News Tips?
-- tips@phblend.com

PHB Mobile


About
-- The Blog
-- Pam | My home page
-- Autumn
-- Daimeon
-- Julien
-- "Radical" Russ
-- Terrance

Contact the Baristas

The Blend Blogrolls

Activism


Best of the Blend
Blog Posts

Special Events and Interviews

Blend-o-licious endorsements...



The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend:
"a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."

He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior." (CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)


Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).

"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008



Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:

A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist."
(Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)

"A nutty lesbian blogger."
(MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)


Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush


who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
--"Joe"

Content © 2004-2008
Pam Spaulding

House Blend logo © 2005
Melissa McEwan

Photo of Pam Spaulding
© Judy G. Rolfe
All Rights Reserved.


SITE TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Support the Blend




An Online Magazine in the Reality-Based Community.



Equality for All Now: The Dallas Principles...join us.

by: Pam Spaulding

Wed May 20, 2009 at 00:00:00 AM EDT


(Note: This post will be up top for the morning. New content is below.)

The Dallas PrinciplesThere were a lot of things I could have done this past weekend. Get to that pile of laundry, hit the pillow for some sorely-needed shut-eye, and, of course, spend quality time with my wife. But I hopped on a plane to meet with 23 other people at a hotel at the Dallas Fort Worth airport. Why?

The reason we gathered was to see how we could seize this special moment in history, to think outside of the box about how we can accelerate achieving full civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in this nation. I had no idea who was on the list of attendees, by the way (see the list below the fold).

The result of our work is The Dallas Principles. The Preamble:

President Obama and Congress pledged to lead America in a new direction that included civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.  We now sit at a great moment in our history that inspires the nation to return to its highest ideals and greatest promise.  We face a historic opportunity to obtain our full civil rights; this is the moment for change.  No delay.  No excuses.

Nearly forty years ago, a diverse group of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people stood up to injustice at the Stonewall Inn in New York City.  In doing so, they submitted themselves to bodily harm and criminal prosecution.  Their demand was simple -- equal protection under the law.

Still today, full civil rights has eluded the same community that rioted forty years ago. Instead, untold sums of resources have been spent to divide our nation and turn our lives into a political football.

At several junctures in American history, the stars have aligned to deliver the promise of equal protection under the law to those previously denied.  At this unique time in history, our nation must once again exercise the great tradition of making its people equal.

Justice has too long been delayed.   A clear path toward full civil equality for the LGBT community is overdue and must come now.

Using fear and misunderstanding to justify discrimination is no longer acceptable in this nation. Those content with the way things are will be judged harshly by history.  Those who do not actively advance these ideals or offer excuses will be judged just as harshly. Those who attempt to divide our community or to delay and deny action on civil equality, waiting for the right moment to arrive, will be held accountable.

We reject the idea that honoring the founding principles of our country is controversial. We believe in the inherent human dignity of all people.  No longer will we submit our children, our family, our friends and ourselves as a political tool for any Party or ideology.  A new day has arrived.

Here in my home state of North Carolina, we enthusiastically voted for change in 2008, turning out in unprecedented numbers, flipping North Carolina to Blue in the presidential election; we also elected a woman as our governor for the first time.

Despite these landmark changes, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender North Carolinians, our newly Blue state does not see us as equal citizens under the law. We have not passed state hate crimes legislation; we can be fired from our jobs because of our sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. My marriage to my wife Kate -- we wed in Canada in 2004, is not recognized in this state. We are strangers under the law.

Sadly, too many of my fellow residents and state elected officials do not yet believe in extending full civil rights to tax-paying LGBT North Carolinians. It doesn't look like positive change here will come at the state level any time soon, either. That's why we need to work together at the federal level to bring us closer to full equality now.

The Principles, Goals, and Call to Action are below the fold.

Pam Spaulding :: Equality for All Now: The Dallas Principles...join us.
PRINCIPLES

The following eight guiding principles underlie our call to action.  In order to achieve full civil rights now, we avow:

  1. Full civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals must be enacted now.  Delay and excuses are no longer acceptable.
  2. We will not leave any part of our community behind.
  3. Separate is never equal.
  4. Religious beliefs are not a basis upon which to affirm or deny civil rights.
  5. The establishment and guardianship of full civil rights is a non-partisan issue.
  6. Individual involvement and grassroots action are paramount to success and must be encouraged.
  7. Success is measured by the civil rights we all achieve, not by words, access or money raised.
  8. Those who seek our support are expected to commit to these principles.

