I GOT SO MAD ..

The fanatic La Rouche people showed up at my local market with this poster. I got so mad I walked into the market found the manager who just happen to be standing around 20 people and very loudly insisted that "I objected to that awful poster and that if you don't remove it I would never, never come back here." I must admit to surprising even myself; I don't think I have ever done anything like that before.

The manager immediately moved away allowing me to follow him and told me that he had called the police who at that moment came driving up. I didn't stay around to find out what happened. As I left I said to the two people at the table, "Take your poster and crawl back into the hole you came from."

My family was deeply effect by WWII. Friends of mine had family who died in concentration camps ... I can't go on. But to compare President Obama's plans for health overhaul to something from the Nazi era is ludicrous and just plan insane!

I have loved this song ... for a long time!

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I've seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to your door.

The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day.
Why leave me standing here?
Let me know the way.


Many times I've been alone
And many times I've cried,
Anyway you've always known
The many ways I've tried.

And still they lead me back
To the long, winding road
You left me standing here
A long, long time ago
Don't leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door.

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long, long time ago (ohhh)
Don't keep me waiting here
Lead me to your door. (yeah yeah yeah yeah)

A Letter to Equality California

Mr. Kors,

I may have been fighting this "battle" longer than you have been alive ... well, I really don't know your age, but...

Personally, I am one of folks who "knew the 'first' generation” of gay activists but am a member of the "second generation that got wipe out by AIDS" group. Those years ago, I moved "back home" to escape a confusing world, to avoid the "cancer" and to escape the pain of the early AIDS death of the man who these days would have been "my husband."

And so it has turned out that this gay man has lived out most of his life in a "str'8" world ... even if it was in a suburban of Los Angeles. There are many of us here. And I discovered that "out here" and just being "me" worked ... even without a lover or kids.

I worked in the religious world, went to church, tended my garden, took care of my parents, smiled at my neighbors, joined the local Rotary, set up neighborhood associations, did my share of volunteering and in a small ways tried to create a better world. It has been a world outside of political wonks and ghettos. Life is about walking around the neighborhood with friends and, at some point or other, coming out in small ways.

It is the idea of those "small ways" that make me think that you and "Equality California" have done the right thing in delaying the vote on marriage equality. And to be frank, I am not sure there are not enough of "me" around and just being good neighbors now.

One more thing ... many of the ground folks in last year’s campaign to defeat Prop 8 were clueless. I can get on a phone and talk to anyone ... that's what I have been doing for 30 years. But the guys you hired to run the campaign on the local level? They were clueless. I imagine they were all working they way up the political ladder and had no idea of why my next door neighbor cried when I told her about Jimmy; Jimmy, who these days "would have been my husband'" ... and for whom I will always say, "Better once than ever, for never too late ..."

So spend some time and get some folks around you who know what winning this "fight" is all about ... Please?

GOP can go South

Published last week:

I love the South; the memories I have of long ago family “car” trips through it, and more recently one particular former Pasadena resident who has now moved back to her home in Alabama. But it was in the South many years ago that I discovered that people hated “Negros”; that there were black and white drinking fountains and when I heard my father firmly say to his two boys, “We don’t think like that; we don’t live like that!”

Years later I remember hearing the commentators say that the Democratic Party would “lose the South” if they move forward on issues of justice and equal rights. “Demand and implement equal rights in voting and in education and the South will go Republican,” they said. Somewhere in my teens I thought, “Well let them go; let bigotry go, let hatred go. It’s okay.” That was not the America I learned about in school or the one my parents believed in.

Today Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio said the Republican Party was being “taken over by the Southerners,” with their “extremist ideas.” Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana shot back, calling Voinovich "a moderate, really wishy-washy.”

I think it is time to let the Republican Party become “Southern.” Let them dwell there with the uglier parts of our historical and political life. Free up the rest of us to remember everything that has makes our country great. Leave the bigotry and hatred there and hope that someday it will wither away and die in the swamps of South Florida.

Frank Clark