REPOSTED FROM QUEERTY.COM -- While Kansas Governor Sam Brownback joined Texas Governor Rick Perry at the American Family Association’s prayer rally in Houston this weekend, the Kansas National Organization for Women and the Kansas Equality Coalition held a free speech rally on the the south steps of the Kansas state capitol building.
You see, even though Governor Brownback allowed the Knights of Columbus to march on the capitol with drawn swords on January 21st, he blocked the KEC from carrying flagpoles with the American, Kansas and rainbow flags onto capitol grounds on June 24th, saying that all flagpoles (including tiny flags on wooden sticks) are “dangerous weapons.” So to celebrate their first-amendment rights, KNOW and KEC returned with two huge flags (sans flagpoles) to combat Brownback’s denial of free-speech rights to his political dissenters.
A Catholic, Brownback opposes marriage equality, civil unions, gay adoption, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate-crime laws. (He also supports Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.) But he’s totally okay with hanging out at a prayer event with a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group that thinks the Holocaust and Hurricane Katrina were caused by gays.
I pride myself on my knowledge of gay history, but I was unaware of this terrible incident until I saw an article on another gay website, QUEERTY.com. Judging from the comments in the comment section, I'm not alone in this ignorance. Indeed, it's rather boggling, even shameful, that we've apparently allowed ourselves to forget what happened on Sunday evening, June 24, 1973 at the Upstairs Lounge on the corner of Rue Chartres and Iberville in the "Gay Triangle" of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
In fact, with a total nod to QUEERTY's work on this story and acknowledging their copyright, I'm going to repost as much of it as I can here. These details must be preserved, these moments and other like them, never allowed to be forgotten.
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June 24, 1973 marked a lively summer day at The UpStairs Lounge, a second floor gay bar in New Orleans’ Gay Triangle. The Lounge had just hosted its regular services for the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Church, then the bar held a free beer and all you can eat special for 125 people in the afternoon. Now that evening had come, about 60 patrons enjoyed David Gary’s piano playing and discussed the bar’s upcoming MCC fundraiser to help the Crippled Children’s Hospital.
Then, at 7:56PM the bartender Buddy Rasmussen heard the downstairs buzzer and asked Luther Boggs to go check the door. Normally cabbies would ring the buzzer to tell people that they had arrived, but when Boggs went to answer the door, he found no cab driver. Instead he found the flames of a molotov cocktail engulfing the wooden staircase and climbing towards the bar.
Rasmussen led about twenty or thirty people out through an unmarked exit behind the bar where they emerged onto the roof and hopped from roof to roof until they found a way down.
But the thirty others remaining in the lounge ran confusedly to the barred windows where they tried to escape. One man managed to squeeze through the fourteen-inch gap between the bars and the sill—he jumped onto the street, his entire body in flames, and died there. The Reverend Bill Larson clung to the bars and slowly melted into the window frame where his charred body stayed visible for hours afterwards.
MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell escaped but when he realized that his boyfriend Louis Broussard was still in the bar, he went back to save him—workers would later find their charred bodies holding each other among the charred wreckage.
The fire only lasted 16-minutes. It killed 29 people and three more who later died from their burns, including Boggs the man who had answered the door. New Orleans had never seen a larger death toll by fire up to that time nor had the United States seen such a large mass murder of gays and lesbians. It remains the largest GL massacre ever to occur in our country—and now even as then, few people ever talk about it.
Initial newspaper reports left out any mention of homosexuality and delighted in grisly details about the fire workers “knee-deep in bodies” “stacked up like pancakes” and “literally cooked together.” One paper quoted a cab driver who said, “I hope the fire burned their dress off,” while radio talk show hosts joked, “What will they bury the ashes of queers in? Fruit jars.” National TV stations covered the fire for one night and then never mentioned it again.
Four of the victims’ bodies were never identified; some thought their families felt too embarrassed to come forward to claim them. Their remains now rest in a paupers graves. Of the city’s public officials not one made a public statement about the fire. Of the city’s numerous churches only one clergy member, Episcopalian Reverend William Richardson agreed to hold a memorial service at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church.
