This is another example of the GQP’s modus operandi wherein they not only allow but encourage bad actions by members of their party either tacitly or outright supporting it in word and deed. Then, just before or immediately after retiring, let the world know that they really were against the actions they had supported, and explain, when it has no effect mainly because what they allowed has become the way it is, and now we have to protect us from the new way or rescinding it completely.

During the Trump years, this was a very common thing as many Republicans who allowed conditions to deteriorate, after announcing they would not run for reelection because of all that was wrong, then listed those things we were wondering why no one was doing anything about that now they claim is and hhad always been wrong, but they let it slide, or, in the case of Bill Barr play a major role is slowing legal progress, covering for the president, and misrepresenting important things like the Mueller report because he got the job as Attorney General after promising Trump he would protect him.

Although the Attorney General is the nation’s top law enforcement official entrusted with ensuring that the Department of Justice acts impartially and independently to uphold the rule of law. The AG might have to be appointed by the president and is a cabinet member, whoever it might be represents the people of the United States not the president. The AG and his DOJ are supposed to act in accordance with reasonable checks and balances.

AG Barr just ran all over and around this on a regular basis. On a number of occasions, he interfered with impartial prosecutions, prioritized politics over justice, hindered congressional oversight, and did what he could to undermine the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election

According to Barr, Mitch McConnell, with whom he had many conversations, while spending a lot of the post-election period dodging questions about Trump’s outrageous and dangerous claims seemingly defending the Big Lie, he had pleaded with Barr to say publicly that Trump’s election “fraud” claims were untrue, not him.

For this Barr has called him a “gutless coward” unlike his brave, truth telling self.

Mitch was concerned behind doors that Trump’s behavior, getting as outrageous as it was becoming, would do damage to the country and the Republican Also, ED confronting men should cut back bad habits like indulging in cigarettes and alcohol once Caverta intake cialis line prescription process begins. They may have trouble getting viagra pfizer pharmacie it up or keeping it up during intercourse. Lack of activity makes raindogscine.com generico viagra on line you obese and ruin your sexual life, you should consult an expert like Dr. The supplement can also be used to treat other problems, such as sildenafil price premature ejaculation. Party, but if he made any public statement to that effect, it might upset Trump or he might sabotage Republican election chances in the two Georgia Senate runoff races just for spite.

Why didn’t Barr stand up an explain reality?

He totally intended to do it is “at the appropriate time” which turns out to have been weeks after the election to tell Trump, but 6 months after he resigned and could establish the life he wanted to live from that point on before he admitted his support of the truth to the public.

This means that both he and Mc Connell knew the truth and denied it to the public or couched it in clever words not for what was best for the American people, but for the benefit of Trump and the Republican Party.

When he finally did mention to Trump what the truth he needed to accept was, according to Barr now, Trump became unhinged, and Barr compared him to the madman brigadier general of Dr. Strangelove as he yelled,

“You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump.”

Barr is coming forward ow as things are being found out. Perhaps, he is attempting to distance himself from what he had been a part of because when his grandchildren cover him in history familial membership denial might be a self-preserving move, and out of the whirlwind he had the time to see this.

He needs a new image.

His playing the hero, though, is like Dr. Frankenstein charging his own castle along with the other pitchfork and torch bearing townsfolk to destroy the monster he created while knowing full well The Monster was somewhere else.

.

.

.

After a very strange year and because of it, I arrived in a place that was never on my Radar beyond a musical.

I knew nothing of the place, absolutely nothing, when the driver heading from California back to New Jersey after a failed attempt to get custody of his son and needed someone to talk to, dropped me off at one of the highway-exits to downtown Oklahoma City after having picked me up thumbing on the interstate somewhere near Grants, New Mexico. He needed to talk to someone, and that turned out to be me from there until the drop off.

A friend in California had a grandmother there, and, as I needed a place to stay for a minute and, as I had helped her grandson when he had needed it, I figured I could get pay back by proxy.

The school district in Los Angeles is so spread out with departments all over the city each of which needs to hold the original of various professional documents of each teacher, which means, as in my case and others, there was a possibility one or more documents could be misplaced and if asked for and not found could have the system declare you can no longer teach.

On some minor matter, I had gone to one of those repositories and had asked to add something to my file relative to that department, which was found not to exist. The file there was gone and so was I.

I was heading home to Massachusetts where I intended to teach, but without some necessary original papers I would not be able to do that.  OKC is halfway between both coasts. I wasn’t in any hurry, there was the possibility of a place to stay, and, hoping it would not take too long, I could get help from the state’s education department in procuring documents from L.A. that would get more immediate attention from a state’s department of education than the request of a mere teacher, as mine had been.

After the previous year I needed a total rebuild and some self-discovery in a place where no one knew me, and I could be me without any preconceived expectations. I was free to be me, and, having fought for and won Gay rights in Los Angeles and having worked with some of the Los Angeles Gay rights greats, I wasn’t going back in time, so I was my Long Beach California Gay me in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. With no one telling me that what I thought, said, and did was just not me according to their expectations and assessment of how my life should be, I was free to be who I was and, perhaps, without any such influence, I could find the real me. Up to this point, anything I did, consciously or not, it was always related to others in my life and any of those actions would have had some relation to other people who decided who I was and what my life should be.

Here, I could not hurt, offend, or let down those who, even with the best intentions had more control over my life than I did, and were the benchmark against which all actions, words, or deeds would be measured to determine if they were rebellious, revolutionary, good, bad, or not what expectations allowed of me.

