Blue Guy in Red Land

Saturday was a very long day.  Those of us on the State Committee of
the Democratic Party of Georgia met at the IBEW auditorium in Atlanta
for 7 hours of fellowship, speeches, and good ol’ fashioned voting!
Below are the results of the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG)
leadership
elections.  Turnout was over 70%, and I was thankful to be under an air
vent with my fellow 5th District members.   

Democratic Party of Georgia Executive Officers:

Chair
Jane V. Kidd (Clarke)

First Vice-Chair
Michael Thurmond (Clarke)

Congressional District/County Liaison Vice-Chair
Sally Rosser (Fulton)

Constituency Group Vice-Chair
Virgilio Perez Pascoe (Forsyth)

Candidate Recruitment Vice-Chair
Winfred Dukes (Dougherty)

Secretary
Stephen R. Leeds (Fulton)

Treasurer
Rex Templeton, Jr. (Chatham)

The elections were exhausting.  The last couple of weeks featured
plenty of behind-the-scenes intrigue as the elected officials and old
guard of the party worked overtime to make sure Mike Berlon did not get
elected chair.  It took 4 ballots, but Mike was defeated.  His vision
for the party was probably too radical in the end, the changes too
great. 

That’s fine, really.  It is in the great American tradition to vote for
change, but not radical change.  But make no mistake, the DPG of our
fathers and grandfathers is gone.  For the first time ever, we have had
truly democratic elections for the party leadership.  A real debate of
ideas was forced, and the conversation moved the party forward.  The
ideas that Young Democrats need to be embraced by the party, and that
grassroots is the way to fight our way back into the majority have
gained real traction.

From a Young Democrat viewpoint, the election was definitely positive.
At least three of the executive officers have made an explicit point of
valuing the Young Democrats and the benefits we can bring to the party
as we move into the future.  This includes the new chair, Jane Kidd.
Jane has been a friend of Young Democrats for a while, and she has been
especially close to the UGA chapter, which has worked heavily on her
state house and senate races.  The state GOP felt threatened enough by
Jane Kidd to redistrict her senate district to add enough GOP voters to
prevent her election.  That decision is one they will come to rue.  I
guarantee you that the GOP will one day wish they had just left well
enough alone, because dealing with Chairwoman Kidd will be much more of
a painful experience than dealing with State Senator Kidd would have
been.   I look forward to helping Jane put the hurt on.

We have an Hispanic businessman from Forsyth County whose campaign
almost gave the exact talking points that the Young Democrats of
Georgia has been promoting for our own future.  Plus, with Hispanics
being a crucial electoral block in the future, having DPG with a major
Vice Chair who is Hispanic will only help us reach out to that
community which is currently under attack by the GOP.

The best part of Mr. Pascoe’s election was the defeat of an anti-gay,
anti-choice candidate for the office.  Mr. Pascoe was unapologetic
about his past as someone who worked very closely with the LGBT group
at Coors.  He is thoughtful and business oriented.  One of his
opponents was a key turncoat vote in 2004 to force a vote on the gay
marriage amendment.  Not only did he advocate openly in the Democratic
caucus against gay people, his actions led directly to the loss of at
least 5-6 seats in the GA House that we might have kept had Rep. Smyre
been allowed to sit on the amendment in the House Rules Committee.
This man’s followers claimed he was a preacher, and had to vote and
advocate against gay people, and against abortion rights.  That’s fine,
and if his constitutents don’t care, that’s fine too.  But bigots don’t
need to apply for major office in the Democratic Party.  That DPG said
"NO" to this individual warms my heart and makes me proud to be a
Southern Democrat!

Mike Thurmond is not only Commissioner of Labor, but our 1st Vice
Chair.  He will have the support of elected officials not only in GA
but also in DC.  Steve Leeds and Sally Rosser provide crucial
leadership, and a perspective of what has and has not worked in the
past.  They are also forward thinking people whose talents promise to
be unleashed under Chairwoman Kidd.