FULL CIVIL RIGHTS GOALS

Being united by common principles and engaging in united action, we will achieve the following goals:

  1. DIGNITY AND EQUALITY. Every lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender person has inherent dignity and worth, and has the right to live free of discrimination and harassment.
  2. FAMILY.  Every LGBT person has the right to a family without legal barriers to immigration, civil marriage or raising children.
  3. ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY.  Every LGBT person has the right to economic opportunity free from discrimination in employment, public housing, accommodation, public facilities, credit, and federally funded programs and activities.
  4. EDUCATION. Every LGBT child and youth has the right to an education that is affirming, inclusive and free from bullying.
  5. NATIONAL SECURITY.  Every LGBT person should have the opportunity to serve our country openly and equally in our military and foreign service.
  6. CRIME.  Every LGBT person should enjoy life protected against bias crimes.
  7. HEALTH CARE.  Every person should have access to affordable, high quality, and culturally competent health care without discrimination.

CALL TO ACTION

  1. We demand that government officials act now to achieve full civil rights without delay.

  2. Our organizations and individuals need to develop a collaborative and revolutionary new organizing model that mobilizes millions of supporters through emerging web and phone technologies.

  3. All LGBT individuals must accept personal responsibility to do everything within their power for equality and should get involved in the movement by volunteering, giving and being out.

  4. We will hold elected officials and our organizations accountable for being transparent and achieving full civil rights by active participation when possible and active opposition when necessary.

  5. Our allies need to be proactive in public support for full civil rights.

  6. Every government measure that quantifies the US citizenry must permit LGBT individuals to self-identify and be counted in every way citizens are counted.

  7. We demand that the media present LGBT lives in fair, accurate and objective ways that neither include nor give credence to unsubstantiated, discriminatory claims and opinions.

This is about looking forward, being proactive and getting involved. I, along with my fellow authors of The Dallas Principles, believe the time for change now, as equality blossoms across this great nation.

I attended the Dallas Meeting to help develop this fresh vision, principles, goals, and call to action because of the winds of change and hope  ushered in with the election of Barack Obama. We have to make this a reality, and it will take work -- collaborative work.

My personal goal is to effect change at the federal level that will bring my fellow LGBT North Carolinians closer to full equality under the law.

I ask you as allies, elected officials, neighbors, colleagues and friends to seize this moment and openly support achieving equal rights for all now.

Visit thedallasprinciples.org to learn how you can be part of this effort.

Join the growing chorus of Americans speaking in unison that now is the time to provide full civil rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens, click here to sign up for notifications of equality actions.

***

Email info@thedallasprinciples.org

The Dallas Principles on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/DallasPrinciple

Twitter Feed:
http://twitter.com/statuses/us...

The Dallas Principles on Facebook:
http://tinyurl.com/owhf4s

***

I made a counter widget (the real one is in my sidebar).


You can get the code here.

***

The Authors of The Dallas Principles
(bio information here)

Juan Ahonen-Jover
Ken Ahonen-Jover
John Bare
Jarrett Barrios
Dana Beyer
Jeffrey Campagna
Mandy Carter
Michael Coe
Jimmy Creech
Allison Duncan
Joe Falk  
Michael Guest
Joanne Herman
Donald Hitchcock
Lane Hudson
Charles Merrill
Dixon Osburn
Lisa Polyak
Babs Siperstein
Pam Spaulding
Andy Szekeres
Lisa Turner
Jon Winkleman
Paul Yandura

Tags: , (All Tags)
Bookmark and Share
Print Friendly View Send As Email
AMEN
Thanks Pam and thanks to all who contributed to this Dallas Charter.

However, I must say, that first you need to spend time to get the GLBTQ community behind it. I have advocated for years mostly all of the principals outlined in the document above. Unfortunately, recently when I have voiced my displeasure regarding the Obama administration and its lack of any kind of movement in fulfilling campaign promises have been slammed big time, and not by christianists or wingnuts but by other GLBTQ Obamacons. Hell I voted for the guy but I did not leave my brain in the voting booth.

So lets all hash it out here and get on board this charter.  We obviously are not going to get help fulfilling our destiny from the Obama administration so lets forge ahaed with making friends and allies elsewhere.  

Lets also get out in front of every issue big and small and make our voices heard and our actions observed.  We are all activists in our daily lives and each one of us plays such an important part.

