Russian Airline Aeroflot Forces Gay Flight Attendant To A Marry Woman

According to internal Aeroflot sources reported by GayRussia.eu, 25-year-old flight attendant Maxim Kupreev was given an ultimatum late last year to enter into heterosexual marriage or to lose his job. At the end of 2011 he married his school friend Sofia Mikhailova.
 The “forced marriage” happened last year on  AFTER Maxim tried to create an LGBT group within the company to fight for the protection of the rights of homosexual employees. Maxim himself told to AFP in June that he had already started to face pressure from the airline management. ‘They are already trying to silence us,’ he told the news agency.

It was at that point that Maxim was told either to marry or he would be fired from his job.
Irina Dannenberg, told the French news agency AFP that there was no LGBT group in her company. According to her, ‘one should separate personal and professional life,’ AFP reported.
Gay activists in Russia will be asling air passengers to boycott Aeroflot

Taking Responsibilty

I want to start this post with this great quote....

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I remain"
                                                                                                                                            Frank Herbert

Its impossible to fully face your fears when you sent to see some one else.  Case in point (without going to in depth).  I have this very trying circumstance where some very anti-gay remarks and overtly homophobic remarks have been made in one of the classes I am in right now.  This has happened three times as of last week.  It always happens with only seven to ten of in class, before class really begins and before the teacher even arrives in the class.

In the beginning I was not going to say anything to anyone, as I have to be in this class for a total of fifteen weeks and this is only the start of week three. But I feel so uncomfortable, afraid, uneasy and intimidated that I don't know what to do.

I was told to go to to our deans office, which I did today and everything would be handled.  Well it was not.  I was referred to someone else, who of course can not be found. I also was not reassured in the deans office that this issue was taken seriously and felt very uncomfortable when asked my name.  So much for trying to stay anonymous.  It took a lot for me to walk into that office in the first place and to leave having felt no better I wonder is it even worth it to pursue it to this next person.

I am reminded of this quote:

"Life is not easy for any of us.  But what of that?  We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves.  We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."
                                                       Marie Curie

However, when the people in "power" that you turn to send you on your way to another department, another person you, or at least I do, lose faith in the system.  The system where it seems no one can step to the plate and take responsibility.  I dare at this point NOT speak out because it could make the next thirteen weeks a living hell; but do I dare just sit there class after class after class and listen to such vile verbal treatment of who I am? 

Do I disservice myself and my community by keeping my mouth shut?  Do I undue our history of brothers and sisters fighting for our equal and fair rights by remaining mute?  Do I spit on the graves of those who died of AIDS in fear and silence because they themselves had no voice and I continue that legacy of hopelessness?

I am reminded of this quote as well:

"Vision without action is a dream.  Action without vision is simply passing the time.  action with vision is making a positive difference.
                                                                 Joel Barker

I post this because I am tired of no one taking responsibility, I am tired of being treated second class, I am tired of no one listening and I am tired of a society that does this over and over again and we simply take it. 

We take it every time we are handled by a recorded systems of prompts when we call somewhere that takes ten minutes to get a live, breathing person on the other end, we do it every time we never speak to our bank teller, our grocery store cashier or the person next to us in the office.  We do it every time we build walls around ourselves and bury ourselves in our own lives that we can not and do not see the person sitting next us.

I believe we do it every time we send an e-mail versus a real paper letter, or send a text message instead of an actual phone conversation, or when driving we are babbling on the phone as we are driving, or not holding a door open for the person behind us as we walk into a building.  We have become a society were we care not for our fellow neighbor.  Oh it happens in times of crisis or concern, and yes it is out of deep concern and support but why does something terrible have to happen for us to care?  Can't we just simply do it?

In closing I am reminded of this incredible quote:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
                                                             Maya Angelou

My final though is.... How did you make someone feel today?

Rick Perry: Homophobic advertising

Peter LaBarbera and AFTHA Use The Penn State Tragedy And It’s Victims To Promote Their Anti-Gay Agenda

The shock and sadness of what has happened to over 100 children at Penn State University has touched everyone in the country..  But it has touched none so much as disgusting anti-gay activists like Peter LaBarbera, the president of Naperville, Ill.-baesd Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) who are blatantly using this tragedy and its innocent victims to push thier hateful anti-gay agenda.

LaBarbera, who falsely keeps claiming that Jerry Sandusky’s horrid actions are the result of being gay even though Sandusky identifies as heterosexual, is married, and has grown children is now blaming LGBT-rights advocates for having a hand in  perpetuating sexual violence against children in an oft handed way. 

On Thursday LaBarbera sent out he following Press Release not once, but THREE times via the news-wire service the Christian Communication Network:

Sandusky is married but obviously has a homosexuality (perversion) problem. Yet pro-”gay” liberals will deny any linkage between homosexuality and Sandusky’s rape/seduction of boys. In fact, after news of the Penn State scandal came to light, “gay” activists stressed that Sandusky is married and that most pedophile cases involve “straight, married men.” However, behavior is what matters – not a person’s marital status or self-described “sexual orientation.” Sandusky was married but was he really “straight” (sexually or morally)? Some inner demons or life traumas – probably in his own youth – caused him to lust for boys, wrecking untold misery in the lives of his victims. Behavior is the issue, and this was a case of a serial homosexual predator raping boys.

For LaBarbera and other right wing  supposedly “Christian” groups to use this horrible tragedy and its victims to spout lies and misinformation just to push their own hateful agenda is monstrous.   Numerous studies and reasearch from reputable organizations and accredited institutions of higher learning, unlike that of the sham research that LaBarbera and his ilk use, proves there is NO LINK whatsoever between being gay and child molestation,

We can not allow laBarbera and the “christian right” to use this tragedy, and those poor children for their own hateful purposes and they should finally be seen by all as the hateful sociopath monsters that they really are.

Source: American Independent

Gay Couple Attacked at------CHURCH

Jerry Pittman, Jr., and his boyfriend, Dustin Lee, were attacked when they tried to go to church at Grace Fellowship in Fruitland, Tennessee:

I went over to take the keys out of the ignition and all the sudden I hear someone say ‘sick’em,’” said Gibson County resident, Jerry Pittman Jr.
Pittman said the attacked was prompted by the pastor of the church, Jerry Pittman, his father.

“My uncle and two other deacons came over to the car per my dad’s request. My uncle smash me in the door as the other deacon knocked my boyfriend back so he couldn’t help me, punching him in his face and his chest. The other deacon came and hit me through my car window in my back,” said Pittman. He said bystanders did not offer assistance. He said the deacon yelled derogatory homosexual slurs, even after officers arrived. He said the officers never intervened to stop the deacons from yelling the slurs.

The younger Pittman says that there were about twenty people standing around the front of the church when the assault took place, but no one intervened to stop the assault or call the police. He also says that the sheriff’s deputy refused to take a statement from the victims or allow them to press charges. Gibson County Sheriff Chuck Arnold said, “If I was on the scene I would not have allowed that. The deputy should not have allowed it if he did,… I haven’t talk to him but that would be out of character for my deputy to say unless they were causing a problem themselves.”
The couple later filed assault charges against Deacons Billy Sims and Eugene McCoy. The younger Pittman is also pressing charges against his father and Deacon Patrick Flatt. They are due in court today. The pastor and his wife are also going through a divorce.