I recently joined the Harkinistas group on Facebook, a group of current and former staffers to U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-IA; started by Jud Lounsbury. Little did I know that Jud was going to stage a whole coup where I would become "El Presidente" of said group. Yes, he made me a figurehead...a puppet if you will...for the cause of celebrating all things Harkin. As I am still to this day a huge fan of fellow Delta Sigma Phi brother Tom Harkin (a.k.a. TH), I am humbled to be a puppet in Jud's Facebook play.
Now, it would seem, the Harkinistas group is throwing an "El Presidente Birthday Party" on Facebook, and Jud has created a new likeness of me that I've never seen before...but is pretty damned funny.
El Presidente
I think this is the first time anyone has ever photoshopped me, or put on a themed party in my honor. I guess being photoshopped on Facebook, and an online birthday party is possibly one of the highest honors I could receive. Its kind of being the Kathy Griffin of Facebook. Where Kathy is on the D list of all other media, I'm the El Presidente of a D list online fringe banana republic.
FABULOUS!
Thanks Judster!
-Scott
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Today I received an early birthday gift from the folks at The Huffington Post. They decided to go ahead and publish my HIV+ coming out story this morning.
If you haven't read it, I hope you'll take a sec and check it out, and then forward it to a friend. Let's recommit this holiday season to erasing the politics of division, the scourge of ignorance, and fight back against agents of intolerance with the most powerful tool we have...Love.
Since I published the original post on World AIDS Day here on ScottsBigMouth, I have received TONS of emails and Facebook messages from people I haven't seen or heard from for YEARS, all expressing thanks and love for sharing my story. Unanimously, my friends have stepped forward to support the reason I decided to go public with the story, as the message is just too important to keep quiet.
All my heartfelt love to each and every one of you who takes the message of the post to heart. As always, it is the message that matters here. Also, my love to Tim, who keeps tolerating me "5 years on." Okay, it sounds corny, but like the Whitney Houston song "I Have Nothing Without You." It's totally true. Without the support and encouragement of Tim and my family, I might never have launched ScottsBigMouth, or told the story. Now, because of people who have been touched by the story, hopefully it is spreading in a meaningful way. Its the best birthday gift I could possibly get!
I'm humbled and thank everyone who's been touched enough to forward the story onward. I encourage you to post your comments here on ScottsBigMouth.com and on HuffingtonPost.com. People need to see that there is support and love for people who are HIV+, for those who are unsure about their status, for those who are unsure about whether their families will still love them for being gay, and for those who have felt they might not ever find what they're searching for. I've been lucky enough to find it in finding Tim, and in finding the power of sharing with you on ScottsBigMouth.
Love,
Scott
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When I heard on Wednesday that Rev. Rick Warren
had been selected to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of
Barack Obama, I was deeply disappointed. While Warren has been hailed
in the media as "new breed of evangelical" and he does have a strong
record on addressing poverty and the global HIV/AIDS crisis, the
reality is that he also is a divisive Religious Right demagogue.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee website states that it
"will organize an inclusive and accessible inauguration that ... unites
the nation around our shared values and ideals." President-elect
Obama's soaring campaign speeches included similar calls for Americans
to unite around what brings us together rather than what tear us apart,
and we deeply appreciate that he wants to heal the divide in our often
deeply polarized country. But Rick Warren is a powerful leader who
marginalizes and dehumanizes those who disagree with him -- he does
nothing to help unite Americans!
In an interview just last week, Warren compared reproductive
choice to the Holocaust and compared same-sex marriage to incest and
pedophilia, and he called Christians who work to advance social justice
gospel "Marxism in Christian clothing." He's also stated that there are
five issues that all candidates should be evaluated on -- the top three
are reproductive choice, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research.
Is this the sort of inclusion millions of Americans voted for on
November 4? We strongly agree with President-elect Obama that everyone
should have a seat at the table, but only those who treat others with
respect should get a seat of honor. We have high hopes for the change
Obama has pledged to bring to Washington, but we also need to let him
know when we think he's making a bad move. Please join me in signing an
open letter to President-elect Obama to let him know that we are
disappointed that he's giving Rev. Warren such a public position of
honor in the inauguration, and we hope that we can use this as a
teachable moment. It's not that Rick Warren simply disagrees with us --
and President-elect Obama for that matter -- on "issues." His views on
basic equality, human rights and core constitutional values cannot be
legitimized as reasonable.
