A couple weekends ago their was an anti-gay hate crime in Colorado Springs. A couple soldiers, and their friends walked into a restaurant and a group of 5 guys and 2 girls started yelling homophobic slurs at them before escalating into a physical confrontation. In the physical confrontation two of the victims were seriously injured with one having to have his jaw wired shut. What was the big offense that set this off? A few of the victims were gogo dancers and one was still in his costume.
I did not post on this when it occurred because the local reporting on the incident was horrible with no details to share outside of a hate crime happened. Since then a lot of information and political posturing has been ongoing.
The homophobic mayor steve bach has “issued” through submissives statements saying this hate crime was wrong, but has never come out and said so himself. His title of mayor and his name do not even deserve capitalization. In the past couple days gay activists requested that homophobe steve bach make a public statement decrying this hate crime by signing a proclamation. He instead insisted on pointing to a proclamation that the council issued 8 years ago when mayor homophobe was not even involved in politics and stated it was not his job.
Homophobe bach also went on to parade out his chief of police who is sucking bach playing politics and has him state that there is insufficient evidence at this time to state that this crime was a hate crime. This despite the fact that the Colorado State Police consider this a hate crime and are investigating.
So I know that I posted a couple weeks ago saying that Colorado Springs is an OK place to live. However, the more that is coming out of our homophobic council and mayor the more I am starting to think that Colorado Springs deserves its reputation of being the toilet of American right wing nut jobs.
Colorado Springs mayor Steve Bach has refused to sign a proclamation sent to him in support of PrideFest. He made very clear during his campaign that he would not sign this proclamation. This has caused many including Charles Irwin Executive Director of the Colorado Springs Pride Center to issue statements in disgust about this decision.
“During Bach’s inauguration he spoke of focusing on downtown, “making it the heart of the community again, as it should be.” It doesn’t surprise me that this lack of support comes as the Pride Center begins it’s fundraising drive to move our Walk In Center aka The Equality Center to the downtown area. Hopefully just a block from City Hall.”
However, I on the other hand am of a different opinion. I support Mayor Bach’s decision not to sign this proclamation as long as his future records is consistent. Mayor Bach declined to sign the proclamation stating that he is not in the business of signing proclamations and is instead in the business of improving this city. Therefore I support Mayor Bach’s decision as long as he is consistent and does not sign ANY proclamations while in office.
If Mayor Bach signs a proclamation in support of the St Patrick’s Day parade, or African American History month, or even for something as small as a Boy Scout getting his Eagle Scout award I will change this opinion and vigorously object to this decision. From my research in the little over a month Steve Bach has been in office, I have been able to find no proclamations that he has signed.
I will continue to watch him on this. I have even set up a news feed to find out if Mayor Bach issues any proclamations. The first time he issues a proclamation I will post it to this site and I will contact Steve Bach with my opinion.
I think the first time you come out is always a scary thing as you never know how people are going to react. You fret and plan on doing it for months on end waiting for the perfect time, which never comes. And finally, you just come out to one or two people. And then you continue to fret about whether the few people you told are going to tell others and plan again to come out to a few more people.
And you keep up this planning and telling cycle, until you finally get tired of it and realize that most people do not care you are gay. Plus you have enough friends who know that if you lose a few friends because you are gay it is no big deal. With obviously gay people they start living more openly and being themselves. This is really the end of the coming out process, after this everybody just sort of knows.
However, for people who are not so obviously gay like me, the coming out process never ends. Very few people can look at you and know you are gay. They say that they need to find you a girlfriend, or ask if you have any plans to get married. Even in this situation though the coming out process gets really easy. When someone asks you if you are getting married you either say no or you say I wish I could but gay people are not allowed to marry depending on the circumstances and how interested you are in having that conversation. Or when someone offers to set you up with a girlfriend you have the conversation below that I had with my neighbor a couple weeks ago.
Neighbor: Now we just need to find you a girlfriend.
Me: A boyfriend.
Neighbor: Oh… CJ is really nice.
Honestly, during that conversation I did not care what my neighbor thought of me being gay. If my neighbor had a problem with it, I would just not associate with them. If you have a problem with a gay person I do not need you in my life. You go from worrying about losing friends when you first come out to comfortable about who you are and do not care if you lose a friend because of it.
I have some very religious friends who disagree with gay people and gay marriage; however, I am still their friends because they do not judge me. They do not say to my face that I am going to hell. What they think in their personal time is not my problem. If they feel they need to pray for me to turn straight, fine, as long as they are not doing it to my face.
I also have lost some friends because I am gay. They were afraid I was going to hit on them. Or they were very religious and could not stop spouting their faith when they were around me.
So, you always hear people saying “It Gets Better”. But does it really? I would argue that it does not get better in regards to the possibility of you losing friends. It does not get better in regards to you never having to listen to someone spout that being gay is going to doom you to hell. But it does get better in that you become comfortable with yourself. It does get better in that you get to a point where it does not matter if you lose friends over being gay. Unfortunately, in some cases being gay will alienate you from your parents. All you can do is try to educate them. If they are not responsive it will hurt in ways I cannot imagine. However, it does get better in that you will find your own community and new friends that allow you to be who you are.
So wherever you are in the process know that it gets easier. You will get to the point you want to be. Take it one step at a time and most importantly learn to accept yourself for who you are.
Every year Independence Day comes around and I find myself debating whether to celebrate or not. Some may call me unpatriotic, some may call me pissed off at the world, but I believe the questioning of whether the beliefs stated in Declaration of Independence are actually used in practice today is the only patriotic thing to do.
Everyone knows the famous lines from the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
According to the Declaration of Independence our government should have been dissolved a long time ago, and certainly no later than the 1960s. It is for these reasons and more that I refuse to celebrate Independence Day.
If you choose to celebrate, I wish the happiest of celebrations to you. Just know that I will not be celebrating with you.
The right wing conspiracy theorists biggest fear is coming true. This almost sounds like a Fox News report.
This is a parody of the video for eHarmony I Love Cats.