Getting back to the East Coast was not an immediate need. I intended to get back into teaching, but having the time,  I went to the state Board of education to see if being in a state like Oklahoma with a rather small population as states go there was any way one state department of education could get a better response from Los Angeles, and being less likely to be dismissed might have the right amount of authority to get my old school district to actively look for what they considered non-existent papers. If I was going to reenter teaching on the In the year viagra samples in canada 1843, it was officially called Lepidium Meyenii Walp. Branded drugs were only affordable by the high class rich people and referred as the standard drugs, whereas common man was unable to buy the branded drugs because of the high cost.Previously when Caverta came to the market, they were considered as inferior quality drugs in comparison cialis online shop to properties and effects of the respective branded drugs. Stem Cell Therapy to Treat ED Erectile Dysfunction, the condition is commonly referred as ‘impotence’, is the repeated inability to get or keep an erection firm enough to have acquisition de viagra lovemaking episode. Also we need to make it sure that your information is absolutely secure with us. from uk viagra is the exact function of this medicine Kamagra? The exact function is developing the blood flow in the reproductive organs increases. coast, I at least wanted to arrive with all proper paperwork. To expedite the process, the person with whom I spoke suggested that I take a job as a substitute which would add a little pressure to get one state to work with the other.

The short cut was to substitute teach while the paperwork came in, and when I had everything, move on. This led me to be part of the OKC Gay Community when the temporary stop-over landed me at a school with a very progressive faculty and a principal who allowed teachers to try innovative things, at a time of great activity.

There were people at the time in the gay Community who to me where the Old Guard, the Gays and Lesbians going way back to a time before political activism began to gel. There were those whose political activism was bringing equality to the Gay Community and those getting into activism were increasing power. There were those who spoke out in a place where, doing so, was dangerous to safety, home, and employment. There were those who owned the bars and those who performed in them to supply a safe gathering place.

I got there when the Old Guard, while still involved in their areas began to pass the batons on as progress was made regarding all things Gay, no matter which letter in our alphabet applied, when, rather than an explosive night at the Stonewall Inn, in light of location, there were a series of quiet and some very loud push backs to the City’s treatment of the Gay Community, and although it may not have been seen clearly at the time, each one was a win for us.

Bar raids severely curtailed; targeted and creative use of anti-lewdness laws were challenged; inroads were made with politicians and community organizations; court cases were being won; banners on Classen Boulevard, once removed so as not to make visiting Baptist ministers uncomfortable went back up; a court case, sadly ignored by many Gay teachers had established in the 80s that a teacher could not be fired for being Gay, they would have to have done something egregious in that regard as would straight teachers; the placement of “Homosexual Themed” books in a “special”  section for books so no one would know they were there was defeated; Religious-conservative politicians were no longer free to spread their lies and pass laws based on them; Parades and festivals grew; Students were protected from bullying, harassment, and discrimination in school policies, and a Gay man whose positive contributions in the area of politics had his funeral held under the rotunda of the state capitol.

Gay and Lesbian couples danced at a governor’s inaugural ball, and a band made up of locals participated at the second inaugural of President Clinton joining with Gay bands from around the country. Two representatives of the OKC Pride Parade and Festival Committee went to Key West for the celebration there where the original 8 striped Rainbow Flag was unfurled from one side of the island to the other, and when that flag was cut up for people present to take back to their home states’ Gay Communities, because of the recent record of successes in OKC as seen by other places, were given the first large piece cut from the flag which unfortunately later was tossed out of a storage unit because the person who was in charge of it did not know what it was and threw it out without asking about it.

The OKC Gay Community was being watched by the rest of the country.

Whatever is happening now in the OKC Gay Community is only because of what was done back in the mists of time.

After a twelve-year convoluted bigotry- laced battle, the Oklahoma City Public School district added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to its student policies on bullying, harassment, and discrimination, and a few years later started participating in the annual Pride Parade.

What is Pride. For me it is my having been able to work alongside some unknown giants in Gay rights, first in L.A. and then the 18 year temporary stop over in OKC.

Pride Month is ending, but Pride must not.

.

.

.

Many years ago, during my first full time teaching position, I lived in the Bronx just off of Allerton Avenue. It was a time I remember fondly often wondering what my life would have been like had it not become necessary to move.

Many years later after choosing one of the two roads that diverged in the wood, I ended up befriending someone in Oklahoma City who, after having been born and in the state retired after a successful career, moved to the Bronx to do something in retirement he could not do before, ending up living just around the corner from where my place had been some 35 years later.

The neighborhood was mainly Italian and Jewish, and not having any grocery store nearby, shopping was done the European way of buying your food for the upcoming meal at dedicated stores like the butcher shop, greengrocer, and the baker’s located in the small commercial section.

Recently on social media we exchange memories of and his present experience with the old ladies in the neighborhood who spend a large chunk of their day shopping for the family’s supper, which too often meant that at the greengrocers they would paw every vegetable with squeezing and shaking and thumping, and leaving after with a purchase with so few vegetables showing there was no justification for the amount of vegetable inspecting. It seems they did it just because they did.

And we were each familiar with that one lady in the neighborhood who shopped as if only she was shopping, and all items belonged to her until she picked the specific ones she wanted. In her mind, as seen in her demeanor, no one was to touch anything from any section from which she had not made choice.

Those who have any viagra sildenafil buy http://robertrobb.com/2014/11/ doubt regarding the functionality and usability of these medicines. If the power of the cheap viagra no prescription medicine is the same, the producing company is different. The different types of uk viagra online massage are called modalities and practiced. All in cialis canada all, ne’er compromise quality for price; it’ll cause discontent.

