Where are the marchers?

On Sunday, March 7th, 1965 a group of civil rights marchers set out on U.S. Highway 80, heading East from the town of Selma Alabama. They were attempting to draw attention to the system of segregation and institutionalized disenfranchisement that prevented African Americans from being able to register to vote and to actually vote. Between 500 and 600 marchers peacefully walked from Selma headed towards Montgomery, peacefully until they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

On the far side of the bridge a group of state troopers were waiting for the protesters and when they arrived the protesters were told to go home. When one of the organizers of the march, the Reverend Hosea Williams, tried to talk to the troopers he was told there was nothing to discuss. Moments later the state troopers started to attack the protesters with night sticks and tear gas. This day became known as "Bloody Sunday"

On March 9th, two days after the violent attack on the protesters 2500 people marched to the same bridge. On March 21st around 8000 people marched, on March 25th around 25,000 people marched. 25,000 people from around the country responded to the violence against a minority group in a small Southern town and traveled there to show their support for what the marchers had originally set out to do and to show their support for their fellow Americans.

In Murfreesboro Tennessee the sign for a proposed Islamic community center has been vandalized twice and more recently construction equipment at the site has been set on fire by arsonists. What will it take to bring busloads of people to this small, Southern, town to show their support for their fellow Americans? I hope it doesn't require the kind of violence that occurred on Bloody Sunday.

God and gays

My partner and I met in a most, unusual way. I won't go into exactly how we met but suffice it to say that we met online and it is somewhat surprising that we met at all. When we first met we really weren't interested in each other and neither of us was interested in being in a relationship at all. Somehow we wound up meeting offline, in person, and somehow we wound up falling in love.

Somehow we figured out that we were pretty much perfect for each other. Somehow we wound up having all of this happen a few months before 2 of my good friends, who also became good friends of my partner, got married and invited us to their wedding. The wedding where we met the man who married them. This will become important a little later on.

Somehow Prop 8 in California passed the same night that Barrack Obama was elected President of the United States. Somehow my partner and I wound up helping to organize, in less than a week, one of the largest gay-rights protests in the history of Tennessee in response to the passage of Prop 8.

Somehow My partner and I wound up being able to buy a home and build a wonderful life together that included planning a vacation in San Francisco. Somehow this vacation wound up being just a couple of weeks after Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. A week later Judge Walker decided that the temporary stay he had issued should be lifted on August 18th, 2010, the day after we are to arrive in San Francisco for our vacation. San Francisco which is a short drive from Santa Cruz where the minister who performed my friend's wedding lives.

So we met, "by chance", we organized a protest of Prop 8 and now "by chance" we are going to be in California on the day Prop 8 is revoked and all people in California can marry the persons they love. "By Chance" we know a minister who lives near San Francisco who will be willing to marry to gay, punk, men.

"Chance"? I think none of this was really chance, and if you think God hates fags, well I think he brought me and my partner together and arranged for things to work out perfectly for us to get married (barring an emergency stay being granted to same sex marriage opponents). Yep, God loves fags, I have no doubt about that after experiencing my life.

Target

A week or so ago news came out that Target donated $150,000.00 to a group supporting a conservative candidate for Governor in Minnesota. Target claims it supported this candidate because he is "business friendly" but many people were upset at the news because of the anti-gay stances this candidate has taken over the years. If Wal-Mart had supported the same candidate I doubt anyone would have noticed but Target has always promoted itself as a company that supports gay rights and so the donation the company made to support an anti-gay political candidate upset many.

The groups and individuals that have been calling for protests and boycotts of Target's stores across the country see this as a moral issue, someone should let them know that businesses aren't moral entities. Businesses exist to make a profit, plain and simple. The only businesses that care about gay rights are the companies that think support gay rights causes will help them increase their profits. They don't do it because it is the right thing to do or the moral thing to do, they do it because they hope it will put more money in their registers.

Nothing matters in the US anymore other than money. Target is doing exactly what any other large business would do, Yay capitalism.