“We have one demand only,” he said. “For equal protection under the law for LGBT Americans in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states.”

Now is the time, he said, for federal action – the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress provide us with a unique window.

His remarks came in response to local LGBT organizations who have complained that a national march siphons off energy, money and volunteers from local Congressional districts and civil rights fights.

But Jones said that “I reject the notion that there’s a finite number of volunteers at any one time. An equal amount of money is spent every weekend on major parties.”

If people are worried about money and volunteers, he said, then they should focus on growing the movement.

“A historic opportunity is open to us. It would be foolish and short-sighted not to push [for LGBT rights] on a Federal level. It is simply a matter of fact: true equality can only come from the Federal Government.”

Cleve said that he was “tired of the laundry list of individual demands that allow legislators to prioritize and compromise.” He is advocating for an ominibus bill similar to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

But Jones said he’d also be happy with individual bills that added up to a package of full civil rights.

**A reminder – 365gay will be at the March!**

We will have a meet up with other readers at Armand’s in DC at 7 pm on Sat. Oct. 10 (that’s the day before the march). It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet with pizza, salad and drinks for $12 each – but we need to give them a headcount by next week. So email me at jennifer.vanasco@ logostaff.com if you’d like to meet readers and (hopefully) some writers!

Yesterday we had two stories. The first was  about a  gay rights resolution passed by the National Education Association and the other covered some nuttiness spouted by Oklahoma lawmaker Sally Kern. The responses to both were disappointing and make me wonder if it’s time to stop reading our comment section.

Kern’s ramblings are silly. Few will dispute that; however, too many of the responses to Kern were sexist. Why people feel a need to call Kern out with language that only middle school boys use (or a certain gay gossip columnist)  is beyond reason. Please spare me any lines about how the revolution won’t be televised or whatever radical keyboard phrase people use now. It is possible to point out the large holes of logic in Kern’s diatribe without calling her names no one would ever call his/her grandmother. We gain nothing by taking down an opponent with sexist rhetoric. If you cannot be critical of Kern minus bigoted language, you and her are part of the problem. Both of you drink from the same well of ignorance.

As for the NEA resolution, the nation’s largest professional employee organization comes out for gay rights and says the marriage debate should be handled by the states. I guess if marriage rights is the only goal then the NEA is wobbly, but the organization’s resolution also asked for  “passage of a federal statute prohibiting federal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.” That’s a huge get for gays and lesbians and we should hold it up proudly to our enemies. I’m sure it makes them gnash their teeth.

If you spent your day looking at the comments left here and other gay political sites, you would think our lives were pre-Stonewall . Should we be singing songs of jubilation? No. The stories of August Provost and Chad Gibson should remind us of the work that needs to be done; however, like columnist Dan Savage said after the California Supreme Court’s Prop 8 decision: we are winning. Sure it’s a long slog and there are setbacks, but we are winning. And if you know anything about this country’s history, people respond best to optimistic warriors.

by Lisa Neff

Sometimes I say “I hate…”

I say, “I hate peas.” In fact, I’m frightened of them.

I say, “I hate softball,” because I believe it is misused to reserve a better game for boys and men.

I say, “I hate litter, smog, cold weather, hair in my food, rocks in my shoes, flat tires, lower back pain and when candidates lie when they know the truth.”

But when I think about the damage caused by hate, I regret that I ever say, “I hate…” and that saying “I hate” comes as easy as “I love…”

Hate, as defined by Webster’s dictionary, is “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury; extreme dislike or antipathy.”

I derive my hatred of peas from fear.

I get my hatred of softball from a sense of injury and injustice.

That hate that comes while watching a campaign commercial espousing known falsehoods, well, that boils out of fear, anger and a sense of injury.

Sometimes I say “I hate…” and sometimes I feel hate, and sometimes I mistake annoyance for hate — because it is difficult to compare my intesne aversion to cold weather to a person’s hatred of a kind of people or an organized effort to rally hate.

The FBI released a new batch of statistics in late October on hate crimes in America in 2007. The report comes out each year just after we observe the anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder and just before we observe the anniversary of Harvey Milk’s murder.

The FBI report, based on statistics provided by local law enforcement agencies, indicates a slight drop in hate crime incidents from 2006 to 2007. The bureau reported 9,535 people were targeted in 7,624 hate-crime incidents — 1.3 percent fewer than the year before.

The FBI also reported a 5.5 percent rise in hate crimes motivated by bias against a person’s sexual orientation, as well as another rise in the number of hate crimes against Latinos for a 40 percent increase since 2003.

About 52 percent of the reported hate crimes were classified as assaults and 47 percent involved intimidation.

If the FBI statistics accurately reported the number of hate crimes in America, such crimes would be occurring at about the cruel rate of one attack every hour of every day of the year.

But we know the FBI statistics undercount the number of hate crimes in America for a variety of reasons — victims may not report crimes, the most violent of crimes may not be investigated or prosecuted as bias-motivated crimes, reporting agencies change from year to year, definitions and classifications for hate crimes differ from locale to locale and some agencies do not track or report hate crimes. Mississippi reported zero hate crimes to the FBI for 2007. Alaska reported one bias-motivated crime and Georgia reported three incidents.

A U.S. Justice Department study, using National Crime Victimization Surveys, found that the hate crime rate is probably about 20-30 times higher than the FBI’s annual statistics suggest, that about 191,000 hate-crime incidents occur each year. If that number is accurate, and experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center and other anti-violence organizations believe it is, hate crimes occur at a horrific rate of 22 an hour of every day of the year in the United States.

It would be pie-in-the-sky to think that as the nation is poised to elect its first black president, hate in America would be directed not at people but just peas and litter, cold weather and flat tires.

But I can hope that this week’s election will bring change in Washington in January that will lead to change across America in the years to come.

Enacting the federal hate crimes legislation stalled by the Bush administration would be a start.

We must expand the federal government’s ability to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated crimes when local investigators are unable or unwilling to investigate.

We must make federal funds available to help local agencies offset extraordinary costs that can be associated with hate-crime investigations.

And we must expand the federal hate crimes law that currently covers race, color, religion and national origin to include sexual orientation, gender identity, gender and disability.