Does this sh*t in the woods? :)
Posted on 03/03/2007 9:23:28 AM PST by Calpernia
NAMBLA describes itself as a "support group for intergenerational relationships," and uses the slogan "sexual freedom for all." According to the group's web site, its aim is to "support the rights of youth as well as adults to choose the partners with whom they wish to share and enjoy their bodies." Google Search of NAMBLA's IP http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=216.220.97.17&btnG=Search
One of the group's arguments is that age of consent laws can unnecessarily criminalize sexual relationships between adults and minors (particularly boys). http://www.warriorsfortruth.com/nambla.html In 1980 a NAMBLA general meeting passed a resolution, proposed by Tom Reeves, which said: "(1) The North American Man/Boy Love Association calls for the abolition of age-of-consent and all other laws which prevent men and boys from freely enjoying their bodies. (2) We call for the release of all men and boys imprisoned by such laws." http://www.warriorsfortruth.com/nambla.html This policy was still in NAMBLA's "official position papers" in 1996.
NAMBLA advocates a comprehensive youth rights platform of which sexual freedom is only a portion. In addition to supporting the repeal of age of consent laws, NAMBLA has also opposed corporal punishment, rape, and kidnapping, and has declared that sexual exploitation is grounds for expulsion from the group. http://www.qrd.org/qrd/orgs/NAMBLA/nambla.replies.to.ilga.secretariat
Although some sources allege that NAMBLA has used the slogan "sex by eight is too late" or "sex by eight or else it's too late", this motto is properly attributed to the René Guyon Society.
NAMBLA emerged from the tumultuous political atmosphere of the 1970s, particularly from the leftist wing of the Gay Liberation movement which followed the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Although discussion of gay adult-minor sex did take place, gay rights groups immediately following the Stonewall Riot were more concerned with issues of police harassment, nondiscrimination in employment, health care and other areas.
Not until a "sex ring" of underage boys brought intense media scrutiny in Boston in the closing weeks of 1977, and police closed down the Toronto-area gay newspaper The Body Politic for publishing an article titled http://clga.ca/Material/Records/docs/hannon/ox/mbm.htm Men Loving Boys Loving Men did the subject of adult-minor sex garner enough attention to prompt the formation of a group like NAMBLA.
In December 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb of Revere. Twenty-four men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts, including child pornography and statutory rape of boys aged eight to fifteen. Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne alleged that the men used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house, where they photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. Byrne accused the men of being members of a "sex ring", and said that the arrest was only "the tip of the iceberg." The arrests sparked intense media coverage, and local newspapers published the photographs and personal information of the accused men.
Staff members of the gay newspaper Fag Rag believed the raid was politically motivated. They and others in Boston's gay community saw Byrne's round-up as an anti-gay witchhunt. On December 9, they organized the Boston-Boise Committee, a name intended as a reference to a similar situation that unfolded in Boise, Idaho in the 1950s. The group sponsored rallies, provided funds for the defendants, and tried to educate the public about the case by passing out fliers. It would also later spawn NAMBLA.
District Attorney Garrett Byrne was defeated in his re-election bid. The new DA said that no man should fear prison for having sex with a teenager unless coercion was involved. All charges were dropped. The few who had already pled or been found guilty received only probation. http://www.ipce.info/host/radicase/ch_13_notes.htm#9
On December 2, 1978, Tom Reeves of the Boston-Boise Committee convened a meeting called "Man/Boy Love and the Age of Consent." Approximately 150 people attended. At the meeting's conclusion, about thirty men and youths decided to form an organization which they called the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA for short.
Some gay rights groups immediately following "Stonewall Inn", perceived age-of-consent laws as governmental tools to suppress homosexual behavior rather than as the safeguards against the sexual abuse of small children that they claimed to be. In many states that didn't explicitly criminalize homosexual behavior (the sodomy laws), age-of-consent laws were significantly lower for heterosexual couples than for homosexual couples. For example, in the state of Massachusetts, "Lawrence v. Texas", the age of consent for heterosexual couples was as low as 13 (with parental approval) but was 18 for homosexual men.
Consequently, a number of gay rights groups opposed age-of-consent laws at the time of NAMBLA's founding. A "Gay Rights Platform" http://www.rslevinson.com/gaylesissues/features/collect/onetime/bl_platform1972.htm formed and adopted by about 200 gay activists at a convention in Chicago held by the National Coalition of Gay Organizations (NCGO), called for the "repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent" at the state level. (The NCGO, which was formed at the Chicago convention, primarily consisted of New York's Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), which was composed of many small gay activist groups organized mostly on college campuses throughout the U.S.). The GAA opposed age of consent laws and had hosted a forum on the topic in 1976. The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition also supported eliminating the existing age-of-consent laws.