Sometime during the investigation, police picked up a gay hustler named Roger Nunez. Nunez had been tossed out of The Upstairs Lounge earlier that day for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. Rumors say that after being ejected from the bar, Nunez went to Walgreen’s, purchased some lighter fluid, doused the bar’s wooden stairs with it, and then set the bar aflame. The cops questioned him for arson but immediately Nunez went into convulsions. They took him to Charity hospital where he disappeared and never got picked up again, despite his repeatedly appearances in the French Quarter afterwards.
One year later, Nunez killed himself. Five days after, a friend told an investigator that Nunez had drunkly admitted on four occasions, that he had started the fire.
Even though a gay man may have started the blaze and killed those of his own kind, the city’s response further dishonored the victims by keeping them closeted and unacknowledged for fear of their sexual identity.
In 1998, New Orleans Councilman Troy Carter lead a jazz funeral to the site of the blaze where mourners laid a memorial plaque at the foot of the building and placed flowers commemorating each of the 32 dead. May God rest their souls.
Thanks to Jim Hlavac for the story idea. Story pieced together via The Daily Mush, Gay World, Out And About, David Mixner, Soul Force, NOLA.com, HuffPo, and Motherboard TV
You can read the QUEERTY.com article at their site at http://www.queerty.com/not-to-ruin-your-pride-but-today-marks-the-deadliest-gay-massacre-in-us-history-20110624/, and there are some photos along with it. They are strong stuff. This story has bothered me since I read it yesterday.
NYC POLICE RAID NEW YORK EAGLE BAR JUST MINUTES AFTER HISTORIC EQUALITY VOTE
Just minutes after the historic vote legalizing gay marriage in the state of New York, NYC police launched an operation that can only be viewed as an act of harrassment and intimidation against a major New York gay leather bar, the Eagle.
Police officers and agents from the New York Police Department and three other agencies, including the State Liquor Authority, arrived shortly after the state Senate's vote as patrons were celebrating the results of the hard-fought battle in Albany. Police reportedly turned off the bar’s lights. They then shined flashlights in patron’s faces and demanded that some of patrons empty their pockets.
According to police, the inspection was one of four previously planned operations carried out as part of a program called MARCH (multiagency response to community hot spots), but Manhattan borough president Scott M. Stringer said what went on at this particular bar on West 28th Street was akin to a raid.
Stringer acknowledged that such inspections weren’t unusual, but said “I think this one was ill-conceived and ill-timed given the circumstances surrounding the marriage equality celebration, on Pride week.”
The visit reportedly led to six violations being issued. One of the charges, unbelievably, was for "Unnecessary noise." What the fuck? It's a big bar, and bars play loud music, and crowds were celebrating both as part of the annual Gay Pride Weekend and as a result of the vote.
“I definitely lost money last night because they made patrons wait outside in a line down the block,” the bar’s owner, Robert Berk, 50, told The New York Times. “I don’t know how much I have to pay, but it’s enough to matter.”
Christopher J. Borras, 46, who was among those waiting to get in when the officers arrived, called the inspection “a blatant sign of intimidation and harassment. I mean, 42 years after the Stonewall riots and we still have to live in fear of the police disturbing our quiet enjoyment of life? I just don’t understand. We are very peaceful.”
Police defended the action, saying that it had been planned "for weeks," and that they couldn't be held responsible for the timing of the Albany vote. But one wonders exactly how dumb New York Police have to be to schedule such a raid on Gay Pride weekend and think that it wouldn't be interpreted as "harrassment and intimidation." Nor was the timing of the Albany vote any unforeseeable secret. It was clear through Thursday and Friday, indeed most of the week, that the vote would go down to the wire. Any intelligent administrator in the police department might have considered the bad-timing of the raid action, especially given the very minor nature of the charges used to justify it: checking ice machines for cleanliness, checking licenses of the bar's security personnel, and the ridiculous "unnecesssary noise."
Frankly, the police department should count themselves fortunate that they didn't have another "Stonewall Rebellion" on their hands. But then, I'm not sure the NY leather community has done itself any honor here, either.
What an amazing and historic night. The New York Senate, following the lead of the New York Assembly, has passed an historic marriage equality bill, extending the right to marry to GLBT New Yorkers. New York becomes the sixth and largest state in the union to recognize marriage or civil unions. After first passing a compromise bill specifically exempting churges and religious organizations from provisions of the marriage equality bill, four Republican senators joined twenty-nine democrats to pass the bill.