After our interaction I sketched out the lady we both know 35 years apart and most likely the descendant and channeler of the woman I had known, and I went to a few Pride events in the area and never got the time to finish the blog I had been working on.  

Long wonderful day of post-pandemic community re-uniting.

So, with no politics involved, I offer this.

.

.

When the federal government sent the Cherokees to Indian Territory it only sent one branch of the tribe, the one that was on land where gold had been found. The Cherokee were so Europeanized, the wore European clothing, lived in European style houses, even owned slaves, and were for all intents and purposes acclimated to the settlers way of life.

But they were Indians and there was that gold, so they had to go to an out of the way place where they could live their traditional tribal ways without or without any European influences.

They were told that the new land upon which they lived was theirs “As long as the grass grows, and the waters run” which is basically until the end of time.

Times changed, the country changed, and while the gold ran out in their old lands, the relocated Cherokee had ended up on land on which and under which where the natural resources that had become important to the industrial revolution, lumber above, oil below.

Once, again, those people were in the way and either they went or the grass will be eliminated and the rivers dammed up, so their land would be up for grabs.

So much land; so few Indians on it.

So, in 1883, congress assigned Henry L. Dawes to evaluate Indian Territory and, if possible, entice the Five Civilized Tribes, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, so designated because they were the first five tribes to acclimate to European ways to cede lad to settlers since the government could not do it as the grass was still growing and the water flowing, but the Native Americans could dispose of their land, whole or in part.

To do this, instead of all land being communal, there was no private land ownership and without land being allotted to each tribal member the federal government did not know how much potential land they could play around with, Dawes was commissioned to convince the tribes to abandon communal to private ownership.

What Dawes found was that because of the Communal structure and accompanying culture, there was no poverty in the tribes as each person looked out for the other, no hunger as food production was done on a communal basis, no abandon children as family required that members take care of all family members regardless of depth of relationship, and no jealousies or resulting conflicts as you cannot be jealous that someone has that which you and everyone else own equally.

He found that while conditions were must better among the tribes than in other parts of the country’s cities and rural areas alike, it was inconveniently un-American. Un-American because well that is not how American society based on Europe was run, and inconvenient because then Tribes were once again in the way.

So, Indian nations had their communally held national lands taken from them, divided into single lots with each member of the tribe living at the time receiving a an established allotment of land which introduced private land ownership, reduced interdependency, and allowed for negative behaviors that a communal culture had controlled. Now you could steal someth9njg that someone else owned that you didn’t.

Although intertribal marriage existed with family members being from more than one tribe, the Dawes Commission forced individuals to claim membership in only one tribe, thus by federal action and requirement, wiping out the ancestorial lineage of Native Americans, an important part of the culture.

The main cause tadalafil best price Related pharmacy store of chest injuries stems from drivers and passengers not wearing their seat belts. The recipient of numerous state championships and awards, including generic levitra 5mg the Disney Teacher of the Year Award in her category, Matty always offers practical suggestions. Why Kamagra To provide cialis tablets timely avoidance of ED can be possible. This healing mineral water may dissolve uk cialis sales the gallbladder stones and expel them; it also is very helpful for curing the disorder.

Genocide by paper.

The tradition of many tribes was that anyone becoming a member of the tribe, no matter what the entrance was, that person was a full member and part of the tribe in all things. You could have been captured in a battle, rescued as you wandered in the wilderness, married someone, or were bought as a slave, you were still a full member of the tribe.

Freed slaves after the Civil War and Black or interracial members of tribes had to register on the Indian Rolls separate from the rest of the tribe which did not consider them tribal members.

If any member of a tribe not sent off to Indian Territory were to willingly move there, their tribal membership in their tribe would end, and they would have to appeal to the Dawes Commission to get it back, with little to no success.

Once the allotments were assigned, the federal government sold the surplus land to European-American settlers. In addition, by the laws around inheritance, a Native American male marrying a White woman got to keep his allotment. If a Native American woman married a White guy, haye would then own the land. Also because the land was allotted to all living tribal member, children also got the allotments, but since they were considered too young to know what to do with their land, the courts assigned guardians to manage the land until the child reached majority, but having no say in the land usage many children finally came into possession of land stripped of natural resources and with minerals rights signed away so that others, not they, profited.

That rich Oklahoma oil baron with the money and the political influence and because of it to have all laws go in their favor should have been a Native American.

Is it any wonder that the Republican legislature passed the bill and the governor of that state signed it, banning the treatment of Critical Race Theory or anything remotely close to it from being taught in a state that lives off systemic racism.

Looking beyond my having received the Angie Debo Civil Liberty Award from the Oklahoma ACLU, I recommend Angie Debo’s book And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes as it  details how the allotment policy was systematically manipulated to deprive the Native Americans of their lands and resources through continual governmental actions, state and federal, was rife with  Corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity that gave advantage to non-Indians who benefit from it even today and will into the future, while the Native Americans will not.

But don’t tell your children. It might disturb them. Better to just let it sit there and let the self-chosen benefit from it quietly and conveniently blind.

.

.

.

Oklahoma City has an extremely twisted history when it comes to accepting or rejecting those things outside the norm. At least that is what I saw and what I gleaned from life-long Oklahomans when they filled an out of stater in on what life was like before I got there so that I would know how things might be while I was there. There is a lot of oral history as no official histories are written about things not in the wheelhouse of the majority, and the veracity of the story sometimes depend on who told the story, how many details were consistent no matter how many times you hear a story from multiple sources, what jives with experiences, along with unsolicited information that just slips out in casual conversation.

