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HERE, QUEER AND ARMED
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
HERE, QUEER AND ARMED
By DEROY MURDOCK
June 30, 2002 -- WITH its world-famous parade going down Fifth Avenue at 2 o'clock, June's Gay Pride celebrations * this afternoon. A group called Pink Pistols is among the worthiest organizations marking this month's national festivities. With 2,350 members and 30 chapters in 22 states, Pink Pistols encourages gays to use firearms for fun and self-preservation.
"Pick on someone your own caliber," declares its excellent Web site (www.pinkpistols.org). "We are dedicated to the legal, safe and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community," it continues. "The more people know that members of our community may be armed, the less likely they will be able to single us out for attack."
Such deterrence already may have prevented homophobic bloodshed. According to Doug Krick, the Boston Internet engineer who founded Pink Pistols in July 2000: "While I can't say that we are completely responsible for it, I can say that there has not been a 'fag bashing' in any towns where we have chapters after they were founded."
Pink Pistols is named after a March 13, 2000 Salon article by Jonathan Rauch, an openly gay writer now at the National Journal. He prescribed armed self-defense as a cure for anti-gay violence. He dramatically made his case with the story of Tom Palmer, a Washington think-tank scholar. Palmer and a male friend were in a rough section of San Jose, Calif., when a gang of 20 hoodlums started taunting them.
"Hey, you f---ing faggots!" one yelled. "When we're done with you, they'll never find your bodies." Palmer and his pal ran for their lives, with the thugs in hot pursuit. Then Palmer pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his backpack, stood and waved it beneath a street light. His tormentors swiftly retreated.
"There's no question," Palmer said, "that my friend and I would have been at least very seriously beaten, and maybe killed."
Bronx resident Jeton Ademaj is organizing a Pink Pistols club here "so people can socialize and network and support each other's right to self-defense." Ademaj complains that Gotham's costly, Byzantine gun controls frustrate law-abiding citizens who seek firearms for personal protection.
Pink Pistols chapters hold monthly meetings and frequent competitions at shooting ranges, to promote marksmanship and camaraderie. It also endorses candidates who "support the Second Amendment as well as the rights of consenting adults to love each other however they wish." Based on responses to a detailed questionnaire, its Web site evaluates contenders in local, state and federal races in 14 states for 2001-2002.
Most intriguing is how straight conservatives respond to the Pink and gay liberals react to the Pistols.
"I know of absolutely no conservatives who have attacked us," says Washington lobbyist Austin Fulk. He often joins the group's Northern Virginia chapter for target practice at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, with which Pink Pistols has collaborated on issue advocacy before California's state legislature.
"The concept of 'out of the closet' is brilliant," says Michael Bane, a straight gun-rights activist who works with Pink Pistols. "Since we represent about 50 percent of the households in America, if gun owners would 'come out of the closet,' we would be unbeatable."
All of this makes gay liberals very nervous.
"I am, and we are, very anti-gun," Clarence Patton of New York's Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project told Philadelphia Gay News last July. "We don't think guns solve any problems, and may create more problems."
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Sue Hyde told Southern Voice last month: "We are not going to settle our scores as a community by having a shoot-out at the OK Corral."
Doug Krick shrugs at these arguments. "There is a certain segment that believes that the world would be better without guns, therefore the message is to ban guns . . . and that would not be desirable, even if you could. As the saying goes, 'God made all men, but Colt made all men equal.' "
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/44920.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By DEROY MURDOCK
June 30, 2002 -- WITH its world-famous parade going down Fifth Avenue at 2 o'clock, June's Gay Pride celebrations * this afternoon. A group called Pink Pistols is among the worthiest organizations marking this month's national festivities. With 2,350 members and 30 chapters in 22 states, Pink Pistols encourages gays to use firearms for fun and self-preservation.
"Pick on someone your own caliber," declares its excellent Web site (www.pinkpistols.org). "We are dedicated to the legal, safe and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community," it continues. "The more people know that members of our community may be armed, the less likely they will be able to single us out for attack."
Such deterrence already may have prevented homophobic bloodshed. According to Doug Krick, the Boston Internet engineer who founded Pink Pistols in July 2000: "While I can't say that we are completely responsible for it, I can say that there has not been a 'fag bashing' in any towns where we have chapters after they were founded."