It is time to rally around eachother, instead of the constant internal bickering.  Drop the bullshit and lets go get us some equal rights!

vanhattan


thanks, vanhattan
It's time to stop the bickering. We have to dispense with the inertia, the hiding in fear, the reticence to speak out, and more important to the cause, living life out of the closet and asking our allies to step up and come out in public in support of equality.

The timidity of those who have the power to grant us full civil rights has been a motivating force for people to step up to the plate.


[ Parent ]
You're welcome Pam
I worship the quicksand you walk on and you always have my support.

This is a great endevor and it is about time to demand what is rightfully ours.

vanhattan


[ Parent ]
seems to me
that on an issue like DADT the public is overwhelmingly FOR repeal.  But, the pols still won't do anything.  What do we have to do?  Get 100% approval before the pols will act?

I do think that keeping issues like DADT in the news everyday MAY just embarass the admin into doing something.  There was another very high profile (decorated pilot) member of the military out there today being fired for being gay.  And, another question from the media about DADT.  THis time with the pentagon saying they are doing NOTHING to prepare or plan for ending DADT.  Even though the white house just said they are in discussin with the pentagon about how to proceed.

If we keep applying the pressure, maybe it will help.  Because it certainly hasn't helped that close to 70% of the citizens approve of repeal.


[ Parent ]
Can you say, Political Football?
  The LGBT community stood strong this last election for President Obama and other Democratic Candidates.  They felt they needed our voting block to turn out in a huge percentage.  Which I am sure we did.

 President Obama needed the LGBT community during the primary to defeat Sec. Clinton.  We did deliver.  We delivered because the promises he made to the LGBT community regarding equality, even though he helped prop H8 pass.

 With some republicans coming out in favor of LGBT Equality,  Megan McCain,

 They Democrats might want to think about acting.  If there is more of a movement in the GOP towards Equality, and we are still stuck with nothing but empty promises by the Democrats for years.  They will lose big time.

If I make sense? it was quite by accident.


[ Parent ]
Pam, I hope they handed you a flack jacket as you left.
I'm going to ask the organizations I work with to sign onto this immediately if not sooner.

But you had to know that the very idea of measuring success 'by the civil rights we all achieve, not by words, access or money' was fightin' words.

How will the lines between The Important Insiders and The Unrealistic Whiners Who Don't Understand Politics be kept in place,   if we start measuring results rather than dollars raised?

Not to even mention the notion that grassroots, not-even-professional organizers can leverage the network to create immediate results without custom-funded and lengthily-implemented infrastructure.

Get me the smelling salts now, because I'm gonna need them. You're gonna need an ice pack for someone, 'cause that is going to leave a mark.

But wait, there's more!


Keep the pressure on.
And thanks for doing the hard work for our community.

Join the fight~!
This is a the time to demand no more excuses, no more delays.  Please forward this to your friends and become a fan of our page at - http://www.facebook.com/pages/...

By the way...

I'm not a direct signatory, but Pam speaks for my views on this here at The Blend. In solidarity with with my head barista Pam, I fully and unequivocally support The Dallas Principles.

Pam didn't just sign for herself, she signed for me too.

-----
~~Autumn~~

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
--Henry David Thoreau


It's a shame that these ideas are revolutionary, but, 40 years after Stonewall, they still are.
I think the self-appointed leaders of No on Prop 8 may have done our community the biggest favor in our history.  By simply handing our statistical lead to the Mormons,  by "fighting back" with the equivalent of meekly begging for people to consider maybe picking on us a little less, by hoodwinking queers statewide and throwing the election to our enemies and still only losing by the slimmest of margins, I think they energized the LGBT community worldwide.

Tell the truth and refuse to be bullied by crazies, defectives and inferiors.  It really is just that simple.

I've only heard of four names on that list and of those I can only postively identify Pam and Lane, but this isn't about that.  The important thing is that these ideas become popularized to the point where every LGBT citizen and ally embraces this.  This is the most important of all memes.

The only thing I would change is number 4 to read "The religious beliefs OF SOME are not a basis..."  The way it reads now can be read to imply that all religions have it wrong, which is, of course, not true.  Also, I'm all for marginalizing the bigots whenever you can.

No more pretense.  No more debating lies.  No more perversions of law, no more enshrining hate.  No more settling for anything less than what the Constitution guarantees us all.


Excellent
Pam, may I have your permission to crosspost this on my site as well as pass to as many friends as possible?

