NEWSBYABBIE KOPF

After the debilitating halt in gay rights victories under then president George W. Bush, the LGBT community hesitantly but enthusiastically organized to elect Barack Obama, whose campaign buoyed our faltering hope with three words: yes we can. We believed that our savior had come — a politician who understood the need for equality and would follow through with an aggressively pro-gay political agenda.

Now, only two years later, some gays feel they have experienced one too many slaps in the face from Obama. Once-fervent LGBT Democrats plan to hit back on November 2nd by throwing their support to third-party candidates or Republicans, or even staying home from the polls. The plight of the “angry gay voter” has surfaced in mainstream media, with Obama-fatigued LGBTs saying things like “It’s all talk and nothing’s happening, and I’m just over it.”

Unfortunately, this logic won’t only ensure significant Republican victories in Congress but will also prematurely dismiss the potential of a President who hasn’t yet had time to prove himself. This Commander in Chief possesses a character trait scarcely seen in today’s political landscape — the willingness to change. Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg, who has fastidiously studied Obama’s writings and philosophical leanings, reaches the conclusion that Obama is ultimately a pragmatist. A scholar in the most sincere form of the word, Obama continuously redraws and recasts his worldview and also the laws that govern society.

Obama has even hinted at his change of heart concerning gay rights. Addressing a group of liberal bloggers, Obama stated "I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage. But I also think you're right that attitudes evolve, including mine.”

I don’t know one LGBT person who isn’t shattered by the young lives lost to anti-gay bullying. Needless to say, it’s rocked us to the core and left us mourning the lives that could have been and reliving painful memories of our own.

As a community, it’s important that we take a cue from some environmentalists when combating this crisis: think globally, act locally. We have to meet our foes where the fight happens – the classroom, hallways, gymnasiums and cafeterias that are the battlefields where this fight will be won or lost. Fortunately, each one of us can intercede right where we live. Here are five important ways that the grassroots movement to end suicides can truly be a life saver.

1. $20 Dollars To Help Teens Identify a respite at school:

Martha Langmuir, Director of Community Initiatives for GLSEN, says that in some areas it’s an uphill battle for school districts to even acknowledge that they have LGBT students. Because of this, they don’t see a need to let their student body know who they can go to for help. That’s where you come in.

For only $20, you can buy a “Safe-Zone” kit for a school of your choice. This money will go toward purchasing safe-zone stickers that can be affixed to lockers, teachers’ doors, backpacks, etc., so that students can visibly see who and where their allies are. For a student with nowhere to turn, this might give them just the nudge they need to seek out an ally to discuss their fears and struggles.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a bedside astrologer made specifically for certain politicians. I can picture Karl Rove or Michele Bachmann curling up in their elephant-print pajamas and gleefully peeking to see what the future holds.

“Aries is totally bored with beating up on the gays lately. While Mercury is in retrograde, you might find yourself restless and wishing for other groups to hate. Have no fear, bold ram, yours is a hatred that can easily be passed along to any subjugated group. Focus on ways to denigrate those most vulnerable and you will find strength and allies thanks to your inhuman knack for exploiting hatred to win elections.”

Thankfully, the cosmos doesn’t operate that way. The midterm elections, however, most definitely do. When November approaches, some politicians pull out all their greatest hits and give their base the opportunity to scream and raise their fists in rage. Abortion, gay rights, immigration, prayer in school and other divisive topics get the troops fired up to take a whack at the sin-filled piñata called liberalism. However, this year has seen a heavily localized dose of ire aimed at Muslims. This Islamophobia is disgusting on many levels, most obvious of which is that politicians are using intimidation and fear to win elections. But what should be most appalling to the gay community is how they want us to get on board with it.

Margaret Hoover, Fox News contributor and frequent guest on the Bill O’Reilly show, warns her fellow conservatives that the party’s hard line against gay marriage is un-Republican. And she did it, of all places, on the Fox News Forum.

Though her arguments seem compassionate and pro-gay, embedded at the bottom of her article was a calculating reminder to her peeps that there’s more at stake with the gays. I speak, of course, about the health of the Republican Party.