The relative acceptance or indifference to opposition of the age-of-consent began to change at the same time as accusations that gays were child pornographers and child molesters became common. Judianne Densen-Gerber, founder of the New York drug rehabilitation center Odyssey House, argued that gays were responsible for child pornography. In 1977 former beauty queen Anita Bryant staked a similar position, starting the "Save Our Children" campaign. "The recruitment of our children," she argued, "is absolutely necessary for the survival and growth of homosexuality."
Bryant's campaign focusing on the alleged "recruitment" of boys by gay men succeeded in overturning a law that had protected civil rights for gays in Dade County, Florida. As a result, the age-of-consent issue became a hotly debated topic within the gay community, and disputes over the age of consent issue within and between gay rights groups -- many of which directly or indirectly involved NAMBLA -- began to occur on an increasingly frequent basis.
Disagreement was evident following the conference that organized the first gay march on Washington in 1979. In addition to forming several working committees, the conference was responsible for drafting the basic organizing principles of the march (“the five demands” http://www.rainbowhistory.org/mowprogram.pdf [see p. 23]). Originally, the Gay Youth Caucus had won approval for its proposal demanding “Full Rights for Gay Youth, including revision of the age of consent laws.” However at the first meeting of the National Coordinating Committee, a contingent of lesbians threatened not to participate in the march unless a substitute was adopted. The substitute, authored by an adult lesbian and approved in a mail poll by a majority of delegates, stated: “Protect Lesbian and Gay Youth from any laws which are used to discriminate against, oppress, and/or harass them in their homes, schools, job and social environments.”
In 1980 a group called the “Lesbian Caucus – Lesbian Gay Pride March Committee” distributed a hand-out urging women to split from the annual New York City Gay Pride March because the organizing committee had supposedly been dominated by NAMBLA and its supporters. The next year, after some lesbians threatened to picket, the Cornell University gay group Gay PAC (Gay People at Cornell) rescinded its invitation to NAMBLA founder David Thorstad to be the keynote speaker at the annual May Gay Festival. And in the following years, gay rights groups attempted to block NAMBLA’s participation in gay pride parades, prompting Harry Hay to wear a sign proclaiming “NAMBLA walks with me” as he participated in a 1986 gay pride march in Los Angeles.
Thus by the mid-1980s, NAMBLA was virtually alone in its positions and found itself politically isolated. Gay rights organizations, burdened by accusations of child recruitment and child abuse, had abandoned the radicalism of their early years and had "retreat[ed] from the idea of a more inclusive politics," opting instead to appeal more to the mainstream. Support for "groups perceived as being on the fringe of the gay community," such as NAMBLA, vanished in the process. Today almost all gay rights groups disavow any ties to NAMBLA, voice disapproval of its objectives, and attempt to prevent NAMBLA from having a role in gay and lesbian rights events.
The case of ILGA illustrates this opposition. In 1993, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, of which NAMBLA had been a member for a decade, achieved United Nations consultative status. NAMBLA's association with ILGA drew heavy criticism, and many gay organizations called for the ILGA to dissolve ties with NAMBLA. Republican Senator Jesse Helms proposed a bill to withhold $119 million in U.N. contributions until U. S. President Bill Clinton could certify that "no UN agency grants any official status, accreditation, or recognition to any organization which promotes, condones, or seeks the legalization of pedophilia, that is, the sexual abuse of children". The bill was unanimously approved by Congress and signed into law by Clinton in April 1994.
ILGA had passed a resolution in 1985 which stated that "young people have the right to sexual and social self-determination and that age of consent laws often operate to oppress and not to protect." In spite of this apparent agreement with NAMBLA on the age of consent issue just nine years before, ILGA, by a vote of 214-30 expelled NAMBLA and two other groups MARTIJN and Project Truth in early 1994 because they were judged to be "groups whose predominant aim is to support or promote pedophilia." Although ILGA removed NAMBLA, the U.N. reversed its decision to grant ILGA special consultative status. Repeated attempts by ILGA to reacquire special status with the U.N. have not been successful, but the group does exercise consultative status with the European Commission.
Gregory King of the Human Rights Campaign later said that "NAMBLA is not a gay organization ... They are not part of our community and we thoroughly reject their efforts to insinuate that pedophilia is an issue related to gay and lesbian civil rights." NAMBLA responded by claiming that "man/boy love is by definition homosexual," that "man/boy lovers are part of the gay movement and central to gay history and culture," and that "homosexuals denying that it is 'not gay' to be attracted to adolescent boys are just as ludicrous as heterosexuals saying it's 'not heterosexual' to be attracted to adolescent girls."
In 1994 the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) adopted a "Position Statement Regarding NAMBLA" saying GLAAD "deplores the North American Man Boy Love Association's (NAMBLA) goals, which include advocacy for sex between adult men and boys and the removal of legal protections for children. These goals constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD." Also in 1994 the Board of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) adopted a resolution on NAMBLA that said: "NGLTF condemns all abuse of minors, both sexual and any other kind, perpetrated by adults. Accordingly, NGLTF condemns the organizational goals of NAMBLA and any other such organization."
