Tag Archives: LGBT

Eat more cookies, teach liars a lesson

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We may have found a new standard for effortless advocacy.

It isn’t really news that people sometimes lie to get their way, but is it my imagination that there has been a sharp uptick in the sheer brazenness of the lying? I’m not talking here about the weaselly, defensive type of lying that public figures often engage in when caught in compromising positions (yawn). I’m talking about utterly making things up with the intention of compromising other people, wholly fabricated things that the liar knows are demonstrably false, but doesn’t care. Things that the liar wishes were true, but are not. So the liar just goes ahead and says they are anyway.

Things like stating as fact (click ‘See more’ under the first block of text) that a kind of rape scenario has occurred in a community when no such thing has ever happened.

Things like claiming that the Girl Scouts of America “promote abortion”, or have a “partnership” with Planned Parenthood, or encourage girls to have promiscuous sex. People dedicated to promoting these and other lies about the Girl Scouts have produced a media campaign that has the fingerprints of hate groups like American Family Association all over it, and are going after, of all things, Girl Scout Cookie sales.

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Prejudice is not a Realtor(tm) value

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

Can you imagine if a Loudoun Realtor were to argue realtorthat they were helping home buyers make an “informed decision” regarding their home purchase by mouthing derogatory slurs about African-Americans and Jews, and complaining that the local government has required desegregation? Because this is the equivalent of that. Professional Realtors have a code of ethics, in part, due to awareness of how such bigotry has been practiced in the past.

Vivianne Rutkowski is a Realtor with Keller Williams on Catoctin Circle in Leesburg. I have contact information for her Broker and Regional Director, but I don’t want to publish it here. Contact me offline if you wish to communicate with them regarding this matter. Miss Rutkowski is bound by the code of ethics adopted by the National Association of Realtors.

I stumbled by accident across this wildly inappropriate, offensive post (it’s captured as it appeared Wednesday, January 25 at approximately 12:45 am) on her professional real estate business blog. I left a comment indicating that I would make sure no one I know would ever use her as an agent, and telling her why. Here are some screenshots of what she thought was appropriate content for a blog on which she presents herself to the public as a Realtor:

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Road spam and special rights: Two great tastes that taste great together?

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Now this is really getting interesting. The new Board of Supervisors is apparently considering a motion to kill the volunteer illegal sign removal program, and it is not going over well with LI. I happen to agree; the program seems like a perfectly sensible way of dealing with the vexing problem of road spam.

“So in keeping with the overriding theme of this Board, paybacks, one of their first acts will be to kill this program as payback to those who helped fund their campaigns – the builders and developers and David Ramadan, and Godfather Dick Black as well. Here is the link to the staff report for this item, pay special attention to the motions at the end. They’re not doing this to keep things the way they are. This program costs Loudoun very little in minimal staff oversight, and provides its citizens with a great service – keeping our roadways safe and free of trash. But does that matter to this Board? Apparently not – this program ticks off their masters, so it must be done away with.”

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The first priority of the new School Board: sneer at human rights

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

The very first action taken by the newly elected Loudoun County School Board was this:

Regarding the Virginia Human Rights Act:

“I move to amend the Board’s previously adopted Legislative Program by removing the recommendation to expand the protected classifications contained in the Virginia Human Rights Act, Code of Virginia §2.2-3900 and §2.2-3901, to include gender orientation and gender identity and to further amend the Code of Virginia §22.1-78 to allow local school boards to similarly expand the protected classifications contained in local school board policies and regulations and that Staff be directed to make such other changes to the Legislative Program as to conform to the Program language of this motion.”

[from page 5 of the adopted Legislative Program]

Motion: Mr. Kuesters
Second: Mr. Fox

Vote: 6-3-0 (Mr. Reed, Mrs. Bergel, and Mrs. Sheridan opposed)

The only reason for initiating such an action is ideological, and the idea in play is that gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgender and gender variant youth are not deserving of having their human rights protected. The Wisconsin School District that was the subject of the film Bullied found out the hard and expensive way that this is not a good position for school boards to take. I hate to being up money when this is a fundamental moral issue, but unfortunately that’s the only language some people seem to understand.

