I watched Milk last night, showing the life of Harvey Milk, who helped organize gay rights in San Francisco, and found against people getting fired for simply being gay, police arresting gays simply drinking in a gay bar, and fighting against Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign, that urged a vote on repealing laws that were simply preventing employment discrimination:
In San Francisco, Briggs was trying to pass Prop 6. Prop 6 would prevent any homosexual from teaching, would fire anyone who already had a job, and fire anyone who supported them.
While there are both similarities in differences in the Props, the arguments remain the same. Bryant, on trying to appear gay rights laws, so that they could once again be discriminated by the "moral people":
“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.”
(Which is clearly false, since gay children come from gay parents. But the same theme is there: that gays are predatory, or that they cannot produce.)
“If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nailbiters.”
(And if we allow them to marry, soon, men will be able to marry the family dog. Yet, there are gay rights, and people aren't sleeping with St. Bernards because of it. Who knew? And here, gays are lumped into a group with prostitutes, people who practice inappropriate behavior with animals, and um, nailbiters? Guess what? You can't fire someone from, say, a Bond Brokerage, because she bites her nails. Prostitutes have rights - the same rights to a speedy trial, a lawyer, the ability to vote. It's as if she thinks that some people should have rights, and some not.)
“If homosexuality was the normal way, God would have made Adam and Bruce”
(There should be no gay marriage - God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. But who made Steve, because he is, indeed, here. So, to sum up what Anita is saying, it should be okay to deny someone an apartment, a job, or be harrassed by police simply because they are gay, because they are not "normal" in her eyes. That's moral?)
On prop 6. she came to California to support the Briggs Initiative in 1978, which failed, but would have banned homosexuals or anyone advocating the "gay lifestyle" from teaching in public schools. "I don't hate the homosexuals," she wrote in a fundraising letter. "But as a mother, I must protect my children from their evil influence."
(I don't homosexuals, I just don't think they should be able to marry. I need to protect the institution of marriage, and protect my children from thinking that it is an option. But did she love homosexuals, in trying to repeal laws that only protected them from injustice or discrimination? How is that loving?)
Celebrating her victory in a sound bite that aired nationwide, Bryant promised she would "seek help and change for homosexuals, whose sick and sad values belie the word 'gay' which they pathetically use to cover their unhappy lives." (Being gay is not an orientation, and simply a choice, and thus, they can change, and marry someone of the opposite sex. They can be "healed" from their sick and unhealthy lifestyle. Only we have found that gays don't change, and that their orientation is what makes them want to date someone of the same sex, not a simple choice of deciding between fish and chicken. Most heterosexuals will even say that they don't know if they could have a same sex encounter, partly because the idea does interest them or disgusts them, or because they simply aren't attracted to the same sex, but then assume that gay people can just change, or that they should.)
"I believe that more than ever before there are evil forces round about us, often posing as good"
(It's an ironic statement. No one looks back at what she, and Falwell, and a group of others were doing to try to maintain the ability to discriminate LGBTs legally with honor, or admiration. Watching the movie, you look back repulsed, like watching those who tried to defend segregation, or even those who used the bible to support their purpose.
They claimed to be fighting against a changing moral climate, to preserve morality, when in fact, they were preserving discrimination and injustice. They were trying to act harmfully toward their neighbor, and inscribe it into law to make sure that they were not punished for it.
She was, in short, doing something evil, as posing as good, as protection of children, of protection of family, as protection of morality, while supporting and pushing for something quite immoral, and daring to stamp it with God's support.
As I watched the movie, I could only think of the photo snapped of the Little Rock Nine, Nine brave black children entering a white school, the beginning of the end of segregation, while a wild, angry woman in the back yells something, her hatred showing, but thinking she is the one who is, the moral one, the good one.
I thought of the KKK that burns crosses, claim to be Christian, and claim that they are only wanting to return the nation to God's original intent - of a white Christian nation.
I thought of signs in historical US that are embarrassments:
The oppressor always thought himself right. He sometimes even looked to the bible to help support him, and found it, with a little self interpretation.
So, I think that in terms of Prop 8, that this is yet another sore spot that will go down in US history, like children asking their parents why black people weren't allowed to drink out of the same drinking fountain as whites.
