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?

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

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!

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!

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!

Rich Cizik has been no stranger to controversy during his long tenure at the NAE. In early 2007, a group of Christian Right leaders called for his resignation because they claimed his work to broaden the evangelical agenda to include the environment diluted an exclusive focus on opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. At that time, the NAE board responded by reaffirming its confidence in Cizik and its commitment to a broader “biblically balanced agenda.”

But this time, with Cizik publicly saying that his views had been shifting toward supporting civil unions, NAE president Leith Anderson asked for his resignation, declaring that “there was a loss of credibility for him clearly espousing our positions and values.” Other evangelical voices on the Christian Right were more forceful, asserting that Cizik himself had become un-evangelical. Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family declared, “He no longer represents the view of evangelicalism.” Charles Colson of the Prison Fellowship claimed that Cizik was “separating himself from the mainstream of evangelical belief and conviction.”

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization, responded today to the exclusive commentary posted on the extremist, right-wing website World Net Daily by anti-gay activist and former singer Pat Boone.

Boone published a bizarre and disturbing commentary comparing the horrific tragedy in Mumbai, which took the lives of over 170 people, to the protests against Proposition 8 here in the U.S. In essence, equating the Mumbai tragedy with those protesting the passage of the discriminatory amendment in California that took marriage rights away from gay and lesbian couples to terrorists.

Read the entire post by clicking here.

According to a police, Sucuzhanay and his brother were seen staggering and holding on to each other as they left a Mexican bar early Saturday morning in Brooklyn. Four young men in a maroon SUV thought the brothers were gay. One of the men was heard shouting, “Check out those fagots over there.” The passengers jumped out of the SUV and accosted the two brothers. One of the attackers shouted, “Fuck you, Spanish people.”

Police are treating the death of Sucuzhanay as a hate crime and are offering a $22,000 reward for the capture of the four black teens in the maroon SUV.

I wonder if homophobe Mike Huckabee who recenlty stated on “The View” that gays haven’t suffered knows this guy got his “skull cracked open” because of his perceived sexuality?

He also recently commented that Proposition 8 did NOT ban gay marriage in California.

His latest spewing of publicly proclaimed hate for the GLBT community happened during a recent book signing, he goes so far as to say that “Christians” are the victims of violence. Then he basically goes on to say it’s OK for people to hate gays, as long as they don’t act on that hate. Now, this is supposedly a “Christian” man. Since when was hating someone OK in the Christian doctrine? Mike Huckabee demonstrated the prime example of homophobia, bigotry and hate. Check it out below.

The Alliance for Marriage Foundation, the group who drafted the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA) in Congress, has launched a new website at www.ProtectDOMA.org. The site offers information and resources pertaining to DOMA, a law that forbids any federal agency from legally recognizing gay marriage.

The legislation was authored by then-Republican Georgia Representative Bob Barr and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1996. The biggest fear of repeal is that it would allow gay activists to push forward with equal rights and same-sex marriage would then become nationally recognized.

Rev. Sam Rodriguez, Jr., an AFM Advisory Board member and president of the National Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) stated;

“The repeal of DOMA is the legislative Holy Grail for activists who want to impose their radical social agenda upon America through the courts. The election of President-elect Barack Obama places the federal DOMA in peril.”