'Gay' Omission: Red Stripe Beer Pulled Support of

Homo-Hating Concerts in Jamaica

Last April, the manufacturer of Red Stripe beer, Diageo, a mega-corporation with extensive beer and liquor brands, ended support of concerts because some of the singers espouse and worship violence against gays.

Actually, the company didn't come right out and say that in their vaguely worded explanation, which did condemn the singers' glorification of violence, but it stopped way short of relating their move in any manner with the epidemic of anti-gay assaults and murders in Jamaica.

Excerpted from the one-page statement:

The Red Stripe Company has maintained a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the music industry and together we have worked very hard with promoters and artistes to uphold globally acceptable standards.

Over the years, however, a very negative trend of glorifying violence has crept into some of the music, causing much consternation among well thinking Jamaicans and others at home and abroad. This has far-reaching and damaging implications for the industry and for the country as a whole.

Yes, the impact of this trend has directly contributed to the launch of the boycott Jamaican campaign. This would have been the perfect paragraph for Red Stripe to clearly state it's opposition to homophobic lyrics calling for assaults and murders against gays.

If the Red Stripe executives can't be out and upfront about how their support for tolerance and support for gay Jamaicans, don't expect me to count the corporation as a friend.

While our most recent efforts through the Coalition of Corporate Sponsors have met with some measure of success, some performers continue to propagate, through their live performances, violent and anti-social lyrics.

Why did Red Stripe fail to say anti-gay lyrics? I like my corporate friends to issue explanations that use words like gay, homosexual, homophobia and ending violence against gay people.

Red Stripe will not be party to this, and thus we have taken the very difficult decision of withdrawing sponsorship from live music events.

What the hell could be so difficult about not sponsoring musicians and concerts that call for murdering and abusing gay people?

Consequently, Red Stripe will not renew our contract for title sponsorship of Reggae Sumfest and Sting. We will, however, ensure that our brands are made available whenever and wherever our loyal consumers enjoy premium alcohol beverages.

Don't expect too many gays to be among those consumers.

It is our hope that our action will cause the proponents of this destructive trend in local music to stop and take stock of the negative impact of their actions on the society and seek to make a change. Red Stripe looks forward to the time when good sense will prevail and we can see a return to improved quality and standard of music that all Jamaica can be proud of. At that time we will review our position.

Let me know when that time has arrived. In the meantime, the boycott of Red Stripe beer, Myers's rum and tourism to Jamaica continues.

Kors/EQCA Sitting on Finished Prop 8 Audit?

Just over a month ago, I blogged about the two long-promised audits of the No on 8 campaign and the role of Equality California in the campaign.

Now, five months after the A-gays on the executive committee of the campaign and their well-compensated consultants lost gay marriage in California, and burned through $45 million doing so, word comes from Seth Hemmelgarn of the Bay Area Reporter that one of the audits is finished.

However, the audit has yet to see the light of day beyond the ivory tower of EQCA's headquarters in the Castro.

From the BAR's blog last Thursday:

Geoff Kors, EQCA’s executive director and a member of the No on 8 executive committee, told the Bay Area Reporter in a March 30 e-mail that the report “was expected to be received tomorrow and released in its entirely sometime soon.”

Why is this man still in a leadership position in California? I don't understand why, after losing so much for gays, he's still in charge of "our" statewide organization. A crisis went to waste, in that after Prop 8 won, no structural changes were made to Gay Inc in California and the generals who lost the war are still in charge.

Vaishalee Raja, EQCA’s communications director, responded to questions about the report in an e-mail April 9.

“We’re just waiting for the final, final version of the report,” Raja wrote. Staff have reviewed previous drafts and provided edits as basic as language, grammar, and punctuation, and they’ve added substantive material because the firm’s information was incomplete for certain parts of the report, she said. ...

“The delay is simply due to Geoff’s intense schedule and all the traveling he’s been doing, and the report is around 35 pages so there’s a lot of material to comb through,” she wrote. “Plus going back and forth with the firm on edits is taking some time.”