Documents relating to the court case Curley v. NAMBLA and others provide further information on NAMBLA's structure and activities. In March 2003 Judge George O'Toole of the Massachusetts federal court found that in the 1990s (the period being considered by the court), NAMBLA was controlled by a national Steering Committee, "a group which purposefully directed NAMBLA's outreach activities generally."
The court documents also shed light on some of NAMBLA's activities, including that:
:"NAMBLA was established as an unincorporated association in 1978 to encourage public acceptance of consensual sexual relationships between men and boys. Its principal place of business is New York, and its primary mechanisms of public outreach include its Bulletin, a quarterly publication sent to dues-paying members... Gayme Magazine, a NAMBLA publication mailed periodically to dues-paying members and sold at some bookstores; a NAMBLA website... TOPICS, a series of booklets providing more focused consideration of issues related to "man-boy love"; a prison newsletter; Ariel's Pages, a NAMBLA project through which literature concerning "man-boy love" was sold; and membership conferences.
:"The Steering Committee, through several of its members, also formed "Zymurgy, Inc.," a Delaware corporation, which was operated as a profit-making arm of NAMBLA. Although the defendants describe the Bulletin, Gayme Magazine, Ariel's Pages, and Zymurgy, Inc. as separate and distinct from NAMBLA, it appears from the materials submitted, including minutes of Steering Committee meetings, that the Steering Committee controlled all of these entities, providing monies to initiate and support various projects and freely transferring funds among them."
:"In addition to managing NAMBLA's financial matters, the Steering Committee also directed the association's policy, political, legal, and public relations efforts. Steering Committee members held frequent meetings and retreats during which they discussed NAMBLA's public image, formulated the association's outreach efforts, and nominated spokespersons. Members of the Steering Committee in close coordination with each other, created and maintained NAMBLA's website, and wrote, marketed, sold, and otherwise disseminated a variety of publications. Working in Massachusetts, William Andriette served as the editor of the Bulletin and Gayme Magazine. He did not act alone but rather under the supervision of the Steering Committee in producing these publications and in holding himself out as a NAMBLA spokesman.
:"In addition to the financial support and supervision provided by the full Steering Committee, the content of the Bulletin was guided by the "Bulletin Collective," an editorial board comprised of NAMBLA members from across the country who contributed and edited articles, screened photos and pictures, and participated in coordinating the production and distribution of the publication."
Judge O'Toole found that Dennis Bejin Joe Power, David Thorstad, David Miller (also known as David Menasco), Peter Melzer (also known as Peter Herman), Arnold Schoen (also known as Floyd Conaway), Dennis Mintun, Chris Farrell, Tim Bloomquist, Tecumseh Brown, Gary Hann, Peter Reed, Robert Schwartz, Walter Bieder and Leyland Stevenson were or had been members of the NAMBLA Steering Committee or had held other leading positions in the organization.
(The full text of these documents can be seen here.)
More recently, media reports have suggested that for practical purposes the group no longer exists and that it consists only of a web site maintained by a few enthusiasts. NAMBLA maintains a web site at http://www.nambla.org that shows addresses in New York and San Francisco and a phone contact in New York, and offers publications for sale, including the NAMBLA Bulletin.
NAMBLA is identified as a lobby group in Jon Stewart's America: The Book A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004), and is also alluded to on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, often tagged on to an existing lobby group's acronym for the parody.
Gay groups, Christian groups, anti-sexual abuse organizations, law enforcement agencies and other critics see NAMBLA as a front for the criminal sexual exploitation of children. They say NAMBLA functions as a meeting place for male pedophiles and pederasts and their sympathizers. A number of alleged NAMBLA members have been charged with and convicted of sexual offenses against children.
Onell R. Soto, a San Diego Union-Tribune writer, wrote in February 2005: "Law enforcement officials and mental health professionals say that while NAMBLA's membership numbers are small, the group has a dangerous ripple effect through the Internet by sanctioning the behavior of those who would abuse children." http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050217-2208-manboy-daily.html
Suspicion pertaining to the group's activities led both the U.S. Senate and U.S. Postal Service to conduct investigations of the group, both of which concluded without allegations of legal impropriety.
NAMBLA responds to the criticism that it is a "front for criminal and sexual exploitation of children" and that it advocates sex between men and boys by stating unequivocally that "NAMBLA does not engage in any activities that violate the law, nor do we advocate that anyone else should do so". Since sex between adults and minors is illegal, it is presumably included in NAMBLA's avoidance of advocating activities that violate the law.