P.S. It's been a great year. I've been thrilled to be part of
People For the American Way and the exciting, important work we’ve done
together. I've counted on you for support, to be the voice of the
grassroots, and to spread the word about our important campaigns.
You've done so much and you have my gratitude and appreciation for all
of it. This will be my last Friday note until the new year, so I wanted
to make sure to say THANK YOU for all you do.
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No gays named to Obama’s Cabinet Victory Fund leader calls week’s events ‘disappointing’ By CHRIS JOHNSON, Washington Blade | Dec 18, 3:28 PM
Chuck Wolfe, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, criticized President-elect Barack Obama today for failing to name an openly gay member to his Cabinet.
“As we talk about either keeping or renewing America’s promise, which the president-elect has been talking about, apparently it does not yet extend to gay and lesbian people in the Cabinet of the president,” Wolfe said.
Gay activists lobbied Obama to select Mary Beth Maxwell, a lesbian and founding executive director for American Rights at Work, to become the next labor secretary. But NBC News reported today that Obama had picked Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) for the position.
The selection of Solis for labor secretary, the last open Cabinet seat in Obama’s administration, meant there were no remaining opportunities for an openly LGBT person to take a Cabinet-level position in the next White House.
Wolfe said Obama’s decision “sure is disappointing” and recalled how in a meeting with the transition team last week, officials told gay activists they would be happy with the president-elect’s appointments.
“I think it’s clear that they were either not telling us the truth or somebody misinterpreted what happy would mean,” Wolfe said.
“Without a doubt, it’s frustrating to know that the transition team and the president-elect is not appointing a Cabinet that truly looks like America.”
Wolfe said the news was particularly troubling as it came the day after Obama’s selection of Rev. Rick Warren, who has been criticized for supporting Proposition 8 in California, to give the invocation at the Jan. 20 inauguration.
“Those are double whammies, aren’t they?” he said. “Not only do you not find a qualified LGBT person to serve in your Cabinet, at the same time, you announce publicly that the person who is going to lead the nation in prayer during the inaugural is a person who does not believe gay and lesbian people are equal in the eyes of the country. So you’ve now sent how many signals to gay and lesbian Americans that they are not equal?”
Wolfe said “plenty of high-qualified” gay people applied to join the Obama White House through the Presidential Appointments Project led by the Victory Fund, but “the transition team just didn’t choose them” for roles in the White House.
“It’s not a lack of LGBT people stepping up and being willing to serve,” he said, “but to date, the administration has found room for one person inside the White House, an assistant to the president.”
Earlier this month, Obama selected Nancy Sutley, a lesbian who currently serves as deputy mayor of Los Angeles for energy and environment, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Sutley’s position is not a cabinet-level post.
Wolfe said he prays Obama’s decisions this week are not indicative of how the president-elect will treat the gay community upon taking office, but added that he is certain his prayer “won’t be heard as loud as Rick Warren’s in this administration.”
But while “there is a sense of disappointment about the appointments to date,” Wolfe said, “there are thousands of appointments yet to be made” in lower-level positions.
“I’m going to keep going down the path of encouraging this administration to be appointing [openly gay people] at the highest levels,” Wolfe said, “but I, of course, am not going to ignore the disappointment that we feel at this point.”
Wolfe said he didn’t think the Presidential Appointments Project was at fault for not getting gays into Obama’s Cabinet.
“The decision on who serves in these roles is not made by outside organizations, it’s made by the people in the White House,” he said.
“If you’re an environmentalist and you’re not happy with the type of people who have been appointed to run [the Department of the] Interior or Agriculture or any of those areas, is it the fault of the environmentalists? No, it’s the responsibility of the person actually taking the action.”
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So far Barack Obama has been pretty smart in making choices for his cabinet and his Inaugural festivities. A rare misstep, the choice of Pastor Rick Warren for his Inaugural, is a serious one; and it should put the GLBTQ community on alert about whether or not Obama really has our back.
For the uninformed, Rick Warren was before the election, and continues to be now, a serious opponent of GLBTQ civil rights. He was extremely anti-gay in his sermons and statements related to the California Prop 8 measure, and has continued to purposefully blur the line in his statements about Prop 8. He even went as far as to express concern that the State of California would restrict his ability to speak out in the pulpit against gay rights, even though there never has been a measure that has even addressed the issue--sticking strictly to the issuance of marriage licenses alone.