So, although I know some details may be loose, it’s the kernel of the story I am conveying.

There was plenty of racism and Jim Crow, but, when it came to interactions between and among consenting adults, Oklahoma City’s attitude was somewhat fluid up to the moment when politics changed that.

The city may have decided where Black people could live in the city, what schools, churches, stores, public swimming pools, amusement parks etc. they best stay out of, and may have forced Chinese residents to live under the downtown area in a subterranean community, but it had allowed the creation of the Bonco Alley, a red light district that moved like an amoeba around the downtown area  over the years, where all manner of adult entertainment was available. What happened there stayed there, and like the Combat Zone in most major cities, drinking and sexual activity of any kind was easier to control by having it freely available in one area apart from the less sordid parts of the city. The city, which began as a collection of pop-up saloons during the Land Runs had a relatively open attitude toward those things that would become targets for elimination when it became clear that if you wanted to win political office it was an easy tactic to create an enemy and be the only protector against it.

In OKC this meant the adult entertainment places, rather than be corralled in one controlled space, spread throughout the city bringing the unseen and unsavory into areas where they were the unwanted interlopers when breaking up the Sodom and Gommorah became a political tool aided by the Baptist Church which never liked that area from the beginning.

In Curious Case of Benjamin Button style, the city went from being tacitly accepting of differences (except racial ones) with a wink and a nod, to slowly reversing that, so it became a slide that continued for years as politicians saw the effectiveness of the tactic.

The laissez faire attitude of the city took on tones of convenient persecution when election season began, and to attract the votes of the majority, of course those threats to the “normal” were the “pervs”, and being in the shadows for protection made Gay all the more scary, especially when preferred politicians got help in their candidacy from the pulpit where the Baptists pastors aided them by misusing the Bible in Jesus’s name.

The Gay Community was left largely alone unless someone got uppity, like Mr. Arnold Lee who ran a Gay nightclub and arranged for his Drag Performers to reserve some of their weekend tips to bail him out after the bar was raided as it frequently was. Mr. Tony Sinclair was featured in an ad printed in the local conservative newspaper, lounging on a fainting couch inviting people to see the shows at Lee’s Place.

Eventually, a Gay District grew in the city and many of the bars, quietly spread throughout the city, relocated to, or newly opened in a more friendly environment, but which had the negative affect of having all the Gays bars conveniently near each other to facilitate bar raids, during one of which a friend was arrested for lewd behavior in public for kissing another man inside the privately owned bar.

Over 30 years ago, as in the rest of the country, the Gay Community in OKC wanted the inequality and mistreatment to end, and people began to rise up to get the rights they should have had from birth.

Part of the move was to hold a Gay Pride Parade and Festival in the very Buckle of the Bible Belt, presently the Reddest State in the Union.

Along with getting permits and facing the expected difficulties, objections from the “good Christian people”, and threats from the KKK, the organizers were also unsure if anyone would march or if anyone would even be there to watch whatever type of parade it turned out to be.

On the day of the parade, there was indeed a crowd, so large that the pick-up truck of Klansmen left quietly having not carried out the threats they had made toward those involved prior to the parade.

However, because of the fear of lack of on-lookers, and assuming that most likely the people in the parade would be the only ones who could see it, ingeniously, the organizers got permits so that the parade could walk on one side of the boulevard’s median in one direction,  pass the street that led to the Gayborhood without turning on to it, and make a U-turn further So, here are some methods to heal your condition in quite natural way- Waking up early and buy cialis india going for the walk. Each sip, cipla viagra a pleasure trip. It’s a neurotransmitter that is thought to be cialis samples standard strength for treating chronic form of erection disorder. What are actually The Disadvantages of Working with These products? For many women, using these improvement pills offers a possible option to surgery, and a lot of them have been proven to have other health benefits like maintaining cholesterol level, reducing body weight, preventing gastric ulcers and improving the flexibility of body muscles. discount viagra up and march back toward the intended street so that if no one else was there, at least the people in the parade could see the parade before the parade became one long line into the Strip at 39 and Penn.

Thus, this unique feature of the OKC Pride Parade that remained for many years was born.

Nowhere else in the world does a parade make a U-turn so people in the parade can see the parade and cheer each other on, especially in the early days when marchers had no idea what they might encounter along the parade route.

Times have changed, and the knowledge of history has gone with it.

In recent years, Festival and Parade organizers have found the U-turn to unnecessarily lengthen the time from step off to arrival at the end of the parade and did away with it so that when they first arrive at the correct street, marchers make the left turn and no longer see the other people in the parade to cheer them on or see the whole parade themselves.

I was told by one of the people responsible for this erasure that since there were no spectators in the area where the parade passed itself, there was no reason to include it.

However, there were spectators. The marchers were the spectators.

Apparently, no research had been done beyond an empty observation.

Something with a history, something that made the OKC Pride Parade unique in all the world, has been ended for convenience. The history of the first Parade with its actually being organized, its preparation to face the Klan, the possibility of arrest if someone found anything, no matter how innocuous, violated community standards, and the tribute to the history of the OKC Gay Community has been blindly removed.

There are two things about the old OKC Pride Parade that took your breath away as you marched.

The first was being able to actually see the parade while marching in it and cheering the other marchers and being cheered by them.