In two crucial contested elections, Young Democrats came out on top.
In my own 5th District, home of Representative John Lewis, my good
friend Will Curry was elected chair of the the 5th Congressional
District by a vote of 17-10.  He unseated the incumbent who happened to
be his own state representative.  Will is a fine addition to the DPG
Executive Committee, and Congressman Lewis will find that he has a
fine, dynamic young leader as the focal point for his party in his
district.   

In the 13th Congressional District, home of Representative David Scott,
another good friend, Nikema Williams survived a nasty campaign to
defeat the incumbent District Chair 8-5.  The incumbent used every
trick at her disposal to force Nikema out of the race, and then to
intimidate the committee members voting in her district.  If looks
could kill, Nikema would have been gutted like a fish during her
speech.  But poise, and actions, spoke louder than words and nasty
looks.  Nikema, unlike her predecessor, will work WITH her congressman,
not against him.  She certainly won’t run against him for office!
David Scott will have a true Democratic partner in his district now,
and everyone will be better for it.

So, while the day was exhausting, the elections were a good thing.  I
have great hopes that the new leadership will move us forward, and chip
away at the GOP machine that has arisen since 2002.  Georgia is
rightfully a purple state, and if our leadership is as bold as I hope
they will be in enacting their campaign promises, we will finally
become a swing state.

Milton County was created on December 18, 1857 from parts of northeastern Cobb, southeastern Cherokee and southwestern Forsyth counties. Alpharetta was the county
seat until the end of 1931, when Milton was merged with Fulton County
to save it from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. At that time,
Campbell
County, which had already gone bankrupt, was also ceded to Fulton,
giving it its long irregular shape along the Chattahoochee River.

Georgia
already has the constitutional maximum of 159 counties, the 2nd highest
total number of counties in the nation after Texas.  Yet, with the
Republicans in control of the state government, Milton County may be
ressurected.  All in the name of making damn sure
that rich white folks’ money won’t be spent on anything that might
benefit a person of color!  Jim Crow racism, 21st century
style….alive and well here in Georgia.

This whole movement
started with Sandy Springs begging for cityhood status starting in the
late 1960s, early 1970s.  At that time, white flight from Atlanta was
in full force, and Sandy Springs was terrified that Atlanta might come
incorporate them into the city.  Democrats in the city of Atlanta
blocked cityhood attempts until the GOP took over the legislature
following the 2004 elections.  At that time, the long tradition of
honoring a local delegation’s wishes regarding local legislation was
abandoned.  What the GOP representatives wanted for Sandy Springs was
to seal it off from the majority black Fulton County, despite what a
majority of the Fulton delegation wanted.

Personally, while I
know that Sandy Springs cityhood push was steeped in racism, I cannot
deny that a 90+% vote in favor of cityhood does clearly indicate where
the citizens wanted to go.  They’d been pushing for a city for 30
something years, so while it did hurt Fulton for Sandy Springs to
incorporate, the movement didn’t bother me too much.

What has
happened since Sandy Springs became a city has bothered me a great deal
because the obvious racial hatred driving it is blatantly obvious.  The
drives to incorporate Johns Creek and Milton in North Fulton were not
based in history, but on a childish fit by people who are consistently
outvoted by their fellow citizens to the south.  Admittedly, Fulton
County government is a mess, but until this year, it’s been run by
Republicans since 1994!  The County chair has been a member of the GOP
all that time, although the commission was usually 4-3 in favor of
Democrats.  The chairs have also been white, so I don’t know where the
spoiled rich people in North Fulton got the idea that if they could
just seal themselves off from the "darker" South Fulton and Atlanta,
they’d be fine.

Milton and Johns Creek were about destroying
Fulton County’s government by making sure all local taxes went to the
cities.  However, Fulton still runs schools, libraries, health centers,
etc.  The entire former Milton County is now incorporated into
different cities, but that still allows some taxes from wealthy North
Fulton to potentially be spent in poorer South Fulton.  For the rich
bitches in Alpharetta, that’s UNacceptable!

