NOM is coming to a California city near you!

The National Organization for Marriage has a bus tour in California to support Carly Fiorina and oppose marriage equality.

So far they are being mostly outnumbered by pro-equality counter-protesters. THey are a little shy about showing up if they think the equality folks are out in force.

More about the tour at the pro-equality NOM Tour Tracker

Don't you think you should let them know what you think?

Friday, October 1:

9:30 AM – Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz) - Santa Cruz Mission Park [GoogleMaps]
11:15 AM – Hollister (San Benito) - Veteran's Memorial Building [GoogleMaps]
12:30 PM – Salinas (Monterey) - Central Park [GoogleMaps]
1:30 PM – Soledad (Monterey) - Gabilan Park [GoogleMaps]
3:15 PM – Paso Robles (San Luis Obispo) - Paso Robles City Park [GoogleMaps]
5:00 PM – Santa Maria (San Luis Obispo) - Preiskar Park [GoogleMaps]

Saturday, October 2:

8:00 AM – Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara) - Mission Historical Park [GoogleMaps]
9:30 AM – Camarillo (Ventura) - Nueva Vida [GoogleMaps]
2:30 PM – Dana Point (Orange) - Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel [GoogleMaps]
4:30 PM – Huntington Beach (Orange) - Huntington Beach Parking Area [GoogleMaps]

Sunday, October 3 - Rest Day!

Monday, October 4:

10:00 AM – Santa Ana (Orange) - 4th & Spurgeon [GoogleMaps]
11:45 AM – Oceanside (San Diego) - Capistrano Park [GoogleMaps]
1:00 PM – Escondido (San Diego) - Grape Park [GoogleMaps]
7:00 PM – RALLY – San Diego (San Diego) - Comunidad Christiana NAM [Google Maps]

Tuesday, October 5:

11:45 AM – El Centro (Imperial) - Stark Field [GoogleMaps]

4:30 PM – San Bernardino (San Bernardino) - Secombe Lake Park [GoogleMaps]

6:00 PM – RALLY – East LA (Los Angeles) - TBA

Wednesday, October 6:

10:00 AM – Riverside (Riverside) - Fairmount Park [GoogleMaps]

12:00 PM – Los Angeles (Los Angeles) - Olvera Street [GoogleMaps]

Creative counter protests

From the HuffPo, via Aravosis, creative responses to anti-gay protests:

NOM's bus tour against equality

The Courage Campaign points out that Maggie Gallagher's hate group NOM is planning a series of rallies in venues across the Midwest and East to oppose equality; they plan a Tour Tracker Campaign The Freedom to Marry organization plans parallel events as part of their own Summer for Marriage.

Full props to Equality Maine for staging a counter protest. Let's make sure NOM sees a peaceful opposition at all their stops. Remember, we're about LOVE. It's they who are about hate.

More from the Courage Campaign:

Compared to the marriage equality rally, the mood at this gathering was bitter and angry. These folks weren’t smiling. They stood awkwardly, clapping at inappropriate times. With the exception of small children, Dan and I were the youngest by at least a generation. There was not a single attendee who was a person of color; all attending were white, old, and conservatively dressed. Some carried signs proclaiming homosexuality a sin; many wrapped themselves in the flag.

NOM is a dangerous group that fronts a lot of the money for anti-marriage equality campaigns. (I'll tell you more about that soon). It behooves us as a community to stand up to them robustly, and let OUR voices be heard.

Coming out against H8

This is a picture from the NoH8 campaign that supports marriage equality. It uses celebrities to demonstrate their opposition to Prop8, and how their voices were not heard.

THis is the latest model. It's Cindy McCain, wife of AZ Senator and erstwhile presidential candidate John McCain. Mrs McCain is coming out against H8.

SCOTUS and equality opponents: the courage of conviction?