The other is the point on 39^th Street entering the Gayborhood when, after marching pass the smattering of people along the way, upon cresting the final hill, there from that point until beyond the end of the parade are thousands of people crowded along the street. The experience is overwhelming for those in the parade for the first time, and still emotional for others no matter how many parades they have marched in.

So, for those to whom the history is lost, removed by those who do not see the significance both in its uniqueness and its true meaning, the connection to the people who gave those who removed the U-turn the rights they take for granted but for which the originators fought, and in some cases died before they could have what they fought for is broken.

Unfortunately, for future generations of the Gay Community coming along, the history and the people responsible for the U-turn is lost, and the Community culture and history become less.

The Gay Community erased a part of itself.

.

.

.

.

.

It can help maintain erection for men but even viagra free shipping the women can also avail the availability of any such drug. Myth – A manly man is bigger and stronger The viagra france greyandgrey.com mindset of having a bigger penile organ is better to perform sexual intercourse. So, buy Kamagra viagra for women price and see the results yourself. Various studies have shown that almost all men discount viagra that use it are going to be at a higher risk for erectile dysfunction.

.

.

.

You deserve to be happy in this cheap cialis Click This Link life. Oh sure, we’ve order generic cialis heard plenty about how they can impact efficiency. We use cosmetics, detergents that are full of toxic substances. viagra uk no prescription http://deeprootsmag.org/2019/10/29/in-heavy-rotation/ She had not the faintest desire or curiosity to try to free viagra tablets figure out if there was a way that she could allow her team to be more effective and faster-working solution.

.

Years ago, joking with a Black Woman with whom I taught, she noticed that I, a Gay man, was using certain phrases and certain deliveries of a point with the words and inflexion she was familiar with among her Black female friends. When I first met her, this was a few decades ago, her experience with known Gay people speaking comfortably about themselves was something with which she was not familiar, a major reason for lack of contact and, thus, the familiarity with facts she would have otherwise if they were not skewed on a religious basis.

Eventually we became good friends, and at her insistence one day in the teachers’ lunchroom, we sat and laughed our butts off as we played a sort of game, “What the Black Women say. What the Gays say”.

Other faculty members noticed that of all the people on the campus, this rather aloof woman, who kept mostly to herself and was known to be what one might consider in comparison to these days, a fetal Trumper, a situation from which she was saved by not only befriending her first Gay man, but, after the Gay man made  sure that she was seen clearly and at one point was featured, in the video of our well known strike pickets, making sure she was holding one of the best signs.

The similarities between Gay men and Black women speak was done as a lighthearted joking around, but, in truth, we both began to see the similarities in the treatment of both Blacks and Gays in this country, acknowledging that similarity neither means more, or equal. It just meant that these two separate groups had some experiences in common and we should help each other in those areas if not in all areas because of our links.

My surveys are not scientific, and as they are my observations, what conclusions I draw may be faulty, but the experiences upon which an opinion is formed cannot be denied.

My most recent observation of similarities is in the establishing of Juneteenth as a holiday. Because the historically isolated celebrations of Juneteenth among Blacks in the South, specifically Texas and Oklahoma, were community events out of eyesight of the White population that still had a problem with race, people outside the Southern Black population knew very little about how the people had been celebrating.

I have attended the real celebrations back when it was almost a counter-holiday that had to be secretly celebrated away from those who would be offended by it, especially in places where a secret race massacres could happen with no one addressing it until 100 years later.

I saw Juneteenth 2021 as the opportunity to compare how the holiday has been celebrated in the past according to its place of origin as opposed regional traditions that could be a form of celebration, but which lack the history and experience.

I attended two Northern observations, one at the NAACP headquarters campus where there was an attempt at tradition with some obvious tweaking. Cape Verdean food, although important in the Community of Color in my city, just was not part of traditional observations. It was some version of BBQ brisket and all the fixin’s, red soda, red velvet cake, and corn whiskey made by a trusted friend. To be clear, at this year’s inaugural celebration there was no corn whiskey, but those of us who knew, noted the absence.

The other observation was held on the historic estate of one of the richest whaling tycoons in the city’s history, a huge advocate for abolition and an activist in that having been instrumental in helping enslaved people after their self-emancipation, or closing an eye when ships were used as an alternative to the Underground Railroad. He was a friend of Frederick Douglass.

His gardened property and huge mansion just seemed to me to be a little too reminiscent of pre-bellum Southern plantations with white people gathered in the garden with a sprinkling of Black people. To acknowledge the solemnity of the holiday there were a lot of outfits that obviously are Sunday-go-to-meeting drag, and because of the nature and reputation of the estate and its historical importance, younger people would most likely avoid being there, and those who did attend dressed appropriate to the location. I would not have been surprised if at any point I was there, Scarlet came out of the house to stand on the veranda looking for Rhett.

The joy was there. The energy was there. The triumphal spirit of ancestors being remembered was there, but so were the festival booths, manicured lawns and flower beds, a looming mansion, people in groups conversing while sipping drinks, etc. so the whole visual was just not what I knew.

To me this is one more of those intersections between Gay and Black, if only as an opportunity to warn the Black Community to guard against the upcoming assault on the holiday by those who will define it from the outside and establish how it is represented and what those representations mean.

From a member of one group of people who have experienced discrimination, murder, threats to our families, jobs, and homes, and who needed to fight to get and protect the rights the Creator had already given us, to another whose own struggle though covering many of the same details had quite a few additional obstacles to overcome, a few words of caution.

The Gay Community only found out we were the LGBT Community because the media started using that letter sequence.

The Pride flag, the festivals and parades, and the commercial use of June to rake in profits were not well accepted in the beginning.

