themselves) about health-related issues.
- We’re also talking about people being monogamous within their relationships.
- We’re also talking about people being honest about their sexual orientation.
- And finally we’re talking about people finding ways to live together with other people’s orientations.
How any given person (gay or straight) in any kind of relationship (same sex or opposite sex) chooses to handle each of these four issues individually will determine the success of their relationship.
I can show you PLENTY of gay/straight marriages where there’s no dishonesty whatsoever — AND vice versa, lesbians married happily to straight men!
And there are PLENTY of relationships of all kinds where people are not honest — that’s the issue, really, not gay/straight but honesty/dishonesty.
And as far as the Georges go, we DON’T KNOW how they chose to handle each of these individual issues. It may very well be the case that:
- Lloyd Georges was completely honest with his wife about health concerns; his own and hers.
- Lloyd and Judy may have had an agreement that non-monogamy was okay as long as there was honesty about health, emotional, and safety concerns. Or Lloyde may have been completely monogamous — we don’t know that he ever had a sexual encounter with a man.
- Lloyd may have been totally out to Judy, and to their family and friends as well.
- Lloyd and Judy may have been happy with their arrangements.
****And this tragedy could still have occurred even if each of the above four assumptions were true. ****
The tragedy was a ROBBERY gone wrong, and nothing more. It was sad and unfortunate, but it had NOTHING to do with the fact that he was gay and she was straight. Lloyd could have met and befriended some shady characters at a gas station, rather than the Unicorn club. People, gay and straight, trust the wrong people every day.
We CANNOT sit around and make generalizations about all gay/straight relationships and marriages, any more than we can about gay/gay relationships or straight/straight ones.
There is no reason that we can or should assume that gay men married to straight women are always dishonest about their health issues, about their orientations, about their emotional and safety concerns.
We can, and should, strive to be honest and concerned about our own health and emotional well-being, and the health and emotional well-being of the people around us.
I think Ruth Holladay’s article was homophobic, even if unintentionally. She suggested that Lloyd Georges was dishonest with his wife because he was gay, that gay people live unsavory and dangerous lives, and that this alleged dishonesty was the reason they both were killed.
None of these things are true.
Ruth Holladay, May 25, 2000, Indianapolis Star:
It was not Lloyd Georges’ homosexuality that caused his death, said the veteran cop. It was his indulgence for guys with criminal histories, his fondness for men with mean streaks.
So the retired 60-year-old educator is dead, a victim of bad choices and worse company. But so is Georges’ 58-year-old wife, Judith, who had taught third grade and collected dolls and was, by all accounts, a quiet woman who left their Greenwood home on weekends so her husband could take part in “Saturday night fever.” That phrase refers to the personal ad Georges placed in an alternative newspaper; it was his invitation to party.
This is a tough one to make sense of, by anybody’s belief system. It’s even tougher in the context of conservative Midwestern family values. But it happened. It happens.
Specifically, what happened is this: The Greenwood couple, wed 32 years, were stabbed to death last Friday in their home, then their bodies were set on fire. In a community that averages one murder every six years, it was shocking. In a community where normal is the norm, it was a bombshell.
Police Chief Robert Dine liked Mrs. Georges. He’s a past president of the PTO at Isom Elementary School, where she taught for 35 years. “She was a dedicated teacher,” he says.
So he made a promise to the couple’s son to find the killer, and on Monday, he might have delivered: Detectives arrested Fernando Griffith, 22, also known as Valentino. That’s his stage name at the Unicorn, a private Indianapolis club where he worked as a stripper. The retired teacher and his friend had known each other about a year, Dine says. Sometimes, Dine says, both Mr. and Mrs. Georges invited Griffith to their home for dinner. But the relationship soured last week, police say, when Georges refused to play sugar daddy.
So much for the allegations. Now, for an effort at insight.
In the past, gay men often married: Peter Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde, Charles Laughton and Cole Porter come to mind.
But that was then, when just being gay was a crime. Given that the only exit from the closet was jail, it’s understandable that gays hid.
While we haven’t created utopia yet — don’t hold your breath, and keep in mind that everybody’s utopia is different — we have changed. Gay men and women can live together openly.
Despite this, old patterns and fears continue, says Amity Pierce Buxton of El Cerrito, Calif., a 71-year-old founder of the Straight Spouse Network. Buxton speaks from experience: Seventeen years ago, her husband of 23 years told her he was gay.
Now, she uses her pain to help others heal. She understands the double-edged stigma, both from the perspective of gay partner and straight spouse. She understands that gays still marry — less so today, but it happens. And it doesn’t take a degree in gay studies to realize that a teacher, like Georges, would be fearful of exposure, especially during his career.
But the bigger the lie, the harder the fall. When the truth finally comes out, as it always does, everybody gets hurt — especially the straight spouse.
As stated, it’s tough to make sense out of this. But if one message should come through, it’s this: Intolerance exists — look at Matthew Shepard, who paid with his life. Still, if you are gay or bisexual and married to a straight person, be honest. If you are absolutely petrified by that, keep your vows: Don’t have sex outside marriage.
And if you are a straight person who suspects she is married to a gay, you need to know that your choice could carry a cost.
Get out. Life is too short.