Local hate group, Article 8, has some excellent photos of the protest at Love Won Out last weekend.
Family “News” in Focus (ok let’s face it, I could put quotes around each word individually since they clearly don’t know the meaning of “family,” the show certainly isn’t “news” and given the accuracy of their reports, I would hardly say it’s “in focus.”)
Now where was I… Oh yes, “Family” “News” “in Focus” also covered the event and also has excellent audio of what sounded like an impressive protest. Their coverage concludes with an interview with the mother of a gay son who attended seeking a way to “help” him. Nobody says where the son is but just listening to the mother speak you could feel how burdoned she was by her son’s sexuality. I had to listen to the clip again and my eyes started to well up. I am not making fun. Listen to the clip and feel the pain in every word coming from this mother.
Update: XGW readers and staffers started a discussion located on another thread about the protestors’ poor choice of chant, “shut it down.”
This is my favorite part:
Do these rocket scientists not realize that the police were trying to help them? They could have let the anti-gay forces march out into the street and then a huge ugly scene would have ensued. If these people are so “terrified” by pro-gay, pro-tolerance demonstrators, then why wouldn’t they want to just wait a little bit and then leave when they felt their safety was no longer an issue?
They probably wanted to have a big fight, and then they would go on the news talking about what victims of persecution they are. Why is it that these people who claim to have been “freed” of their sin ALWAYS act like they are victimized at every turn? What they seem to be saying is that no matter what you say or do, you will always be a victim and be oppressed.
How well known of a gay activist was Joe Dallas before he became anti-gay? At first I thought he was named after that horrible character on Soap who “turned straight”, but his name was Jodie.
I just love the persecution complex. We are so persecuted, but they are the ones that control the white house, congress and now finally the judiciary, and they have the gall to say that they are persecuted, PLEASE, whenever we have gay pride parades they do exactly the same thing, only they say they aren’t persecuting us they are doing it to “Save the Family”, their version of the family has been dead for 45 years and will never return, If they really hate america so much we should just give them the bible belt as a country to live in and us progressives and moderates can have the rest of the country, lord knows they need us more than we need them.
I live in the Boston area and can attest that there was little if any coverage of the LWO dog-and-pony show or the protest. Recognize also that any material coming from Focus or the Article 8 group should be viewed with a mine of salt.
Regarding the Article 8 group, they are indeed a hate group. They were founded by Brian Camenker, a nut in Newton MA who previously headed the “Parents Rights Foundation,” which he founded to oppose equal rights for gay people. Article 8 refers to the article of the MA state constitution relating to the removal of judges from the bench. His stated purpose is to remove the justices of the MA Supreme Judicial Court who voted in the majority in Goodridge from the court. So far it hasn’t gone anywhere, and with Romney’s Republican debacle in the 2004 mid-term elections in the statehouse, it is doubtful that they will any time soon.
I seriously wonder who has been supporting Camenker financially. He makes a bit of noise, but it appears that few people here in MA are paying attention to him politically.
This group ran very ugly propaganda against the very bright young politician Carl Sciortino when he was running in a Democratic legsiatlive primary year against a longtime, anti-gay incumbent. Here is the kind of crap they spewed:
http://www.article8.org/docs/sciortino/sciortino.htm
They unwittingly helped to elect him to office and then their efforts of “help” caused Sciortio to win by an even bigger margin in the general election when the incumbent ran as a write-in candidate.
Oh, him…Article8 also support two lunatic parents who demanded that the entire World stop revolving until their (young) son was assured of never hearing ANYTHING about homosexuality unless it fitted with their negative views.This included even if a child came into class and did “show and tell” about what they had done with their two mums — or their two uncles (to make it more personal for us).The school, to their credit, said piss off. These parents are not only anti-gay but expect teachers to pass these anti-gay views onto other students.For those interested, Warren Throckmorton did not appreciate what how this would operate in reality or what “stigma” really means…
I’d really love a Regan “go for it” on this one… 🙂
I won’t forget the mother who was brutal to her little daughter for being nice to me-the black half of a black/white couple.
The children of gay parents, just as the other child-are the easier target.
These parents wouldn’t DARE confront the gay parents.
Indeed, they want notification precisely to avoid the very people they are vilifying.
If the child is gone from the school, the gay parents will have no reason to attend school meetings and functions as nuclear family.
Once again, an opportunity to REALLY SEE the gay parents as equally concerned, stable and loving parents will be squandered and avoided.
This is another excuse to maintain the segregationist principle.
This is screaming, hysterical, cowardly and immature.
DL Foster describes this scene in Boston as if it was how the 1992 riots in Los Angeles were initiated.
His hysterical description isn’t even close to what really happened.
Let me say again, that Love Won Out is representative of decades and decades of the mental and emotional and destructive consequences of heterosexual conceit.
Gay people rightly are sick of it, sick of people demanding that gay people change.
It’s not for the sake of gay people, and never has been.
Those that represent ex gay and ex gay life have had the floor, and said their piece.
Over and over and over again.
It’s someone else’s turn, and refusing to leave the national stage for someone else’s (gay folk’s) opportunity to speak for themselves isn’t just a matter of bad debating tactics and form.