I don't trust anything anyone from this organization has to say. They lied so many times during the campaign, and have shown themselves beholden to A-gays only, all the while positioning themselves to lead the next ballot proposition on gay marriage.

Raja said in her e-mail that the B.A.R. will hopefully get a copy of the report by Tuesday, April 14, the day after EQCA is set to lead a marriage equality town hall in San Francisco, “which means we’ll probably be working over the weekend again to get everything into shape.”

She did not immediately respond to a message asking how much EQCA is paying Woodward and McDowell, the Burlingame-based ballot measure and issue advocacy firm, to conduct the assessment. Raja later said EQCA is paying $7,500 for the report.

Kudos to the BAR for informing us of the cost for the audit. Every detail of it must be transparent and scrutinized.

Ted Green, a project director at the firm, said the report contains three sections: an inventory of what EQCA did to try to help defeat Prop 8; an analysis of what’s happened since November, when the measure to ban same-sex marriage passed with 52 percent of the vote; and “lessons learned and recommendations going forward.”

Green is gay and volunteered with No on 8, though he noted that the firm was not involved in the campaign. He said the substantive material Raja referred to pertains to the inventory portion of what EQCA did. ...

“We took an objective look at what Equality California did,” Green said when asked if his volunteer role with the campaign could taint the evaluation. “We came at it from the view of people who wanted to see Prop 8 defeated” and see marriage equality in California.

Green said he couldn’t say how much EQCA is paying for the assessment.

Huh? EQCA said the cost was $7,500, so why would he not know the cost involved? Cost aside, would be nice of EQCA to share this report with the community.

There’s no word yet on when the larger assessment of the No on 8 campaign will be available. That evaluation is being conducted by UCLA.

C'mon, UCLA. Get moving on your audit and give the community a clue as to when your report will be made public.

Denver Post: Gay Iraqi Killings Shouldn't be Ignored;
Hello HRC, HRW, IGLHRC, NGLTF?

After reading this excellent editorial in today's Denver Post, two thoughts came immediately to mind.

First, we need to save daily corporate newspapers such as the Denver Post and the New York Times, two papers that devoted staff time and resources, and column inches, to the plight of gay Iraqis and the death threats they suffer from lots of forces. Unlike the Human Rights Campaign, the Human Rights Watch, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Denver Post and NY Times are not silent about the murders of gay Iraqis.

Second, if either paper wants to offer memberships to gay advocates who appreciate and support their advocacy on behalf of gays around the globe, I'd like to be among the first to sign up.

This forceful editorial puts HRC, HRW, IGLHRC and NGLTF to shame. The headline alone should cause much embarrassment at those organizations, and their ability to ignore the gay blood flowing in the streets of Baghdad. Here we have the corporate media doing a better advocacy job than our own gay advocates, calling on the State Department to investigate the gay murders.

Thank you very much, Congressman Polis and the editorial writer responsible for this editorial at the Denver Post, for raising your voices on behalf of gay Iraqis. Here are excerpts from the editorial:

Killing of Gay Iraqis Shouldn't be Ignored

The U.S. State Department must not stand idly by if the Iraqi government fails to protect basic human rights, even if the persecution stems from traditional cultural or religious beliefs.

We applaud Colorado Congressman Jared Polis for his efforts last week to shine the spotlight on the killings of homosexuals in Iraq, and to press the State Department to demand accountability from the Iraqi government. ...

His research led to the discovery of a transgender Iraqi man who told the congressman he had been arrested, beaten and raped by security forces with Iraq's Ministry of Interior.

Human-rights groups have passed information to Polis that claims another man was beaten into confessing he belonged to a gay-rights group and that the man had been sentenced to execution by an Iraqi court.

Polis, who toured Iraq last week, passed along a letter outlining his grim findings to State Department officials in Baghdad. He told Riley: "We will see whether the Iraqi government is serious about protecting the human rights of all Iraqis, and we can also see what role our own State Department can play in helping to protect this minority in Iraq." ...