Hoover says, “The aforementioned arguments against Judge Walker’s Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision risk undermining legitimate conservative gripes about the judiciary and putting conservatism once again, on the wrong side of the latest chapter in American civil rights.”

Hoover foresees the Republican Party quickly turning into the equivalent of everybody’s racist grandfather — you might have respected him at one time, but now he just says offensive shit in public that makes the whole family cringe. While Hoover looks far into the future of the Republican Party, the more myopic of her crew focus on November. And believe it or not, they want to put the kibosh on gay-bashing, including the Prop 8 ruling, to focus on money, money, money. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the head of the RNC has repeatedly told Republican candidates to focus their candidacy on economic recovery because it is the number one issue on voters’ minds.

It seems that more and more, conservatives are learning a hard lesson that poor, dumb Target has had to grapple with this past month: ignore them or accept them, but don’t piss off the gays. The question is, can we trust or should we seek out politically motivated acceptance?

The folks at the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) have been blogging up a gathering storm about their Summer for Marriage Tour, a multi-state journey to stand up for heterosexual marriage. Since I don’t want Change.org to be sued for causing mass up-chucks, I’ll summarize the contents thus far in order to save you from reading.

At every stop on the Summer for Marriage Tour, gay counter-protestors have been present to make our discontent known. NOM claims that these protestors have been bullying, harassing and intimidating their clan. Oh. And they also say that we want to steal their children. Essentially, the blog is a martyr orgy, wherein we are portrayed as mustache-stroking scoundrels and the NOM homophobes are painted as Bambi trying to flee from rifle shots. You’d think such religious people would feel heretical about climbing up on a cross.

What makes these allegations so amusing is the hypocrisy of NOM. They claim that we spread lies about their protest tactics, but rage against ours. At one NOM rally, an anti-gay activist held up a sign picturing a noose and a scripture saying that gays should be put to death. Several gay bloggers wrote about the sign as it seemingly advocates for the murder of gays. NOM claims that the sign is the work of a “single individual” and released a statement saying that we are intentionally scaring our supporters with lies.

Unfortunately, this statement would hold a lot more water if the very next post on the NOM blog didn’t do the exact same thing, claiming that they’ve witnessed “mothers harassed, children threatened and outrageous efforts to disrupt and drown out our rallies.” Cue the YouTube clips.

I think grammar people take themselves way too seriously. Congratulations! You haven't spliced a comma since the third grade. BFD. Call me when you get a six pack. Then I’ll be impressed.

Yet sometimes, I can’t help but feel bad for the ol’ English language. People dress it up in that hideous Comic Sans outfit and force it to be at constant attention with all caps. They poke it with "izzle" and cut off its legs with text speak. It almost makes you feel bad enough to diagram a sentence. But sometimes, even a grammar rebel like me can’t handle seeing someone abort the English language any further.

Such is the case with some anti-gay religious leaders and their overuse of the quotation mark. Like a five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum, these folks have thrown their lips out in a big grammar pout. They loathe the appearance of validating gay people on any level, so they put quotation marks around anything they find offensive. Let me give you some examples from real, live fundamentalist websites.

From the American Family Association, on why we shouldn’t watch the Today Show: “After a meeting with gay and lesbian activists, NBC's "Today" show said it is changing the rules for its annual wedding contest to allow homosexual "couples" to apply for a wedding ceremony conducted on morning TV. NBC extended the deadline for applications until Monday to accommodate homosexuals who want to get "married" on a live television airing of the show in October.”

Not to be out done, the Focus on the Family website also takes part in some hot quotation action. “No matter where one turns in the culture today, the issue of homosexuality and "gender identity" is being hotly debated. The "homosexual rights" ideology continues to seek legitimization.” And on the subject of Focus on the Family’s ex-gay therapy, they say “Bowing to the forces of political correctness, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1998 issued a position statement "rebuking" practices that are broadly referred to as "reparative therapy" for homosexuality.”

The Research on Gender & Sexuality at San Francisco State University released a study that details what many of us already know – gay couples are engaging in open relationships. Termed “San Francisco” relationships, 45% of gay men in the Bay Area reported that they have a primary partner with whom they are committed, but still have the option to have a little on-the-side romp with other beaus. Though San Franciscans have named this phenomenon after their region, it begs the question if open relationships are a California thing, a gay thing or quite simply a people thing.

