Once again, the Kalamazoo city commission has unanimously passed an anti-discrimination ordinance outlawing discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people when it comes to hiring, housing, and other public accommodations and once again the wing-nuts in West Michigan are blowing their tops and screaming bloody murder. Really, I can’t make this shit up, look at some of the comments posted on WOODTV.com’s message board pertaining to this:
UUUMMM!!! I am sure God defined a relationship to One MAN and One Woman. If anything else was acceptable…. You wouldn’t be putting it to a vote. It’s in the Bible… that a man shall not lie with another man or animal.Only a woman is acceptable. I will not put the exact location of this.I Hope you will find the time and Grace to read the bible and find that any other relationship, other than a man and a woman is not acceptable. Our God is forgiving and your sin will be noted but forgiven, should you choose to make your wrong right. There is no such thing as “Gay Rights”. It is only Apathy to a sickening delusion.
Praise God…Praise God? I don’t think so, and neither did Sodom and Gomorrah. Why do you think it’s called Sodomy. Fire and Brimstone ring a bell? Maybe the people of America and the governments will accept it, but your “victory” is only for a short while….Have fun while you can and more power to you, but don’t be praising my God for it, you’re welcome to give the glory to Satan!
If you are a white male or female that goes to work and does your job or you own a small business and work your but off all year and you happen to acknowledge your Creator and acknowledge the Word He gave us to understand our reason for being here on earth you have very few rights. If you decide to ignor that God created humans and animals male and female for a given purpose to praise Him and live a ife of thankfulness you have all the perverted laws of this sinful counrty on your side. Pray for this country and it’s people that we don’t destroy ourselves with our wackiness. Genesis 1: Male and female He created them to populate the earth
It is amazing to me the ignorance that plagues West Michigan in SO many ways. I’ll be the first to admit that where I am living now is full of backwoods, gun touting, red-neck, bible beaters but in the 5 years that I’ve lived in the Traverse City area, working in a very public place, meeting hundreds and hundreds of people every week doing my job, I have never experienced the same sort of belligerent holier-than-thou attitudes that I experienced routinely while living in Grand Rapids. The homophobia I experience up here is exalted with deep blushing and whispers…by those knowing that what they are saying in public is unacceptable in polite conversation. Not so in West Michigan. These folks, while they have every right to express their opinions, have no problem blasting out lies and bible verses to support their blank and completely uninformed statements. Sometimes I wish that their God would just smite them for being so dam ignorant!
It’s very likely that this ordinance will end up on the November ballot so once again, they can put MY civil rights up to a popular vote. Folks, one of these days, someone or some group is going to put YOUR civil rights up to a popular vote so you can feel what it’s like to have to fight for things you should never have to fight for.
Whew, another long day at work. I hate going back on Monday’s, it’s such a drag on my well relaxed body to have to get up and trek my lazy ass into work. I think I’ll win the lottery and sit on my butt the rest of my life. If only.
I know I preach to the choir quite often on this blog but for you heterosexuals out there who are reading this (which likely is my primary audience), I feel that I have at least a small obligation to provide you with accurate information to combat all the mis-information you have received over your lifetime about homosexuals. This blog is my activism outlet you see. I don’t take to the streets with signs and I don’t get into heated public arguments with people about this or really about anything. It’s just not my style. I get my opinions out in writing for anyone to see and I welcome challenges to those opinions…provided you eventually agree with my point of view. Well, you don’t have to agree, but you do at least have to be nice to me and respect that we can agree to disagree. So, those of you in Michigan, it’s important for you to know the arguments out there that want to keep me pinned down as a second class citizen. Michigan you see has already declared through it’s Constitution that my existence doesn’t count, that I am not worthy of marriage, that it’s OK to fire me from my my job simply for being gay, that it’s OK by the laws of Michigan to prevent my partner from making medical decisions for me should I ever be incapacitated and not able to do so for myself. You’re right, most of those don’t apply to me directly, right now, at this particular minute in my life but they have in the past and they will in the future. So my voice is here on this blog for anyone to read because I can. Because I can change minds and hearts through words just as my opponents can harm me through words of their own. So I’ll get off my soap box now and take off my tin-foil hat and let you watch the video below. Take note of the issues presented as they are the issues that are being used to keep me down. You’ll see, none of them are legitimate but those making those arguments sure seem to think so.