In the past two months, at least 25 men and boys were killed, usually by multiple gunshots, their bodies often left with signs in Arabic that declared: "pervert."

Meanwhile, Iraqis are murdered for many reasons, greatly complicating the situation on the ground. It's hard to imagine the country will have much stability or peace if it can't quell such things as religious killings and the so-called "honor killings" of women who may have had extramarital relations. ...

But because of his position as an openly gay Democratic representative serving while his party controls Washington, Polis has a unique opportunity to press the issue. We hope he continues to encourage the State Department to act, and continues to talk about these issues often relegated to the shadows.

We realize our nation has its own issues to worry about when it comes to treatment of gays and lesbians. But we've lost and risked far too many of our troops to help establish and protect Iraq's new government to stand by and watch Iraqis, especially if their government is involved, murder their own in blatant defiance of basic human rights.

Lorri '$327,000' Jean's
Sabbatical Abroad in April

I sent an email this week to the executive director of the LA gay community center, Lorri L. Jean, who, according to a recent Washington Blade survey, earned $327,000 last year, and Jean's addy sent back this automated reply:

I am out of the country and will not be back in the office until April 28, during which time I will not have access to email. If your matter requires attention before I return, please contact my assistant, Adriana Rosales, at 323-993-xxxx.

Odd, I thought, that she would be taking another vacation, er, sabbatical so soon after her trip to Hawaii in December, on top of her taking a one-month vacation to Alaska last summer during the Prop 8 campaign.

My curiosity aroused about why Jean would be out of her office for practically the rest of the month, I shot some questions over to the communications office of the LA gay center. This was the reply:

Hi Michael –

As you probably remember from my Dec. 5 e-mail (see below), more than a year ago our board approved a sabbatical for Lorri, which she split into two parts. She took the first part of her sabbatical during the holidays.

The second part was scheduled to begin last month. Although she decided to cancel the second half of the sabbatical, she couldn’t cancel a trip with her mother that she had pre-paid. She left yesterday and will be back on Friday, April 24.

Is there anything I can help you with?

Best,
Thomas Soule
Communications Manager
Marketing & Communications
L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center

-----Original Message-----

[December 2008]

Hi Michael,

In response to your question about Lorri L. Jean, I can tell you that upon returning to her duties as the Center’s CEO after being on loan to the No on 8 Campaign, Lorri began a portion of a sabbatical granted to her by the Center’s board of directors that she had postponed for more than a year. She will return after the holidays.

Best regards,
Thomas Soule

I sure get the sense that Jean's day job is a real hindrance to her passion for travel. Maybe the LA gay center's board can find a way to give Jean even more time off and a higher compensation package, so she can see more of the world, while the rest of us slog away at movement work and community organizing, and keep things moving forward.

If history is any indication, when she returns from seeing the world, she will castigate the community for complacency about something related to either gay or HIV issues, just like she complained after her Alaska sojourn and found Prop 8 losing.

Lorri Jean - the perfect example of an over-compensated and dripping with privilege A-gay mover-and-shaker.

Gays Rally at Iraq's UN Mission
Over Dozens of Deaths

There are two reports out from the demonstration today at the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations in New York City. The first is from Wayne Anderson, who operates the World of Wonder site:

I attended the NYC Rally for Gay Iraqis at the Iraq Mission to the U.N. on East 79th Street. It was a smaller and much more somber tone at today’s rally compared to the recent events I’ve attended in celebration of marriage equality, and for good reason. ...

Walter Armstrong, the organizer of the rally, called on President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to hold al-Malaki accountable for the flagrant violations of international law. He also tried to deliver a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at the door of the Mission, requesting that al-Maliki take immediate steps to condemn the anti-gay terrorism.

The police refused to allow him to deliver the letter which caused the somber protest to erupt into momentary anger, with protesters calling on the police to stand aside and allow him to deliver the letter.

