"Justice For All" Rally Seeks to Unify Progressive Causes - WREG

"Justice For All" Rally Seeks to Unify Progressive Causes - WREG

A coalition of progressives groups representative women, labor, immigrants, and the LGBT community, organized a rally Saturday in Memphis to protest recent actions by the conservative Republican Tennessee legislature to restrict the collective bargaining rights of public employees, cut funding for Planned Parenthood, and to rollback and prohibit local laws to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians and LGBT people. 

In addition to anti-gay and anti-labor legislation at the state level, the Memphis City government is considering proposals to privatize sanitation services and destroy the local AFSCME labor union that Dr. MLK came to Memphis to march with to protest low wages prior to his assassination.

Right-Wing Hijacks MLK and Civil Rights Movement

While Glenn Beck holds his neo-fascist "Restore America" rally on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream Speech" to promote militarism, capitalism and theocracy, we need to remember that MLK's dream was a radical, DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST vision of equality and social justice that called for ending the Vietnam War, slashing military spending and REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH to alleviate the suffering of the poor and create a more just and equal society.

Glenn Beck is con-man and is using religion to promote a neo-fascist corporate agenda that opposes MLK's pro-labor, anti-capitalist legacy.

King's Dream Was Radical Economic Message

Glenn Beck Needs a History Lesson on the Civil Rights Movement

Glenn Beck Has Long History of Racial Mockery--His "Civil Rights" Talk is a Fraud

Glenn Beck's Perverse Revision of King's Dream is Nothing New

Glenn Beck is NOT Martin Luther King Jr.

Rally for Rights May 8

Memphis Rally For Rights
Manifestación para los Derechos Civiles
Saturday, May 8 :: Sabado, 8 Mayo
12:00pm - 2:30pm
National Civil Rights Museum
Museo Nacional de los Derechos Civiles

REFORM IMMIGRATION FOR AMERICA

Arizona Legalizes Racial Profiling
Boycott Arizona

Some Good News

First, sorry I haven't been posting a lot lately. My step-father died last friday and I've been dealing with that and visiting my mother in north Arkansas. My step-father Dave was a good man who gave my mother and my family lots of love and happiness. He will be missed...

Now, after a string of bad news for LGBT civil rights, we have a couple of good news items this past week.

First, Houston Texas elected a lesbian Mayor! Change is possible even in a conservative state like Texas!

Second, Washington D.C. Legalized Same-Sex Marriages!

Justice and equality prevailed over right-wing religious bigotry.

The bad news is that the Democratic Congress and the Obama Administration are putting off LGBT equality for at least another year...

Pres. Obama Speaks against Anti-Gay Discrimination in Civil Rights Speech

President Obama gave a stirring emotional speech to the NAACP today at the 100th convention of the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S.

Obama expanded his message of equal rights beyond the black communities. He said many Americans still face discrimination.
Racism, he said, is felt "by African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights."

He wasn't booed, and got a lot of applause, so at least the African-Americans at the NAACP understand that racism is not the only form of discrimination and African-Americans are not the only group fighting for their civil rights. He was echoing the words of MLK, that injustice against anyone is an injustice against all.

Well, not everyone understand MLK's vision of civil rights. Some still think that "civil rights" = BLACK rights.

Many of us are perplexed by LZ Granderson's column on CNN today, Gay is Not the New Black
Black gays are not upset with Obama's lack of progress on his campaign promises to LGBT people, so gay whites should not attack Obama? Gay rights should not be compared to (black) civil rights?

Pam has more on this on Pam's Houseblend

Religious Bigots Protest Ordinance to Protect Gays

Former civil rights activist protests ordinance to protect gays

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC-TV) - Although he marched for civil rights in the 1960's, Rev. William Owens of Memphis says he's opposed to a proposed ordinance that would prohibit Shelby County employees from being discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

"We don't want San Francisco, Shelby County," he said.

Owens says he's against giving gays equal employment rights.

"I don't see where these people are being discriminated against. If so, it's very isolated," he said.

Owens and several other ministers plan to hold a news conference Tuesday outside the Shelby County Administration Building in Downtown Memphis.

Although he marched for civil rights, Owens said,"I did not march one inch, one foot, one yard for this type of legislation."

Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy says he expected the opposition. Mulroy is behind the potentially groundbreaking measure that would not only protect gay employees of the county, but also those who work for county contractors.

"If you're against my ordinance, then what you're saying is you believe people ought to be able to discriminate in employment on the basis of sexual orientation," said Mulroy."If you think that, you're entitled to your opinion. But I think it's profoundly misguided, and I think the tide of history is against you."

Mulroy says his intent is for the county to protect the employment of gays in the same way African Americans, Hispanics and women are protected from discrimination.

"They want to be treated under the law like everybody else. And who can blame them?" said Mulroy.

Opponents say commissioners will be to blame if the measure passes, and they say they'll voice their displeasure loudly come election time.

"We're gonna do everything in our power to see they don't have a seat on that commission the next time," said Owens.

Mulroy says he hopes his colleagues on the Shelby County Commission don't bow to the pressure.

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UPDATE: Memphis Pastors, County Commissioner, Speak Against County Anti-Discrimination Measure

Six Memphis Pastors Oppose Equal Protection for Gays
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TAKE ACTION: Contact Tennessee Equality Project!

County Ordinance Targets Discrimination Against LGBT People

National Black Justice Coalition: King Would Stand With Us Civil Rights Belong to ALL People!

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NAACP Chair Julian Bond: "Gay Rights Are Civil Rights"

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond gave a great speech to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Gala Saturday, and makes the case that "Gay Rights are Civil Rights!" Some homophobic black preachers need to watch this:


My only problem with Bond's speech is his emphasis on sexuality being an "immutable" trait like race, and that the constitution protects us from discrimination based on immutable traits. First, sexual orientation is NOT totally biologically or immutable (See Queer By Choice), and Second, our rights are not only based on biological characteristics. The Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee all citizens equal protection under the law and freedom of conscience--i.e., the freedom to CHOOSE our religious, political and yes choose our sexual identity/preference.
The liberal "biological" argument for gay rights leaves out bisexuals and those who do CHOOSE to be gay, bi, or straight.
Anyway, still a good speech that should persuade most rational people to support LGBT rights.

See Also:
Greg In Hollywood

Citizen Crain

(I wish people at the Human Rights Campaign would read David Richards' IDENTITY AND THE CASE FOR GAY RIGHTS to learn how to make the case for LGBT rights without resorting to questionable scientific claims about sexual orientation being a biologically immutable trait.)

Wing Nuts Not Happy With White House Website

The Right Wing Nuts Are Slaming the White House.gov Civil Rights Agenda

Focus on the Family, American Family Association, World Net (Nut) Daily... they are all upset about the White House.gov Website agenda on Civil Rights for LGBT people!

MLK on Liberal "Tolerance"

I found these quotations from my bookmarked copy of the writings and speeches of Martin Luther King. It is from Letter from A Birmingham Jail, and it was about the problems of “white moderates” for the civil rights movement. If you substitute the references to “negro” and “white moderate” with “gay” and “heterosexual moderates” he articulates what many of us feel about the attitude of many moderate/liberals toward the gay community:

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have ben gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klus Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which his the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”: who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advised the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection....

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time.... It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always right to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

Wow! Wouldn’t that make a great inaugural invocation!