NAMBLA rejects the widely held view that sex between adults and minors is always harmful, arguing that "the outcomes of personal experiences between adults and younger people primarily depend upon whether their relationships were consensual,". In support of this position NAMBLA cites research such as A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples, which was published in the Psychological Bulletin in 1998. NAMBLA devoted a web page to a brief overview of the study under the heading "The Good News About Man/Boy Love," and claimed the study showed, "On average, nearly 70% of males in the studies reported that as children or adolescents their sexual experiences with adults had been positive or neutral."
http://web.archive.org/web/19981205120531/www.nambla.org/metaanalysis.htm Some researchers dispute the findings of the meta-analysis http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/rbt_files.htm
Gay rights groups opposed to NAMBLA contend that their reason for disavowing NAMBLA has always been their sharing of the general public's disdain for pedophilia and child sexual abuse (as expressed in issues statements). These gay rights groups reject NAMBLA's claims of an analogy between the campaign for gay and lesbian equality and the abolition of age-of-consent laws, and view NAMBLA's rhetoric about "the sexual rights of youth" as a cover for its members' "real agenda".
Radicals like Pat Califia http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/califa_aftermath_frame.htm argue that politics played an important role in the gay community's rejection of NAMBLA. Califia says that although the gay rights mainstream never committed itself to NAMBLA or its platform, neither did it actively ostracise NAMBLA until opponents of gay rights used the group to link gay rights with child abuse and "recruitment." As evidence, subscribers to this theory point to statements made by prominent gay activists which contain political assessments of NAMBLA's impact on gay rights. One such statement was made by gay rights lobbyist Steve Endean. Endean, who opposed NAMBLA, said: "What NAMBLA is doing is tearing apart the movement. If you attach it [the man/boy love issue] to gay rights, gay rights will never happen." Gay author and activist Edmund White made a similar statement in his book States of Desire: "That's the politics of self-indulgence. Our movement cannot survive the man-boy issue. It's not a question of who's right, it's a matter of political naivete."
Some conservative Christians in the United States have used NAMBLA to attack gays in general. With the outbreak of the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in 2002, this practice intensified. Critics of such organizations have pointed to statistics from national professional associations, such as the American Psychological Association and the Child Welfare League of America, which indicate that there is no correlation between homosexuality and child abuse.
Although NAMBLA itself has never been prosecuted, there have been a number of prosecutions of alleged NAMBLA members for sexual offences involving children or adolescents. The most recent of these cases involved a number of men arrested by the FBI in Los Angeles and San Diego in February 2005. Seven men were charged with planning to travel to Mexico to have sex with boys, the FBI said. An eighth man was charged with distributing child pornography.
According to a media report http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050217-2208-manboy-daily.html, the FBI believes that at least one of the arrested men is a member of NAMBLA's national leadership, a second organized the group's national convention last year and a third said he had been a member since the 1980s.
Sources cited
http://www.glad.org/marriage/Joseph_Ureneck_brief.pdf
Brief of amicus curae of Bill Wood and Joseph Ureneck for Massachusetts Senate Bill 2175
Gamson, Joshua. 1997. Messages of Exclusion: Gender, Movements, and Symbolic Boundaries. Gender and Society 11(2):178-199.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0891-2432%28199704%2911%3A2%3C178%3AMOEGMA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
http://www.thecpac.com/Curleys-v-NAMBLA.html
The Curleys v NAMBLA and others
Johnson, Matthew D. 2004. NAMBLA. An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture.
http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/nambla.html
Thorstad, David. "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement," Journal of Homosexuality 20 (1990): 251-274.
References
- Art Cohen, "The Boston-Boise Affair, 1977-78", Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Vol. 10, No. 2. March-April, 2003.
- Benoit Denizet-Lewis, "Boy Crazy: NAMBLA: The Story of a Lost Cause," Boston Magazine
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=27
May 2001.
- John Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, Boston, Glad Day Books, 1981
External links
- http://www.nambla.org/ Home page of NAMBLA
- http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/voices/gl_sexual2.htm Gay Community Responds to Revere
- http://www.qrd.org/qrd/orgs/NAMBLA/ NAMBLA-related Documents on the Queer Resources Directory - http://www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=27&print=yes
Boston Magazine: Boy Crazy] A history of NAMBLA, May 2001 - http://www.thecpac.com/Curleys-v-NAMBLA.html The Curleys v NAMBLA and others
- http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/01/08/nambla.suit.crim/ CNN: Parents of murdered child sue child-sex advocates January 8, 2001 - http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2003/12/the_aclu_and_th.php
BLOG: Dispatches from the Culture Wars: The ACLU and the NAMBLA Case] December 22, 2003
- http://www.aclu-mass.org/legal/docket_2003-2004.asp ACLU of Massachusetts :LEGAL DOCKET 2003- 2004: Summary of their defense of NAMBLA
- http://www.columbia.edu/cu/thefed/v3/volume20/4/nambla.shtml The Fed goes to a NAMBLA meeting: Category:Pedophile organizations Category:LGBT organizations Category:United States organizations
It was from a Documentary in 1989 on Remembering Stonewall.
