Bobservations

I am, generally speaking, a positive person, and try not to dwell on the negative and hateful, unless it’s the _____’s or Michael Elizabeth Pence. But, where Carlos is concerned, my mind always goes there when things don’t happen as planned.

Back when Carlos used to drive, and he worked in Columbia, about forty minutes from our house, he’d call at 5PM to say he was on his way home.it was usually a forty-minute drive, maybe forty-five, but if the clock stretched to an hour and he wasn’t home, my mind went to ‘Car Wreck.’ If it stretched out to an hour-and-fifteen minutes and he wasn’t home, my mind went to ‘Lying Dead In The Street.’

I only tell this story because while I was at work one morning this week, helping a client, a co-worker motioned to me that I had a phone call, and mouthed the word, ‘Carlos.’ As I went to the phone another co-worker apologized to me, saying, “I meant to tell you, he called earlier.”

I picked up the phone:

“Hello.”

There was noise on my end and noise on his, but I heard this:

“I’m at the hospital  phumpher-phumph-phumpity-phump.”

My mind began to run to, what I needed to pass off to co-workers, where was my boss, so I could get to the hospital; but first I said:

“I can’t hear you.”

“I said …I’m at the hospital  phumpher-phumph-phumpity-phump.”

He’s having a heart attack, a stroke, a seizure, and the last words he’ll ever say to me are:

“Phumpher-phumph-phumpity-phump.”

I nearly shout:

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

“I’m doing a translation at the hospital and have no reception on my phone if you’re trying to reach me.”

Um, I wasn’t trying to reach him, and I wasn’t planning on trying to reach him, and now I’m crawling back from the edge of Carlos Is Dead, to say:

“Next time, lead with ‘I’m doing a translation’ so my mind doesn’t go straight to death!”

He laughed; I didn’t.

I missed it, but during the Grammy telecast a few weeks ago, there was a new ad for Gay Haterz, Chick-fil-A, that featured the Jefferson Starship‘s 1986 hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” Had I heard it, I would have been shocked because Starship, and it’s precursor Jefferson Airplane, were one of the bands of choice during the free-loving, psychedelic San Francisco music scene during the 60’s and early seventies, and I figured they would be the last band to allow their music to be used to fund hate. And I was right, because Starship singer Grace Slick explained the “sellout” allegations from fans with this:

“Chick-fil-A pisses me off. [They have] a well-documented history of funding organizations, through their philanthropic foundation WinShape, that are against gay marriage. In interviews, CEO Dan T. Cathy has critiqued gay-rights supporters who ‘have the audacity to define marriage’ and said they are bringing ‘God’s judgment” upon the nation.’ I firmly believe that men should be able to marry men, and women women. I am passionately against anyone who would try to suppress this basic human right. So my first thought when ‘Check’-fil-A came to me was, ‘F**k no!’”

But then Slick devised a plan that would  help the cause rather than merely showing her ceremonial support by declining Chick-fil-A’s  offer:

“I am donating every dime that I make from that ad to Lambda Legal, the largest national legal organization working to advance the civil rights of LGBTQ people, and everyone living with HIV. Admittedly, it’s not the millions that WinShape has given to organizations that define marriage as heterosexual. But instead of them replacing my song with someone else’s and losing this opportunity to strike back at anti-LGBTQ forces, I decided to spend the cash in direct opposition to ‘Check’-fil-A’s causes—and to make a public example of them, too. We’re going to take some of their money, and pay it back.”

Thanks, Grace, for standing with us and giving Chick-fil-A money to The Gays. I’m sure they love the idea!

Last week, the United Methodist Church Worldwide Conference voted to ban same-sex marriage and openly gay clergy in their churches.

This week, the Open Table Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, is saying Oh Hell no:

"I was just broken. I felt almost sick inside because I knew that for so many of our LGBTQ friends this was yet another voice, another church saying that we close our doors. [So] let us not rest until all people can be welcome to worship God in any space that they choose. That is what we will fight for.”— Reverend Jason Butler 

Butler says no law is higher than the law of love and his church will fight until this new ruling is reversed.

Before same-sex marriage was legal anywhere, Richard John “Jack” Baker and Michael McConnell got married in Minnesota … in 1971! I posted their story HERE.

Baker and McConnell applied for a marriage license in Hennepin County, Minnesota in 1970 and were denied; and although the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the county’s refusal, Baker and McConnell applied to be married in another county, Blue Earth, and were approved because the county clerk didn’t realize it was a same-sex marriage. Baker had changed his legal name to the gender neutral “Pat Lyn,” to get their marriage certificate, and after one Methodist pastor backed out of the ceremony, another, Roger Lynn, agreed to marry the two men who have been together ever since.

In 2019 the Social Security Administration has recognized that the 1971 marriage as legal.

Ain’t love grand, and ain’t same-sex marriage, too?

I love the hypocrisy of Draco Malfoy, er, former South Carolina GOP Congressman Trey Gowdy, the man who led an 11-hour public congressional hearing on the Benghazi consulate attack, saying now—now that the Democrats are in charge and are investigating the Criminal-In-Chief—that he believes such hearings are “utterly useless”.

Fuck off, Gowdy, you pandering, goose-stepping traitorous hack.

Well, maybe it’s a beautiful Rainbow flag day in the neighborhood, because according to a recent biography Fred Rogers, of the PBS children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, was bisexual. In the book, Rogers was asked by an interviewer if he was gay and he said:

“I’m not gay, but I suppose if you look at attraction as a kind of line…I would probably be somewhere in the middle.”

So, apparently Mister Rogers liked all of his neighbors?

There’s a new show, The Enemy Within, starring Jennifer Carpenter, and I just had to watch it because she also played Dexter’s sister. I know, that makes no sense, but there you have it.

Carpenter plays Erica Shepherd, one of the CIA's most brilliant operatives until she became one of the greatest traitors in American history by giving a terrorist the names of three other operatives. She is serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison but is recruited to help find the terrorist she helped.

Anyway, you know it’s about the men, like Morris Chestnut, who plays FBI agent Will Keaton … and former male model turned actor, Noah Mills, who plays fellow agent Jason Bragg … along with Raza Jeffery who plays Daniel Zain.

A triple dose of Man Candy and Dexter’s sister? I’m in …