Archive | Go hetero ally go! RSS feed for this section

Honor roll

By on November 13, 2008 in Baba familias, Go hetero ally go!, Metacommentary, On marriage and commitment

Social change takes work on multiple fronts, usually simultaneously. Popular, electoral, cultural, intellectual, emotional, juridical fronts all need to advance.  The most integral work is free: people talking to people, helping move the moveable, ideally by listening more than talking. Other free social change work entails getting one’s arse out into the public sphere to demonstrate to allies and onlookers both how deeply felt one’s beliefs are, and how determined one is to stand with others and do what it takes to get us closer to what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the beloved community.”

When the battle for social change entails an electoral one, at least in contemporary politics, money makes a difference. A huge difference.  And a few hundred LD readers (and their friends, and friends of LD), honored below, doled out a heaping helping of support on behalf of the effort to preserve the California Supreme Court’s recognition that (a) marriage is a fundamental right, and (b) there’s no defensible reason to prohibit same-sex couples from exercising it (nor, for that matter, is there any defensible reason to treat this group unequally under the law, period). 

This is not the only LGBT social justice battle of the day, but it sure as sh#t has become the biggest one. It’s where anti-gay forces  – from national organizations to religious entities to activist individuals —  are pouring their resources and attention. Fortunately, so have you. Since September 11, when I initially posted the fundraising graphic and link, all the way up until a day before election day, two hundred and twelve of us, many donating multiple times (some up to four), collectively raised $16,763 to try to fight No on 8.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 4 }

Denouement: forthcoming*

By on November 6, 2008 in Baba familias, Go hetero ally go!, Mostly a picture

pollsign

Outside my polling station at Totland, our kids’ favorite local haunt.  

 

Being a pessimist is supposed to inoculate one against disappointment, but the dirty little secret is that we’re still disappointed.  

Regarding the personal (denouement): Won’t be easy to come by for a while.  So much, too big, too sad.  So many worked so hard, to come so close.  All of which, so hard to process, amidst the blinding light of Obama’s triumphant win.  A dream deferred for 232 years, then come true.  Racial barrier broken at the highest point imaginable, and on the same day another barrier is erected at the most emotionally intimate point imaginable. 

Also, regarding the political (denouement): so far as I know as of this point (wee hours between Wednesday and Thursday), No on 8 continues to await the final count of the remaining absentee and provisional ballots.  Out of some ten million votes cast, less than half a million (roughly 400,000) separate yes from no.  Some speculate (know?) that the counties from which these are expected had not otherwise “trended” significantly enough against the proposition that they would swing the election.  Regardless, No on 8 continues to wait for these results. [*see below for mid-day update, 6 Nov.]

Continue Reading →

Comments { 14 }

Weekend Prop 8 update, part deux: All Dog Alert*

By on November 2, 2008 in APB, Go hetero ally go!, On marriage and commitment

gotv2One of life’s gazillion ironies: what’s exacerbating my obsession about this Prop 8 battle — a sense of protectiveness for my kids — is also behind my inability to throw myself into it 110%.  I’m sure I’m not the only one in this position.  

Ratcheting up that inability (and peppering the whole business with yet more irony) is the fact that my co-parent is in tech week for her youth theater (yep, the self-same youth whose well-being the Yes on 8 folks are looking to protect).  By the way, for those not familiar with the work schedule of the theater, tech week is kind of like finals week, only without the books. Um, and with a lot more drama.  ’Round the clock, day after day, ten- to twelve-hour days either at the theater or home, trouble-shooting theatricality.  Opening night’s Friday. 

So you can picture the mayhem around the house.

Whenever I lament that I can’t be more out in the fray (a lamentation to be heard every quarter hour, when I’m not doing something that feels Sufficiently Effectual), I think: It’s a darn good thing there are so many others out there, fraying!  Scads and scads of them.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 5 }

Weekend bonus sh– aw who am I kidding, it’s another No on 8 update

By on November 1, 2008 in APB, Go hetero ally go!, On marriage and commitment, Weekend bonus shot


Where’s the content-free, calming photographic image for the weekend, the Proposition 8-bedraggled regular LD reader might ask?

Gone! Along with all sense of proportion to the world!  Which will return in three — count ‘em: 3! — days.  Come hell or high water, and today, at least in my home state, it looks like both are heading our way.

This weekend, behold, at right, a crummy cameraphone picture of the two crack Election Day trainers doing ’round the clock trainings for No on 8 volunteers at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, out of which phone banking has been done for the past eleven plus weeks.  Yep, ’cause if you look at the locations of the phone banks for No on 8, you’ll notice a preponderance of faith communities.  All of organized religion is by no means united behind the anti-marriage equality message, though the volume of the message from the passionately anti-gay marriage religious contingent might make one think that.  Here’s the long, long list of faith-based organizations actively supporting the No on 8 effort.

But I digress. 

I’m horning in on my customary weekend text-free quietude to share two things: One is an update on the fundraising, and renewed urgent need to raise funds to respond to some major Yes on 8 deception.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 5 }

Oh, the posts, they’re coming fast & furious these days*

By on October 31, 2008 in Go hetero ally go!, On marriage and commitment

3mil3days4So fast, the title doesn’t even give you a CLUE.