In either case, the mission doors were shut tight and no one came in or out of the door during the entire rally.

And over at Joe.My.God., Joe has shared this report. He's also posted some video footage:

What would have been a relatively low-key demonstration turned somewhat ugly due to the NYPD, who at first refused to allow activists to stand on the public sidewalk in front of the Iraq Mission, then threatened to arrest anyone who attempted to ring the building's bell and deliver a formal letter of protest.

Reporter Andy Humm of Gay City News vehemently objected, shouting, "You can't ring a bell and deliver a LETTER in NYC?" Eventually two men appeared from inside and a man who identified himself as Yassar Mohammed accepted and read the letter but said he would have no official comment, as the Mission was observing "Great Friday."

A big round of thanks to all the New Yorkers who showed up for the action today. I'll do my part to spread the word about the rally, and share some images. These photos are from Wayne Anderson and his World of Wonder site:

A remembrance wreath lain at the steps of the Iraqi UN Mission,
surrounded by placards.

Brendan Fay, holding sign, and Walter Armstrong, reflected in mirror, contend with a member of the NYPD, at the Mission's door.

From the left: Walter Armstrong, with flowers and letter; Bill Dobbs, holding a sign; and Andy Humm of Gay City News, taking notes.

State Dept Press Briefings
and Gay Iraqi Murders

Over the last seven days, we've seen numerous wire stories, reports on CNN, gay protests, Italian and Arab news coverage, a front-page article in the New York Times and a handful of gay blog posts about an epidemic of murder of gay men in Iraq.

It's abundantly clear gays are targeted by many social and political forces in the US-occupied country, and that media interest and global gay community concerns are increasing.

Yet, the matter of any US government concern about the gay Iraqis and the killings didn't come up once during any daily press briefing at the State Department.

No related questions were raised at last Friday's briefing. Same thing at the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday briefings with department spokespersons.

If we had our professional community organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, IGLHRC, HRC, NGLTF or GLAAD, raising a ruckus about the murders and pressing State Department reporters to pose questions about the deaths and the US response to them, and how we intend to help gay Iraqis, we might have the reporters asking questions at the briefings, thereby forcing the department to go on record about the murders.

I really don't understand why we have these advocacy organizations, and allow them to maintain silence about the murdered gay Iraqis and making no visible push to have the US government recognize the killings and raise objections, maybe even investigate the killings.

It's going to take a lot more than this blogger to persuade the State Department to say something, anything, about the dozens of dead gay bodies turning up in Baghdad in recent months.

NYC Rally for Gay Iraqis, April 10, Noon:
Iraq Mission to the UN

This press release just arrived from the organizers. I hope they get a good turnout and then they share lots of photos and news coverage of their event:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:
Brendan Fay
(917) 402-3134
Walter Armstrong
(212) 674-6168

Iraqi Murder Campaign of Gays Spurs Vigil, Rally In NY

Gay and Human Rights Groups To Demand Immediate Investigation and
Diplomatic Intervention from Pres. Obama, Sec. Clinton., Other Officials On ‘Sexual Cleansing’

(New York, NY) - LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and human rights groups, increasingly alarmed about reports by the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters on the continuing harassment and murder of gay men, including 6 last week, and of the fate of an estimated 128 men on death row (many convicted for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality), will hold a protest and vigil outside the Iraq Mission, 14 E. 79th Street in Manhattan, Friday, April 10, 2009 at 12 Noon.

Organizers of Friday’s protest point to the staggering number of gay men killed: over 400 since 2003, and over 85 since 2005. Men have been identified in and around Baghdad’s Shiit slum known as Sadr City with bullet-ridden bodies, some with broken arms and legs, and with the words “pervert” or “puppy” (a derogatory word used by residents in Sadr City to refer to gays) written on their chests. In an act of intimidation, a café frequented by lgbt citizens of Sadr City has been firebombed.