As the Federal Prop8 trial (Perry v. Schwarzenegger) enters its second week, we are all relying heavily on the live-bloggers and tweeters to keep us informed, given that the SCOTUS agreed with the Defendant-Intervenors (the Bad Guys) and banned broadcast of the trial.

This decision was based ostensibly on the fear of the Prop8 proponents that their witnesses would be harassed, threatened and injured if people knew who they are. Because you KNOW how much violence there has been, right? Right? Yes, not so much. Despite the endless claims of roving bands of homos beating up on people, there is a paucity of evidence that anything dangerous has actually happened-- even though donor lists pro- and con- Prop8 were public in CA. Sure, there have been a few boycotts, but that tactic goes both ways.

In fact, in the aftermath of Prop8, its supporters made numerous unsubstantiated claims of violence. They accused the marriage equality supporters of terrorism --they even compared us to Al Qaeda for daring to march and claim the right of free speech! Let's not forget this.

And these experts and proponents of Prop8 who are reputedly so fearful, were certainly unafraid to be seen on camera during the run-up to the election, when you couldn't escape from them. Perhaps more telling is that, despite banning the broadcast, the Prop8 supporters' fearful witnesses have still retreated. It seems more likely that their withdrawal has something to do with the fact that their bias may actually be exposed-- see for example William Tam, who attempted to withdraw as a defendant-intervenor. His issue may be less about safety, than privacy, as noted by the Box Turtle Bulletin

I do not like the burden of complying with discovery requests. I do not like people questioning me on my private personal beliefs.

Of course he had no such qualms about sharing those beliefs to deny GLBT people of equal rights for months and years. (He also thinks the "gay agenda" is based on sex with children and was founded in Chicago in 1972. I am looking forward to his examination by the Olson / Boies team.)

Or perhaps it has something to do with the cross-examination of the expert witnesses, because some of them apparently don't look so good in the deposition tapes where they had to backtrack on their testimony.

In the end, these experts might end up blowing up in the defense’s face. If Boies and team is able to show what he claims, that their testimony was without basis, the experts have opened themselves to charges of perjury. Removing the possibility that the defense team knew about the baselessness of the depositions, because such a circumstance would be an egregious violation of professional responsibility, this also has huge implications for the case. If the defense experts admitted that there is no basis to say there is harm to straight marriages, that point becomes a big longshot to recover for the defense.

This embarrassment tends to happen when you are wrong, or careless, or somewhat ....stingy with the truth.

Both the LA Times and NY Times Op Ed pages decried the SCOTUS decision to hide the case. From the LA Times:

"Reasonable minds," the majority wrote, can differ over televised court proceedings. Fair enough, but some significant number of them also will be troubled by the five justices' blanket adoption of the assertion that televising the testimony of expert witnesses called to defend Proposition 8 -- including those being paid -- would create "irreparable harm" by exposing them to embarrassment and "harassment." If you accept that, you're on a path whose logical conclusion is secret testimony. It's easy enough to excerpt trial transcripts and post them on the Web. Doesn't that "expose" witnesses in any socially or politically divisive case to potential harassment? Television may accelerate the process, but the way text and photographs ricochet around the Internet these days, it's just a matter of degree -- and a rapidly diminishing one at that.

Moreover, as Justice Stephen G. Breyer pointed out in a 10-page dissent, in this particular case the witnesses "are all experts or advocates who have either already appeared on television or Internet broadcasts, already toured the state advocating a 'yes' vote on Proposition 8." What is there about these proceedings that will make them more vulnerable to reprisals than they already are?

That brings us squarely to the majority's troubling subtextual suggestion that there is something uniquely threatening -- even sinister -- about the activities of gays and lesbians advocating marriage equality. It's true that a tiny handful of activists on the movement's fringe have behaved outrageously toward opponents of same-sex marriage, but that criticism can't be made against the plaintiffs in this case. They've simply sought vindication of their rights through the courts, the very definition of law-abiding.

