N.C. Gay Marriage Ban Rally Scheduled

Opponents of equality and same-sex marriage in North Carolina, a state where the KKK is still very active, will lobby the Legislature for the second time in one week.

Return America, a conservative “Christian” group has scheduled a “Stand Up for Traditional Marriage” rally on today in downtown Raleigh.

North Carolina law defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but anti-gay conservatives are seeking to have the state constitution changed to prevent same-sex marriage from ever occurring in the state.

Equality supporters oppose this move as they don’t want to see the state in which they pay taxes and live in, write discrimination into the constitution.

Religious leaders and anti-gay lawmakers held a news conference last week promoting the amendment.

I’m still a little confused about the name “Return America”….who took it and what makes it the property of those who are anti-gay?

The Sons of Tennessee Williams

This trailer below is from a new film called THE SONS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. It should fill everyone in on the historical elements missing from the other clips I have been posting. A reminder, this is a trailer for an unfinished movie. Editing will be complete by April 2009. Contact timwolffhouse@yahoo.com

Please consider being a financial sponsor of this history project. All donations qualify for a federal tax exemption. This production has been conceived and produced entirely in the city of New Orleans, by people who love this place and the culture of the gay krewes. Please help our loud voices for this city be heard and uplift an entire community in the process.

THE SONS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS trailer from Tim Wolff on Vimeo.

Tim received his education in the CalArts Directing for Theatre and Film program. In 1999, he began the first of four productions at HBO as producer. He produced two segments for the adult magazine show Real Sex, working closely with “Wigstock” filmmaker Barry Shils. This is his first feature documentary.

THIS IS AN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS STORY.

THE SONS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS tells the story of the gay men of New Orleans who created a vast and fantastic culture of state chartered public
“drag balls” in the early 1960s. They staged a flamboyant revolution without politics and won freedoms during a time, as now, when laws and people fought against them.

Widely believed to be the catalyst that brought gay people out of hiding, the Stonewall riots of June, 1969 were the result of an ill-timed raid on the Stonewall Tavern in New York’s Greenwich Village. That story is well-known.

In February 1959, a group of gay men in New Orleans decided to have a Mardi Gras ball of their own. Mardi Gras organizations in New Orleans, called Krewes, are social clubs comprised of members who celebrate the season together. Each Krewe has their own festivities, including parties and parades, usually ending with a formal ball and the coronation of a King and Queen. Everyone seems to have a Krewe of some kind to belong to. A full decade before Stonewall, a gay Carnival krewe was founded. They called it the Krewe of YUGA.

In 1962, the Krewe rented a school cafeteria in the notoriously conservative suburb of Jefferson Parish. Securing such a venue for an all male Krewe to hold a Mardi Gras ball would not likely raise suspicion. Most Krewes were, in fact, made up of an anonymous all male membership. Various personnel from the venue were present at functions like these, however. This would no longer be a private event. “It was a kindergarten, is what it was.”

Familiar with police raids, the men knew that the 1962 ball would break a few laws. They made absolutely sure to be in full drag anyway. “It was a ball, after all, not bowling night.” The police roared in precisely at coronation time, alerted by private citizens of cross-dressing men entering the building at night. Krewe members attempted to escape by running into the swamplands adjacent to the school, chased by officers with dogs and flashlights. Many were betrayed by their glittering costumes while hiding in the dark night and tall grasses of Jefferson Parish. They were taken to jail, identified by name in the newspaper and eventually prosecuted with the charge of “disturbing the peace”.

The significance is this. The following year the ball was not raided nor was any subsequent ball in the history of these annual events. By 1969, there were four gay Krewes legally chartered by the state of Louisiana as official Mardi Gras organizations, holding yearly extravaganzas at public venues across the city. “Society matrons begged for ball tickets from their hairdressers.” New Orleans was the first place in America where gay and straight people came together to publicly recognize gay culture.

These men are the embodiment of the archetypal “southern bachelor gentleman”, complete with the cast-iron fortitude. Their story will reveal the pathos of the early persecutions and arrests to the uncommon freedoms in the decades that followed. We will hear of AIDS emptying Krewe rosters in the 1980s and eventually, the experiences during and after Katrina. They have more than a few stories to tell.

To read the complete treatment for the movie, go to www.exposureroom.com/sonstreatment

Views About Gays Spread Hate & Gay Self-hatred

IN LAST Sunday’s Globe, Barry Cohen conveyed that he believes “the notion of people of the same gender entering into romantic and sexual relationships is not normal,” while inferring that those who label this viewpoint “bigoted” are irrational (“Calling Warren a bigot over his views smacks of bigotry,” Letters).

His is not merely a “different” opinion; it is an untruth rooted in tragic ignorance.

As a gay man who, in his early adulthood, experienced the suicides of two gay friends whose parents vocally held such a differing opinion, I know the dangers of this kind of ignorance.

Read the entire post by Peter Danbridge at Boston.com!

The Religious Right’s Panic Over Obama & Equality

Several Religious Right organizations who have been long-term advocates of criminalizing homosexual, and even punishing them by death, are in an uproar over President Obama’s call for LGBT equality.

In reference to the White House Civil Rights page address to provide equality to LGBT Americans, American Family Association’s Rev. Donald Wildmon said:

“This is only the beginning of Obama’s plans to reshape society. His view is that unborn babies aren’t worth protecting and that homosexuals deserve special rights.”

The editor of CovenantNews.com has stated:

Obama “intends to use his office to promote and maintain the sexual deviant criminal behavior of homosexuality (with malice aforethought). Civil officials who approve of homosexuality, make the civil government a vile cesspool from which the abominations vomit out across the land.”

And LifeSiteNews.com stated:

“The Obama Administration has posted its plans to implement the most radical homosexualist policy agenda in the nation.”

Of course you have to keep in mind it was the Relgious Right that made very similar statement about JFK and Civil Rights back in the 60’s.  If equality is “radical”, I guess I’m a radical.  What amazes me still is the tax-free status of these hate groups.  The same who proclaim that “God is love”, spew hate in the name of God, push their religious agenda into politics, yet do it tax free…again, amazing!

Critics of Gay Rights Hurt Cause with Hateful Rhetoric

Paul Summers, of Rogersville, you and Duke McDonald make it very easy to be a gay activist in this area, because in effect, your own words speak volumes as to the need for discrimination protection for gay people in Springfield.

Paul, you exclaim your agreement with and commend Duke McDonald, a city lawyer, who spouts hate and denounces civil rights to a whole class of people, because he believes their sexuality is a sin. He justifies this by his book of faith and his religion. This is not teaching family values, as you so eloquently put it; this is absolute prejudice and discrimination.

Read the entire post at News-Leader!

Next Page »