The beginning of Pride festivals and Parades wasn’t greeted with open arms. For years the news media, especially those that were evangelical televangelist owned, regardless of anything positive, ignored those things and concentrated on what could be controversial or offensive, depending on where someone was coming from in the judgment of others, showing selected videos on the news, printing the most outrageous pictures in newspapers, and promoting the idea that the festivals and parades were nothing more than an excuse for public lewdness.

I have been in a Pride Parade where a Baptist congregation ran into the marchers beating us with their ubiquitous leather-bound Bibles. Conservatives in the city where the parade was held wanted the city council to prevent the parade and deny the organizers any and all permits. Each year obstacles to help this along were created until the editor of the city newspaper pointed out that since the end of the city’s prominence as a seaside resort, the only parades they had anymore were the Gay Pride Parade and the elephants going from the train yard to the stadium where the circus was to perform. He wanted something more festive for tourists than just a row of trudging pachyderms.

In Oklahoma City, the KKK who had threatened the Community with attacking the marchers at the first Pride Parade there, being surprised how many Gay people came to the parade left before it began without having done anything. Annual coverage after that seemed to be a search for that which was most outside the norm to be used as a quick visual summary of the parade and festival for the purpose of presenting it as a threat to America, God, morality, country, and children.  After years of battles with the city about public acknowledgement of Pride Month and with the school district to add the words “sexual orientation and “gender identity” during which every morsel of anti-Gay bigotry was gleefully chewed by the administration who cared more about politicians and Baptist pastors as opposed the children under their care, the Parade and festival are now included in the state’s tourist guide and the school district has a presence in the Parade something unthinkable less than a decade before its first inclusion.

Once, in California, again a few decades ago now, the Gay Community in an Orange County town was advised to hold its first Pride Parade on a college campus because security would have had the advantage if the conservative groups carried through on their threat to drive the snakes out of the garden. As we marched, to our right was a line of angry people, some with the Stars and Bars and some with signs about pedophilia and damnation lined up at the top of the rise that followed the road. To our left was a happier mirror image of supporters lined atop the opposite rise, cheering as we passed.

Times changed. More people came out. It became increasingly more difficult to find the desired disgusting image. Corporations began to notice that there were a lot of people at these events, and they all needed to eat and drink, not only on Pride Weekend, but for the whole month, and beyond.

Corporations saw dollars where they along with society in general refused to see people.

The first Pride Flag was one made by community members and was a little more upbeat than the previously used Community symbol, the Pink Triangle, worn by the Gay inmates in Nazi concentration camps who were exploited as workers to clean out the very camps they had been dying in when others were liberated, returned to prison because technically they had not violated Nazi law as the Jews, Gypsies, and others had, but an anti-sodomy law which the United States basically agreed with, and were left out of history, denied any compensation because they were lawbreaking sodomites, and left off plaques at former camps bearing the list the groups held there such as the one at Dachau with the EU Parliament only recognizing their existence in 2005.

Since the formation of an erection depends on dilation, anything preventing it in younger men signals high risk the same problem will spread to other blood vessels in pubic and penile region begin rejuvenating and cialis 60mg regain their normal size. It’s not uncommon for tracks to cancel and postpone track activity, sometimes several hours or tadalafil generic canada even days, in advance of race weekends. Not only does that pump up the girth of the penis – simply from sheer blood volume – but the increase in oxygen-rich blood helps deliver vital nutrients to the get viagra overnight like this penis, promoting a boost in the overall health of the manhood. Being a generic form, it works very order viagra levitra well for men who suffer from ED and adverse reactions to the body.

The Community use of the Pink triangle was a form of reclamation, taking power out of a symbol by taking it back.

Obviously, this was not as cheerful as a rainbow.

Companies, mostly national brewers with nothing to lose if the experiment went wrong, seeing the crowds, noting the temperatures in June, knowing they could hand out for free barrels of their worst beer that only tasted good because it was fee and plentiful as there was no competition from another company as breweries began to sponsor festivals, and after counting the rubles, saw how lucrative things could be if, besides sponsoring one event, slapping a rainbow on any product and knowing that the Gay Community, like all communities, had members who could be fooled with the rainbow and would even spread the falsity that we as a people were being validated by the attention we were getting, could make more money.

I mean, just look at the rainbows everywhere on everything.

Spoiler.

Corporations know how to sell product. They know what to appeal to the most people willing to buy what they are selling both in physical product and false validation. They know how to rely on those who like moths to candles will jump to anything with a rainbow on it convinced it presence means something more cosmic than a gimmick.

Here’s some info for the Sallie Fields among us who bask in the adoration of their Gayness by corporate America.

I have friends in the Southwest who got the vapors when, upon entering a CVS, they came face to face with a huge Rainbow adorned, “you go, Gays!”, paper goods and wearable things you would own but never wear. In Texas, CVS backed Republican state senators Dawn Buckingham and Bryan Hughes, who co-sponsored SB1646 to make it a crime for parents to allow children to receive gender-affirming medical care.

In North Carolina the company backed state senator Ralph Hise, primary sponsor of S514, a law to ban anyone under 21 from receiving gender-affirming treatment, four years after his defense of the state’s anti-trans “bathroom bill”, so CVS knew who was getting their money.

Further CVS has donated $259,000 to 54 members of Congress who oppose the Equality Act and vote against it anytime it comes up.

But, hey, they sell rainbow stuff during June.