The Courage Campaign reminds of what's at stake in this:

The legal system exists precisely to counteract those kinds of situations, to provide those who have had their rights attacked or taken away the ability to confront those who have done so and take back their rights. And that in turn is precisely why ProtectMarriage.com wants to undermine the legal system in order to undermine marriage. If they can’t win fairly, then they’ll try to undermine the systems and institutions that ensure fairness.

Secret courtrooms and hidden testimony are antithetical to our principles of justice. And for an issue discussed almost exclusively in superficial media soundbites and advertising hyperbole, it is particularly disheartening to have hidden from public view the reasoned discussion of evidence in a courtroom that actually relies on facts and data, not lies and misinformation.

There's now another SCOTUS case, this one not just a request for an injunction, but a full-blown case, that the Court has agreed to hear, called John Doe vs. Reed. You may recall in Washington state last year the referendum on civil unions, in which the voters only narrowly approved generous partnership benefits. (The campaign against Referendum 71 provides yet another example of how the argument isn't about marriage, it's about ANY recognition of our families).

Washington has a law that releases the names of people who sign petitions to put referenda on the ballot. The proponents of discrimination want their names hidden, and in the case John Doe vs Reed, ask the SCOTUS to allow them to do so. From Pam's House Blend, a discussion of this case which asks the Court to

a. Declare Wash. Rev. Code § 42.56.070 unconstitutional to the extent that it requires the Secretary of State to make the Referendum 71 petition, or any petition related to the definition or [sic] marriage or the rights and responsibilities that should be accorded to same-sex couples, submitted to the Secretary of State's office available to the public;

b. Enjoin Defendants from making the Referendum 71 petition, or any petition related to the definition or [sic] marriage or the rights and responsibilities that should be accorded to same-sex couples, available to the public pursuant to the Public Records Act, Wash. Rev. Code § 42.56.001 et seq., or otherwise;....

ONLY for this issue, note. They are seeking to cover up ONLY the opponents to marriage equality and civil unions. Unlike NOM, which is trying to overturn completely the campaign transparency law in Maine, the Washington folks want protection specifically, and ONLY, for petitioners involving same sex marriage or civil unions.

The irony is noted by the NY Times Opinionator :

Has anyone noticed that now that lesbians and gay men have left the closet to assert their equal rights as citizens, their adversaries seem to be running for a closet of their own?

But the Opinionator comments, more disturbingly,

A question now is whether the opponents of same-sex marriage can plausibly claim, as their court papers have sought to do, that they face threats to their lives and property comparable to those faced by civil rights workers in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s.

Did you catch that? Let's make this clear. The opponents of marriage equality (AND civil unions) are claiming the mantle of honor for themselves, and as they strip the rights away from a persecuted GLBT community, they have the utter audacity to compare themselves to freedom marchers in the Civil Rights movement.

It is gob-smacking: those hiding under the hoods are pretending to be forces for justice. And it is even more outrageous if the courts let them get away with it.

David LInk at the conservative Independent Gay Forum writes,

People who believe they are right should be willing to own the morality of their cause, even when that means taking very real, sometimes severe risks such as going to jail, or even being killed — neither of which anyone opposed to gay equality can truthfully claim. That’s what lesbians and gay men have had to do to get where we are. Perhaps that’s harsh, but I’m having a very hard time seeing how name-calling really counts as a similar sort of abuse, or how risking some loss of government funds equates with actual peril in a way that would justify refusing to air arguments in a public forum like a court of law.

And Firedoglake chimes in, remarking upon the hypocrisy of the conservative viewpoint:

Sure, harassment is fine and dandy when you’re the one brandishing firearms and shouting down congresspeople at townhalls, or yelling at women going into family planning clinics, but when there’s even the slightest chance that someone might call you a bigot, well, that’s just as bad as the KKK killing Freedom Riders.