If you want to see those materials, this MIT law professor has them:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1794584/posts?page=83#83
And Diago posted this last night:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1801700/posts
Planned Parenthood & Child Predators
There is information on that thread about NAMBLA being, well, let's use the correct phrase, about NAMBLA being STONEWALLED from connections to child molestation.
I don't know what to think. I liked it when they were in the closet personally . I never wondered as a child about the 2 spinsters who lived together across the street from me. I knew there was something different about some people but I never knew what. I had my childhood & it was free of gays wanting me to see movies about its ok to be gay etc. There wasn't all this gay bs out inthe open. I don't care about them being gay as long as they leave their d@mn gay bs out of the schools. Thats where I draw the line. Of course its too late for my feelings, not that they would matter. I saw a bunch of these drag queens in Asbury Park once. They sure were big ladies(?) and that were all painted up with lipstick all smeared and blue eye shadow. I felt they were more insulting to women because I don't know any women who look like they did. ewwwwww If they want to be gay and they don't push their bs on my child I don't care. As for the Mafia...well they make their money wherever they want to. I am not messing with them .lol.
heh. I notice one of 'em in the documentary was named "rudy"
The age is right.
LGBT + Stonewall
Little Pride on the Prairie
June 10, 2006
by Christopher Renner
Each June across the nation and around the world LGBT people gather to celebrate with pride the Stonewall Riots that marked the beginning of the modern LGBT civil rights movement. Kansas is no exception to this collective effort to affirm our dignity and worth.
This year the Xcalibur Club, Junction City Teddy Bears and KEC-Flint Hills are joining together to present Little Pride on the Prairie, an event for the Manhattan/Junction City/Salina area as well as for any Kansan (or Missourian) wanting to join with other LGBT people and their allies to celebrate our uniqueness.
Gates open at 11:00AM and a BBQ lunch will be served at 2:00PM. Guests are invited to bring a dish to share; burgers, hot dogs, chicken, brisket, condiments, tea and lemonade are furnished by the organizers. “Were hoping for a hundred plus attendees and there is always plenty to eat,” Said Mark Beatty, Xcalibur owner and Pride Fest Chair.
“We’ve got a great committee and we should thank them, the patrons of the club and sponsors who make it possible.”
Entertainment will include the conclusion of Queer Pfactor, drag races, a horseshoe pitching contest, and a massive tug-o-war. Queer Pfactor, based on the popular Fear Factor reality program, will give participants an opportunity to engage in one-of–a-kind queerly-inspired events; it promises to provide fun and laughs for the whole family! There will also be raffles and prizes occurring throughout the day.
Queer Pfactor started on Friday, May 26, at Xcalibur Club, and competitions are being held on each Friday in June. One winner from each of the four weeks will compete in the finals to be held at Little Pride on the Prairie. Event host Brock Hard and this year’s Ms Trailer Trash, Pat E. Cakes, have promised to “Kick it up a notch.” The winner will receive a vacation package for two to Eureka Springs, AR, Diversity Weekend valued at over $400. Mr. Hard and Ms Trailer Trash said, “We are grateful for the donations from the Eureka Springs merchants. It’s a great package. We do have an entry fee for the contestants to offset the costs for the event but that way we don’t have to charge cover.” Sign up early at the club because only the first twelve candidates compete each night. More info at http://www.xcaliburclub.com/events/pfactor.htm.
Little Pride on the Prairie is a family-friendly event. Special activities are planned for children and young adults, including a massive water balloon fight after lunch. Swimming and fishing are also available. Bring your own lawn chairs, towels, swimsuits, sunscreen, toys, bug spray, ice/cooler and beverages, extra clothes – everything you would need for an afternoon of fun.
The event also marks the 10th anniversary of the JC Teddy Bears. The Junction City Teddy Bears, Inc. is a nonprofit gay men’s club formed to bring together for social and entertainment purposes those individuals with common interests as bears, cubs, and their admirers. They sponsor contests, benefits, raffles, campouts, picnics, and such throughout their member service area. They will also celebrate their birthday at another event later in the summer.
Little Pride on the Prairie will be held at Farnum Creek Park, Milford Lake, easily accessible from I-70. Take the US 77 exit on the west side of Junction City and go north 10.9 miles to Farnum Creek State Park. Turn left into the park and take the first right to Group Site #1; go all the way to the end of the road.
Stonewall and more affiliates:
LGBT Political Groups Step Forward
July 28, 2006
by John Long
Click For Full Size With the Kansas primary on August 1, the Missouri primary on August 8, and general elections in November, there are a lot of people pounding the pavement on behalf of their candidates.