But you know, making sense TAKES TIME, and a gal has to put the cutie pie son down for his nap.

First, Mark Morford’s bang-up column in the San Francisco Chronicle the other day: “It’s racism and homophobia, neck and neck, down to the wire.  Can they hang on?”

Let’s not be naive. Just because it looks like the Western world is about to get its first black intellectual president, just because the nation’s most influential and populous state could very possibly decide, finally and forevermore, that two adults of the same gender can get married without the cruel hammer of religious ignorance crashing down upon their heads, well, this can’t possibly be a sign that racism and homophobia, two of our three most revered national pastimes (don’t forget the sexism!) are going away anytime soon.

Unless it can. Unless some of our darkest cultural demons could finally be up for a major exorcism. Could it be true? Could this vote, at the very least, be one hell of a giant step forward in the fight against two toxic beliefs that have poisoned the American mindset for ages? Let me suggest: You’re damn right it could.

There are 1,001 ways to try to convince the outer ring of the outer ring of your sphere of influence to get up and do something about this election out here, but Morford’s piece bumps it to 1,002.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 1 }

New Field poll numbers should scare you into the street

By on October 31, 2008 in APB, Go hetero ally go!, On marriage and commitment

3mil3days4We knew a Field Poll on the California propositions would be released right before the election, and indeed, out it came.  From “‘Yes on Prop. 8′ gaining on foes, poll finds,” in this morning’s Sacramento Bee:

Over the past six weeks, a proposed constitutional amendment that would end same-sex marriage in California has gained substantial ground but still trails by a five-point margin heading into Tuesday’s election.

A new Field Poll shows Proposition 8, one of the most closely watched state ballot measures in years, is supported by 44 percent of likely voters. Forty-nine percent oppose it, and 7 percent are undecided.

In the last Field Poll, released Sept. 18, the measure was behind by 17 points.

I hasten to remind us, with a stone in my gut, of the “gay Bradley effect,” as I like to call it, surely confounding the historical record about the sexual orientation of the former mayor of L.A. His loss in the 1982 gubernatorial race in this state, given his healthy lead in the polls before the vote, was a suprise, and widely attributed to the social stigma of racism that voters felt when speaking to pollsters.  In anti-gay marriage initiatives nationwide, a 7-10% difference has consistently shown up between actual vote and the polls leading up to it.  Same thing: there’s some social stigma against homophobia/heterosexism, but no one’s looking when you get into the sanctum sanctorum of the voting booth.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 4 }

No, no. Make that, UN-holy crap

By on October 30, 2008 in APB, Go hetero ally go!, On marriage and commitment

O, here we go.  Buckle the seatbelts:

 

Yep.  You heard right.  An official campaign spokesman at a Sacramento Yes on 8 rally just compared advocates of marriage equality to Adolf Hitler.

Yes, that Adolf Hitler.  

Along the way he had the gall to quote Pastor Martin Niemöler.  

Yes, that  Pastor Niemöler.  

DONATE TO NO ON 8 SO WE CAN STOP THIS HATE IN ITS TRACKS.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 11 }

Holy cr@p!*

By on October 30, 2008 in APB, Go hetero ally go!, On marriage and commitment

wediditI love you people!

I was in the midst of “Urgent appeal, part deux,” a rambling rant which may not see the light of internet, because IN CAME THIS BREAKING NEWS!

Look what you just did!  You just blew past our pulled out of my arse third fundraising goal, and poured in more than $3,216 in less than 24 hours!  We get to see the “we did it!” happy graphic again! (For at least 24 hours, really.  I mean it this time.  But then I may be inspired/egged to up it just an eensy bit, one more time. For the last time. Really.)

Why did we did it?  Because a ton of people are coming together and helping us to did it.  Over a half dozen other bloggers have graciously borrowed the code for the thermometer and parked it on their blogs, either in a sidebar or a post:

(You want to post this fundraising jobbie on your blog?  Write me!  It’s yours!)  I’m absolutely certain I’ve forgotten some more LD Love Train Brigadistas, and will gleefully add them to this list, plus the other in-process one I have going on over at my No on 8 page.

*[See?  List already amended!  I forgot the @ss-kicking Maria the Immoral Matriarch! Whose cathartic "I'll show you a Socialist, you fucking idiots" ought to clean out any toxins you might still find lingering in your system.  She is a national treasure.]

Yet more have linked to it in blog posts, and as Goddess is my witness, I will note and thank all of THEM properly, too.  Along with the first names, the home towns, and the various occupations of those of you who have contributed to this much, much larger battle via this extremely appreciative entry point.  (All info disaggregated, of course, so that you don’t find a clot of picketing wingnuts in front of your house chanting “No on love! No on love!” or what have you.)  

All that, as soon as my fingers can catch up with real time events that are exploding all around me.  

The other reason why we did it is simply that the magnitude of this whole battle is getting bigger and bigger, and clearer and clearer, by the minute.  Picture the opening scene of Star Wars, where over the course of a good long twelve seconds (an eternity in movie land!), we eventually get the full measure of the Star Destroyer, or whatever it is, that’s attacking our intrepid heroes.  Like, at first, we’re all: Ooo!  That’s scary!  Then we’re all: Shit.  O shit.  Then we fall silent.

Continue Reading →

Comments { 4 }
← Older posts Newer posts →