Large crowds and protesters on both sides of the issue had gathered in the halls of the Albany capitol. When the final vote was announced, supporters broke into loud cheers and chants of "USA! USA!"
(Photo by Spenser Platts)
Large crowds also gathered outside the Stonewall Bar in the West Village to await the outcome. This is Gay Pride Weekend in New York, and tomorrow is the NY Gay Pride Parade. The Empire State Building, which usually is lit with lavender lights during Pride Weekend, ignited tonight with this beautiful rainbow lighting.
Normally, I try to be in New York for the last week in June, flying out for Leather Pride, staying the week, and taking part the next weekend for Gay Pride. The parade is the best in the world. I decided to postpone my trip this time until later in the year, and boy, am I kicking myself for that decision.
To all my many New York friends and colleagues, and to all the hard-working activists, congratulations on this monumental victory. Hopefully, this moment in New York represents a tipping point.
Last month brought the depressing news that San Francisco's long-established gay bookstore, A DIFFERENT LIGHT, located right in the heart of the Castro district, was closing its doors. A DIFFERENT LIGHT is just the latest in a long list of closings that include the OSCAR WILDE BOOKSTORE in New York's West Village and many others.
I said it before, and I'll keep saying it: the loss of these bookstores represents major damage to the Gay community. They are important, and they deserve our support.
An item that has just appeared on the Yaoi News website demonstrates exactly why gay bookstores are important and why we make a huge mistake by allowing them to fade. What is "Yaoi?" Simply, it's a Japanese term for "beautiful boys," and "Yaoi stories" are especially popular in manga form. Now, I'm not specifically interested in manga, but as literature, it has a huge audience.
But as of this past week, Amazon.com has removed scores of Yaoi titles from its Kindle platform and will no longer make them eligible. Here's part of the story from the Yaoi News website.
"It appears the Amazon KINDLE has changed its Terms and Conditions to ban explicit images from being published on the KINDLE (See EDIT below for exact terminology). This issue started last month when Yaoi Press had a few of their titles, both manga and prose, pulled from the KINDLE with no explanation other than they were in direct violation of their Terms and Conditions. Yaoi Press's founder Yamila Abraham has stated they will now have to change their explicit images on their prose titles to more 'romantic' images that will be acceptable to KINDLE.
"Today Digital Manga has announced they too have had some of their 801 Media titles pulled, including Weekend Lovers and King of Debt. However, it appears this will also affect June Manga as KINDLE has rejected The Selfish Demon King and has banned The Color of Love. Unfortunately since these are manga and not prose like Yaoi Press's titles, there is no way to alter the images to meet KINDLE's Terms and Conditions.
"I took a peek at Libre's direct from Japan KINDLE releases but have not noticed any titles that are missing as of yet. That being said, I expect with some of the explicit Ayano Yamane and Youka Nitta titles they have that it is only a matter of time. My recommendation is to grab what you can get now before it is gone. The good thing with the KINDLE is that once you own it, it's yours to keep. You also do not need to own a KINDLE to read their titles. You can use any number of their software apps to read them including KINDLE Desktop for both the PC and Mac.
"I guess now we will just need to wait and see if Borders' KOBO or Barnes & Noble's NOOK will follow suit."
This is not the first time Amazon.com has removed gay titles from its inventory. Last year, in what Amazon later called a "glitch," hundreds of gay books were removed from its list. A loud outcry resulted, and most of the titles were eventually restored. But now, Amazon.com is once again attempting to control what books the gay community can access. We're not talking about graphic pornography here. Manga has long ago moved into mainstream acceptability.
Too many times I've heard people claim that gay bookstores are no longer necessary, that we can walk into any Barnes & Noble or Borders and find gay books. That is only true in a very limited fashion. Yes, you can usually find a "gay section" in some back corner of one of the big box stores, but it seldom contains more than a handful of individual titles, and most of those from the larger, best-known publishers. At the Oscar Wilde Bookstore or at A Different Light a buyer could browse thoussands of different titles from major presses and from smaller publishers side by side, often along with magazines, pamplets, chapbooks, and much else. I have never seen an issue of THE JAMES WHITE REVIEW, one of the Gay community's most important publications, in a Barnes & Noble or Borders.
