A Texas gay raid and Stonewall
The Fort Worth police have “some explaining to do,” said Jacquielynn Floyd in The Dallas Morning News. On June 28, officers raided a gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge, sending a patron to intensive care with a head injury. “In what I can only hope is a spectacularly infelicitous coincidence,” it took place on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Raid, the gay-rights movement’s catalyst. The cops’ story—drunk gay men groped them—doesn’t add up.
Well, police chief Jeff Halstead is backing his men and their classic “Gay Panic Defense,” said Dan Savage in The Stranger, which goes: He made a pass at me, so I was justified in beating/killing him. That would still be illegal, but it’s also bunk. “I’ve been in a million gay bars” like the Rainbow Lounge, and “gay men don’t grope police officers when they enter gay bars.”
It is, “obviously, very sad” that one of the Rainbow Lounge patrons is in critical condition, said Rod Dreher in BeliefNet, but come on, the report that “cops who entered a gay bar were set upon by drunk, horny patrons who played grab-ass with them” is “hilarious,” and not at all far-fetched. Gay people, especially drunk gay people, can be “as stupid as the rest of us.”
Except that the hospitalized man was reportedly drinking bottled water, said Jeff Epperly in New England’s Bay Windows. But 40 years after Stonewall, this kind of gay harassment goes on all over the U.S., not just in Texas. The raid at Forth Worth’s Rainbow Lounge “was the work of a police department that wasn’t smart enough to hide its bigotry.” See A Texas gay raid and Stonewall The Week Magazine
* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
 |
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/texas-gay-rai…
Methodist Court Rejects Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library
The United Methodist Church’s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal, and gave the final OK for the George W. Bush Library to be built at Southern Methodist University.
The church’s nine-member Judicial Council rejected separate resolutions passed by the California-Nevada and California-Pacific Conferences that voiced support for clergy who officiate at such unions.
Last year, the 8.3 million-member church upheld rules in its Book of Discipline, or constitution, that Methodist churches cannot be used to host same-sex unions and clergy are prohibited from officiating at them.
The latest court ruling rejected a California-Nevada resolution that supported retired clergy who volunteered to conduct gay weddings, and a California-Pacific resolution upholding the “pastoral need and prophetic authority” of clergy to do so.
Between May and November, 2008, California allowed same-sex couples to marry until voters banned the practiced with a constitutional amendment.
“An annual conference may not legally negate, ignore or violate provisions of the Discipline with which they disagree, even when the disagreements are based on conscientious objections to the provisions,” the court ruled, according to United Methodist News Service.
In a separate case, the court said it found no reason to halt construction of the planned George W. Bush Presidential Center at the church-owned school in Dallas.
Critics contend the library complex and affiliated policy center will promote policies that the United Methodist Church officially opposed, including the Iraq War. The former president and his wife, Laura, are both United Methodists.
See Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush …
Beliefnet.com
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/methodist-cou…
Map of anti-gay-marriage donors adding fuel to Proposition 8 fire
Now there is a interactive Google map showing where donors to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign live or work — and that is generating more controversy. Some supporters of same-sex marriage love it, saying it’s all about public accountability. From the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan:
And that is surely one useful element of the map. It helps one see whom to engage. And I don’t get the fear. If Prop. 8 supporters truly feel that barring equality for gay couples is vital for saving civilization, shouldn’t they be proud of their financial support? Why don’t they actually have posters advertizing their support for discriminating against gay people — as a matter of pride?
But others see it as potentially dangerous. From Rod Dreher on Beliefnet:
“I believe strongly that people’s homes should be a sanctuary. I say this as someone who was bullied in high school, and who had my house vandalized during the night by the bullies. When people have the right to feel safe in their homes taken away from them, it’s a terrible thing.”
See Map of anti-gay-marriage donors adding fuel to Proposition 8 fire
Los Angeles Times, CA
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/01/map-of-anti-g…