Pink Pistols is named after a March 13, 2000 Salon article by Jonathan Rauch, an openly gay writer now at the National Journal. He prescribed armed self-defense as a cure for anti-gay violence. He dramatically made his case with the story of Tom Palmer, a Washington think-tank scholar. Palmer and a male friend were in a rough section of San Jose, Calif., when a gang of 20 hoodlums started taunting them.
"Hey, you f---ing faggots!" one yelled. "When we're done with you, they'll never find your bodies." Palmer and his pal ran for their lives, with the thugs in hot pursuit. Then Palmer pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his backpack, stood and waved it beneath a street light. His tormentors swiftly retreated.
"There's no question," Palmer said, "that my friend and I would have been at least very seriously beaten, and maybe killed."
Bronx resident Jeton Ademaj is organizing a Pink Pistols club here "so people can socialize and network and support each other's right to self-defense." Ademaj complains that Gotham's costly, Byzantine gun controls frustrate law-abiding citizens who seek firearms for personal protection.
Pink Pistols chapters hold monthly meetings and frequent competitions at shooting ranges, to promote marksmanship and camaraderie. It also endorses candidates who "support the Second Amendment as well as the rights of consenting adults to love each other however they wish." Based on responses to a detailed questionnaire, its Web site evaluates contenders in local, state and federal races in 14 states for 2001-2002.
Most intriguing is how straight conservatives respond to the Pink and gay liberals react to the Pistols.
"I know of absolutely no conservatives who have attacked us," says Washington lobbyist Austin Fulk. He often joins the group's Northern Virginia chapter for target practice at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, with which Pink Pistols has collaborated on issue advocacy before California's state legislature.
"The concept of 'out of the closet' is brilliant," says Michael Bane, a straight gun-rights activist who works with Pink Pistols. "Since we represent about 50 percent of the households in America, if gun owners would 'come out of the closet,' we would be unbeatable."
All of this makes gay liberals very nervous.
"I am, and we are, very anti-gun," Clarence Patton of New York's Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project told Philadelphia Gay News last July. "We don't think guns solve any problems, and may create more problems."
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Sue Hyde told Southern Voice last month: "We are not going to settle our scores as a community by having a shoot-out at the OK Corral."
Doug Krick shrugs at these arguments. "There is a certain segment that believes that the world would be better without guns, therefore the message is to ban guns . . . and that would not be desirable, even if you could. As the saying goes, 'God made all men, but Colt made all men equal.' "
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/44920.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Sunday, June 30, 2002
Metro Report
Diallo Place OK
The City Council's Parks Committee voted this week to rename a portion of Wheeler Ave. after Amadou Diallo, victim of one of the city's most notorious police shootings.
Diallo, 22, was killed Feb. 4, 1999, in a fusillade of 41 shots fired by four police officers who said they thought he had reached for a gun.
Instead, Diallo, who died in the hallway of his home at 1157 Wheeler Ave., Soundview, was unarmed and reaching for his wallet. The four officers were acquitted of murder charges.
If the full Council and the mayor approve, Wheeler Ave. from Westchester to Watson Aves. will be renamed Amadou Diallo Place.
The name change plan was praised by Diallo's father, Saikou, who called it a "living memory" of his son.
Cook's Historic Day
Pastor Suzan Johnson Cook of the Bronx Christian Fellowship Church made history this month when she was elected president of the Hampton University Minister's Conference, the largest conference of African-American clergy in the country.
Last Monday, the conference honored the 44-year-old Cook as the first woman to ever to hold the office, and also the youngest president in the conference's history.
Safe Night for Kids
Mott Haven residents turned out at St. Mary's Park yesterday for Safe Night.
It was the park's fourth annual Safe Night all-day event, with speakers, performers and information tables.
Though the point was to bring youth and families into the park in the evening, the day's events concentrated on informing neighborhood kids about safe and fun summer activities.
http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-06-30/News_and_Views/City_Beat/a-155998.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
some time ago there was a shootout nearby (It lasted 2HRS) more that
400 shots were fired ,cars,windows,streetlights you named (even dead cats and dogs,but the Gun flinging fellas missed each other ,now they are in jail getting "shot" in other ways they may have never dream of.
JD
Good...? , Bad...? Who cares ? as long I am the one with the the gun.....
But seriously folks.... If we're into promotion of guns for self protection, we shouldn't come down too hard on these folks. After all, the right to self protection is for all (non-violent-felon) Americans, and an armed society is a polite society.
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
lets all be responsible! shoot a criminal! Remember 0% of firearms pull there own trigger!
