On Friday we are doing another Take Back the Polk March for visibility. I am so mad that I would like to throw bricks through the Court house windows!!! However in practicing nonviolence like two of my heroes; Ghandi and Martin Luther; we came up with a way to make a statement and get our message heard.

Friday I ask that you bring a bag of shit to the protest labeled with a justices name that voted for the upholding of prop 8 and we will march to the court house and deposite them on the steps of the court house and walk back to the Cinch. This way no bricks are thrown but the message is clear “STOP SHITTING ON US!

I know it grosses some of you out but perhaps you have a cat or dog that you wish to use his or her poop. I will be using my own.

I am as serious as a heart attack about this. Even if you can’t bring yourself to do so please join us in our quest for better visibility in this city. OUR city!

Also I encourage you to voice your anger loudly because if this hatred isn’t stopped it is all too possible that in this world we will only be heard when we start dying in droves! Just look at what the budget has done to ADAP! 96 billion in cuts! People are going to start dying again! In horrible horrible ways! It is time for ACTION! It is time to be ANGRY! It is time for JUSTICE! It is time to leave some EXCREMENT at the feet of the people who will not listen to our voices!

The majority should never have the right on voting to oppress the minority; and only OUR voices can stop it!

Advocating shit for a better tomorrow!

Anna Conda
San Francisco

Enough of the Speeches, Please!We all Thank You for your tireless work and efforts these past 5 years in this Fight for Marriage Equality!

But, But But But But, But But...

ENOUGH OF THE SPEECHES!

Have we not learned anything these past few months of protests awaiting the Supreme Court’s Decision? This is the last straw for people. We’ve all listened to the speeches by countless politicians, organizers, couples, kids, and the list goes on and on and on. Five years of speeches and who is it helping now? You’ve already got me! You don’t need to win ME over. Why the speeches, why the singing, why the kumbaya moments, NOW?
PLEASE save the speeches for the TV cameras, the interviews where they’ll probably make a bigger impact.

During tonight’s protest there were thousands who splintered off because they too were mad and didn’t want to listen to any more speeches. Thus, people got angry on the street and there erupted some police violence.

This GAY isn’t gonna attend anymore speech rallies. I won’t give you anymore of my money unless you have better organization. PEOPLE ARE MAD, do you hear that? PEOPLE ARE MAD, they don’t want to listen to anymore SPEECHES!

As my friend Johnny said, “The Gay Community has too much programming and NOT enough Activism”. “Too many choirs and not enough queers.”

People attend protests/marches because they’re upset and feel hopeless. They take to the streets to let their voices be heard. Some cause violence, which is rare for “gays.” We aren’t normally a violent people.

Why do we go to the Castro? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to perhaps stay downtown where you’re gonna reach more people with a message, where there are tourists from all over this Country, all over this World?

It’s a bit annoying to march in the Castro and our fellow citizens stand there watching from the bars, restaurants and businesses like we’re a parade, it’s NOT a parade, it’s a protest/march. I’m all for patronizing our businesses and I do often, however I don’t know what going to the Castro accomplishes? Perhaps start from there, I’m more likely to grab dinner an hour before a march in the Castro. I dunno, it just seems so meaningless, especially NOW!.

So PLEASE, ENOUGH OF THE SPEECHES....INTO THE STREETS! or something!

Obviously something isn’t working here, so how do we fix it? Perhaps we need some FIERCE Drag Queens organizing!

John Steen
San Francisco

Prop 8: What’s Next?
We always feel proud standing as LGBTQ community in protest or celebration and in our determination. In our actions to defeat Prop 8, we can continue in the spirit of Harvey Milk, and see ourselves as part of and partners with our larger community. When the AFW initiated a boycott on grapes, the gay community joined their cause. When we were threatened with the Briggs initiative, they supported our fight to save jobs of gay and lesbian teachers. Rather than placing gay marriage at the top of our agenda, and then seeking support from others, we can reach out and enter into open dialog with people in other communities. The marriage focus may have seemed disconnected to these larger issues. What are issues in other communities and how can we support them? Where is our common ground? If we can bring our community into the streets against Prop8, we can include demands to stop draconian budget cuts. Budget cuts to student loans; we are students; cuts to medical services; we are families of seniors, people with disabilities, and children? Many LGBTQ, while dealing with day-to-day oppression, are deeply engaged in coalition work with our allies striving to save our social safety nets, and preserve basic rights. 

We chant “Separate is not Equal”. Let us not separate ourselves, or our hopes for equality from other’s need for equality. We can create coalitions and mount a campaign insuring jobs, medical benefits, social security and pensions as guaranteed rights to every individual. 

Patricia Jackson
San Francisco

Proposition Hate Redux
With six months now passed since the historic day in November 4, 2008 that threw LGBTQ Americans under the bus, and symbolically removed black Americans, with the election of Barack Obama as this nation’s first African American president, from riding on the back of the bus, I’m confused in terms of where my seat is on this bus ride toward democracy being both African American and lesbian and bi-coastal. 

Yes, I live in Massachusetts, the first state in the nation to legalize same- sex marriage. And on May 17 Massachusetts celebrated five years of marriage equality. But one of my jobs - coordinator of the Africa American Roundtable at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion - is in California. I’m free to marry as long as I stay within the five states that now offer me the right to. 

The fight for marriage equality in the U.S. is similarly to my ancestors’ fight for freedom. In their day, before the Civil War in 1861, the U.S. consisted of 19 free states and 15 slave states. As a matter of fact, in the 2004 presidential race between John Kerry and George Bush where marriage equality was a hot-button issue, the election map results between Kerry’s blues states and Bush’s red states corresponded to the pre-civil war free states and slave states, respectively. 