It has been reported
that North Fulton has 42% of the property wealth in the entire county,
although it’s land mass is much smaller.  People have written into the
paper furious that while they provide 42% of the tax base, 42% of the
taxes are not spent on them.  That kind of logic is ridiculous, and it
would mean that only the wealthiest citizens deserve any government
services at all.  I realize we’re talking about Republicans here, but
haven’t they heard of the social contract?  To those whom much is
given, much is expected.  Rich people who have gained tremendous
benefits from the entire society have an obligation and responsibility
to give back to that society.  They deserve good schools, police
protection, etc….but so do the poor.  To achieve the American dream
of upward mobility, we must have a tax structure that gives the poor a
chance to get a good education and to better their circumstances.  We
do a piss poor job of it now, but if we follow the "I provide 42% of
the tax base, so you must spend 42% of the taxes on me" philosophy, we
will re-create a medieval society where the poor get poorer, the rich
get richer, and the middle class disintegrates.

Luckily, there
are many obstacles in the way of giving rebirth to Milton County.
First, the Constitution of Georgia forbids it.  Unless you want to go
South Georgia and dissolve, say, Jeff Davis County in order to make
room for a reborn Milton County, you must amend the constitution to
allow more than 159 counties.  That requires 2/3 of the both houses of
the General Assembly plus a vote by the people.  Thankfully, the GOP
does not control 2/3 of the legislature, so if Democrats just stick
together on this question, the proposal can be defeated.

Let’s
say the GOP does peel off enough Democrats to get their 2/3 majority to
send the question to the people of Georgia.  It’s likely Georgia will
yawn and vote "yes" to Milton.  But there are unanswered questions as
to how to affect a divorce.  Fulton has contracts with Grady Health
System, MARTA and others.  Milton cannot just shirk those contracts,
although you can bet they will look for the first chance to break
them.  After all, Grady provides services to the poor (and probably too
many black folks for Alpharetta’s tastes), and we all know they don’t
care for MARTA.  Then there is the matter of the school system.  How do
you split that?

The GOP sponsors of the drive to recreate Milton
County have no answers for these questions.  It’s because this drive is
not rooted in anything that makes good governmental sense.  It is
steeped in racism, pure and simple.  Exposing this basis for separation
is the new proposed map of Milton.  Milton County reborn would not stop
at the Chattahoochee River at the thin neck of Fulton County, as would
be historically accurate.  Milton would absorb Sandy Springs too, and
some would like for it to also include Buckhead.  Gee, I wonder why
that map exists.  The demographics carefully cherry pick the wealthy,
mostly white areas of the county and cleave them into a lilly white,
conservative, GOP bastion.

This drive to re-create Milton County
must fail.  It’s intent is to financially destroy the city of Atlanta,
and to cause the fiscal collapse of the southern portion of Fulton
county simply because the citizens there are mostly of the wrong color
and have too low of a bank balance.  Democrats in the legislature must
make a united stand against this foolishness, because only they can put
a stop to it.

Lost in the din of pre-Christmas news were a few articles about
Episcopal parishes in Northern Virginia, including George Washington’s
parish, voting to leave the Episcopal Church and recognize the
Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, as their leader.  Then there was
news of a law in Nigeria that the Archbishop is pushing  to make
homosexuality subject to the death penalty.

I have written about
the struggles of the Episcopal Church of the USA regarding
homosexuality.  My adopted church not only ordains openly gay clergy,
but also has an openly gay bishop.  This summer, at our General
Conference, our deputies and clergy elected the Katherine
Jefferts-Schori as the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of
the USA.  As such, she is considered the "primate" of the United States
in the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the equal to Archbishop Peter
Akinola of Nigeria.  This turn of events, some have decided, must not
stand.