Barack Obama, in choosing the political route by inviting Warren to participate in his Inagural festivities, is delivering a serious "I don't give a crap about you" to the GLBTQ community that backed his message of change. He is basically forsaking the Change mantra by co-opting the religious moral right crowd, in a shrewd attempt to disarm them. The problem is, now that he has done this, an entire political block that was squarely in his corner during the election will no longer trust him to represent them going forward. In effect, he has put out the signal that discrimination against the GLBTQ community, and lies by those who continue to espouse the anti-gay rhetoric of the right, are okay and should be allowed in his administration.
Well, I'm sorry Mr. Obama. You are wrong on this one. Choosing anti-gay Rick Warren is like throwing a cocktail in the face of every member of the GLBTQ Army that you so delicately recruited to join your cause during the election. You have just made it incredibly harder for us to call for fairness, simply by validating the Right's biggest wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. Sure, you've disarmed many of the people who thought you were too liberal to begin with, and therefore by picking Warren to give your invocation you have given them less ammo to throw at you. You have to admit, though, sir, that you did this for politically expedient reasons, and really didn't consider the need to help guarantee basic equal rights and the core message that it means for ALL PEOPLE by being principled in your choices.
No, Mr. Obama, you have sent a shiver up the spine of every GLBTQ American who believed that you might actually be the voice and actor of real change. What you have proven with this choice, is that unifying hateful people into your tent is more important than protecting those of us who helped put up that tent in the first place. You've hurt more than our feelings, sir. You've kicked us when we were down by supporting the enemy. The GLBTQ Army is becoming more militant, and we won't forget this shot to the gut.
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In reaction to last week's vote on Proposition 8 in California, and anti-gay-marriage measures succeeding in two other states; activists in more than 80 cities nationwide and internationally this Saturday will take to the streets in protest. Coordinated through the blog JoinTheImpact.com, the November 15 protests have spread from a couple initial cities to a global effort, the goal being to draw awareness to the November 4th passage of anti-gay measures in Arizona, California, and Florida.
Highlighting the hypocrisy of the divisive measures' passage in tandem with Barack Obama's historic unifying win, on last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann program on MSNBC, host Olbermann stepped up to the plate with a "Special Comment" and called out backers of the measures as the bigots that they are. Check it out...
You have to hand it to our straight friends who are willing to use their power to shine a bright light of truth on an effort that is clearly so dark and hate-filled.
Thanks, K.O. We'll be cheering your support this Saturday, here in Chicago and around the world.
Today is the 40-SOMETHING (the number which must not be said...um...seven...oops!) Birthday for our favorite progressive talk radio comedy diva Stephanie Miller!
The Stephanie MIller Show's Jim Ward, Stephanie Miller, and Chris Lavoie
So just for "Momma" go out and buy a cheap box o' wine and drink it all right from the tap! Make sure you follow her lead, and do so 1.) watching Hardball, 2.) surrounded by your dogs, and 3.)somewhere safe so that when you pass out around 7PM, your dogs can lick you awake in time to make your 6AM radio slot.
On the eve of the International Conference on HIV / AIDS, kicking off
today in Mexico City, Mexico, a revelation on the depth of the HIV/AIDS
epidemic ripped across the wires. The rate of HIV/AIDS infections in
the United States annually was underreported by roughly 40%. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/health/03aids.html?scp=2&sq=H...
After all the number crunching, the hemming and hawing over
experimental vaccines, DNA profiles, drug-resistant strains, and
experimental regimens; the numbers we have been talking about are
actually 40% higher than reported. The new numbers tell us that nearly
a quarter of a million additional Americans are living with the virus
that causes AIDS or have full-blown AIDS, up from just over a million
to 1.1 million.
As a self-identified HIV-positive American, I would have expected that
my government was keeping better tabs on the epidemic. More than that,
knowing this new data, I would have expected that U.S. HIV/AIDS
prevention and treatment would be at least as important as other items
on the national agenda, equally-as-important as the economy, jobs,
poverty, corporate responsibility, the housing crisis, etc. I have a
very hard time believing that this data is actually “new” information.