It’s a truly amazing lack of perspective. Gays are persecuted, discriminated against, bullied, beaten, raped, and murdered; many of them feel they have to conceal the very essence of who they are to fit in and be safe. Gay marriage opponents? The worst that’ll happen to them is that they’ll get picketed or insulted, or get the cold shoulder from residents of the 21st century. But apparently the risk of facing intolerance of one’s own intolerance is too steep a price to pay for defending The Most Important Institution Evar.

Many of these people who want to hide under a hood claim to be Christians (which insults the many, many Christian faith groups who support fairness and inclusivity.) Perhaps it is time for them to actually READ the Bible that they thump so passionately:

And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’
John 3:19-21

Donors, boycotts, and mercenaries

Have you ever noticed that those opposed to GLBT rights employ boycotts regularly? They seem to have annual boycotts of Disney and its gay family days. There have been boycotts of Ford , Pepsi, Apple Computer, and Wells Fargo Bank, for daring to be at all friendly to GLBT people.

Of course, like bullies everywhere, they shriek "unfair!" when the same tactics are applied to them. But what's good for the goose, as they say, is good for the gander.

After Prop8, the GLBT community also resorted to boycotts. The targets were mostly businesses whose owners gave donations to Prop8. This prompted a complaint from the Forces of Evil that we shouldn't know who was donating money against us, that we should do business with them anyway. They raised the specter of marauding gangs of homosexuals vandalizing their property to justify keeping donations secret. (There seems to be a lack of evidence of this ever happening, but when did the truth stop them?) Please, what do they think we're going to do, paint their houses tastefully pink in the middle of the night?

Still, our community was divided over the boycotts and the collateral damage. Free speech means we absolutely must respect the rights of people to disagree with us. But do we have to do business with them?

For example, a theatre director in Sacramento resigned, because GLBT and gay-friendly playwrights refused to allow his theatre to use their work any longer. Gay and gay-friendly actors and staff were also very uncomfortable discovering that their co-worker actively opposed their rights. A woman who co-owned a restaurant in LA that was very popular with the GLBT community was boycotted. Both of these donated money to pro-Prop8 because they are Mormon, using religion as a justification for actively hurting other people. They were both understandably upset at the reaction, with the equivalent of, "but it's not personal, some of my best friends are gay!" (Not any longer, I bet.)

I feel sorry for them at some level; but they are effectively using my money to take away my rights. You know what, this isn't a disagreement about health care reform or how to fight a war, something that is external to who we are. This is denying the fundamental equality of another human being --and that human being is supposed to smile sweetly and work with you closely? So while they are perfectly entitled to have their view, and to choose to donate money to that cause, I'm just as entitled not to do work with them. Just like Jim Dobson and Focus on the Family are entitled to boycott the LIttle Mermaid every year.

Then there's the larger order of magnitude of donors like Doug Manchester, owner of the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego. A conservative Catholic, he felt that marriage needed defending from the awful gay people so he gave $125,000 to the bad guys. (Now that he and his wife are engaged in a very nasty divorce with accusations of theft and draining bank accounts, I wonder who will defend marriage from him?) Manchester tried to "make nice" with the GLBT community after the election, claiming that he'd made an equal donation to our side. Actually, he made this "donation" by offering discounts if the GLBT community used his hotel, which doesn't in any way equal, or undo the damage he's done. (I wouldn't go in his hotel if he paid me, personally.)

At least those people actually believed at some level in what they were doing. But surely there is a special circle of boycott hell for the mercenaries who are attacking our rights merely for money. An article in the NY Times last weekend pointed out the industry that has grown up in California, businesses taking Maggie Gallagher's money as consultants for bigotry.

As the political battle over same-sex marriage plays out in state capitals across the country, several California companies have emerged as the go-to players for opponents of the marriages.....

Of the $2.7 million spent to pass the Maine measure, about 75 percent flowed to companies in California, according to campaign disclosure documents. And while large chunks of that money were subsequently paid out to television and radio stations in Maine, California companies billed hundreds of thousands of dollars for consulting work, phone lists, printing and other services.