Kansas and Missouri have several political groups working hard on behalf of their candidates and the issues. It may surprise people that there are so many groups in the LGBT community that live and breathe politics as these people do. But their memberships and activism has never been stronger.
Four Freedoms Democratic Club; the Kansas City Chapter of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); Kansas Equality Coalition; KC Pride Democratic Club and PROMO are all working to effect change in the political process.
Some of the groups have spent the spring and summer sending out questionnaires and conducting interviews with candidates. Endorsements can be found at these groups websites, in the sidebar to this article, and in ads in this issue of Camp.
Four Freedoms Democratic Club
Jim MacDonald is the new interim president of Four Freedoms, a role he has just assumed since Kirby McCullough had to step down for business reasons. Four Freedoms, like KC Pride Democratic Club, is an affiliate of the National Stonewall Democrats. “We’re the first and oldest Democratic political club for the LGBT community in Kansas City,” MacDonald said.
“Four Freedoms tends to view ourselves as a descendent of HRP, the Human Rights Project, the group that was formed specifically to pass the human rights ordinance in Kansas City and other non-discrimination laws. A lot of the folks that were involved in that helped with the formation of Four Freedoms. HRP died a natural death and a few years later, from its ashes, emerged the Four Freedoms.”
MacDonald credits local community activist Kevin Hennosy for coming up with the name for the group, based on the FDR speech about the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
The club is “really an acknowledgement of the fact that LGBT people were now part of the political mainstream of the Democratic party, not just nationally but locally,” MacDonald said. “Evidence of that is Tim van Zandt, who was the first out gay elected official probably of any type in the State of Missouri and certainly in the State Legislature. He was one of the founders of the club.”
Asked about the differences between KC Pride and Four Freedoms, MacDonald said, “The differences in my mind are minor.. . . We tend to focus on a broader geographic area. We cover Jackson, Clay, and Platte counties and we’ll accept requests from endorsements from any candidates in those counties. KC Pride focuses exclusively on Kansas City south of the River, the urban core.” He added, “They would say that they are more grassroots and have a more diverse membership racially and socioeconomic ally. I’ve never compared the numbers but they’re proud of that, so that’s another distinction.”
“The two clubs screen candidates together if it’s a race that we’re both screening in. And then we go off and make our own separate endorsements and sometimes the endorsements differ.”
“There have been times when we’ve had a candidate pursuing our endorsement that we’ve chosen not to endorse, even though they’re better than their opponent. The best example of that is in the wake of the “No on 2”gay marriage amendment campaign. A lot of Democrats backstabbed us and voted in favor of the constitutional amendment, even though they had been generally good on our issues prior to that. That year we used that issue as a litmus test, though usually we tend not to have a litmus test in any formal sense. If you voted for the amendment you did not get our endorsement. The good thing is that there were still plenty of people for us to endorse since there were at least half a dozen Democrats in this metropolitan area that voted against it.”
After the August primaries, Four Freedoms will start focusing on the City Council races next February. “We’ll work informally for Claire (McCaskill) and then we’re going to begin screening for the City Council races,” he said.
MacDonald said it’s going to be a tough race between Jolie Justus, their endorsed candidate for State Senator, and her three Democratic opponents in the August primary. He said a telephone poll in describing Justus among the other three candidates, asks “Would it influence your vote if you knew that her top priority if elected would be to overturn the ban on gay marriage in the state of Missouri?” “We’ll never know who did it,” he said in talking about whether or not the poll was done by a 3rd party group or one of Justus’s opponents. It does help, he says, that there are no major issues to vote on in the primary which could have drawn more conservatives to the polls. “Jolie’s camp is thrilled that the Rolling Roof is not on the ballot” he joked.
Four Freedoms is a membership organization with dues of $35 for local and an extra $10 for national membership said MacDonald. “We have one fundraiser a year and we never have more than $10,000 in the bank. We’re just a small grassroots organization.”
Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
Based in Washington, D.C., HRC is both a federal PAC and a membership organization. A Kansas City chapter of HRC group was formed only formed two years ago. (See the story on Joe Solmonese, President of HRC, on page 23 in this issue of Camp.)
Kevin Hager, co-chair of the Political Committee for Kansas City HRC, is also a member of the Kansas Equality Coalition and has been active in the gay community since coming out to his family and forming a gay/straight alliance at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. He is currently the manager of Mel Solomon’s campaign for the 4th District City Council seat.
Though the actual steering committee in Kansas City is only about two years old, it has a mailing list of over 2,500 names. Hager said one of the big challenges is to get more participation at HRC events. “Our biggest difficulty right now is activating those people. We’ll do a really great Town Hall and get 100 people. So where are the other 2,400 people we know of in Kansas City?”
