Show Up Monday Night for the Re-Introduction of the Human Rights Ordinance

From Pepper Partin:

Did you know that walking from your car to the Indianapolis City-County Building will burn 1 million calories? Enjoy a guiltless Thanksgiving and look great in your new holiday wear this year by attending the City-County Council meeting this Monday night. Why? In addition to burning calories so your body will be in a much-needed holiday calorie deficit, you will be showing support for the re-introduction of Prop 622 – the proposal that will add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Human Rights Ordinance (HRO). The added language will make discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity illegal in the areas of housing and employment. Council member Jackie Nytes plans to re-introduce Prop 622 just in time for you to get that Madonna-like body prior to filling up on turkey or tofurkey or whatever macrobiotic diet followers eat on Thanksgiving.

When: Monday, November 21st at 6:30 (be there a little earlier if you can)
Where: City-County Building downtown Indianapolis – (across the street from the City Market) Beurt Servaas Public Assembly Room

As you may know, The HRO was defeated earlier in the year when Eric Miller and Advance America led a campaign against the added language just days before the Council vote. The campaign was successful albeit unethical since Miller called upon his cronies outside of Marion County and even outside of the state to barrage the Council with e-mails and phone calls. His campaign worked, and we can’t let it happen again! If Indianapolis wants to claim that it is a world class city, our City-County Council will need to prove it by following the lead of Daniels, Brizzi and Peterson.

The road to a second vote on Prop 622 may take several weeks and Rock Indiana, along with other organizations, will be calling on YOU to help. It will take all of us to win this battle. So pay attention to calls to action as the entire community will be needed. But let’s start with Monday night.

The Council will not be voting on Prop 622 or even hearing testimony Monday. And that’s the beauty. All you have to do is stand in unison with the Indianapolis/Marion County GLBT community and other fair-minded Hoosiers. You’ll look great doing it since you will have that just-worked-out rosey glow. So show up Monday night along with HUNDREDS who support Prop 68 and know that you can enjoy a guiltless holiday and you’ll look fabu.

Don’t let Eric Miller and other right wing radicals win this time!

A special Rock Indiana thank you to Jackie Nytes for her support and to the Greater Indianapolis Fairness Alliance and IE-Region 8 for their INCREDIBLE work on getting this before the Council again.

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We Kissed Inside The Statehouse

Photo Set: 2005 Rally Against SJR-7

We had a wonderful, successful rally at the Indiana Statehouse yesterday! Hundreds of people showed up with extraordinary signs to protest the SJR7 legislation. We were getting people’s contact information, and of the people who agreed to sign up, we got 757 contact addresses. That was about 3/4ths of the crowd, so we had about 1,000 people attending.

What I was really impressed with was not just the fact that I saw tons of people I knew (some of whom I’d never imagine going to a political rally) but I saw tons of people I’ve never seen before in my life. That’s really amazing, because when you’ve been out in the gay community as long as I have, you tend to think it’s really small and that everyone knows everyone else. It takes something like this to make me realize that we have a HUGE gay community in Indiana.

There were excellent speakers, and according to some of the people who lobby regularly, we made a great impression on some of the legislators. Nobody expected the size of crowd we had. At the end of the rally we went inside to lobby, and ran into Eric Miller’s Advance America bigots as they were leaving. Most of Miller’s crowd were home-schooled kids and christian school kids who get extra credit for being bussed into Miller’s rally.

So we chanted at them and basically screwed up the end of their rally. Stephanie and I were by the doors, and a group of bigots who were leaving started to bunch up to trap us inside, chanting and trying to intimidate us. So we kissed in front of them and freaked them out. It was GREAT! They RAN outside to get away from us. A reporter from the IU School Paper snapped our photo while we were kissing, and then interviewed us, so we’re likely to end up in the IU paper. It was really exciting.

UPDATE: Stephanie and I were quoted in the IU paper but they didn’t include our picture.

Indiana Daily News

Other’s Pictures from the Rally

Scott Barrett’s Photos
Marti Abernathy’s Photos
Scott Barnes’ Photos
Wilson’s Photos

Media Coverage of the Rally

Check out this picture of an anti-gay bigot attempting to punch one of the people from our rally:

South Bend Tribune
Another Story of threatened violence from the bigots from a person at our rally: “The Advance America people were filing out —a small group of 5 or 6 young men approached me holding our big IE sign and one said, ‘Don’t you wish we had some torches?!’ The others laughed and they continued on down to the sidewalk.”

NUVO Story: “God hates gays”
Indy Star
WISH-TV
WTHR
The IndyChannel (RTV6)
WXIN – Channel 59 (Indianapolis)
WIBC/Network Indiana
Associated Press
Courier-Journal (Louisville)
Indianapolis Star (Dan Carpenter column) “Inside the anti-gay crusade”
Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne)
Courier & Press (Evansville)
Northwest Indiana Times
365Gay.Com

Continue ReadingWe Kissed Inside The Statehouse