It is not a fight for Morality in passing Prop 8, but is a fight to legalize discrimination, and if that is the true end goal, then those are the people that are trying to destroy the country, the society, by trying to erase the First Amendment saying that the government can neither prohibit nor endorse any one religion, try to erase the part we hold most dear:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
In San Francisco, Briggs was trying to pass Prop 6. Prop 6 would prevent any homosexual from teaching, would fire anyone who already had a job, and fire anyone who supported them.
While there are both similarities in differences in the Props, the arguments remain the same. Bryant, on trying to appear gay rights laws, so that they could once again be discriminated by the "moral people":
“As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.”
(Which is clearly false, since gay children come from gay parents. But the same theme is there: that gays are predatory, or that they cannot produce.)
“If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nailbiters.”
(And if we allow them to marry, soon, men will be able to marry the family dog. Yet, there are gay rights, and people aren't sleeping with St. Bernards because of it. Who knew? And here, gays are lumped into a group with prostitutes, people who practice inappropriate behavior with animals, and um, nailbiters? Guess what? You can't fire someone from, say, a Bond Brokerage, because she bites her nails. Prostitutes have rights - the same rights to a speedy trial, a lawyer, the ability to vote. It's as if she thinks that some people should have rights, and some not.)
“If homosexuality was the normal way, God would have made Adam and Bruce”
(There should be no gay marriage - God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. But who made Steve, because he is, indeed, here. So, to sum up what Anita is saying, it should be okay to deny someone an apartment, a job, or be harrassed by police simply because they are gay, because they are not "normal" in her eyes. That's moral?)
On prop 6. she came to California to support the Briggs Initiative in 1978, which failed, but would have banned homosexuals or anyone advocating the "gay lifestyle" from teaching in public schools. "I don't hate the homosexuals," she wrote in a fundraising letter. "But as a mother, I must protect my children from their evil influence."
(I don't homosexuals, I just don't think they should be able to marry. I need to protect the institution of marriage, and protect my children from thinking that it is an option. But did she love homosexuals, in trying to repeal laws that only protected them from injustice or discrimination? How is that loving?)
Celebrating her victory in a sound bite that aired nationwide, Bryant promised she would "seek help and change for homosexuals, whose sick and sad values belie the word 'gay' which they pathetically use to cover their unhappy lives." (Being gay is not an orientation, and simply a choice, and thus, they can change, and marry someone of the opposite sex. They can be "healed" from their sick and unhealthy lifestyle. Only we have found that gays don't change, and that their orientation is what makes them want to date someone of the same sex, not a simple choice of deciding between fish and chicken. Most heterosexuals will even say that they don't know if they could have a same sex encounter, partly because the idea does interest them or disgusts them, or because they simply aren't attracted to the same sex, but then assume that gay people can just change, or that they should.)
"I believe that more than ever before there are evil forces round about us, often posing as good"
(It's an ironic statement. No one looks back at what she, and Falwell, and a group of others were doing to try to maintain the ability to discriminate LGBTs legally with honor, or admiration. Watching the movie, you look back repulsed, like watching those who tried to defend segregation, or even those who used the bible to support their purpose.
They claimed to be fighting against a changing moral climate, to preserve morality, when in fact, they were preserving discrimination and injustice. They were trying to act harmfully toward their neighbor, and inscribe it into law to make sure that they were not punished for it.
She was, in short, doing something evil, as posing as good, as protection of children, of protection of family, as protection of morality, while supporting and pushing for something quite immoral, and daring to stamp it with God's support.
As I watched the movie, I could only think of the photo snapped of the Little Rock Nine, Nine brave black children entering a white school, the beginning of the end of segregation, while a wild, angry woman in the back yells something, her hatred showing, but thinking she is the one who is, the moral one, the good one.
I thought of the KKK that burns crosses, claim to be Christian, and claim that they are only wanting to return the nation to God's original intent - of a white Christian nation.
I thought of signs in historical US that are embarrassments:
The oppressor always thought himself right. He sometimes even looked to the bible to help support him, and found it, with a little self interpretation.
So, I think that in terms of Prop 8, that this is yet another sore spot that will go down in US history, like children asking their parents why black people weren't allowed to drink out of the same drinking fountain as whites.
It is not a fight for Morality in passing Prop 8, but is a fight to legalize discrimination, and if that is the true end goal, then those are the people that are trying to destroy the country, the society, by trying to erase the First Amendment saying that the government can neither prohibit nor endorse any one religion, try to erase the part we hold most dear:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