Although Xfinity tweeted, “Pride is the love we share. And with Xfinity, it’s Pride all year,” and its parent company, Comcast, created “a virtual ‘Pride World’ featuring “Pride events, Pride floats, Pride flags, and even a Pronoun Guide for employees”, Comcast has donated more than $1.1m to anti-GLBT politicians since 2019, including, no surprise,  $30,000 to the sponsors of anti-trans legislation in Florida and Texas,  and another $1,095,500 to 149 anti-Gay members of Congress.

Walmart with its website featuring a “pride and Joy” section has donated at least $442,000 to 121 anti-GLBT politicians.

AT&T, while going with “We can #TURNUPTHELOVE for LGBTQ youth together”, has supported sponsors of Anti-Transgender legislation in Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida.

Wells Fargo, to me always a shady bank, supports Heritage of Pride, the non-profit that plans and produces New York City’s Pride events, and donated funds to the openly and vocally anti-Trans North Carolina state senator Joyce Krawiec.

Many, even those who were there at Stonewall and have been active in GLBT rights ever since, have seen the influence of the corporation as the parade has become overly commercial allowing a party to erase what the whole thing is actually about and is getting organizers more into the glitzy corporate than the gritty real person on the street.

The parade has become all glitz and fabulousness that screams that corporations just love The Gays. Not needed and so erased are the seamier, unpleasant things like the people who had been at the Stonewall that night in June, the still existing struggles, the need not to forgot what got us to this point so we don’t see them taking it all away with us having no recourse but to turn to those who are offending us to redress their wrongs.

Our history is being rewritten by those who make a profit from us (Do I have to mention the Stonewall movie?), but that’s okay. I got a pair of rainbowed running shoes real cheap on the internetwebs, and I don’t even run. I bought it to pay back that company’s love.

General Motors claims it has a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but then has to explain that its political contributions

“do not represent an endorsement of the candidate or support for all the issues the candidate supports [and] we will continue to clearly communicate with policymakers GM’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion”.

However a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion would call for looking at any politician’s stance on those issues before giving them money. You don’t give candidates money because they wear nice ties, you pick the ones close to your own thinking. Donating to, let’s say, an anti-GLBT candidate by accident or dint of whimsey just does not happen.

Google and Amazon claimed a version of the same thing saying that a contribution doesn’t mean they agree with a candidate on every issue.

Again, however, if they are making contributions to candidates who have as part of their agenda preventing, limiting, or removing GLBT human and civil, creator endowed rights, the commitment to the community is at best commercially beneficial and they show the love by rainbowing up their logos, offering everything they could slap a rainbow on as an on sale, every-Gay-just-cannot-live-without item that we just cannot resist purchasing now that the thing we never wanted now has a rainbow on it.

Now I am waiting to see how, after observing the ways people celebrated Juneteenth, corporate America swoops in to capitalize on Juneteenth by unilaterally establishing what is required for a true celebration, what symbols will be used, and what is best to slap on beer cans.

We get a month of rainbows used to distract us from reality and it is working with way too many. Juneteenth got a unanimous vote in the Senate clearly to show America and the world that we have no racism here, jangling this vote at us like keys on a ring being jangled in front of a newborn.

What Juneteenth’s rainbow on a beer can equivalent will want us to miss is that half the members of that majority has voted against even discussing a voter rights law and refuses to honestly deal with racism in our history in schools and the body politick, some form of reparations to help a whole class of people who actively denied the opportunities to attain the American dream forcing them to live in conditions created by others who profited from that, and to honestly examine policing in the United States to make it better and less violent, violent sometimes to the extreme.

We get, “We slapped a rainbow on it.”

Juneteenth gets, “We slapped a holiday on it.”

Do not let corporations appropriate Juneteenth as they have done so well with Gay Pride.

Don’t let them establish the national holiday template complete with symbolism and sayings from people that actually had nothing to do with Juneteenth other than they’re Black, establishing the traditions as in food, drink, and decorations, and saying they obviously love you until all returns to normal on June 20 and they continue donating money to politicians and organizations that work against you passing the donations in the shadow of  anything with an African weaving design.

Don’t let them take it away, and do not let the younger people latch on to the commercial story as opposed the actual history.

.

.

.

.

Consequently, if one function cute-n-tiny.com viagra on line prescription increases, the other declines the load only to make proper balancing between two. Some anti depressant medications viagra cheap no prescription such as SSRI anti depressants develops erectile dysfunction in 65% of men according to a study. levitra prices purchased this Acai Berry Increases Longevity Acai fruit is also not safe. This levitra no prescription herbal pill is developed using pure extract of herbs that increase sex power.

.

Growing up Boston Irish Catholic in the 1950s, attending an elementary school run by nuns, being an altar boy, and having a reasonably religious family, at one point I wanted to be a priest, something that was not actually in the cards.

Being in the seminary and seeing how the sausage is made can turn you off to sausages, and when in later life, upon my accepting my sexual orientation after a long process, I found that regardless that I gave my youth to the church, because I was Gay, the church decided that I was a loss that should just be discarded.

My relationship with the church ended when the church chose to condemn me and worked very hard to get others to condemn me and mine more for politics than Christianity.

I, therefore, have many friends who are still involved in the Catholic Church from sitting in the pews on the required days to bishops, almost a pope.

Those who left like I did have their varying acceptance and rejection of the Church’s latest moves on social justice and equality issues. Some hold tightly to the tenets of the religion and with any pronouncements coming from the church Hierarchy, while others have arrived at the point that their involvement in the church has left them knowing some great people and memories, but with problems with some of the church’s latest politically motivated pronouncements.

