Chalk one down for Bronz bigot Ruben Diaz: in his bid to keep gay people down and unwed, he seems to have carried the first round: Democrats won't introduce marriage equality legislation for the time being.

But now, party leaders have sent strong signals that they may not take up the issue during the 2009 legislative session. Some of them suggest it may be wise to wait until 2011 before considering it, in hopes that Democrats can pick up more Senate seats and Gov. David A. Paterson, a strong backer of gay rights, would then be safely into a second term.

Of course, all that could change the instant there's a special election for a Senate seat. Stay tuned, because there will be special elections this cycle.

As we asked some days ago, please come out today to protest the hateful and bigoted policies of the Mormon "church".

In the wake of the passage in California of the bigoted Proposition Eight, which took away the right of same-sex couples to marry, an effort bankrolled by the Mormon "church", protests are taking place nationwide.

In New York City, please join our friends and allies outside the Mormon temple on the Upper West Side.

Wednesday, Nov 12, 125 Columbus Ave at 65th Street
6:30pm to 8pm

The Mormon "church", apparently oblivious of its own rather checkered sexual past, has been at the forefront of hateful, ignorant anti-gay bigotry for the last decade. It's time to fight back.

And while you're at it, sign the petition to remove the "church's" tax exempt status here.

Update: It gets better: Mormons are resigning from their church en masse. Join them.

In the wake of the passage in California of the bigoted Proposition Eight, which took away the right of same-sex couples to marry, an effort bankrolled by the Mormon "church", protests are taking place nationwide.

In New York City, please join our friends and allies outside the Mormon temple on the Upper West Side.

Wednesday, Nov 12, 125 Columbus Ave at 65th Street
6:30pm to 8pm

The Mormon "church", apparently oblivious of its own rather checkered sexual past, has been at the forefront of hateful, ignorant anti-gay bigotry for the last decade. It's time to fight back.

And while you're at it, sign the petition to remove the "church's" tax exempt status here.

There is, right now, a lowgrade flamewar going on in blogdom over the catastrophic success of Proposition 8 in California. Exit polls suggested that black voters supported the bigoted proposition, which eliminated the existing right of gay couples to marry, by a margin of roughly 70% to 30%.

Unsurprisingly, the reaction in the LGBTQ community is one of undisguised and bitter outrage. The result, obviously, and the support by blacks (and, one might add, of Hispanics, over-65s, and so on) for an amendment that takes away existing rights, would explain that. But there is, as always, more: gays feel that blacks, themselves the victims of discrimination, should of right bring more understanding to another persecuted minority, in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement. Here, too, it's important to point out that many blacks reject the lack of continuity postulated by others; among them was the late and much missed Coretta Scott King, who supported marriage equality as a matter of our common humanity.

Needless to say, caught grievously in the middle of the fight are African-American LGBTQs. Just one example: one of the parallel failings of both the black and the LGBTQ community is our respective ignorance of the suicide rates among black LGBTQ teenagers. In the black community, with its confiningly delineated gender stereotypes, that problem is ignored as non-existent; in the gay community, there's just not enough awareness that these kids are even out there. That's how little we know of each other.

Then, there is the equally grievous debate between some blacks and some gays - interestingly, that same debate doesn't take place between LGBTQs and straight women - over the continuity of the Civil Rights Movement. Gays maintain that Dr. Martin Luther King fought for us as well, and for all the oppressed minorities in this country where all men are created equal. Many blacks vehemently reject that notion, treating the civil rights struggle as a project dedicated uniquely to overcoming their own unique oppression stretching from slavery through Jim Crow through today's arrest statistics.

What's tragic about this fight is this: blacks and gays have so many more interests in common than we realize. Or you tell me which two groups of Americans would benefit more from universal healthcare. Oh, that's right, gay males coping with the Aids epidemic and blacks struggling at the lower end of the middle class.

At this point, some leadership would be helpful, black leadership and LGBTQ leadership. People need to start talking to one another. The anger and recriminations are going to dissipate at some point, and then, it will be time for that. Let's hope it's soon.

You can't make this stuff up. John McCain to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 18th, 2000 (via Daily Kos):

Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to apologize yesterday for his use of a racial slur to condemn the North Vietnamese prison guards who tortured and held him captive during the war.