I remember renting a Glock at the range before buying mine. I was always curious about how difficult it would be to bump-fire a pistol. It jammed every time. Never hold a Glock loosely....or limply
"The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal governmentare few and defined, and will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace negotiation, and foreign commerce"
-James Madison
These guys won't be victims.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A version of this article first appeared in the June 30 New York Post.
ith a colorful parade down Fifth Avenue, June's Gay Pride celebrations were in full gear Sunday afternoon. A two-year-old group called Pink Pistols is among the worthiest organizations that marked last month's nationwide festivities. Boasting 2,350 members and 30 chapters in 22 states, Pink Pistols encourages gay people to use firearms for recreation and self-preservation.
"Pick on someone your own caliber," declares the group's website. "We are dedicated to the legal, safe and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community," it continues. The group's logic is unassailable: "The more people know that members of our community may be armed, the less likely they will be able to single us out for attack."
This deterrence policy already may have curbed anti-gay violence. According to Doug Krick, 31, the Boston-based dot.com engineer who founded Pink Pistols in July 2000: "While I can't say that we are completely responsible for it, I can say that there has not been a 'fag bashing' in any of the towns where we have chapters after our chapters were founded."
Pink Pistols borrowed its name from the headline of a March 13, 2000 Salon magazine article by Jonathan Rauch, an openly libertarian columnist for the National Journal who happens to be gay. He urged armed self-defense as an antidote to anti-gay violence. He dramatically illustrated this matter with the case of Tom Palmer, a Washington-based think-tank scholar. Palmer and a male friend were in a rough section of San Jose, California when a gang of 20 hoodlums started taunting them.
"Hey, you f***ing faggots!" one yelled. "When we're done with you, they'll never find your bodies." Palmer and his pal ran for their lives, with the thugs in hot pursuit. Palmer pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his backpack. He stood and waved it beneath a street light. His tormentors swiftly retreated.
"There's no question in my mind," Palmer said, "that my friend and I would have been at least very seriously beaten, and maybe killed."
Washington lobbyist Austin Fulk, 31, recalls a close brush with a hate-filled mob back in 1987. "I was 17 years old and living in Little Rock," he says by phone. "I was in a park where gay people too young to get into the bars would hang out and talk. Some people came by in a car and yelled at us, 'F**king faggots. Get AIDS and die.' I was standing beside the pick-up truck of a guy who had driven in from a rural part of Arkansas. He verbally responded to the people in the car. Four of them came piling out of their vehicle with baseball bats and tire irons. My friend reached under the seat of his truck, removed his pistol, aimed it at them and fired a warning shot over their heads. They basically decided that they would rather not attack people who would fight back. They jumped back into their car and fled."
Jeton Ademaj, 30, is organizing a Pink Pistols club in New York City "so people can socialize and network and support each other's right to self-defense." Ademaj, a porter in a Fifth Avenue apartment building, also tells me that Gotham's costly, Byzantine gun controls frustrate law-abiding citizens who seek firearms for their own protection. Still, he says, "It's an option that we need to have."
Pink Pistols chapters hold monthly meetings and frequent competitions at shooting ranges, to promote marksmanship and camaraderie. It also endorses political candidates who "support the Second Amendment as well as the rights of consenting adults to love each other however they wish." Based on responses to a detailed questionnaire, its website evaluates contenders in local, state, and federal races in 14 states for 2001-2002. Most tend to be Libertarians, although Republicans and Democrats are rated, too.
Most intriguing is how straight conservatives respond to the Pink and gay liberals react to the Pistols.
"I suspect there is as much misinformation about gays circulating in the gun culture as there is misinformation about guns circulating in the media!" says Michael Bane, a straight consultant to the National Shooting Sports Foundation who collaborates with Pink Pistols. Still, he believes "the concept of 'out of the closet' is brilliant. Since we represent about 50 percent of the households in America, if gun owners would 'come out of the closet,' we would be unbeatable."
"I know of absolutely no conservatives who have attacked us," says Fulk. "I've gotten a lot more grief from gay people for owning guns and supporting the Second Amendment than I ever have from gun owners for being gay." He often joins the group's Northern Virginia chapter for target practice at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, with which Pink Pistols has testified on gun issues before California's state legislature.
All of this makes gay liberals very nervous.
"I am, and we are, very anti-gun; we don't think guns solve any problems, and may create more problems," Clarence Patton of New York's Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project told Philadelphia Gay News last July.