Maybe you'll save a dollar or two at Big Bookstores that can sometimes offer discounts on major titles. But what do you give up for that dollar? You risk losing important parts Gay culture. You risk losing potentially important gay writers. Literature frames and preserves our experiences, documents who we are and who we hope to be. You risk losing those publishers and presses that find, nurture, and showcase important gay artists and writers. If we surrender our culture into the hands of others, we risk losing our culture and our identity.
We see that at work as Amazon.com once again censors these "Beautiful Boy" titles.
Our gay bookstores are vanishing. Our gay literature will suffer for that. And we will be poorer.
A 22 year-old man is listed in critical condition today, May 8 2011, after being beaten by a group of men with a baseball bat outside the Old Plantation, a popular El Paso nightclub. Media reports are light with details so far, but police said the man was waiting for a ride outside the Old Plantation Night Club, 301 S. Ochoa, when a verbal confrontation began between the victim and six other males. The verbal confrontation became physical and the six suspects allegedly began punching, kicking the victim. The group allegedly also used a bat to hit the victim. One of the victim's friends, a woman, tried to help and had her vehicle damaged as she tried to do so. A suspect struck her 2003 Jeep Liberty windshield with a bat to stop her from helping the victim. The suspects then fled the area in what appeared to be a van.
LIBERTY, MISSOURI -- A teenaged, bisexual boy was ordered to remove a teeshirt and sent home when he refused to comply. The teeshirt reads "Queer + Straight = EQUAL." Watch the video.
An 18-year-old BOY died at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center Monday after four Queens teenagers allegedly screaming anti-gay slurs and wielding a chrome bat and a cane beat him on a sidewalk in Woodhaven, according to the NYPD and other officials. Police said they are treating the death of Anthony Collao, 18, as a hate crime after he was allegedly chased down by four teens after leaving a birthday party on 90th Street in Woodhaven early Saturday morning.
The four teens, two from Flushing and two from Woodhaven, reportedly screamed anti-gay slurs at the party, which they crashed, according to a statement from Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) and a report from the Daily News. “Get the f--- out of the front, this is my hood,” one of the teens yelled at the party, according to the criminal complaint.
Published reports stated Collao was not gay but that the hosts of the party were.
Quinn, Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) and a host of other community activists denounced the attack. “My council colleagues and I are saddened and disturbed by this outrageous attack,” Quinn said in a prepared statement. “We celebrate diversity in New York. We do not tolerate bias attacks in any neighborhood in Queens or anywhere else in our great city.”
Collao died after being taken off life support at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, according to the NYPD.
Flushing residents Nolis Ogando, 17, and Christopher Lozada, 17, and Woodhaven residents Luis Tabales, 15, and Alex Velez, 16, were charged with manslaughter, gang assault and criminal possession of a weapon, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. The four were arraigned in Queens Monday night. Tabales was held on $200,000 bail, Lozada on $150,000 bail, and Velez and Ogando were each held on $100,000 bail, according to the DA.
Fresh Meadows attorney David Bart, who represented Velez and Lozada for the arraignment but is now only representing Velez, said his client plans to enter a not guilty plea. “Obviously I’m always willing to negotiate with the district attorney,” Bart said. Attorneys for the other defendants did not respond to phone calls for comment.
The DA noted a fifth individual was involved in the killing, and police said they are looking for him.
“I was truly saddened to hear about the fatal attack in my district over the weekend,” Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) said in a statement. “My prayers go out to the young victim’s family and friends. Our streets will not be safe until the individuals who are responsible for this heinous crime are brought to justice. Senseless acts of violence such as this will simply not be tolerated.”
Police did not elaborate on the gang charge but neighbors living near the site of the alleged attack said they heard it was part of an initiation rite for a gang from Flushing.
The killing has elicited strong responses from not only elected officials but community activists as well. Individuals at the Jackson Heights-based Queens Pride House, the borough’s only lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center, called for strong action in response to the alleged crime. “We at Queens Pride House are saddened by the tragic loss of life and sickened by the hate motivating this murder,” said interim Executive Director Peter Pavic. Pauline Park, president of the board of directors, too expressed her concern. “In the last few years, there have been a number of hate crimes against LGBT people, including transgendered women of color,” Park said.