As I expected, no response to my email to TV 7&4 here in Traverse City. Grand Rapids was also subjected to this program and Pam Spalding (Pam’s House Blend) has written some comments on her blog about it. It seems she has the propaganda that the AFA sent to WOOD TV8 in Grand Rapids. She has some good comments on her blog, I will be curious to see if the gay community counters this assault in some way or another once more areas of the country have been exposed to it. These folks at the AFA are grasping for straws at this point. Their existence is threatened, their lies are being uncovered, and people are simply fed up with a propaganda war they seem to want to fight but nobody really wants to hear what they have to say. It amazes me how ignorance feeds upon itself. There is so much good that a “community focused” organization might do for the world, it’s a shame the AFA and other “family” groups tend to waste all their money and time going out of their way to stigmatize gay people. Sorry folks, pick your battles if you want, we gays have already won the war.
You know, before I was in a serious relationship I don’t think I would have really cared that Gay marriage was “banned” in Michigan through the passage of proposal 2 in 2004. Now that I’ve been in a serious relationship and now that the relationship has ended it makes me wonder why I am continuing to live in this state at all. I know why I continue on here but oh my fucking god folks, how fucking ignorant can you all possiably be? Did your crack pipe explode in your face? Did Bubba forget to wash his overalls again?
Already, Lambda Legal, which recently created a “Safety Scale” of states as guidance for convention planners as well as gay couples planning to travel or relocate, put Michigan, once a leader on gay rights, in the worst class.
For those of us who care about Michigan, the damage this court ruling does to the state’s reputation is, to put it mildly, discomforting.
Michigan Sucks. If I had been allowed to get married to Jirar, I would already have the use of the legal system to help us both dissolve our relationship. What if the 2 of us had adopted children? We were together 10 years, it would not have been unusual for a heterosexual couple together that long to have had kids, why not a gay couple? The fact is, Jirar and I had (and continue to have) no legal rights in Michigan. He could walk out on his commitments tomorrow and I would have absolutely NO recourse. He could have the power, gas, phone, and cable shut off here tomorrow and I could do nothing about it since they are all in his name.
Two justices dissented from that May 7 ruling, saying the five-justice majority read too much into the amendment. The dissenters, citing the campaign’s bait-and-switch tactics, issued a warning that should be heard nationwide: “(T)he majority condones and even encourages the use of misleading tactics in ballot campaigns… (I)n the future, organizations may be encouraged to use lies and deception to win over voters or the court. This should be a discomforting thought for us all.”
Not only is this one of the worst states in the county economically, it has also become so corrupt even our justices don’t know what justice is.
Well today sure was an intersting day. It started actually last night when I fell asleep on the couch and woke up with with a horriable back ache around 1am. I transfered that to the bed where the dog had been keeping my spot warm and decided I needed to get up at 4:30 so I could leave early for work. I don’t have to show up for work on Sunday until 7:30 but becuase it was 30 below zero with the windchill and snowing like a bitch, I figured I had better give myself lots of time. Good thing I did.
I managed to get all the way out of Leelanau and over by Traverse City West High School before out of nowhere (well not really) I could not see anytying in front of me on the road. I was going quite slow to begin with so I did as I would normally do when you can’t see, slow down more and keep the wheels on the car straight. As I slowed down, I must have hit some ice in the road becuase within 5 seconds the front of my car was heading over the side of the road and into a ditch. There was no way I could stop the situation at this point so I kept my hands on the wheel, put my foot on the break and just let the snow stop me. For the first time since I’ve lived up here, I ran myself off the road, or Mother Nature did anyhow.
No airbag explosion, no damage to the car, just a big fluffy pile of snow with my car burried under it. I had to get my balance since I was sitting at an angle. I flipped on the light in the car and started looking around for a phone number for a tow service. This would be interesting I thought at 7am on a Sunday morning out in the country. Called Mom and Dad, thankfully not to inform them that I was calling from beyond the grave, and they got me a tow truck phone number.
