I always understood the general rule to be: one in 10 people is gay.  This ratio, which apparently has been oft-repeated to a point where it still remains lore 10 years after I first heard it (the gay population apparently has not adjusted for inflation), is a nice shorthand for: it could be you.  (One of my favoritest people of all time, Jane Lynch, interviewed with Terry Gross on NPR yesterday, and this was her reaction to her 20something realization that she is gay: “Oh man, really?”).  The threat that you could be the one left holding the rainbow flag is the greatest fear tactic of all: it results in the simultaneous internalization and externalization of one’s homophobia.  This is, in part, what moves certain people to go to the polls, draw the little iron curtain, and, in the comfortably private, if not stuffy, polling station, mark a mark that will seal the fate for all those ones in tens, if not themselves.  And they are, of course, protecting the children.  Remember the children!

Yesterday – one year after Prop. 8 passed here, and one day after a similar referendum passed in Maine – Equality Network organized “Death to Discrimination,” a march-and-mourn protest and rally in Silver Lake.  The LA Times estimates that 60 people were present when the march started, but grew to a bit over 200 as the march marched up Vermont and down Sunset towards its destination in front of Le BarCito at Sunset Junction (overall, a decent turnout, but a far, far cry from the 700+ people who RSVP’d for the event on Facebook — like certain people I’m sometimes frustrated to know, you’ll always have flakes).  As the speakers began their spiels to the converted, the number of people dwindled – slowly at first, then “exponentially faster,” as Narinda Heng, my fellow mourner, observed.  Tip to future organizers: a rally and protest aren’t the Oscars.  Keep the speeches short well before the orchestra starts to hum its boredom.

A handful of pictures from the post-march rally, after the jump.

Tom Colicchio

“The idea that religious leaders are continuing to shape state law is just wrong.”

Remember last fall’s boycott of El Coyote restaurant in West Hollywood by supporters of same-sex marriage after it was learned an owner had donated money to the campaign to pass Prop 8?

El Coyote had a sizable gay clientele on Thursday nights, the unofficial “gay night” at the restaurant, which packed the place. That all changed in the aftermath of Prop 8′s passing when the owner’s name appeared on donor lists that were available online and publicized by some media outlets.

Demonstrators appeared in front of the restaurant, business fell off on Thursdays, the pilloried owner did herself no favors when she tried to explain herself, saying if she had a chance to do it all over again, she would do the same thing, citing her religious convictions.

Such a mess for such a mediocre restaurant.

Enter Tom Colicchio, Bravo TV’s Top Chef lead judge and owner of Craft, his first venture into the  Los Angeles restaurant world, located in Century City. (Since the mid-’90s, his places have been sprinkled like fresh herbs all over Manhattan’s foodie jungle.)

In response to a recent episode of Top Chef when a lesbian contestant balked at cooking for an opposite-sex wedding in light of same-sexers being legally banned from marriage rights, Colicchio posted on his Bravo site blog about his views on marriage equality:

I’m going to go out on a limb and say a few words about same-sex marriage: First of all, part of the problem with the issue is that it is framed by opponents as a discussion of whether gay people should get special rights. This is specious – yes, special legislation or court decisions grant them the right to wed in a particular state, however this is done to ensure that they share equal protection under the law by finally being able to avail themselves of the same rights as everyone else.  They are not seeking special treatment, just equitable treatment.

Second, religion has no business being part of the discussion. When a couple is wed in a house of worship, the officiant may be performing a religious rite, but as far as the law is concerned, that officiant has been authorized to perform a civil function, plain and simple. And even were same-sex marriage to be legalized by the state, no one would be holding a gun to the heads of the clergy to require them to perform a ceremony that their faith or personal creed does not condone.

Just as some rabbis would not perform my marriage to my wife because I wasn’t Jewish, clergy can decline performing same-sex marriages; gay couples can either find clergy willing to officiate or can be wed in a civil setting.