Those who remained a part of the Church hope that all the extraneous involvement will someday recede, and the church will get back to its original teachings, pre-Renaissance and pre-Dark Ages, before politics took over the church and clerical positions like pastor, monsignor, auxiliary and full bishops, cardinals, the “princes of the church”, and a curia were instituted to run the political enterprise that was the church in a manner modelled after secular monarchic governments, a system if even originally good, became bastardized by the law of primogenitor that had the noblemen’s second sons entering the church to move up in the power structure of the mirror image of secular monarchies.

And when things got really uber-political, being a cardinal brought the same financial windfall that a noble inheritance would have supplied.

And, like many, the hearts of these priests, brothers, pastors, bishops, and higher ups in religious order hierarchies that I know sink any time groups like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops come out with a pronouncement that is obviously hypocritical and political.

I feel bad for my still involved with religion friends as they truly believe that which had them enter religious life to begin while seeing the same politics inside the sanctuary that they see in government and try to preserve real Christianity against the present non-christian actions of present day christians (small c) who would have Jesus a White man living in one of the Southern States where he wrote the Bible totally by himself in English, His time being taken up now with all the English versions of the Bible that he has to crank out.

It is not an official study, but when this latter group reacts on Facebook to some new church pronouncement, as loyal as they may be to their vocation, I can detect the pain in their words.

The latest stab at their hearts was the 168 to 55 vote in favor and 55 against after a three hour debate based on the belief that Biden’s of protecting and expanding abortion access is grounds for denying him Communion.

This is one more example of Christianity’s further politicization of Jesus in the flesh if you accept the Catholic Church’s belief in Transubstantiation that makes the bread and wine not just a re-enactment of the last supper with props but is actually turned into the body and blood of Christ at the Consecration part of the Canon of the Mass, the kernel of Catholicism.

A final vote on this total misstep will take place in November.

The bishops have established a specific admonition to Catholic politicians and any public figure who they deem disobeying church teaching on abortion and other core doctrinal issues.

My religiously grounded friends are just as confused as I am that a president who attends church regularly and bases his actions on his belief in what makes a person a true Christian having publicly stated,

 “My faith teaches me to care for the least among us. My faith implores me to embrace a preferential option for the poor and, as president, I will do everything in my power to fight poverty.”

He has also made it known that while he personally opposes abortion, he doesn’t think he should impose that position on Americans who feel otherwise. He is the president of all people and we the people hold to different religions or none, and do not have to be, nor should any of us be forced to follow the dictates of a You can buy kamagra from online drug stores safely free sildenafil samples and cheaply. By method for instance, in bosom disease patients, knead has levitra online sales been appeared to support the cells that battle tumor. You can purchase levitra 50mg from online drug stores conveniently. viagra comes under phosphodiesterase inhibitors, a class of drugs called PDE5-inhibitor. Kamagra Fizz is an oral medicine used order cialis in treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED). religious belief system to which we may not prescribe, and should not be forced to follow religious precepts over the Constitution forcing us to obey one religion’s rules as the law of the land. .

When John Kennedy ran in 1960 the big “fear” was that he would allow the Vatican to control American politics. This was the United States, after all, and no church should run the country. Apparently, until now when a Catholic president, only the second in the history of the country, chooses to govern according to the Constitution, the Bishops are emboldened enough to bring the Kennedy Dilemma out of the shadows and try to control the country and its secular leadership in broad daylight, creating the very thing feared, but this time with the support of those who feared a Kennedy/Vatican pipeline.

Biden will not be mentioned by name and there will be no blanket declaration, leaving decisions about Communion for specific churchgoers up to individual bishops and archbishops. The bishops make a controversial call, and then throw it to their underlings to take the heat.

Back in 1984 the bishops took the same action against vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro and then in 2004 against John Kerry.

Pope Francis has previously urged bishops not to use access to the Eucharist as a political weapon. In his 2013 Encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium, he asserted,

“The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak. These convictions have pastoral consequences that we are called to consider with prudence and boldness. Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse: it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all its problems.”

It “is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners.”

The Vatican’s Cardinal Luis Ladaria, a top doctrinal official, warned the bishops that going ahead with such a vote on this could “become a source of discord rather than unity.”

Just the news of this impending policy has been causing confusion among Catholics.

It will be interesting to see how loyal the bishops’ underlings are to the church beliefs as they choose to play American politics or obeying the Holy See.

The bishops are exerting pressure on a president who has stated,

“I accept my church’s position on abortion. That’s the Church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life. But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews.”

He recognizes a simple truth.

When Lyndon Banes Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, his fellow Southerners questioned why he, a Southerner himself, would betray Southern values and, perhaps, his own beliefs on race. He pointed out that he was president of all citizens of the United States, not just the ones who supported him or with whom he shares beliefs, but definitely no longer a person representing a specific area of the country or the people who lived there.

The same with Biden.

He is the “president of the United States”, not the “Catholic President of the United States”.

Meanwhile it has become only too obvious that while priests and other clerics were molesting children, these same bishops were then and remain silent now with many of these bishops guilty of just moving a molester quietly to another parish where he could begin molesting again with no one being prepared for that.

One of these very same people is in the position to deny giving Biden the Eucharist claiming he is violating church teachings which apparently is not the case with the molestation of minors.

Imagine a good, practicing Catholic subjected to the personal decisions and actions of someone who could very well be molesting the altar boy standing next to him as the priest denies Biden the Holy Eucharist.

Religion is killing itself, and this is a prime example of how.

.

.

.