The four teenagers charged with the killing are due back in court on April 6.
UPDATE: A fifth suspect was arrested Tuesday night in the deadly beating of a Long Island teen in Woodhaven, police said.
Calvin Peitri, 17, of 91-10 77th St. in Woodhaven, was charged with manslaughter and gang assault as a hate crime stemming from an incident that occurred outside of a Woodhaven party, police said. However, they would not confirm a report that Peitri was found and arrested after he bragged about the beating on his Facebook page.
An openly gay Brooklyn man required ten hours of surgery and three metal plates in his face after a February 22nd anti-gay attack by a group of six teenagers. Via yesterday's Brooklyn Paper:
Barie Shortell, 29, was on N. Fourth Street on Feb. 22 at around 10:10 pm when he brushed past six teenagers wearing hooded sweatshirts. “Oh s–t, is that a guy or a girl?” one of the teens yelled. Shortell thought to himself that the slur was “juvenile,” but he crossed to Wythe Avenue just to be safe. But the group followed and shoved Shortell against a wall, fracturing his jaw, nose and eye sockets. He has no recollection of the attack.
“I feel pretty confident they perceived me as a gay man and attacked me, but I can’t understand why they did what they did,” said Shortell. “I looked horrible. Blood was everywhere.”
At the insistence of the NYC Anti-Violence Project, the police have classified the attack as a hate crime, although no suspects have been apprehended. Today the AVP issued a press release denouncing the recent spate of hate crimes in NYC, which have taken lives in Staten Island and Queens this month.
The AVP points out a coming fundraiser for the above victim, who has no medical insurance. "The Barie Response is organizing a benefit for Barie to assist him in paying his medical bills. The benefit will be at on Wednesday March 23, from 7PM to 10PM at Blackout Bar, 916 Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. While AVP is not sponsoring the benefit, we will be present to provide safety and outreach information." You can donate directly via the above link.
KILLER STONES 70-YEAR OLD GAY MAN TO DEATH "JUST LIKE THE BIBLE SAYS."
KILLER CONFESSES: I Stoned That Homo To Death Just Like The Bible Says I Should
A Pennsylvania man is under arrest after confessing to beating an elderly man to death with a stone, just like the Bible instructs should be done with homosexuals. A 28-year-old Upper Darby man has been charged with murder after telling police that he stoned a 70-year-old man to death when the man made homosexual advances toward him, authorities say.
John Joe Thomas, 28, of Sunshine Road in Upper Darby, spent almost every day with 70-year-old Murray Seidman at Seidman’s Lansdowne home, police say. Days before Seidman’s body was found on Jan. 12, Thomas allegedly beat Seidman to death with a sock full of rocks. Thomas told authorities that he read in the Old Testament that homosexuals should be stoned to death. When Seidman allegedly made homosexual advances toward him over a period of time, Thomas said he received a message in his prayers that he must end Seidman’s life, according to court documents.
Police say that Thomas struck Seidman in the head about 10 times with the sock of rocks. Thomas left Seidman dead in his apartment, and then threw his bloody clothing and the bloody sock in a dumpster, according to authorities.
The killer was the sole executor of the victim's will and returned to to the scene of the murder several days later claiming to have discovered the body.
EQUALITY KANSAS HAS ISSUED A FORMAL STATE AND CALL FOR PROTEST in response to actions taken in the Kansas State Legislature to re-criminalize homosexuality in that state. The organization is calling for a protest march on Thursday, March 17.
[ Posted Tuesday Mar 8 2011, 9:19 am by Thomas Witt ]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jon Powell, Chapter Chair Kansas Equality Coalition, Hutchinson Area Chapter 916-761-8984 Powell462@gmail.com
Thomas Witt, State Chair Kansas Equality Coalition 316-683-1706 chair@kansasequalitycoalition.org
STATE REPRESENTATIVES CALL FOR CONTINUED CRIMINALIZATION OF GAY AND LESBIAN KANSANS
Topeka, Kans, March 8, 2011 -
State Representatives Jan Pauls (D, Hutchinson), and Lance Kinzer (R, Olathe) said yesterday that being gay or lesbian should remain a crime in Kansas. Pauls made, with Kinzer’s support, the successful motion in the Kansas Legislature’s Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee to keep the criminalization of gay and lesbian relationships on the books. Their action removed key language from HB2321, proposed by the Kansas Judicial Council, which would have resolved inconsistencies in Kansas criminal code, as well as remove unconstitutional laws.