Hager said that the national group is increasing its focus on helping in state races, especially the eleven they’ve identified as needing special attention this year. (Missouri and Kansas are not in that group). There is a budget for local events. “We did a Keith Boykin Town Hall at UMKC and a Transgender Town Hall at KU,” he said. HRC also helped sponsor with PROMO the recent Take Action meeting at the Lesbian and Gay Community Center and the spring benefit with UMKC’s LGBT office for the Keith Boykin presentation. They hold regular meetings, such as Third Thursdays at a restaurant in town and they are scheduling a “Tee Off for Equality” Golf Tournament on August 26.
Since HRC operates on a national level, “We’ve worked with the federal candidates enough now that we know exactly how to create some leverage there. As always, it’s with money and volunteers, so we’re stepping up fundraising for candidates and we’re trying to really get our members to volunteer locally for the primaries and then more at the federal level as we get closer to the November elections.” They are looking at ways they can help both Dennis Moore in Kansas and Emanuel Cleaver in Missouri in their 2006 Congressional races.
Asked about how they work with the other political groups in Kansas City, Hager said “We’re only two years old and I’ve been the co-chair of the Political Committee since its beginning, so I came in when I was 21. I was brand new to all these organizations so I feel just I’m just getting to a place where I know the people that are out there and we’re really starting to form effective partnerships.”
Kansas Equality Coalition
Tom Witt is Chair of the Kansas Equality Coalition, a new 501(c)4 group of LGBT and allied supporters in Kansas. As its website describes the group as: “The Kansas Equality Coalition is a new, unified statewide group of fair-minded people who are determined to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We seek to ensure the dignity, safety and legal equality of all Kansans. We are nonpartisan and include people who are religious and secular as well as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered. We are from all walks of life and from all parts of the state.”
The coalition has chapters in Lawrence, Topeka, Wichita, Flint Hills, Southwest Kansas, and Johnson County. KEC started with five existing Kansas groups that had been operating independently and added the Johnson County chapter recently. A seventh chapter in Salina, now in provisional status, will be called the North Central Chapter.
Kansas for Justice and Equality Project, one of the original 5 groups, will be transitioning as the KEC PAC. Describing the formation of the group, Witt says, “We took the biggest gay egos in the state of Kansas, got them all in a room, actually a series of meeting rooms all last summer, and we argued about ways to find agreement. We started in June and ended in October. We met every three weeks in a different place in the state.”
The group is also forming a foundation, the Kansas Equality Foundation. The local chapters raise money and send part of it to the statewide organization, keeping a share for local initiatives. Tom Witt gave a few examples of how local chapters use their funds: The Flint Hills chapter in Manhattan is working to add sexual orientation to the City’s Human Rights Ordinance. The Wichita Chapter sponsored the Pride Parade and Festival: “Pedro Irigonegaray, the civil rights attorney, was our keynote speaker, and gave a real barn-burner of a keynote speech.” The Lawrence and Topeka chapters hired lobbyists to work their issues, and the Johnson County Chapter was one of the biggest fundraisers for AIDS Walk.
Witt is particularly pleased about the Southwest Kansas Chapter. “We formed a chapter in the most unlikely spot in the whole state of Kansas. There has never been a gay rights organization in Dodge City—ever—in the history of Kansas. And we now have a chapter there. It has 30 members.”
KC Pride Democratic Club
Barely four years old, KC Pride is the second of two Kansas City LGBT Democratic clubs along with Four Freedoms. In a city the size of Kansas City two Democratic clubs in the LGBT community might seem unusual, yet each has found its own place in the political processes.
John “Coach” Comstock, a Kansas City native and president of KC Pride, is a high school teacher in Kansas. Among the founders of the group are Terry Norman, who ran for State Representative that year, Calvin Williford, the late Roger Goodin, Van Buckley, Jim MacDonald, and Comstock.
“A key difference is that we are membership driven, [Four Freedoms"> are Executive Board-driven. Any endorsements that we do have to go through our membership. And you have to be a member for 30 days or longer before you can vote,” Comstock said.
“We also have tried and are pretty close to being 100% successful in trying to have at least one meeting where candidates can come and speak in front of our members before they vote.”
“The other big difference, I see, is that we do a lot of work on outreach of coalition building with outside groups that are friendly to LGBT. We work with several union groups.”
“ We share a room out at Truman Days with the firefighters. We see them as a strong group that can continue to build different ideas,” Comstock said. He gave an example of the domestic partnership benefit that the prosecutor’s office was trying to get through the legislature. “The other groups that were representing the prosecutors and the paralegals were the firefighters and the carpenters. And they were the ones that called us and saying ‘hey, we’ve got to have your support because part of this whole deal is domestic partnership.’”
“Our third difference from Four Seasons is that we are a little bit more concentrated, partly because we are still so new. We really concentrate on what is going to affect the main corridor of downtown through midtown to Brookside because that is the where we have the highest number of LGBT businesses/residents in Kansas City. We see that as our strongest place to be effective.”