I sat there in the ditch with my car running for about 45 minutes before the tow truck came to haul me out. In that time I’d say about 10 people stopped to ask if I needed any help. I’m very grateful that people actually stopped but I could not help but notice something about those who did. 80% of them were women and of the 2 men who stopped, 1 was a county snow plow driver who was not allowed to use his plow to tow anything and the other apparently lived near where I was. Again, I am thankful for those who stopped, if I had needed help, I know I would have received it. My question though is for all the people who just kept on going. Why did you slow down, look, and then speed away? Next time, do people like me in this type of situation a favor. Don’t stop, don’t look, don’t gawk. If you have no intention of helping or asking if anyone needs help, get the hell out of here.
Anyhow, by the time the plow arrived it was light outside so I was able to take a look around. I’m actually lucky to be alive and writing this. About 10 feet behind where I went off the road the ditch kept right on going….down about 50 feet. Had I been going any faster and that white out happened any sooner, I would have ended up parked in the top branches of several old cherry trees. They might have broken the fall but they would have never been able to support the weight of my car and thus I would have ended up at the bottom of the ravine, likely in pretty bad shape and out of sight of the road. Call it what you want but I call it luck.
So tomorrow, I get to wake up again at 5am and do it all over again. I just love working for a company that doesn’t care what happens to you on your way to work, only that you get there on time. Like I said in my previous post, I’m about done risking my life just to get to work and sit on my ass because EVERYONE in their right mind is at home and not out driving in the first place. This is the reason I need to be closer to town. This is the reason I will not be saying at this house past August of this year.
I’ve had a rather goofy week this week. I’ve been contacted through Facebook.com by 3 random people from my past (2 from the Boychoir School and 1 from High School), I’ve had 2 people try to get me involved in new marketing business startups (sorry, no I don’t care to venture into the MLM arena at this time), I’ve been whistled at like a dog at work by no fewer than 3 ornery old fucks with no social skills, and I was offered an opportunity to promote at work which I had to turn down because I’m not ready to leave Leelanau yet. On top of that, it’s only Wednesday so I’ve got the rest of the week here to go!
This new year is starting out on an interesting note but the only thing I give a shit about right now is how difficult the factor of time and distance is for Jirar and me right now. I’ve not been able to see him since before Thanksgiving and now it looks like it will be into February before we have another opportunity to see each other. After 10 years together, the only thing I can say is this Sucks with a capitol S. Neither of us thought it would be as difficult as it’s turning out to be. So, I just keep going day to day trying to deal with an obnoxious roommate whose financial help is not helping much at all and don’t even get me started about work. It can hardly be called a job right now since nobody up here is even shopping anymore. This economy fucking sucks!
So I spent tonight creating listings for eBay. I’ve got a bunch of things I’ll be putting up for auction soon. I’ll keep you posted but as for family, don’t buy these things, I’m getting rid of them, I don’t want to inherit them again sometime down the road!! If you really want to buy any of the items, I’ll gladly sell them to you but please don’t give them back to me. I have to start thinning down this house. I have too much shit and it needs to just disappear. I’m not willing to just give it away for free. I need the money and lord knows I’ve got plenty of time to screw around with eBay.
Here’s another picture for you. I thought this was pretty funny. Now Sarah and Brian don’t freak out. Iowa appears to be part of Dumbfuckistan but remember you are not native to that part of the country. Your birth place will always be Michigan which at least right now is still part of America. It’s where you are born that counts you know. =)
I’ve been following some of the politics lately from the Iowa Caucus to the Hew Hampshire primary. In the words of Thom Hartman (Talk Left Sirius Radio), is America more racist or is it more misogynistic? Clearly this race will be between a black man and a woman. The Republicans don’t have much of a chance at this point unless something major changes. I think it’s awesome that finally we’ve come to a point in this country where it is perfectly acceptable for EITHER to be our president (some of the back woods boys up here clearly don’t however – racist, sexist, inbreeders that they are). Anyhow, the Michigan Primary is coming up shortly, I’ll be interested to see how that turns out.