Reports on the root cause of the murders range from religious decrees by clerics -- Moktada al-Sadr, an influential, anti-American cleric with considerable influence in Sadr City recently devoting Friday prayer service to inveigh against homosexuality – to families and tribal groups repulsed by homosexuality who defend their killings as being perpetrated at the behest of the ‘democratic’ Iraqi government. Shiite and Sunni death squads, militias, and officials point to homosexuality as a ‘crime punishable by death’.

"These gross human-rights violations are not a series of isolated or sporadic acts of violence but the widespread practice of 'sexual cleansing' against the Iraqi gay community," states Walter Armstrong, an organizer of the vigil and rally Friday. "We are delivering a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanding that he take immediate steps to publicly condemn this anti-gay terrorism and order his security forces to put an end to it. We also ask President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to hold al-Malaki accountable for these violations of international law."

Brendan Fay, a co-organizer, is urging immediate intervention by U.S. officials, namely President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. “LGBT people are being harassed, threatened, detained, tortured, shot and maimed with no right to legal representation, all this with the unabashed cooperation of family, tribal leaders and state officials. We cannot afford to wait until GOP leaders lift their hold on President Obama’s nominee Christopher Hill to the post of Ambassador to Iraq. We merely need aggressive, diplomatic action from Obama, Secretary Clinton and anyone with the power and will to save the lives of our brothers in Iraq.”

Ali Hili, an exiled, self-identified gay Iraqi runs a London-based group called Iraqi LGBT that is working to put a stop to the murders. Iraqi LGBT has posted a petition at its web site, iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com. Additionally, his group operates a series of safe houses for lgbt Iraqis.

On Friday organizers will demand that the State Department help support the protection of targeted or threatened lgbt Iraqi’s with funds and other resources to expand the network of safe houses and the “underground railroad” that currently takes at-risk individuals out of the country. Additionally, Fay, Armstrong, Hili and Michael Petrelis, who helped form a similar rally in San Francisco on April 6th, ask that members of the lgbt and human rights communities contact their elected officials and advocacy organizations to demand change of ‘lax’ U.S. policy towards persecuted lgbt individuals worldwide, most pressingly in Iraq.

-- 30 --

Arab TV, Italian Press: San Francisco Protests
Iraqi Gay Murders With Funeral

Something was lost in the translation. Let's go over the known facts about Monday's action in San Francisco designating the base of the rainbow flag at Harvey Milk Plaza as the Tomb of the Unknown Gay.

There were 15 gay advocates who attended a short press conference, laying down of flowers and lighting of candles. Our local member of the Board of Supervisors said the board would send a letter to the State Department requesting an investigation into the recent murder of gays in Baghdad.

We didn't hold a funeral, nor did we say anything remotely about wanting a "vendetta" against anyone, but that is what's been reported by the APCOM news wire in Italy today:

La tv satellitare al Arabiya riporta oggi una manifestazione di protesta avvenute ieri a San Francisco, dove il movimento gay locale ha tenuto un "funerale simbolico per i loro compagni uccisi in Iraq", chiedendo al governo del loro paese "vendetta".

As translated by Google, here's what was (erroneously) reported:

The Arabiya satellite television reported today in a protest demonstration that took place yesterday in San Francisco, where the local gay movement has had a "symbolic funeral for their comrades killed in Iraq," calling on the government of their country "revenge."

A much more accurate short news piece appears in today's edition of Corriere della Sera paper in Milan. Unfortunately, the paper didn't post the photo and article on their site, but the reporter, Viviana Mazza, sent me a PDF version, which a good friend converted into a JPG for me.

Here is the JPG, followed by the Italian text, and then an English translation:


Monta la rabbia negli Usa per la "caccia all'omosessuale" a Bahdad: nel quartiere scitta di Sadr City, 6 uomini sono stati trovati morti nelle ultime settimane (25 negli ultimi 2 mesi il New York Times) perche sospettati d'essere gay (trovate sui corpi scritte come "pervertito".

