Some of my friends used to go to El Coyote. There was an email about one of the owners having donated to the Yes on 8 campaign. I responded to the email..........

I was unaware that there was a mail group for those of us who have downed a few too many margaritas at El Coyote. BUT....since I was included I figured where better to pontificate.

I have no interest in gay marriage. I think state involvement in people's lives ought to be kept to a minimum. I think we ought to get rid of marriage all together, replace it with domestic partnership for EVERYBODY and let people add what ever religious mumbo-jumbo to the process that they like. You could register your relationship at the county courthouse in the morning and have your wiccan high-priestess spilling candle wax all over the Berber carpet by lunch time. I think everybody ought to be entitled to all FEDERAL and state marriage benefits no matter what their relationship might be. Yeah if some guy wants to marry his toaster we will just deal with that on an individual basis....by putting a butterfly net over him and upping his Haldol.

AS for the current protests (and boycott of El Coyote)....well that seems to be a slightly different matter. The mormon church, based in Utah, sent letters to their congregants and suggested how they should vote and how they should spend their money. It is a violation of their 501 c 3 status. Additionally, they used the money to lie. They sponsored adds that were deceptive and homophobic. I think that there are more than 5% of the people who voted Yes on 8 who would have voted differently if we had pulled back the sheet of secrecy and revealed the involvement of the mormons in our polititcal process. I think more than 5% would say that they were duped and that they would have changed their minds. So....while I don't give two hoots about gay marriage, I DO care about the way the mormon church subverted our political process. They did it before with Prop 22 and they did it again and they will continue UNTIL we raise holy fucking hell about it.

I think the protest marches are great. I am the one who keeps reminding my fellow CSW board members that we have turned the march into a parade. We celebrate a riot that changed the landscape for human rights in the whole world and it is time we chanelled that energy again. BUT having said that....I think we are marching in the wrong place. Rather than blocking traffic on Santa Monica Blvd. I think we need to block the driveway that leads into the LA Mormon Temple. Block it on Saturdays so that all those sweet little mormon brides won't be able to get in to the temple to get married. Let them cry how we have ruined their marriage plans. Let them moan when they won't be able to learn the secret handshakes to get into heaven and have to postpone the reception being held that afternoon on the basketball court at the church. AND best of all.....let the potential husband have to wait to finally FINALLY have sex for the first time. Let the irony of the whole situation that THEY can't get married drip all over the place.

Mormons believe that men will have multiple wives in eternity, they believe that people of color were not valient as spirits, and those who were not born in the church are not as good as those who were. They believe that they are the ONLY true church on the earth and that baptisms and wedding performed by non-mormons have no validity. They believe that dead people ought to be baptized as mormons by proxy and do geneology so that they can do that for people. Recently that has included holocaust victims despite the pleas of the relatives to stop doing it. They believe that they are lead my an old man who talks face-to-face with god usually in the temple in Salt Lake City. They believe that there is no such think as gay or lesbian just people who struggle with same sex attraction. AND these are the people who determined the outcome of Proposition 8. And we let them.

We gave control to the assimilationist "leaders" of our community. We let Equality California take charge and try to act all nice and proper because they think if we just behave ourselves we will be accepted. They want people to believe that we are just like straight people except we suck each other's dicks and fuck each other in the ass. And they are not TOO comfortable with that. If we get married at least then maybe we will only do those awful sex things with one person. Remember the Mattachine society tried to do that and failed. It was a bunch of ugly drag queens who fought back and the world took notice. There are currently people trying to make sure that our protests are neat and orderly. They want us to listen as political hacks and hollywood flunkys tell us what we should think and how we should feel, They want the choas of change to be comfortable and risk free. And they will be swept up in the change and forgotten to history as just like those stupid Mattachine members.

There are members of our community who are already planning their future politcal careers. They want to be the "go-to" guys that the LAPD or City Hall can go to as liasons to the Gay community. They have chosen whose side they are on and want to deceive us that it is our side. It is not. They are standing on the sidelines trying to control the flood of progress by asking if we can't just be a little nicer. This is not going to be pretty. Hopefully, it is going to be effective.