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Benefit for Ugandan LGBT rights in Sterling

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

Benefit Celebration for GLBT Rights in Uganda
with Rev. Mark Kiyimba
Music by Tom Teasley
Friday January 13th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Unitarian Universalists of Sterling
22135 Davis Drive, Sterling (map)

It’s illegal to be gay in Uganda, and has been since colonial times. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the anti-gay fringe in America. Following a 2009 conference arranged by three American extremists, a bill was introduced in the Ugandan Parliament that would institute the death penalty for gay people under some circumstances, prohibit any form of advocacy or human rights work on behalf of gay people, eliminate confidentiality for health care providers and clergy, and even make it a crime to fail to turn in one’s own family members. Along with the bill a vicious pogrom has been unleashed against the gay community, leading to many Ugandans living in constant fear. The developing situation has been extensively covered by Box Turtle Bulletin.

LGBT activists in Uganda point to a virulently anti-gay March 2009 conference put on by three American Evangelical activists for inciting the latest round of violence and intimidation against the local LGBT community. Among the three were Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, and International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Lee Brundidge, who is a protege of ex-gay advocate Richard Cohen. Lively, who blamed gay men for the rise of Nazism and the Rwandan genocide, proudly declared his talk as being a “nuclear bomb” against LGBT advocacy in Africa.

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A simple idea

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Yesterday in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a brilliant, deeply compassionate speech in recognition of International Human Rights Day.

She begins by describing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted following the atrocities of World War II.

“It proclaims a simple, powerful idea: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. And with the declaration, it was made clear that rights are not conferred by government; they are the birthright of all people.”

All people. Those are such straightforward, easily understood words that it seems silly to discuss the fact that some people don’t understand them. “Because we are human, we therefore have rights.” There are still some among us who actually advance the argument that some people are not really people, and that insisting that they are amounts to conferring upon them “special rights.” There are some who would – seriously – claim that this declaration of our universal humanity is merely a matter of “opinion.”

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It’s not personal

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Students riot Nov. 9, 2011 in State College, PA. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

I think that must be what the rioting Penn State students and anyone else making excuses would say to the victims of child rapist Jerry Sandusky, if they felt the need to say anything to them at all. Sorry you were raped, but our team is winning national championships and that makes us feel good and we don’t want any interruptions. It’s not personal.

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This is what hate speech encourages.

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Photo credit: John Wright at The Dallas Voice

This is what hate speech gives people with violent inclinations license to do. When they are erroneously told, by someone like hate group leader Eugene Delgaudio, that gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people are threatening to something they value, such as their children or their right to worship freely, such people feel justified in resorting to violence. They are fearful, and feel that they are acting to protect something of great value.

Engaging in hate speech is not illegal. Lying is (usually) not illegal. But when hate speech is used to motivate people to make donations or to vote in a particular way, there are unintended (or perhaps intended) consequences. Anyone who engages in such behavior is unfit for public office, by definition. Such a person does not serve the public, by definition.

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Unfit for office, unfit for endorsement

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I could never, had I been asked to imagine the most ridiculous and easily verifiable lie that Eugene Delgaudio might invent, have imagined something as ridiculous and easily verifiable as this:

When contacted by the Loudoun Times-Mirror for comment about the exposure of his “Blood Door” email, Mr. Delgaudio told the reporter that the Photoshopped image he had sent to his mailing list was the original and that his image had actually been Photoshopped, by the very people who caught him in this behavior, to make it “look like blood.”

Side by side image comparison by the Loudoun Times-Mirror

When the reporter told me this, I said I thought that was interesting, and suggested that she search on Google images for “blood door.” She did.

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Is this acceptable to you, LTM?

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A second update (the first one appears at the bottom of the post): This is the original image that was photoshopped by Loudoun Republican Eugene Delgaudio to turn the blood “rainbow,” which he then lied about to the Loudoun Times-Mirror. This was found by a commenter via google using the search terms “blood door.”

Image included in the header of an October 25 fundraising letter sent by Eugene Delgaudio

Editor: Please direct the following to all individuals with input into political endorsements at the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

Is this what the Loudoun Times-Mirror editorial staff had in mind when you said of Eugene Delgaudio “his view on social issues is unsettlingly conservative and his antics distracting”? The attached image of the GLBT rainbow symbol in the shape of a pool of blood, complete with a gruesome bloody handprint, was sent to the presumed supporters of an elected official to whom you just gave your endorsement for reelection. While it could be described as unsettling, especially if one has been witness to such a crime scene, I don’t think that “conservative,” “distracting” or “antics” would apply.

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