"ROCK(theVOTE!)tober 2011" Come OUT & Stand UP!"

http://www.slate.com/id/2303013/
"Underlying these and other attempts to change the subject there was, and still is, a perverse desire to say that the 9/11 atrocities were in some way deserved, or made historically more explicable, by the many crimes of past American foreign policy. Either that, or—to recall the contemporary comments of the "Reverends" Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—a punishment from heaven for American sinfulness. (The two ways of thinking, one of them ostensibly "left" and the other "right," are in fact more or less identical.)"

"ROCK(theVOTE!)tober 2011 - Come OUT & Stand UP!"

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“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” - Maya Angelou

By: Give a Damn Campaign

"Each time a gay person finds the closet morally acceptable for himself or others, he degrades himself as gay and sinks to the level of abjection dictated for gays by the dominant culture. No gay person with sufficient self-respect and dignity can be required to view himself or other gays in this way." Richard Mohr

 

Date: Sun, 01 Aug 1999 13:19:01 -0400
To: RainbowTalk

Greetings!
Personally, I agree wholeheartedly with Richard Mohr and will respond to that later. But I just couldn't let this response go unanswered...

In 1994, three years after my HIV+ diagnosis and Issue 3 had thundered through Cincinnati, I moved across the river back to my roots on The SouthBank. What follows are journal entries and my thoughts on the situation at that time:

"People who have never had a problem with or been touched by discrimination, verbal or physical abuse or harassment are quite content to stay in their closets and continue to 'pass' through mainstream society. But there are things they can do from behind their closet doors - Quietly and without fanfare that can make a difference. But they're too apathetic and selfish to be bothered!?! The Cincinnati Gay Community deserved Issue 3; precisely because they are neither Out, Honest nor a Community. They are merely an un-connected collection of self-serving, apathetic, ego-centric, ambiguos, ass-kissing, closeted, gutless wimps!

I ended this entry by paraphrasing a story about The Holocaust:

"I DIDN'T SPEAK UP - '94"

"In America, the proponents of Family Values and Christian Morality first came for the Drag Queens, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Drag Queen. Then they came for the LeatherMen, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a LeatherMan. Then they came for the radical Gay Rights Activists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't about to speak out from the closet and rock the boat. Then they came to quarantine the AIDS/HIV-Challenged, and I didn't speak out because I was disease-free. THEN they broke down my closet door and came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."

All war is full of misery & degradation; in regard to Gay Rights & the Repeal of Issue 3, you can suffer that abjection from your closet (something akin to fleeing to Canada) or you can stand up for yourself and what's right by fighting on the Front lines.

Michael W. Connett

ComixBear@... wrote:
> From: ComixBear
> Everyone, gay or straight, conforms in some ways to what is expected to what society tells us. It is impossible to entirely get rid of it. However, you have to make it so that you don't let what society tells us to do make you miserable....including Richard Mohr.
> Mark

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Rock the Vote As we posted before, some heath insurance companies are allowing 21-26 years olds to stay on the parents' insurance even before the health care reform bill becomes law. Is your family's insurance co on the list? http://bit.ly/9pjM5O

Update on Dependent Care Coverage « Rock the Vote Blog

The list of insurers that will allow young people graduating from college this May to stay on their parents’ insurance plan now includes UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Humana.

Project Inform What happened to “silence = death”? A blog from David Mixner.

What happened to silence = death? : DC Agenda.com

www.dcagenda.com

There is a fire in our house that we are no longer talking about, that we pretend no longer exists: the unchecked spread of HIV.