The wealthy, largely conservative, and most certainly Republican,
parishes of Northern Virginia who voted to leave and join the Anglican
Church of Nigeria are bigots who should be faced with the full legal
force of the church to strip of them of the property they hold in
TRUST, a trust they have broken.  For them, it was bad enough when we
let women become priests and bishops.  It got much worse when
homosexuals were allowed to wear the clerical collar, and they reach
the end of their rope when an openly gay man was elected Bishop of New
Hampshire.  Apparently, having a woman as the chief bishop of the
church in the United States was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
They simply REFUSE to acknowledge the authority of a woman, and instead
back a man who holds their views that women shouldn’t be priests, let
alone bishops, and gays deserve jail and death rather the the love of
Christ and the church.

These people are stalwarts of the
Republican Party nationally, considering the location of the fleeing
parishes.  They hold nothing but contempt for a process based on the US
Constitution and written largely by our Founding Fathers.  This
contempt is based on the fact that they have lost the argument. They
are on the wrong side of the great issues of the day, and they will not
tolerate it.

Personally, I’m tired of mollifying these
conservatives and their right wing, hate-filled agenda.  If they want
to leave the Episcopal Church, fine.  Lock the doors and give us the
keys as you leave.  All property is held in trust by Parishes on behalf
of the National Church.  That national church should be vigorous in
enforcing its rights in court.  Let these bigots meet in a field for
all I care.  We have tried and tried to reach compromise, approach
these people in good faith and loving spirit, and they spit in our eyes
each and every time.  It’s their way or the highway, and I’m personally
sick of it.  We have a woman as the head of our church, and some
dioceses may feel called to elect an openly gay person as their
bishop.  Get over it.  Time marches on.

Let’s look at what this
"savior" of theirs from Nigeria has been up to.  Peter Akinola is a
proud bigot.  He claims he must discriminate against women and gays
because the bible commands it (it doesn’t), and because he’s in
competition with Islam for the souls of Nigeria.  Nigeria is a state
that is 50% Muslim and 50% Christian. The Muslims control the northern
parts of the country, and the Christians control the southern parts.
There is a real competition for control of Nigeria’s religious life.
Since Islam hates gays, Christians must to in order to "compete". 

In
this spirit, Archbishop Akinola has openly supported a new law in
Nigeria that would not only outlaw gay marriages (which are now legal
in South Africa), but ANY form of association between gay people,
social or otherwise, as well as the publication of any materials deemed
to promote a "same sex amorous relationship."  Under the law, anyone
attending a meeting between gay people could receive a sentence of 5
years in prison.  Other activities prohibited by this law are
participating in gay clubs, reading books, watching films, or accessing
Internet sites that "promote" homosexuality.

Take a moment to
digest that paragraph.  It’s stunning the malice and sheet hatred of
gay people expressed in this new Nigerian law.  Two men having DINNER
together could be construed to be illegal under this law.  Straight
people who allow more than one gay person in their home would be
eligible for a prison sentence of up to 5 years!  Reading this blog
could get you put in prison or stoned to death.  Apparently, the
Christian south would only use prison, but the Muslim north would be
allowed to use the death penalty, which constitutes stoning to death.
The Republican Episcopalians in Northern Virginia have aligned
themselves with Peter Akinola and his precious Gay Holocaust law.  Make
no mistake, that this bill is intended to eliminate any person deemed
to be homosexual.  No one will be safe.

In NYC, Archbishop
Akinola was visiting a church.  Afterward, he was greeting parishoners,
and a man shook his hand, told him how much he enjoyed his sermon, and
then introduced him to "my partner, who’s been with me for several
years."  When Akinola understood that the man clasping his hand was
GAY, he recoiled in horror, jerked his hand away, and jumped back.
Later, he recalled this story with PRIDE.

Personally, I’m done
with Nigeria too.  In my work, I’ve known the problems they cause in
polio eradication, the corruption, the graft, etc.  We should simply
build a wall around Nigeria and them rot.  Oh wait, they have OIL, so
we can’t do that.  Still, my disgust with this country leads me to
support such a wall nontheless.  They are trying to destroy my church,
and if I went into their country, they would try to take my very life.