It’s not as if non-monogamy is something new in the world of relationships. Conservative studies estimate that 30-60% of married people (the vast majority of which are heterosexual) will cheat on their partner during the course of marriage. Considering these infidelity statistics are regularly the result of surveys, this means that the cheating offender must admit to it – which probably means the actual percentage is closer to 60% than 30%. But we don’t really need studies. A spin on the casual encounters section on craigslist is lousy with partnered people, both gay and straight, trying to get their jollies off outside of the ol’ marital bed.

So why are people so hell-bent on making non-monogamy a gay thing? After all, swingers and swing clubs are increasing in popularity and many of its participants are heterosexual, conservative, religious folks. It seems like a lot of people are itching, privately or publicly, to have a little NSA fun, not just us gays.

The heteros sure do have an odd relationship with tradition. Apparently, damn near everything is a custom they believe should be reserved for one penis and one vagina, including domestic violence and getting felt up in a sequin dress.

Now, Steve Blow, columnist for the Dallas Morning News, claims that sexual assault is “refreshing” when it sticks to a manly man's definition of rape. D Magazine's FrontBurner blog reported that Blow had this to say about a local Priest who has victimized numerous young women:

"This is sad to say, but it's almost refreshing to read about a priest accused of good, old-fashioned heterosexual perviness.

The dreadful stuff between priests and boys has been going on for so long that I almost forgot that some priests have more mainstream sexual hangups.

Again, I say, it's time for a married priesthood."

Let’s ignore for a moment that “refreshing” is a term used to describe a Fresca soda or Sunday morning walk. The fact that he refers, with levity, to one of the most harmful, degrading, deplorable crimes made on a child is classless and insensitive, but his gross misrepresentation of the nature of child abuse is inexcusable. Like many before him, he’s made child molestation an expression of either heterosexual or homosexual lust. He believes different-sex sexual assault to be in the same family as heterosexuality, therefore making it “mainstream” and associates same-sex molestations as a result of us homos and our weird “hangups.” Unfortunately, this widely held but completely misguided premise fuels many in their gay hate.

For liberals residing in blue states, the thought of moving to a bible-belted red state may sound slightly less favorable than having an arm cut off with a butter knife. It’s no wonder. Seemingly racist, sexist, homophobic and conservative wonderlands in the South and Midwest are always doing something stupid that makes the rest of the country hate them — especially on the gay rights side of things.

Many leaders and legislators of the "Redneck States of America" hate our kind with a fervor that verges on erotic, and take pride in riling up their evangelical base to throw some hate our way if we get too uppity.

In fact, just recently Change.org Editor Michael Jones covered the release of the Texas GOP platform, which makes Texas seem just as bass-ackwards as everyone thinks it is. In fact, backwards is putting it lightly. The Republican Party of the Lone Star State suggests that anyone with the audacity to marry gays should be charged with a felony.

“Are you on the rag, or what?”

It’s a question — an offensive, almost comically sexist query — that almost every woman has had to stare in the face at one point in her life. The question more or less means, “If a woman is exhibiting discontent in any capacity and for whatever reason, chances are likely that she is hysterical and emotional thanks to Aunt Flo and her red army. So, that must be your problem, right?”

For the LGBT community, a dangerous equivalent is mounting in the mainstream media. The homophobic version of the rag question is, “Why are you overreacting?”

After the now infamous Modern Family episode omitted a gay kiss in what seemed like an intentional snub to the community, we rightfully spoke out. Surely, we thought, Modern Family wouldn’t do us this way. So we made a simple request: Let Cam and Mitchell Kiss! ABC released a statement in which they directed the community to “chillax,” and Ed O’Neill, the actor who plays lovable curmudgeon Jay Pritchett characterized our anger as “half amusing, half annoying.” Though the Modern Family folks might have been simply trying to downplay the fuss, it sounded more like a patronizing pat on the head to a group of citizens who just need to take our bitters and keep our mouths closed.