Rather, it seems to me, based upon the particular agencies involved in
public health policy and the Bush Administration's policies towards
dissemination of this type of information, it is becoming clear that in
the last 8 years the Bush Administration has been fudging the numbers
in order to purposefully ignore the domestic HIV/AIDS situation, while
simultaneously giving billions in global HIV/AIDS assistance to appear
empathetic and responsive to the problem.
Meanwhile, U.S. HIV/AIDS prevention policy is hopelessly delivered via
abstinence-only education programming in public and private schools, a
course of “cloaked theology” proving itself ineffective through actual
reported teenage pregnancies and up-ticks in new STD reports not
including HIV/AIDS. At the national and state levels, HIV/AIDS research
dollars, governed by the numbers that are now being “restated,” already
are steered away from domestic “street level” prevention and treatment.
Rather than leading research, prevention, and treatment at home, U.S.
Taxpayers' health care dollars are spent on massive external delivery
of anti-retroviral pharmaceuticals to African countries in an effort to
cultivate needed goodwill, and the all-important access to oil reserves
they hold.
These new numbers arguably are just another bullet in the smoking gun
of hypocrisy that has become the hallmark of today's Republican party.
Through cynical manipulation of all U.S. Government resources towards
relentless pursuit of oil exploration at all costs, massive propaganda
campaigns to confuse the American people, and manipulation of markets
and other government -- all efforts are designed and executed to reward
Republican donors' “investments” in their candidates. Regardless of who
dies on the home front, be it soldiers or those suffering without
adequate health care, the Bush Administration won't spend a dime unless
it benefits their power or their pocketbook.
Obviously that statement is arguably controversial, especially because
the Bushies claim they care about people with HIV/AIDS. The problem is,
they only care when oil is connected to the situation. If you asked
George W. Bush and Laura “Pickles” Bush to come down to the hood or to
boystown to tour an HIV/AIDS not-for-profit treatment and services
program...oh, I don't know...like TPAN here in Chicago
(http://www.tpan.org), I guarantee you will get a non-response. Heck,
we can't even get local Republican candidates to come down and witness
the lack of resources, scarcity of free adequate HIV/AIDS care, and
widespread starvation that exists here--let alone getting POTUS to stop
by.
The truth is that we gays and african-americans have been written-off
as “disposable” by the Republicans in charge of our current U.S. (and
many local) government. We don't give a lot of money to them, we don't
align with their right-wing conservative Christian ideology, and we
don't “fall in line” behind the straight white guys who are their
candidates. As a result, this 40% number, in any other context a scary
increase over previously-disclosed numbers, will barely be reported in
the corporately-controlled, Republican-leaning mainstream media.
Rather, it will be swept under the rug, like all other things that
affect the poor, afflicted, and less-powerful; and will only be spread
under the left-wing and progressive blogs. The caveat is that if enough
of these left-wing sites spread the message far enough, maybe, just
maybe a brave reporter for Big Media will do some digging...of course,
then that person's editor will nix their story.
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On CNN's AC360 program last Thursday, July 3, 2008, nationally syndicated radio host Ed Schultz (http://www.WeGotEd.com) skewered Cliff May (former communications director for the RNC) for spreading crazy propaganda.
In his comments, May asserted that liberals wanted to lose in Iraq. Ed didn't let him get away with it though. Check out this clip to see how it all went down.
Congratulations to Big Eddie Schultz for keeping the righties honest. He's our BigMouth of the Day!
Check out The Ed Schultz Show, Noon-3 EST/11AM-2PM CST on Jones Radio Networks affiliates across the U.S. and online at http://www.WeGotEd.com. In Chicago, tune in to WCPT 820 AM Chicago's Progressive Talk or http://www.wcpt820.com 11AM-2PM to hear Ed live.
Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco and friend of the GLBTQ community, announced yesterday the formation of an exploratory community to run for Governor of California in 2010. SFGate.com reported that the race to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger could run into $30 Million or more.
The question is, will Newsom's leading role putting GLBTQ marriage rights front and center on the national stage translate into GLBTQ donors' financial support for his campaign? Arguably it could mean that anti-GLBTQ folks might cough it up to make sure Newsom doesn't get anywhere near the Governor's mansion, by backing an ultra-conservative candidate who runs to overturn the gay marriage law. It could further elevate the culture wars to a whole new level. Stay tuned.