The idea that religious leaders are continuing to shape state law is just wrong. The institution of marriage should be available to all. The idea that you can have a life-long partner and not make decisions for them in a hospital, not share in insurance benefits, not automatically have parental rights unless you are the birth parent, is just flat-out wrong.

Via Towleroad.

I initially wrote about it here last month, when three gay rights organizations successfully got the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in DC on board  to wait until 2012, which at the time I suspected was the writing on the big gay wall.

In a related matter, some gay leaders are at odds over a hastily planned march for marriage equality in Washington DC this fall, on October 11th.

The Newlywed Game, the game show that started in 1966 and is now hosted by Carnie Wilson and sponsored by the eHarmony personals site, is scouting for married same-sex couples via Craigslist. Contestants need to be legally married in one state. From Craigslist:

NOW CASTING!!!

The Game Show Network is currently casting season 2 of

“The Newlywed Game”

Producers are seeking fun, outgoing couples to participate in the next season of this classic television game show!

Gay Couples: *Marriages must be legally recognized in 1 state

If this sounds like you or someone you know, please contact the Casting Team IMMEDIATELY at:

TheNewlywedGame@embassyrow.com

PLEASE INCLUDE: Names/Ages, City/State, Phone Number (with area code), Email Address, Wedding Date, and PHOTO.

All participants must be 18 years of age or older and married 2 years or less.

eHarmony recently got on the big gay bandwagon thanks to an anti-discrimination suit in New Jersey that forced them to climb on board. Before that, the site barred same-sex match-ups for their users. Times change.

The two dates in question are the November elections in 2010 and 2012. Those pushing for holding off until 2012 cite flat poll numbers favoring same-sex marriage since last year’s election, linking them to the difficulties it would create for raising the enormous amount of money necessary to undertake another ballot initiative drive. The Prop 8 campaign cost more than $80 million, with those opposing it spending $43 million.

Two weeks I posted about three gay rights groups in California that joined together, with the endorsement of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in DC, to release a statement calling a 2010 initiative “rushed and risky.” Called “Prepare to Prevail,” its approach calls for a lengthy grass roots movement that engages minority communities that overall supported Prop 8; and waiting for statewide poll numbers to show a 60% approval rating for same-sex marriage before an initiative appears on the ballot.

They target November 2012 election as the more doable option to achieve that number but don’t rule out delaying even longer. (Thing is, same-sex marriage was polling favorably at around 60% several months prior to last year’s election, but also before the Yes 0n 8 campaign kicked in huge amounts of money for advertising, raised from religious groups, notably Mormons.)

Yesterday, The New York Times weighed in with a front page article about the conflict among gay groups about the timing.

Marc Solomon, marriage director for Equality California, said he spent June and early July asking the opinions of nearly two dozen California political consultants and pollsters and had been surprised by the almost unanimous opinion that a 2010 race was a bad idea.

But EQCA’s website says they support a return to the ballot in 2010 because of factors like CA state races, including for governor, that will have strongly pro-marriage equality Democratic candidates; the difficulty of maintaining momentum until 2012; and the presumption that LGBTs will be expected to financially support Obama’s reelection in 2012, making funding a ballot initiative difficult.

(Which is somewhat ironic, given the recent rift between gay groups and his administration for its slow movement and ham-fisted handling of gay issues so far. Recently, there was a brief period when, in protest, gay groups withdrew donations at a gay Democratic fund raising event.)

As this plays out, anti-gay groups like ProtectMarriage.com, the leading organization behind Prop 8, have expressed their delight.

ProtectMarriage’s Frank Shubert told the NY Times, “The other side has said they will not move forward with an initiative until they are sure they can win. That day is not going to come.”

I can’t tell whether those are provocative fighting words or if the anti-gay groups are merely whistling in a graveyard as the views of society change generationally.