"I don't believe arming ourselves is a sustainable response to a subculture of hate towards homosexuality," Sue Hyde of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force told Southern Voice last month. "We are not going to settle our scores as a community by having a shoot-out at the OK Corral."
Doug Krick shrugs at these arguments. "There is a certain segment that believes that the world would be better without guns, therefore the message is to ban guns. But the genie cannot be put back in the bottle, and that would not be desirable, even if you could. As the saying goes, 'God made all men, but Colt made all men equal.'"
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock070102.asp
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
From the militant bunch of homos I saw in Bloomington a few weeks ago I think I'm the one that needs protection.
Those were the so-called "Christians" that you needed protection from since I assume this is the incident you're refering to. These were some scary looking people!
BTW one of the "shirtless young men" playing hacky sack was my 20 year old, Christian, son. The young man with the nipple rings is also an active member of our church and a frequent guest in my home. (And my opinion on his rings is between me and him.) Both of them were singled out for harrassment. Having gone through the stage where both of them were hormones with feet, I can assure you that neither of them is gay. (And I think their girlfriends will back me on that one.)
My sons, as well as most of their close friends, are guided in their lives by the teachings of Jesus Christ. This group follows the ignorant teachings of the alleged rev. John Lewis, who wouldn't recognize Christ if he parted Lake Monroe!
Jesus Christ said, "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, this you do to unto me!"
And I say, "If you want to really piss me off, screw with one of my kids!"
Tom
Protesters at park ignite furor
By Doug Wilson,
Herald-Times Staff Writer
About 35 people carried signs protesting homosexuality and abortion Monday afternoon on East Kirkwood Avenue.
"God Hates Fags," "AIDS Cures Fags" and "Got AIDS Yet?" proclaimed signs held by members of a Campbellsburg religious group that conducted its second protest in and around Peoples Park in eight months.
Within an hour, more than 100 people gathered on all corners of the intersection of Kirkwood and Dunn Street to witness the spectacle.
Many passers-by shouted angrily at the protesters or argued with them. Police arrested Kristofer R. Bowman, 23, of 1501 S. Madison, on the preliminary charges of Class B misdemeanor battery and Class B misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he reportedly shoved a protester repeatedly, Bloomington police Sgt. Bill Parker said.
Others said the protesters made them not angry, but sad.
"Nothing I know about God is revealed in the hate I've seen here today," said Linda Johnson, a priest at Trinity Episcopal Church. "It's a sad day."
The protesters - mostly male, with one woman - piled out of a large van at about 12:50 p.m. and immediately began yelling at a group of young men playing hacky sack in Peoples Park.
"This is your day," hollered a protester carrying a "Fags Doom Nations" sign. "You need to turn from sin."
The shirtless young men mocked the protesters by hugging each other in a circle. Then the two groups started yelling at each other.
"You got loops hanging off your nipples like a pervert," one of the protesters retorted.
Another demonstrator with a bullhorn blasted his message across the street to people eating lunch outside Kilroy's on Kirkwood. He used a vulgar term to describe sexual intercourse between two men and said no condom is thick enough to protect such men from AIDS.
Kilroy's diners Steve Marquie and Georgia Peterson, a married couple from Lansing, Mich., attending a conference at Indiana University, made signs of their own. "Loudness 9.5, Stupidity 10," their scorecards read.
In addition to signs displaying anti-gay slogans, some protesters carried anti-abortion signs with photos of what appeared to be aborted fetuses.
The group's organizer, Rev. John Lewis of Old Paths Baptist Church in Campbellsburg, about 40 miles south of Bloomington, said homosexuality and abortion are the sins of America. His group, which includes people from Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin, has had protests in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and Louisville, he said.
Lewis said the negative reaction his group receives is of no consequence because it is their duty to Christ to call others out for sinful behavior.
When asked why his group singles out homosexuals as potential AIDS victims, he said he's aware that heterosexuals can also get the disease.
"A fag could spit in a salad bar and you could get it," he claimed, despite research to the contrary.
A group member with a Confederate flag hat angrily chased a young man after the youth tried to take his sign away from him. One man succeeded in yanking away a large anti-abortion sign and ran away with it down an alley.
A Kirkwood business donated signboard so the teen-agers and 20-somethings at Peoples Park could make signs of their own. Some of these were confrontational, such as "God Hates Rednecks" and "Repressed Homosexuals," while others were more positive, including "God Loves Everyone" and "God Even Loves Bigots."
