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

A Budget? or Punishment!

Letters to the editor: All are punished
Posted: 07/21/2009 05:18:20 PM PDT

Tuesday's headlines read, "California governor, lawmakers reach budget deal."

I wonder how many of these "lawmakers" will attend the funerals of people who die for lack of care; how many will visit the elderly who are forced into nursing homes; how many of their children will have to attend over sized classrooms; how many of their children go without college - the list is endless as are the numbers of people who "care" but who will lose their "caring" jobs.

At the end of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," the Prince shouts at the players as he views the sorrow that surround them: "All are punish'd!"

All are "punish'd": Democrats for forgetting "the least of these." And Republicans who do not care.

What Yarddog Thinks

Within my Christian context the word "evil" can mean many things ... and then there is the business of the "one unforgivable sin." These two concepts do not find their way in to my every day faith. But what do you do with folks who for whom these two concepts mean something?

They claim to represent my faith; they claim to know the Truth and they want our larger American family to be subjected to their point of view. Trouble is I don't think like them and I do not believe my Creator and His Son don't think like them.

So what am I to do with this bunch:>
American Association of Christian Counselors
American Family Association
Americans for Prosperity
Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND)
Campaign for Working Families
Catholic Online
Concerned Women for America
Conservative Action Project
Eagle Forum
Exodus International
Faith and Action
Family Research Council
High Impact Leadership
Liberty Alliance Action
Liberty Counsel
Liberty University
Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN)
Marc Nuttle
Morning Star Ministries
National Clergy Council
National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Renewing American Leadership
Strang Communications
Teen Mania
The Call to Action
Traditional Values Coalition
Vision America

Yarddog

Any clue?

PROTEST TONIGHT

By clicking on the link in the title above you will discover where the protests in your area are tonight and in the upcoming days ... more later.