Gay Rights: 2 Urgently Important Petitions That Will Impact The Elections

The 2012 national and local elections in the United States present stark choices on the human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans. There is no room for complacency about the momentous LGBT human rights progress achieved under the Obama administration. And of equal importance, it would be impossible to underestimate the malice, sociopathy and sadistic ambition of anti-gay political bullies and thugs for 2012. Many of today’s ringleaders of anti-gay politics jeered “Fag!” at gay classmates when in school. Not coincidentally, adult political gay-bashers are against sexual orientation-specific anti-bullying protections in the schools today. We are in a society where some of these psychopaths actually say that anti-gay bullying is a “healthy” form of peer pressure.

Princeton University Professor Robert George, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the so-called National Organization for Marriage (NOM), believes that homosexual intimacy should be a prosecutable crime. George has drafted a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting marriage equality.  Nationwide, and beyond, George zealously promotes 1) ignorance fueled anti-gay bigotry and 2) sexual orientation apartheid having force of law. His scandalous anti-gay smear op-eds — containing shameless junk scholarship — get published in journals that prominently mention his association with Princeton University.

A group Robert George founded, the so-called National Organization for Marriage, is very aggressively inserting itself into elections nationwide — its sole aim in doing so being to double down on sexual orientation apartheid in the United States. The NOM pledge signed by many Republican presidential candidates would have state level marriage recognition ripped away from all currently married gay American couples, with no regard for how the children those couples are raising would be negatively impacted. NOM also is highly-active in the militant ignorance inherent to opposing sexual orientation-specific anti-bullying policies in the schools.

One of the petitions I’m urging you to sign asks Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to ban NOM and its affiliates from Facebook for 1) NOM’s violations of Facebook’s terms of use and 2) because NOM is an anti-gay hate group. NOM though in violation of Facebook’s terms of use exploits the platform to beg for donations from anti-gay bigots. As of this writing, the petition has garnered 1,193 signatures.  Many signers have added their reasons for signing. One said, “I’ve been beaten, jailed and abused for being gay. It’s time for this to stop. We need your help.”  Another said, “’Misleading, malicious, and discriminatory’ describes NOM’s rhetoric exactly. Facebook needs to enforce its own Terms of Service and stop giving NOM a bully pulpit.” Yet another, citing a study by Columbia University’s Dr. Mark L. Hatzenbuehler, said they were signing because “” [d]epression and drug use among LGBT people have both been shown to increase significantly after new laws that discriminate against gay people are passed”, and that’s exactly what the NOM is after.”

The second petition I am urging you to sign asks the Princeton University Board of Trustees finally to repudiate Professor George’s anti-gay bigotry. George only gets away with publishing his anti-gay junk scholarship because ignorance-fueled anti-gay bigotry is still prevalent in the society. Were George to attempt to publish papers containing equally faked and fraudulent scholarship in a field not dealing with perceived “moral” judgments – physics, for example – he would be an academic laughing stock, not a celebrated Princeton professor. And, George at Princeton is grooming the next generation of academic gay bashers; his savagely anti-gay article “What is Marriage?” is co-authored by a Princeton Ph.D. candidate. The signers of this petition too have left compelling explanations of why they signed. One said, “It’s time for law professors to stop making outrageous, offensive, pernicious statements, as if this were just another argument about something. Words do hurt people. And no legal argument justifies the severe damage these hateful words inflict.” Another signer said “I am a survivor of an abusive academic environment which purposely inhibited learning and growth among LGBT students.” Yet another remarked, “It is frightening that the anti-gay bigot Professor George has it in his power to evaluate young students.” And another said “People in a position to mold the minds of young people should have a higher ethical standpoint and should not be the bully that we are trying to protect our children from in the first place.”

Circulate, repost and promote as widely as possible 1) the petition asking Mark Zuckerberg to ban NOM and its affiliates from Facebook, as well as 2) the petition asking the Princeton University Board of Trustees to repudiate Professor Robert George’s anti-gay bigotry.  And, tell your Democratic elected officials that the Republicans are very aggressively attacking LGBT Americans’ human rights for the 2012 elections — the Democratic defense of those rights must be at least equally vigorous.

 
New York City-​based novelist and freelance writerScott Rose’s LGBT-​interest by-​line has appeared on Advocate​.com, PoliticusUSA​.com, The New York Blade, Queerty​.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.