"I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live."
"
McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, was questioned about the language because of a story last month in the Nation magazine reporting his continued use of the slur.

Because what this country really needs is an avowed, unrepentant racist as President.

Update: A phone statement from Councilman John C. Liu:

"This was highly offensive in 2000, and it's offensive today. For a would-be President, the statute of limitations for a slur like this is longer than eight years. I think everyone can understand how a POW comes to hate his captors. Hopefully, however, he's come to understand that "gooks" is one of the most offensive terms anyone can possibly use about Asian-Americans."

Well, if this isn’t the ultimate irony, I don’t know what is. The Stop the Madrassa Group (SMG), the organization responsible for the attack on the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) before it even opened, is now calling for the closing of the school on the grounds that it has become “chaotic.”

The group issued a press release yesterday calling for an “immediate investigation into chaotic conditions at Arabic Public School.” The Group is correct in stating that there is chaos at the school. What it fails to explain is that this chaos is a direct result of their spreading vicious lies, resulting in the loss of the school’s founding principal and the continued failure to support the school by the DOE.

Today's big news is obviously the decision by Empire State Pride Agenda to throw its considerable weight behind the Senate Democrats' efforts to retake the state Senate in 2008. This is part of a larger realization on the part of Progressives that, if we ever want to make progress in this state, Joe Bruno and the obstructionist Senate republicans need to be disempowered.

Gay City News:

With more than a year to go before New Yorkers return to the polls to vote on legislative candidates seeking office in Albany, the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA) has already directed upwards of $300,000 to the effort to shift control of the State Senate to Democratic hands.

The marriage equality bill that Governor Eliot Spitzer introduced in late April won approval in the overwhelmingly Democratic Assembly in June, and GOP leadership of the Senate is viewed by ESPA as the remaining obstacle to full relationship parity for gay and lesbian couples in New York State.

This is good stuff, and further evidence that a broad coalition is coming together for this purpose. Needless to say, this is also what's at the root of the current posturing emanating from Albany on everything from the non-scandal about Joe Bruno's misuse of state aircraft to the drivers license imbroglio. Say what you will about Joe Bruno, and God alone knows there's much to be said, but one thing you won't be able to take away from him: he's a streetfighter.

What's curious about ESPA's decision is that it seems to have been taken without much regard to the various less than gay-friendly stances taken by individual Senators and their campaign committee, the DSCC.

In bullfights, to get a bull to charge, the matador waves a red cape in front of it. Supposedly, when the bull sees red, it becomes enraged. Similarly, among humans, certain words cause people to “see red” and become enraged. The words that evoke this response differ among different people. The word “intifada” is one of those words that leads certain people to “see red.”

When people “see red,” they often become so caught up in their emotions that they are blind to anything other than the red-caped word in front of them. This is because the red triggers their instinctual fight-or-flight reaction. Physiologically, when we are in fight-or-flight mode, our focus is narrowed to what we see as the source of danger. Looking thus through tunnel vision, we are unable to see all of the other data that is available. We frame the situation through the narrowed context of the angry and fearful emotions triggered by the word.

Yesterday, supporters of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) (KGIA) and Debbie Almontaser held a rally in front of the Tweed Courthouse. It was an attempt to set the record straight as well as to make sure the DOE knows that community support for the School and for Debbie is strong.

I was asked to speak because I was a member of the KGIA Design Team. And, both as a member of the KGIA Design Team, and as a white Jewish parent from Brooklyn, I wanted to make clear that the stated mission and purpose of the school is the opposite of what it’s opponents are making it out to be.

The other speakers at the rally were: Rabbi Michael Feinberg, Executive Director of the

A travesty of justice has taken place in Brooklyn. Debbie Almontaser, the woman who created the vision of a dual-language Arabic-English school in Brooklyn has been forced to resign from her position as the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) as a result of a smear campaign carried out by an organization known as “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” (SMC) with a great deal of support by the New York Post and a surprising dearth of support by the Department of Education.

Debbie is a woman who personifies peace and interfaith connections, yet articles in the Post and statements by the Stop the Madrassa group have portrayed her as supporting violence and wanting to create an Islamic school. Nothing could be farther from the truth.