When the other side is DONE with them, then they are DONE.
Engaging politicians, government and educational institutions to your long dead cause is no longer about a motive based on compassionate concerns. It’s about legislating inequality for the person who lives as a gay person.
So leave the floor and if the other party ( gay people and those who care about equal treatment) isn’t taking your message without protest anymore, your time is more than up.
It’s finished and shouldn’t be heard from again.
Let me say again, that Love Won Out is representative of decades and decades of the mental and emotional and destructive consequences of heterosexual conceit.And that Regan is what I hoped for. Thank you.Ex-gay is not new, it’s the old — our self-hate, our bowing and scaping, our trying to please people who will never be pleased. Our pain is their opportunity.Yet, most of us have never listened to them.
From the pictures they posted, it appears that there were relatively few anti-“Love Won Out” protestors, at least during most of the day. And if it was so dangerous to go out and interact with the picketers, how exactly did they get all the pictures? Clearly somone had to shoot them.
I can see why the attendees did not like the protest signs, but there was little that was truly offensive about them – certainly they were no worse than the anti-gay signs many “pro-family” people wave at gay events.
As for blocking the street – as you can see from the pictures, this appears to be a typical narrow Boston street – a double-parked car can effectively block it.
“Engaging politicians, government and educational institutions to your long dead cause is no longer about a motive based on compassionate concerns. It’s about legislating inequality for the person who lives as a gay person.”
Exactly. The Boston demonstrations of LWO expose the lie of claimed compassion. Any objective outside observer has to wonder if there can be any compassion in actions that the object of that supposed compassion find so offensive. I hope this kind of (peaceful) protest occurs at every LWO or Focus on the Family anti-gay event. These people are assuming the role of their god by passing judgement on gay lives and seeking control of lives other than their own. The arrogance stuns me. They are not the legal guardians of all people with same sex attractions.
No one has the right to control another adult’s behavior that doesn’t affect them.
Oh my God, I simply had to add another post – check out their “outrageous” photos of the Boston gay pride parade – apparently even Article 8 could not find any real perversion – so they mock gay cops instead! (Click on their home page and scroll WAY down to find the photos).
Regan,
“DL Foster describes this scene in Boston as if it was how the 1992 riots in Los Angeles were initiated.”
I didn’t see Foster’s reference to the 92 riots. But I can assure him it wasn’t the same. I lived at that time on Hipoint, one block from the corner of Pico and Fairfax, so I think I was a bit closer to things than DL ever got.
If he can’t see the difference between local Bostonians peacefully protesting and outsiders coming into a neighborhood to loot and burn (and, NO, it WASN’T “them people burning their own neighborhoods”), then Foster’s got a real problem with discernment.
This is a good article from Oct. 27 that talks about the protest plans.
http://www.baywindows.com/media/paper328/news/2005/10/27/News/Preparing.For.The.ExGays-1035234.shtml
Notably, Melissa Fryear seems to have no problem with the idea of protests.
What real and yet unnecessary pain. :’-(
They really are idiots. The police were very obviously trying to keep a confrontation from happening.
I think it was good of Article 8 to show the signs about queer youth suicide. Maybe someone sitting on the fence will see these signs, too.
Hi Timothy, to clarify-no Foster didn’t make any references to the ’92 riots. I was making a descriptive statement of his reaction to the Boston situation.
He saw it as violent and horrible and as an indictment against Christians.
As if those Christians held in the church were going to be beaten within an inch of their lives if they had a chance to leave the church.
Not only that, he complained that the treatment of the police was cruel or inattentive.
I look at it this way-
if Love Won Out, was so wonderful and great and healthy-there wouldn’t BE any protests of ANY kind.
Indeed, your average house of worship or religious based organization doesn’t get protested at all.
It’s the ones whose agenda has proven to be cruel, politically distrustful and most of all damaging to individual identity that gets responded to in this way.
If they don’t like hearing what the protesters are there for and don’t respond to what motivates the concerns of the protesters, then they are not there to be compassionate or caring about gay people.
They aren’t LISTENING to gay people.
Especially not healthy, well adjusted and strong, successful and recovered gay people and how they GOT that way WITHOUT any such thing like LWO.
If those aren’t the gay people they want to hear from, then their cause in itself, regards these gay people as anathema, as enemy.
So if a healthy gay person doesn’t interest them, then indeed, who REALLY needs LWO at all?
Which totally shows LWO for what they really do.
Their sole purpose is the exploitation of insecurity and pain-either that of gay young people and/or their parents.
And there is never any excuse or goodness in that.
Besides, LWO INSINUATED themselves into this, and then couldn’t take the consequences for doing so .
It’s not like they are invited by gay people to show up.
James at November 2, 2005 08:47 AM
Yes, they (Art 8 coalition) did help bring about the conservative Dem’s incumbent’s demise.
Hi Everyone!
Thanks for your discussions about our protest – queertoday.com organized it. We’re a group of young queer activists here in Boston.
Check out this month’s issue of the advocate – an attendee of the conference has thanked the protesters!
🙂 Mark