Per protesta, l'altro ieri il movimento gay di San Francisco ha tenuto un funerale simbolico per le vittime: i manifestanti hanno deposto fiori e ceri davanti a un "Monumento al Gay Ignoto" (foto).

L'organizzatore Bevan Dufty ha detto: pensavamo di portare la democrazia in Iraq.

The English translation came from using Google's translation service:

Mounting anger in the U.S. for "hunting to homosexuality" in Bahdad: scitta district of Sadr City, 6 men were found dead in recent weeks (25 in the last 2 months, said the New York Times) because suspected of being gay ( are written on the bodies as "pervert").

To protest the day before yesterday the gay movement in San Francisco held a symbolic funeral for the victims: the demonstrators have laid flowers and candles in front of a "Monument to the Unknown Gay" (photo).

The organizer Bevan Dufty said, we thought of bringing democracy to Iraq.

Congressman: State Dept Action Needed on Gay Iraqis;
HRC, NGLTF Silence Grows Louder

I'd like a round of bravos for gay US Representative Jared Polis for having concerns about and bringing media attention to the plight of gay Iraqis. This Denver Post story, appearing in today's paper, provides a good overview of his action on behalf of Iraq's gay population, and how he's pushing the State Department to take action.

While Polis is taking the lead on the gay Iraqi situation, and trying to move levers of US power to investigate the deaths of gays in Baghdad, the usual lame gay political groups, Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, steadfastly remain silent about the abuses of our brothers and sisters in Iraq.

Both HRC and NGLTF are working on just one issue - gay wedding cakes. I guess it's asking too much of multimillion homosexual human rights organizations to work on more than a single issue at a given time.

I look forward to hearing more from Polis upon his return to Washington regarding his agenda for helping gay Iraqis. From the Denver Post:

As Rep. Jared Polis toured Iraq this week, he had something more than security conditions or troop withdrawals on his mind: the case of a man allegedly sentenced to death in a criminal court for membership in a gay-rights group.

An openly gay member of Congress, Polis has been investigating the treatment of gays in Iraq for several months, and last week he spoke through a translator by phone to a transgender Iraqi man who said he had been arrested, beaten and raped by Ministry of Interior security forces.

Human-rights groups tracking the issue also passed Polis a letter, allegedly written from jail by a man who said he was beaten into confessing he was a member of the gay-rights group Iraqi-LGBT. The group said the man had been sentenced to death in a court in Karkh and finally executed. ...

Polis carried some of that evidence with him to Iraq and presented State Department officials in Baghdad with a letter outlining the allegations and pressing members of the Iraqi parliament's human-rights committee.

"We will see whether the Iraqi government is serious about protecting the human rights of all Iraqis, and we can also see what role our own State Department can play in helping to protect this minority in Iraq," Polis said by phone Wednesday after leaving Iraq. ...

Polis said the most disturbing aspect of the persecution is that the government itself may be involved.

The Boulder Democrat said that while State Department officials in Washington initially dismissed the claims of Iraqi Interior Ministry involvement, the charge d'affaires in Baghdad has requested more documentation and the chance to speak with witnesses and victims. (State Department officials did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.)

"We have our follow-up work to do in providing the contacts and information that we have to the State Department and, with the permission of those involved, some have agreed to have their information also given to the Iraqi government," Polis said.

My Computer Crash; Tech Help Requested

Why are my emails with links no longer clickable, among other problems, and why am I using my boyfriend's computer to post this message? Because my computer, having served me admirably since 2000, and the power pack, crashed a few days ago. I was supposed to modernize my system with a tech friend, but he's moved.

A computer crash ain't fun at any time, and now, with the boycott Jamaica campaign and the murder of gays in Iraq on the front-page of the New York Times, I sure miss being on my own computer.

I've hobbled through as best as possible without my files and all, and I am trying to find a local tech person to assist me getting the right upgrade for my needs, then getting all the wires hooked up properly. If you're that person, please get in touch. Thanks.