Reading my blog, one might think that all I care about are gay
issues.  That is certainly not true, as anyone who knows me could tell
you.  I care about access to quality healthcare, women’s rights, strong
families, fiscal responsibility, patriotism, fighting terrorism, etc.
The list goes on and on.  Yet, as a gay man, I feel a sense of danger
in the political world surrounding me.  I do have the sense that all
will be OK in the end, but it will take a while.  I do not think that
any state in the USA would dare pass a law as draconian as the Nigerian
law.  Yet, I see people from the other side of the political spectrum
rising up to CHEER the very men who push forward such laws.  Perhaps my
being a gay man makes me more sensitive, and more likely to have a
vociferous opinion when it comes to gay issues.  I would love to have
no reason to blog about it ever again.  Unfortunately, I think I will
be an old man before that happens.

On January 2, while the rest of the nation was watching coverage of
Gerald Ford’s funeral, the outgoing Massachusetts General Assembly decided
to move forward a "citizens petition" to ban gay marriage in the
Massachusetts Constitution, despite the fact that gay marriage has been
legal since May 2004 and over 8500 same sex couples have wed without
destroying straight families or causing Massachusetts itself to be
washed into the sea by a vengeful and angry God.

Yet, there’s
hope in this petition.  The Supreme Court of Massachusetts told the
legislature it had a duty to vote on citizen petitions.  In November,
the Massachusetts General Assembly simply adjourned a constitutional
convention without voting on the anti-gay measure.  The rule on citizen
petitions is that only 25% of the legislature, sitting as a
constitutional convention, has to OK an initiative for it to pass.  Out
of 200 legislators, only 62 voted for the anti-gay petition.  That’s
only 31%!

The newly elected governor of Massaschusetts, Deval Patrick, had this to say about the vote: 

"I am disappointed by today’s vote in the Constitutional Convention. We
have never used the initiative petition to limit individual freedoms
and personal privacy, but today’s vote was a regrettable step in that
direction.

"We have work to do over the next year to
turn this around. I am heartened by the fact that the overwhelming
majority of the members of the Legislature — a margin of over 2 to 1 —
voted to move on. I pledge to do what I can to build on that momentum,
so that our Constitution will continue to stand for liberty and
freedom, and not discrimination."

I cannot imagine
a day where Sonny Perdue or any elected Governor in Georgia would issue
such a statement.  Here’s a man who was overwhelming elected to his
office, and he’s quite forcefully advocating that the amendment be
defeated, and not be put to a vote.  Unlike Mitt Romney, who lead
rallies against gay marriage, and railed about how evil it was and how
it harmed children, Gov. Patrick personally petitioned lawmakers to
vote down the proposal, and seems to indicate he will continue to do so.

The
roll call is now a matter of public record, and the newly elected
Massachusetts General Assembly has a gain of 6 votes in favor of
keeping gay marriage.  That means only 6-7 more votes are needed to
defeat the measure, and many think that those 6-7 votes can be found
before the issue arises again later this year.

The Boston Globe’s editorial board said it best:

"When
a final vote is taken by the new Legislature, the members must consider
whether this is an appropriate issue to put to the voters. We believe
Massachusetts voters would not take away this right, and a popular
endorsement might be considered healthy. But civil rights are
fundamental, and gay marriage should not be subject to plebiscite here,
any more than it would have been appropriate to have Alabama voters
directly decide school integration or Virginia voters decide
interracial marriage."

That’s the whole problem with the "let
people vote" mentality.  Civil rights really shouldn’t be put to a
vote.  You know that old time segregationists are kicking themselves
for not using this method to block those "uppity" blacks who had the
temerity to demand to be treated as equal citizens.  Imagine what the
vote totals would have been all throughout the South in the 1950s and
1960s if segregation, interracial marriage, or school desegregation had
been put to a vote.  What sense of decency stopped those bigots of the
mid-20th century from using the popular vote as a bludgeon?  And more
importantly, what happened to it?