"Peoples Park is a place where we accept individuality and embrace people's differences," said 22-year-old George Cummings, who participated in the mock "gay hug" although he isn't gay and neither are the other hacky sack players as far as he knows. "However, in my eyes it's unacceptable to preach hatred of others for homosexuality or any other preference in life."
By 3 p.m., the crowd around the protesters had shrunk to about 50 and tempers had calmed. Yet plenty of hard feelings remained.
"No other group would be discriminated against like this in this society. That's what makes this so maddening," said Doug Bauder of the Indiana University Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Support Services Office.
Bauder said the best response is to turn one's back on the protesters and create safe places for gays and lesbians in homes, schools, businesses and churches.
Bloomington Safe and Civil City director Marsha Bradford hoped the protesters would just go away.
"I wish they'd pack up their hatred, go home and examine their own conscience," Bradford said. "The city of Bloomington categorically condemns these hate-mongering protesters."
Edited by - Alerion on 07/03/2002 09:58:03
Eric S. Williams
Whoa! What are you talking about? Earrings, pierced belly buttons?
You lost me friend. We are not on the same page.
I've lived in Bloomington for the past 15 years and I've learned that this town has more than its share of "odd" people. A lot of them come here to attend IU, mistakenly think the freedom of college is an attribute of Bloomington, and never leave as a result. I've also learned that is I make assumptions about people's sexuallity based on their appearance I stand a 50% chance of being 100% wrong!
Up until the beginning of this summer, I don't think I'd ever noticed anything that could be called a "militant bunch of homos" (although admittedly I don't hang out in the places where they gather) until the so-called rev. John Lewis and his Old Paths Baptist Bozos started showing up. The article I quoted was only his first visit. He and his followers have been showing up every couple of weeks now and the gays and gay supporters have been coming out in ever increasing (and more obvious) numbers with each visit. Personally I don't care to see either the protesters or the counter-protesters. Personally I think all of the Old Path Baptist are idiots and doing more harm to their cause than good.
The thing that got me torqued off was that the bozos came to town looking to do battle with gays and, finding none, chose to attack a group of kids playing hacky-sack in a public park just because they didn't have shirts on. As I said, one of those kids was my son.
As far as earrings and body piercings, I don't like them and I've made this clear to my son. The young man, in the article, with the nipple rings has suffered through a lot of my disapproving comments. But he's still a good kid and I'm pleased that he's one of my son's friends. And the Baptists were dead wrong in believing that this young man was gay because he has nipple rings or that my son was gay for defending his friend! I'm pretty sure that both of these guys are better Christians than John Lewis or any of his followers.
So if you saw a militant bunch of homos in Bloomington, I'm pretty sure there was an ignorant bunch of Baptists in the middle of them!
BTW, did I mention that I don't like what John Lewis and the members of the Old Paths Baptist Church are doing? I just wanted to make sure that my feelings on the subject were clear.
Tom
So, just how does rendering me defenseless protect you from violent criminals?
I don't know anything about this John Lewis so I can't comment on him. I do know that whenever Christians take a stand for what God's word says ,and in this case it can be found in the book of Romans, They are slammed by an ever too eager liberal media. Romans refers to men having an unnatural effection for one another. The Bible also says we should avoid the very appearance of evil.
I guess the bottom line is regardless of what the Rev. Lewis was doing or the protestors who were against him, a man's relationship to God is a personal one. We will each someday have to answer for our own actions at the beginning of eternity. Thanks for filling me in on the situation down there. By the way. Do you go to Atterbury often?
Last time I was there it was overseen by a range officer.
I try to get to Atterbury at least once a month. Sometimes a little more often than that in the summer or when the weather is nice.
Atterbury has a range safety officer there all the time when it's open. Unlike most of the other DNR ranges, it has "hours of operation" and is not available outside of those hours. The only problem I've had with that is that the range is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The safety officer that's normally there is a pretty good guy. I generally spend some time talking to him when I'm there. He's pretty interesting. Besides, he always complements me on at least one of the guns I've brought along. (He really liked my Weatherby!) I'm glad he's there. With the amount of use that place gets I'd probably be afraid to go there if someone wasn't around to keep some of the folks in check.
Tom
So, just how does rendering me defenseless protect you from violent criminals?
I may see you over there sometime. I do a lot of work with the Dept of Natural Resources and their programs such as hunter education, 4-h shooting sports, and various workshops. Atterbury is the DNR's district 6 meeting place. Have a safe one.