Catching up with an update….An apology….and that Andrew “Sully” Sullivan thing

Greetings.

I apologize for the delay in posting to the site. With so many changes happening on the news end of things (check out my news site, PageOneQ) the posts to the blog have definitely fallen by the wayside over the past two weeks.

Thank you to those of you who are assisting in the changes to blogACTIVE and PageOneQ. I have been contacted by some very supportive folks and this summer will bring changes to the site’s design and operation. When complete, the site will be much easier to navigate. While the site will still be a blog in the truest sense, it will also have special navigation for new visitors, direct links to take action areas and other enhancements. The complete upgrades to the site will run approximately $2,400 and, as the chart on the right shows, we’re more than halfway there. If you have not yet contributed, I hope you will consider doing so, by clicking on the thermometer and helping out via paypal.

To those of you who keep coming by as the site undergoes changes, a HEARTFELT THANK YOU! Visitors to the sites and our advertisers help to keep blogACTIVE alive.

A blogACTIVE campaign update
I’m happy to report that the campaign blogACTIVE began a little over a year ago has reached a new level of success in the past few weeks.

Last year, despite the many, many letters to printed press in Rep. David Dreier’s district, his story hardly made a ripple in the press when it was first reported here. At the end of June, however, the press was quick to jump on the irony of a Liberal’s son interning for the closeted GOPer Dreier. Publications throughout the UK told the story, complete with reference to the reporting on blogACTIVE.com.

As regular readers know, the goal of this site was never short term change. Our success in taking closeted gays who work against the gay community and bringing them into the forefront of media has, in just a year, been pretty amazing.

Stories and columns have been written by everyone from veteran journalist Doug Ireland to the New York Times’ Frank Rich whose absolutely amazing piece, Just How Gay is the Right (excerpts), brought to the pages of one of the nation’s most read newspapers the blatant hypocrisy of such so-called leaders as David Dreier, Ed Schrock and Mark Foley.

Why our work MUST continue
The work, however, remains far from complete. One need look no further than the case of Jeff Gannon (right) to see how far we must go until gays and lesbians are treated equally by the media. Do you think for one minute that if “former prostitute Jeff Gannon” was “former call-girl Jane Gannon” that the NY Times would hesitate asking “Who on the White House staff did you have sex with prior to obtaining your press credentials?” If Jeff were Jane, I am sure Fox’s Sean Hannity would have been right there demanding every salacious detail so he could repeat them with his filthy mouth. Because Jeff Gannon was, and still is, a closeted gay man he gets a free pass from the press — all because they are too timid to approach the topic of man on man sex, especially when one of those men may be in the highest levels of the U.S. Government.

Now, the apology I promised
In less than a year, I will celebrate my tenth year anniversary in Washington, DC. I moved to the nation’s capital in 1996 to become the development director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the oldest national lesbian and gay civil rights organization. Over the past decade, I’ve been involved in politics and have attended many events and asked questions of (well, some might say “confronted”) elected officials.

I have, on more than one occasion, encountered at-large DC city councilmember Carol Schwartz (left) and, because of her stand against marriage equality for gay and lesbian citizens, I resorted to the same kind of language that Dick Durbin used when he quoted an FBI email to describe members of the US military in Guantanimo Bay. I am sorry for resorting to such divisive and hurtful language and I have called councilmember Schwartz to apologize.

At the same time, I’ve thought long and hard about what caused me, a Jewish grandson of people who fled persecution in Europe, to resort to such words. Perhaps seeing the councilmember, also a Jew, taking a stance against my community was more frustrating that I could pull the words together for. Or, on a deeper level, perhaps the councilmember reminds me so much of the strong women in my own life who have said to me time and time again, “never again” in regards to the tragic treatment of Jews in 1930s and 1940s Germany that I expressed my frustration with language I knew would affect her.

In any case, the tactic has been, appropriately, pointed out to me by my friends and colleagues as one that is certainly not helpful in our struggle for civil and human rights. Perhaps it’s my vision of that “slippery slope” that led me to say what I said…For that I am both sorry and hopeful that the “slope” is not so steep.

An apology for Andrew Sullivan? For what?

A number of you wrote saying I owed Andrew Sullivan an apology for attacking him on his essay about HIV and AIDS. On that, no dice. Some criticized me for posting this picture of Andrew (above) on PageOneQ when he wrote that

I have never felt better. HIV transformed my life, made me a better and braver writer, prompted me to write the first big book pushing marriage rights, got me to take better care of my health, improved my sex life, and deepened my spirituality.

Andrew, can you please tell your readers how having to strap a mask tethered to a breathing machine every night makes you feel “better”? How does such a contraption really improve your sex life? (although from what I’ve seen around the web , maybe it’s just a new fetish of yours like those “milkly loads” days.)

Two email writers suggested to me that Sully’s sleep mask is unrelated to his HIV. Not true. See here. And while I am happy to see that treatment for sleep apnea can help to improve sexual intimacy, I certainly don’t think recommending HIV transmission in an effort to get sleep apnea so one may be treated for it is the best way to improve a sex life.

And, finally, Andrew, are you suggesting that it’s only your illness that motivated you to stand up for marriage rights? If that’s true, it’s further proof of the right wing’s ability to pretty much screw anyone ever, so long as it’s not themselves.

You protestations against Bush today do little to help our community out of the mess people like you have gotten us into. Perhaps it’s time for you to do a little less writing and a little more reading.

Wrap Up
If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for your patience! That’s it from here for today…I’ll be attending some events over the weekend and look forward to more frequent posts beginning next week

And, again, thanks for your support.

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