“Jan Pauls was trusted to be a judge before becoming a state representative, and should know better than to support unconstitutional laws, breaking her oath to defend the Constitution,” said Jon Powell, Chair of the Hutchinson Area chapter of the Kansas Equality Coalition. “We are fed up with her obvious support of harassment of gays and lesbians. We will not be bullied.”
Although one remains on Kansas’ books, all state laws criminalizing gay and lesbian relationships were struck down by the United States Supreme Court in 2003. Writing for the majority in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Anthony Kennedy said “if protected conduct is made criminal and the law which does so remains unexamined for its substantive validity, its stigma might remain even if it were not enforceable as drawn for equal protection reasons. When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.”
Disregarding the US Supreme Court, the President of the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association, John Wheeler, said in 2008 that “even to this day, homosexuality is a crime in Kansas." His warning, made to a group of adult college students and caught on video, raised questions about the ability of gay and lesbian Kansans to live free from arrest, and to receive fair trials in our courts.
“Representatives Pauls’ endorsement of an unconstitutional statute that’s used to threaten and discriminate against law-abiding Kansas citizens is an outrage,” said Thomas Witt, state Chairman for the Kansas Equality Coalition. “She took an oath as both judge and state representative to uphold the Constitution. We insist that Representative Kinzer and she be immediately removed as Chair and Ranking Minority from the House Judiciary Committee. Legislators who willfully ignore the Constitution should never be in positions of leadership and responsibility.”
The Hutchinson Chapter of the Kansas Equality Coalition is organizing a peaceful demonstration to raise awareness of Representative Pauls’ actions, to take place Thursday, March 17, in downtown Hutchinson. The demonstration will begin at 6pm, and will take place at the intersections of Main and Avenues A and B.
Here's an email address for Kansas State Representative Jan Pauls, who successfully sponsored an effort to keep unconstitutional laws criminalizing gay sex on the Kansas books.
Write her a note at
janpauls@ sbcglobal.net
or
janice.pauls@house.ks.gov
Let her know how you feel about her bigotry. If you live in Kansas, challenge her to arrest you.
I'll post a personal email address for Lance Kinzer as soon as I can get it, but I suspect that his office address will be
KANSAS: Lawmakers Call For Continued Criminalization Of LGBT Residents
How long are we going to put up with this shit? Fred Phelps is enough embarrassment for Kansas. Now we have Jan Pauls and Lance Kinzer making fools of the state.
Even though in 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all anti-sodomy laws in its landmark Lawrence vs. Texas ruling, two state legislators in Kansas are fighting to keep their now unconstitutional laws on the books. The Kansas Equality Coalition reports.
State Representatives Jan Pauls (D, Hutchinson), and Lance Kinzer (R, Olathe) said yesterday that being gay or lesbian should remain a crime in Kansas. Pauls made, with Kinzer’s support, the successful motion in the Kansas Legislature’s Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee to keep the criminalization of gay and lesbian relationships on the books. Their action removed key language from HB2321, proposed by the Kansas Judicial Council, which would have resolved inconsistencies in Kansas criminal code, as well as remove unconstitutional laws.
“Jan Pauls was trusted to be a judge before becoming a state representative, and should know better than to support unconstitutional laws, breaking her oath to defend the Constitution,” said Jon Powell, Chair of the Hutchinson Area chapter of the Kansas Equality Coalition. “We are fed up with her obvious support of harassment of gays and lesbians. We will not be bullied.”
Equality-minded Kansans are encourage to join a March 17th demonstration calling for Rep. Paul's removal as chairwoman of the Kansas House Judiciary Committee. Well and good. Paul and Kinzer, as well as the rest of the complicit committee members who supported them, deserve to be protested. But come on, Equality Kansas! On St. Patrick's Day? Even if anyone shows up for your march, what kind of media attention do you think you'll get? Think. And reschedule. It's called "strategy."
