Dear All,

My partner and I are members of the HOB [House of Blues] Foundation Room in Las Vegas and I am horrified that you are actually willing to sell out our safety in order to make a buck. While I fully support the First Amendment and everyone’s right to free speech, I also believe in corporate responsibility. That said, it is your responsibility to cancel the upcoming Sizzla show in Cleveland. This is a responsibility that your company even has in writing in your commitment to “promote racial and spiritual harmony through love, peace, truth, righteousness and non-violence.”

What if instead of encouraging violence against gays Sizzla or another performer encouraged violence against African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, or Jews? Would you cancel the show then? Without a doubt you would, and rightly so. So, please explain to me why my life, as a gay man, is less valuable to you than anyone else’s?

I have tried to think of some reason why your company would make such a heartless move. Even if you called it a “business decision”, that doesn’t add up considering that gays have the highest disposable income when compared to any other demographic. That spending power far outweighs the amount of money you would bring in off of one single hate-filled show.

However, this decision shouldn’t be about money, it should be about doing what is right. As if our struggle hasn’t already been difficult enough, the current political climate is making our lives harder and hate crimes are on the rise. We certainly don’t need your organization rewarding performers who only seek to make it worse.

If your organization does not chose to do the right thing by canceling Sizzla’s Cleveland show, my partner and I will have no choice but to cancel our membership and encourage our friends to do the same. While I have enjoyed our membership, I will not stand by a company that won’t stand by me.

Sincerely,

House of Blood On Their Hands, Cleveland

“Shot batty bwoy, my big gun boom” (Shoot queers, my big gun goes boom); “Boom boom! Batty boy them fi dead” (Boom boom, queers must be killed); and “Mi a go shot batty bwai dem widdie weapon ya” (I go and shoot queers with a weapon).

When last we heard from the rector at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Monsignor Eugene Clark, it was April of 2002, when he made headlines amid the priest sexual abuse scandal, practically calling for a new Spanish Inquisition, this time directed solely at homosexuals.

In 2004 Perkins's Family Research Council released a pamphlet, "The Slippery Slope of Same-Sex Marriage," introduced with the tale of a Missouri man who wants to marry his horse. "The logic of his argument is remarkably similar to that employed by advocates of homosexual marriage," the pamphlet states. Perkins recently told a reporter from the Vancouver Sun, "You ask anybody that's investigated homosexual murders and without question they are the most violent...even the sex act itself is violent in homosexuals." (Such comments contradict a claim made on Dobson's Focus on Your Child website that boys who are becoming gay "dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.")

And just in case anyone is unclear about the goals of these right wingnuts are, Blumenthal ends with this great quote:

The true underlying agenda of Justice Sunday II was undisguised in the rousing speech given by Bishop Harry Jackson. "We need to tell both parties, 'It's our way or the highway,'" Jackson told the cheering crowd. "You and I can bring the ruling reign of the cross to America."

I think it's safe to say that George W. Bush's 2000 campaign promise to bring civility back to Washington has been abandoned. No surprises there, considering the promises broken by this president.

[W]hile a handful of Democrats have attacked Bush, it has been Republicans, and the conservative pundits, that have done all they can to vilify Democrats and liberals. They claim we're terrorist sympathizers and that we're guilty of treason for speaking out against the war in Iraq. They claim we're on a campaign to persecute Christians and to destroy "traditional" family values by attempting to "legitimize" gay marriage.

The pundits have also written books attacking liberals. Ann Coulter, a frequent guest on shows like Fox's Hannity and Colmes, has written a number of books slamming liberals. Sean Hannity of Hannity and Colmes also writes books, and includes titles that say "Deliver Us From Evil...defeating...Depotism and Liberalism." As if liberals were a group that needed to be destroyed. Michael Savage's latest book likens liberalism to a mental illness.

Iranian teens are executed because they are gay!

11 gay men languish in jail for over four months in Cameroon, un charged, but there because they are gay!

Teenage boys are being forced into the sex trade in Iraq.

"ex-gay" Richard Cohen
(Not counting mentor cuddling, of course)

Touch plays a central role in his therapy, said Cohen, who does not treat women. He recommends that clients develop intimate friendships with heterosexual mentors who will cuddle them in a parental, nonerotic way, making up for the love they did not get from their fathers.

(Chicago, Illinois) The head of an Illinois group fighting same-sex marriage and partner benefits says he wonders if militant anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps is actually a gay plant.
...
[Anti-gay activist Peter] LaBarbera went on to say: "Politically and culturally speaking, Phelps and his protesters serve as a crude caricature of pro-family traditionalists who oppose the normalization of homosexuality. Fred makes an easy target for the media and secularists who are tempted (partly by their own prejudices) to paint any opposition to 'gay rights' as hateful. For this reason, I have sometimes wondered if Phelps and his lawyerly clan are 'gay plants.'"