As EQCA points out in the arguments it considered for delaying until 2012,

We can assume that some percentage of additional people will come our way during that extra time period as a result of both national trends and a change in the voting population (as those now 15 will be able to vote in 2012, but not 2010, and some people 65 or older will no longer be in the voting pool).

"I’m a blogosphere virgin. I don’t read blogs. Blogs feel like they’re a dime a bushel. They’re endless. Like cockroaches..."

Out, gay-as-a-picnic-basket, proud, loud, blog-challenged and, by all accounts, liberal director Todd Holland inadvertently got sucked on to the Hollywood Liberal Shit List last week. However, the move looks to be temporary in light of his good-natured and at times bitchy response, in addition to being nominated this year for a directing Emmy for 30 Rock, the sitcom starring über-liberals Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey. His placement on the HLSL was further complicated by the fact that he got legally married to his partner last year before Proposition 8 was passed.

How it happened: At a panel discussion about gay Hollywood, Holland answered a question about whether he would advise gay actors in Hollywood to come out. Leave it to some nasty bloggers to take his response and “twist or warp” his words into anti-gay remarks.

The panel discussion took place at Outfest, the Los Angeles gay film festival held each July at The Directors Guild (a.k.a. Hollywood Liberal World Headquarters.)

So now the LA Times, LA Weekly and those spiteful, overly-sensitive gay blogs manned by (to use Holland’s word) “cockroaches” are tripping over themselves as he trips over himself to clarify and over-explain what he really meant or really meant to say– or more likely wishes he hadn’t said at all in the first place.

A condensed version of what played out… At an Outfest panel on July 12th, Holland was asked what he says to young, gay actors who seek his advice on whether to come out. “I say, ‘stay in the closet.”

The LA Weekly posted it on their Queer Town blog.

Shit hits fan as Holland says his words were “shoved back into my mouth over and over…” and “There are only a few things I allow to be shoved in my mouth — my mangled words are not one of them.”

He clarified today in an “exclusive” to an LA Times blog: “If you’re a guy, no one cares … unless you’re in that fractional .002 percent of the young male actor population, and you really have the goods to become a true leading man.”

In addition to likening bloggers to insects he said studios were like Chihuahuas, and agents and managers “do not push rocks up hill — they’ll push level (but prefer downhill).”

But it’s those awful, mean bloggers who get most of his ire:

“60 Minutes” journalist Morley Safer said in 2009, “I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.” I now know what he means. And I feel an obligation to “citizen journalists” everywhere to muddy the record with a few facts.

But somehow, I sense a newfound respect for us insects.

I’d put it this way (or quote it, anyway), at least by analogy:

We find the same logic of the error as an internal condition of truth with Rosa Luxemburg, with her description of the dialectics of the revolutionary process. We are alluding here to her argument against Eduard Bernstein, against his revisionist fear of seizing power ‘too soon’, ‘prematurely’, before the so-called ‘objective conditions’ had ripened [...] they are too impatient, they want to hasten, to outrun the objective logic of historical development. Rosa Luxemburg’s answer is that the first seizures of power are necessarily ‘premature’: the only way for the working class to reach its ‘maturity’, to await the arrival of the ‘appropriate moment’ for the seizure of power, is to form itself, to educate itself for this act of seizure, the only possible way of achieving this education is precisely the ‘premature’ attempts. –Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology.

Isn’t it funny how every new idea was old in 1915?

Now is a better time than later for needed change.  Until we actually make the political push necessary (even if it really isn’t anything like the revolutionary matters contemplated by those early 20th century Marxists), it will not be possible to create the conditions where a majority of voters and citizens really do understand the needs and logic of equality.

Should marriage equality supporters push for a ballot initiative in next year’s November election that would repeal Proposition 8? Not according to three gay advocacy groups in California that jointly released a statement urging a delay until 2012.