Click HERE and sign up: Campaign For Military Partners

Click here for DADT photobook


yes, Louise
Sure you can cross-post this item! And others may do so as well as long as you:

1) link back to the Blend and obviously credit me, lol.
2) make sure to ask people to sign up.
3) put the widget up if your blog platform supports it.


[ Parent ]
I vow to do what I can to promote this
Pam, you and the rest of the group in Dallas have my undying appreciation and support. If there is anything that I can do to help, I will

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même merde.

join the FB group and follow on Twitter
The Dallas Principles on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/DallasPrinc...

The Dallas Principles on Facebook:
http://tinyurl.com/owhf4s

I'll be Tweeting from time to time on there.


[ Parent ]
I guess I will set up a Facebook account, then
I'm a bit leery of Twitter, though; the Internet is already a massive time suck as it is. Thanks for the links!

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même merde.

[ Parent ]
Added image and link to LiveJournal
gadow.livejournal.com, on the right sidebar near the top.

For now, I'm bandwidthing your image. With your permission, I can copy it to one of my sites and link from there.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même merde.


[ Parent ]
Dallas Principles YouTube Channel is live
From the Dallas Principles You Tube Channel, Dr. Dana Beyer, one of the attendees:

I will make a video as soon as I have a free moment. Sigh, when is that?


We deserve this.
Thanks Pam and all the Dalles gang.
Makes me feel calm this morning to read this.  
I so agree will all.

It's about time
somebody bothered to put the Gay Agenda into writing.  Needless to say, the fundies will have a field day feeding their flocks' paranoia with this.  Too bad there's so little they can do to stop it, huh?

Cynic, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  
-Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


Good ideas put into good words to make a good document.
24 people gave it life, now the fight to keep it alive and make it reality. Do we just blog about it to each other, or do we have an action plan that actually involves doing something?

If it had come out earlier, state representatives and senators could have submitted The Dallas Principles as resolutions to their legislatures for approval and passage.

Will it be read into the Congressional Record and become American history? Will it be published by some of the major players in the mainstream media so everyone can hear about, and discuss, it? Can we get the GLBT organizations to adopt and promote it? Can we get widespread and repeated condemnation of it from radical conservatives and right-wing nutjobs so it can gain widespread support among reasonable people? Will it be presented in businesses, schools and universities for educational purposes and policy actions? And so on...

Or will it have fleeting fame and then be placed on the shelf and forgotten like so many other worthy attempts at equality?


I think it is up to us to decide that.
Great questions Cathy Cat.
We can go sign it and then forget it or we can use it at the grass roots level to rally all our local organizations with.
We can not go sign it and bitch that others were left out and blog about that too.

I think each of us who really has the inclination to be an activist has to now use it to rally the troops, keep it in the public eye and MAKE IT WORK.

It isn't going anywhere if we now leave the 24 to take care of it. They will burn out. It has to be thousands of us taking care of it, nurturing it and making it grow.


"They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol



"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" - Blaise Pascal


[ Parent ]
A good start...
1) Any group worth its salt has to explicitly reject being an adjunct to the Democratic and Republican parties like LCR, the Stonewall Democrats, NLGTF and the HRC. These people can be our allies if they choose to but although so far they've chosen to be our enemies.

If they want to be our allies it has to be on our terms. We're not here to raise money of hustle votes but to win our equality and the two strategies are contradictory and mutually exclusive.

2) The group has to immediately contact the AFL-CIO's Pride at Work constituency group to involve unions on the ground floor and to involve the broadest range of activist groups and activists.

This group is a little like the Committees of Correspondence, a good first measure. Now we need a whole bunch of MinuteGLBTpersons culled from the best activists in our communities. The original Minutemen didn't have a powdered wig among them and fought like Native Americans but they did win the battles. We won't win without mobilizing and organizing activists from our own our communities.  

3) To avoid being sucked into the quagmire of electoral politics the group should adopt a program of mobilizing our communities for persistent mass actions to compel passage of our agenda. That kind of action orientation will put us in a good position as the war and economic crises deepen.

The looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons - they're greedier, they fool more people and they're able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.  


Menu

Make a New Account

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?




Join the Blend Chat Room



Report TOS Violations

Premium Sponsors



BlogAds






Search the Blend
Current site


PHB 2.0 Web
Search Blend 1.0 Archives
Ad Networks


BlogSheroes BlogAds


Miscellany

RSS Feeds

Subscribe with Bloglines

Visit NCBlogs


frontpage hit counter

Stats

Powered by: SoapBlox