Frank Schubert, the public face of the campaign with his firm Schubert Flint Public Affairs has even received an award for his vicious "contributions", much to the dismay of many of his colleagues. Schubert claims his campaigns represent Christians, which is a surprise and an afront to many gay Christians, let alone the Unitarians, the Episcopalians, and the Quakers.

Schubert uses a firm called Mar/Com, which the NY Times investigation found only reachable with a PO Box, but is apparently owned by Bill Criswell, of Criswell Associates. This is an advertising agency in San Francisco. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't hire any of them, and I think that anyone who does, should be well aware of the attacks they have authored and the bias that they enable.

These mercenaries fighting marriage equality are perfectly entitled to take anyone's money and conduct their business. But I have an equal freedom to choose the firms to whom I give my money. Just as I may choose to put my investments into socially responsible corporations or green energy, just as many organizations refused to do business with South Africa in the era of apartheid, and, yes, just as Christian Conservatives are currently boycotting Pepsi for being "pro-gay", so do we all have a right (if not a responsibility) to choose with whom we do business, and to choose to do business with those who share our ethical and political values.

Schubert Flint Public Affiars, Mar/Com, and Criswell Associates are actively working against my equal rights. They have told lies, fomented hysteria and attacked our families, because they were paid to do it. And they are very good at it. Those who value equality and social justice should know just who is working against us, and should consider hiring firms with more progressive values rather than lining Frank Schubert's and Bill Criswell's pockets.

And as for boycotts, if you lie down with dogs, don't be surprised if you wake up with fleas.

Great Gay (and Gay Friendly) Kiss-in, Aug 15th

We ... believe that there's not enough love and affection in the world, because most people are afraid to show it. We should never be afraid of brief, unimposing displays of affection. There is nothing wrong with a hug, a kiss on the mouth, a kiss on the cheek.

Our friends at Join the Impact are joining the New Civil Rights Movement and calling for a kiss-in, to protest the arrests of gay people who dare exchange a kiss in public. More background here.

Check out the Facebook Group for a city near you, find a friend, a spouse, or a partner, and pucker up!

Australia: yes or no?

Australia's Labor party supports recognition of same sex couples but stops short of marriage equality (AFP)

Australia's centre-left ruling party on Saturday voted for national recognition of same-sex unions but stopped short of lifting a ban on gay marriage.

The national Labor conference voted to develop a system for the registration and recognition of same-sex relationships, after gay rights advocates failed to gather enough numbers for a resolution to legalise gay marriage......

A recent poll suggested up to 60 percent of Australians supported gay marriage and the statistics bureau in May announced it would count same-sex couples who declared themselves married in the national census.

WIth 60 percent support what's the problem? Probably the usual suspects, those who insist their religious views trump others'.

The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes it clear that he doesn't support marriage equality, leading to protests across Australia last weekend. The NY Times:

"The prime minister has made it clear that a Labour government will not support any form of recognition of relationships that undermine marriage," Attorney-General Robert McClelland told delegates to the Labour Party conference.

Rudd, a church-going Christian, has long opposed formal recognition of gay marriage and promised before he won power in 2007 that he would ensure national marriage laws would continue to define marriage as between a man and woman.

Gay marriage remains illegal in Australia, but the states of Tasmania and Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory, all allow a form of civil union, which gives gay couples similar rights to married couples......Rudd's government is also committed to ending all other discrimination on the grounds of sexuality.

San Diego Protests 5/26/09 (video)

This is a great video, very moving.

Tuesday is the day of decision.

The Day of Decision: Join the rallies in your city. See the list here. Show your pride, show your love. Keep it peaceful! We have to win hearts and minds, not simply show our feelings. The eyes of the world are upon us.

And remember, on Saturday May 30, road trip to Fresno for Meet in the Middle: take the discussion to the heartland where the battle must be fought.