“We’re not afraid to step into an issue. A few years back Mayor Barnes came and asked for our endorsement of the bus increase. We know that there are enough of the LGBT community that uses mass transit in midtown to get to the Free Health Clinic or whatever they need to get to because they can’t afford transportation, so we see it as an issue. The stadium issue was not a strong issue for us or for our community, so we didn’t take a stand.”
KC Pride has 45 paid members, since they are a young organization, and a much larger e-mail list. The group just held a fundraiser and auction that raised more than $12,000. Their goals are to substantially increase paid membership.
Their endorsements are listed on the website and they will be mailing out a sample ballot before the August 8 primary. The group informally helps candidates with canvassing and does whatever else it can to help their candidates. “I go to almost any fundraiser for our candidates,” said Comstock, “I try and show support for them.”
PROMO
A statewide group with offices in St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri, PROMO is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Sarah Finken is the new regional field organizer in Kansas City. Don Dressel is senior field organizer in Springfield, and the main office in St. Louis office is staffed by Julie Brueggemann, executive director, and A.J. Pupillo, membership coordinator.
Although only in her role at PROMO since April 10, Sarah Finken is well known to many Kansas Citians from her former work with GLSEN and as volunteer Chair of the Youth Hospitality Committee for the November 2006 Creating Change Conference in Kansas City.
PROMO is both a membership organization and a political action committee (PAC) supported by individual donations and grants. Finken began her job by training with Dressel and Brueggemann and developing a plan for the area. “With the Jolie Justus race, I would like to get more volunteers involved from PROMO It’s a pretty exciting time to get started with this.”
Finken recently organized a “Take Action” meeting on July 12 with Kelly Anthony, regional field director for the Human Rights Campaign, and several speakers from local campaigns. She was pleased that at least 30 people came to the first meeting of this type which was organized to encourage people to step forward and volunteer to help candidates, including canvassing for votes. Anthony said, “We’ve been holding these meetings all over the country and thirty is a good number.”
PROMO has played a key role in fighting for the rights of LGBT Missourians. With the assistance of the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri, they were recently successful in the battle for foster parenting won by gay Missourians Lisa Johnston and Dawn Roginski for now all LGBT parents in Missouri. PROMO will continue to introduce legislation in Jefferson City to protect the rights of Missourians.
PROMO’s next event will be the Equality Summit August 26 in Columbia. For more information see their links under events, legislation and issues on their website: www.promooline.org.
Four Freedoms Democratic Club
www.fourfreedoms.org
(816) 881-1140
Monthly membership meetings are held on the first Thursday of the month at 6:00pm - location varies (call to inquire).
HRC Kansas City
www.hrc.org/kansascity
Monthly meetings every third Thursday from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Frondizi’s Ristorante, 4558 Main St., Kansas City MO 64112
Kansas Equality Coalition
www.kansasequalitycoalition.org
Meetings and contact information varies by Kansas Chapter. See website for specific information on each chapter.
KC Pride Democratic Club
www.kcpridedemocrats.com
(816) 523-3135 admin@kcpridedemocrats.com
Check their website, phone or e-mail for information on events and membership.
PROMO
www.promoonline.org
816-931-2300
Check website for information on events in Kansas City and throughout the state. Next events are PROMO’s 20th Anniversary Celebration in St. Louis July 29 and Equality Summit in Columbia on August 26.
With people that make the laws as members, now we know why child molesters have such light sentences.
Come over here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1803808/posts
Church of Satan rumors, Procter and Gamble awarded $19M
See my post 7 and 11.
Even if this got pung out when you posted it, I’ll ping it out tomorrow!
Lots of info and links in case anyone isn't sure of the connection between the homosexual agenda and pedophilia.
And check out the names here, you'll recognize many of them.
Freepmail wagglebee or little jeremiah to subscribe or unsubscribe from the homosexual agenda or moral absolutes ping lists.
FreeRepublic homosexual agenda keyword search
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I’M not smoking anything, and I read the date wrong. This was posted a couple of months ago, not YEARS ago!
duh...
Anyone who dares touch my son is a dead man.
That’s a guarantee.
Now I find that wagglebee pinged this out two months ago.
I hang my head in shame and will crawl off to bed, where I should have gone a while ago.
There has been a lot of information added since wagglebee pinged it anyway. Thanks for the ping.
Just WOW. That list contains just about every NY politician, AND Robert Kennedy Jr.!
This should get out, as I and I am sure many others, did not know this!
Soro’s, in my opinion, is another Kinsey. He is slimey and dispicable. MoveOn, and other leftists are funded by him. And these groups meet daily with the Dem. members of congress to give them their marching orders.
I cannot even begin to imagine how to stop this.
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