As LGBTQ Americans we’re not in slavery, but we are certainly in a civil war. Whereas President Lincoln acted on behalf of my ancestor’s civil rights, Obama is immovable on ours. 

When Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked for a response to California’s ruling he told the Associated Press, “”I think the issues involved are ones that you know where the president stands.” 

When society narrowly defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman, it is not only policing the sexual behaviors of lesbian and gay people, but society is also policing the sexual behaviors of heterosexuals. Handcuffing marriage to a heterosexual paradigm merely chokes its possibility of ever flourishing and lasting, especially as we are coming to understand the fluidity of not only gender and sexual identities but also of the constant changing configuration of family units. 

But with heterosexual marriage being so sacred, opponents to same-sex marriage fail to see how it is constantly desecrated on any given weeknight by being slotted for family entertainment - television shows like “The Bachelor” that cavalierly join people together for high Nielsen ratings. 

To me, democracy is an ongoing process where people are part of a participatory government working to dismantle all existing discriminatory laws that truncate their full participation in society. The work of democracy is rooted in justice and social change allowing us to see, along this troubling human time line, those faces and to hear those voices in society of the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the dispossessed. 

Democracy can only begin to work when those relegated to the fringes of society can begin to sample what those in society take for granted as their inalienable right. 

A government is ethically bankrupt when it legally frames a minority group’s civil rights as a ballot question. 

If I waited for slaveholders to free my ancestors predicated on a ballot vote we all wouldn’t be living in the America we know today. 

Rev. Irene Monroe
Boston, Mass

Sexism Against Women in the Castro
Yes, it’s true. There is much sexism against women in the Castro – don’t forget about hetrophobia {“What Kind of Community Is This?” Letters, MAY 28). And what’s this obsession about gay men getting tested for VD? I thought VD was a human issue - not a gay one. So sorry to the lesbian who wanted a lesbian night at a gay bar and couldn’t get one in the Castro. This is the whole reason why the Dyke March was created years ago and things haven’t changed much. I’ll never forget when a patron of Midnight Sun told me to go to a lesbian bar and then told me to “get the fuck out of the Castro” when I said I wasn’t a lesbian. Perhaps this is why there are so many empty storefronts now in the Castro - discrimination. I acknowledge that there will always be some animosity between queens, fairies, bears, dykes, lipsticks and straights, but all this infighting kills business faster than anything else. I think somebody needs to a documentary a la Marlon Riggs about sexism in the Castro and submit it to the LGBT film festival. Maybe some people will finally get it then.

Denise Jameson
San Francisco

What’s Up with the Center?
Should queers try to improve our Center, or just destroy it? Gay Shame denounces the SF queer Center, root and branch.I am a dues-paying member of the Center; and a frequent user of its CyberCenter (free public computers).

When I have a specific complaint about the Center, I voice it, by email; sometimes in the SF Bay Times. For example, a few years ago, the Center stooooopidly imposed a censorship program on the CyberCenter. I complained repeatedly, and others joined in; so we got rid if it (?). I remember Tommi Avicolli-Mecca fighting against censorship. Did Gay Shame speak up?

The Center STILL has several policies which need to be changed. Let’s hear proposals addressing specific problems. And the Center has a basic problem, which continually threatens its future — big debt, small revenue. In less hubristic cities, a queer community center project would start small, by RENTING, not by building. Like most SF queers, I didn’t voice these objections way back when foresight could have made a difference.

So, now what? Shall we live with our troubled Center; trying to reform its policies; while trying to help it survive the Bush Recession? Or just destroy it?
There’s a part of me which shares Gay Shame’s equal-opportunity mad-hattitude of “Piss on ALL establishments, of all orientations.” And there’s another part of me that values my Qommunity and its flawed center, warts and all.

Tortuga Bi LIBERTY
San Francisco

Got fury???
Got fury? We sure don’t got the $92 BILLION dollars Congress just approved for Obama’s War ‘Supplemental’! War Profiteering Corporations got $92 BILLION MORE dollars!

The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan got death and destruction!

Turn your fury into ACTION! Be prepared to TAKE TO THE STREETS - maybe some OFFICES too - Noon on the day Obama signs this horrific killing ‘Supplemental’.

We expect that will be June 1 or 2.

Watch the calendar at www.bayareacodepink.org for details or sign up by emailing info at bayareacodepink.org or calling 510-540-7007
May 31st we will have a banner/poster making party/strategizing session. Call 510-540-7007 for details.

Code Pink
Berkeley

Gitmo?
There is some concern about Obama’s decree closing Gitmo by the end of the year. Where are the prisoners to go if no other country will accept them and are they to be released in this country? Fortunately there is a large building that is exclusively under federal control, surrounded by a fence and large gardens with complete security and open to constant vigilance. It has all the modern conveniences such as exercise rooms and libraries. It is fully staffed and under control of a sympathetic owner who lives on premises. I’m sure it would be the ideal location. The address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington D.C.

James Keefer
San Francisco

Delusion Of Recycling
The earth does not have the capacity to contain the trillions of tons of waste created daily in our so-called civilized society. Extending out in the future the present accumulation of waste from electronic devices, packaging material, plastic storage containers, automobile parts, toxic batteries and other devices, we will have to consider looking to outer space for another planet where we can repeat the pattern that is destroying our present planet.

We should not delude ourselves that we will be able to recycle our way out of this predicament. Partly, because, many items are not recyclable, most people will not recycle and there are limited markets for such material. Also, to be considered the transportation costs and the pollution created by reconstituting any material.

One-solution charge high taxes on manufacturers as a disincentive in producing things our society consumes.

Denise D’Anne
San Francisco