The statement, “Prepare to Prevail,” was released this week by the Jordan/Rustin Coalition, an African American LGBT advocacy group; API Equality-LA, an Asian and Pacific Islander LGBT advocacy group; and HONOR PAC, which advocates for empowering Latina/o LGBTs.

The groups implore supporters of same-sex marriage “to forego a rush to the 2010 ballot box to repeal Proposition 8″ and “start now in building the campaign infrastructure and robust public education efforts needed to win back marriage equality.”

Going back to the ballot to remove the voter-imposed ban on same-sex marriage from the state constitution in 2010 would be rushed and risky. We should proceed with a costly, demanding, and high-stakes electoral campaign of this sort only when we are confident we can win.

Popular support for marriage equality for same-sex couples has not changed since the last election. Today, California voters’ opinions on a constitutional amendment to overturn the voter-imposed elimination of marriage equality remain evenly split, according to all recent polls.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, based in Washington, DC,  has signed on to the statement by the California groups:

Build solid majority support for the freedom to marry before returning to the ballot.  Multiple polls have shown that support for marriage equality has remained flat since November 2008. The LGBT community will be in a stronger position to win if we’re defending, and not attempting to create in the midst of a campaign, majority support at the ballot box for the freedom to marry.

Today she has a post about the religious right’s attempts to twist facts, lie about studies and just make stuff up about LGBTs in an attempt to scare voters into not supporting marriage equality for everyone. And she must have struck a nerve, because someone from an anti-gay group, Focus on the Family, responded to her in an email, which she quotes and answers.

It’s going to be a tough campaign, but Pam’s early primer is a good way to gird yourself for the campaign.

According to Pam, this is the first of six distortions used by the anti-gay crowd:

1. Using nonrepresentative or out-of-date studies to make generalizations, or distorting legitimate studies to give misleading conclusions

Example 1 – Religious right talking point: According to the book Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sexual partners. Therefore gays have no concept of mongamy and certainly can’t be trusted to raise children.

Truth - Homosexualities was a book written in 1978 that only looked a certain portion of the lgbt population (gay men in the city of San Francisco). It also did not look at same-sex households. In addition, the authors of Homosexualities (Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg) said that their book should not be used to generalize about all gays in general.

And here are the the first four of 17 lies she identifies:

1. Homosexuality is a lifestyle more harmful than cigarette smoking.

2. Gay men have a short life span.

3. The gay and lesbian community have a high rate of domestic violence.

4. Unhealthy behaviors (i.e. substance abuse, promiscuous sexual behavior) is indicative of the gay or lesbian orientation.

This spring, the Gay and Lesbian Centers in Los Angeles and New York partnered to sponsor Project Pushback, a viral video competition aimed at changing public opinion to favor same-sex marriage.

Out of 68 entries from across the nation, a panel of judges chose eleven finalists. Yesterday the winner who will receive a $2500 grand prize was announced, a video entitled Family Values created by LA-based filmmaker Andrew Putschoegl.

“We received entries from across the country but most of them were from Los Angeles and New York, being film centers,” Thomas Soule, communications director of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center told me. “The contest spurred people to get very creative in their approaches to changing hearts and minds about the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.”

Soule also said some of the entries will be shown at Outfest, the LA Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held each July at the Directors Guild in Hollywood.

The videos are all polished and professional, running the gamut from testimonials from real people to vignettes written for actors. There’s even a Blair Witch Project parody, which won the $1000 People’s Choice prize. But my favorite is the one where the guy says– actually, I don’t want to give it away so you’ll have to watch it and see why. (It made me cry.)

Los Angeles-based judges included Academy Award-winning producer Bruce Cohen (American Beauty, Milk); Rev. Art Cribbs Jr. of the San Marino Congregational Church; CA Assembly Member John A. Perez;  Kirsten Schaffer, Executive Director of Outfest,; Judy Starkman, co-owner of convergencefilms.com and Emmy Award-winning director and producer Paris Barclay (In Treatment, Cold Case, The West Wing.)

View the eleven finalists here.