I just watched "Prop 8 the Mormon Proposition"

[dickthegrouch]

Absolutely stunning what the Mormons and Catholics have got away with for decades. If the IRS doesn't subpoena all those documents and use them to trash the Mormons, I will want to know why.

I cannot recommend this documentary highly enough.

How they can sit there and be so arrogant as to subvert the civil justice system in State after State defies belief. It is perfectly clear that they don't understand the first principle of separation of church and State, and neither do the States, otherwise they'd have reigned this in a long time ago.

And the so-called families that abandoned their gay kids? I reserve special love for the kids and a unique form of loathing for the parents. I'd much rather be fostered by a gay parent than live in those pervertedly KKKristian houses.

[dsc]

1. the whole suicide section of that movie killed me

I am so glad my fear of my parents abandoning were unfounded but I know many whose parents did. I can't imagine doing that to a kid I just can't. Even more heartbreaking a person they interviewed for the film but didn't use, killed himself just recently.

[Sapphocrat]

3. Stuart Matis. My town's most shameful episode.

Most shameful of all -- besides, of course, his parents' practical cheerleading over their gay son taking his own life (better dead than gay) -- is the blackout on talking about him.

See, there's a stunningly powerful contingent running this town, and I've been trying to get through to these people for years -- at city council meetings, in emails, in letters, in LTTEs, in blog posts, in impromptu sound bites on three different local TV stations -- trying to make them see what they did to kill Stuart, how they made him blow his brains out on the temple steps -- and what they continue to do to kill all of us, slowly...

But that's pretty difficult when the goddamned mayor is also a bishop in the local stake. Harder still when he and his ilk are obscenely rich, and own, and control, half the town.

Thus, the blackout on talking about Stuart.

But even knowing this, I spoke to him -- the mayor -- and continue to speak to him, directly, in public, in print, in pixels, on television.

It doesn't make a damned bit of difference -- he continues to pour untold thousands into anti-gay hate campaigns -- but I do it anyway, in whatever medium is available to me.

I beg everyone's forgiveness for, again, linking my own blog posts, but they're relevant -- and while I never knew Stuart (and maybe that's what motivates me: if only I had, maybe I could have have talked the gun out of his hand), his suicide has haunted me for more than a decade.

And if I don't just post links, then I will be compelled, in my usual, obsessive, verbose way, to explain it all over again, and risk hijacking a fine thread (even more than I have already).

Here's my experience with Stuart -- whom I never met, and who will never know how much he inspires me to speak my truth, even when my voice shakes:

Los Altos, CA: Red Island in the Middle of a Blue Sea
February 25, 2006

Latest from Los Altos
February 26, 2006

Lawyers We Love… And One We Don’t (or: Los Altos Gets Another Well-Deserved Slap)
March 8, 2006

Gavin Newsom Shames Los Altos (Good!)
March 9, 2006

Pride Parade in Bigotville, USA
April 15, 2006

Ex-Los Altos, CA, Mayor, Incurably Anti-Gay Mormon Ron Packard Propagates Prop 8 Propaganda on PBS
May 24, 2009

How Much Land Underneath Your Town Do the Mormons Own?
July 10, 2009

Letter To A Mormon
April 24, 2010

Again, all, please forgive me if I've done any hijacking. I didn't mean to. This just brings up a lot that I can't contain, and is not resolved.

I wonder just one thing: Stuart's parents... They seem so relieved by his suicide. By their beliefs, shouldn't he be in hell? They want their son to be in hell? Does their belief in his eternal suffering somehow abate their guilt -- or, somehow, earn them a planet all the nearer to Kolob?

[MadMaddie]

2. It is beyond time that the organizations lose their tax exempt

status. They are attempting to shape U.S policy and they have been crossing the line for a long time.

[Sapphocrat]

4. Oh, and... K&R, dick! n/t

[PanoramaIsland]

5. It's such a powerful issue that even the docu's cheesiness didn't stop me from crying. n/t