Matt Comer at QNotes has a great piece on openly gay candidates running for office in my state, as well as a look back at some of the trailblazers in the past. This year North Carolina has three out gay candidates who will be on the ballot -- Mark Kleinschmidt, who's running to serve as the mayor of Chapel Hill, Lee Sartain is making a bid for a seat on the Raleigh City Council, and Owen Sutkowski has his eye on the Charlotte City Council. Taking a look back at the timeline of progress of openly gay North Carolinians running for office is interesting:
Bob Hoy and Lightning Brown: In 1981, Hoy lost his bid for a seat on the Raleigh City Council, while Lightning Brown narrowly lost in a race for Chapel Hill Town Council.
Joseph Herzenberg: Way back in 1987, North Carolina elected its state’s first openly gay elected official -- Joe Herzenberg. He won his race for Chapel Hill Town Council. Lightning Brown's partner, Joe was a co-founder of Equality Carolina Political Action Committee.
Robert Sheets: Ran and lost his bids for a seat on the Charlotte City Council in 1987 and 1989; in his first bid played coy in the press about his orientation that reflected the times:
Q-Notes reported, “He said that asked whether he is gay, he will reply, ‘Would you ask such a damaging question of all candidates?’”
Mike Nelson: Elected to Carrboro Board of Alderman in 1993, then elected mayor of Carrboro in 1995 before running a successful campaign for Orange County Board of Commissioners.
Sen. Julia Boseman: NC's first out LGBT member of the NC General Assembly was elected to the Senate in 2004.
This seThis session, Boseman has taken on the responsibility of being the leading proponent of the School Violence Prevention Act, opening her to personal criticism from radical, right-wing colleagues.
In a House committee hearing on the bill on June 16, Republican Minority Leader Skip Stam of Wake County said same-sex parents were “more dangerous that second-hand smoke.” He said protecting gay students would lead to the protection of pedophilia and gay marriage. All this in front of Boseman and her six-year-old son, who were both attending the committee hearing.
Elic Senter: Won his bid to become mayor of Franklinton in 2007; this is the first elective office ever held by Senter.
Additional notables cited in Matt's piece:
Other current openly gay or lesbian elected officials include:
• Ernest Fleming: Warren County Board of Commissioners, first elected 2006.
• Janet Pepin, Boone City Council
• Lydia Lavelle, Carrboro Board of Aldermen
• Jennifer Knox, Wake County District Court
• Nancy Caviness, Duck, N.C., Town CouncilOther historic candidacies include:
• Lesbian Sue Henry’s 1995 independent, write-in campaign for Charlotte mayor.
• Openly gay Jim Neal’s 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He was defeated by then-N.C. Sen. Kay Hagan who went on to defeat then-incumbent Elizabeth Dole.
• Wade Boyles’ 2008 Democratic challenge to incumbent N.C. Rep. Dale Folwell in western Forsyth County. Folwell, a Republican, carried 60 percent of the vote.
• Libertarian Chris Cole’s several unsuccessful runs for the Charlotte City Council, N.C. Senate and House and U.S. Senate.
A stringent Bill against homosexuality is in the offing, the state minister for ethics and integrity, Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, has said.Addressing a press conference at the Media Centre yesterday, Buturo said the country was besieged by homosexuality, pornography, prostitution, human sacrifice, drug abuse, embezzlement and witchcraft to the extent that it was "dangerously becoming a permissive society."
He noted that once the Bill is passed into law, it will be an offence to publish and distribute literature on homosexuality or advocate for it. He also stated that it would become impossible for homosexuals to address press conferences and attract people to their cause, once the Bill becomes law.
Update from Autumn: For those of you who think this post is a comment from me that says "F*** it, it doesn't matter if I identified the right first person" of "First actual perceived-by-me weaponizing of the term cis, cisgender, or cissexual" ... that is literally not what I meant. I likely did get it wrong -- it was the first weaponizing of the term that I remembered specifically as the weaponizing of the term, as opposed the probable first actual perceived-by-me weaponizing of the term cis, cisgender, or cissexual. I should have wrote it that way initially, but the way it was presented editorially left it open to wide interpretation. This was not a news story or reporting, but my personal commentary.
In addition, I'm saying that if you think I got the "first" aspect of this wrong, that's probably correct as well. If the point of the continued commentary is to achieve resolution of this editorial or semantic lack of clarity, I'm presenting it here. To those who want me to specifically admit I got the timeline wrong -- I didn't scan the comments looking for the first instance of what I remembered the initial perceived-weaponized-as-weapon comment, it in all likelihood wasn't the first one; that's obviously a mistake. If the purpose of continuing this discussion is to ensure there are clear public winners and losers regarding this entire time-draining endeavor, then this is the "win" you're looking for. The bottom line is that this is the correction, the statement of fact to answer the questions you've expressed. It's not clear that many of you will accept it no matter how it's phrased or presented, but I wanted it to be clear that this needed to editorially be put to bed.
There is a new meme of commentary out there now that I wrongly misstated the timeline of who threw the first snowball(s) in the current cisgender and cissexual discussion.
In the big picture, does it matter who threw the first snowball? Is the argument that no one threw any snowballs? Or, is argument that there were snowballs thrown and I misstated who threw the first snowball? Or, is the argument that I threw the first snowball, and no one else has thrown any snowballs?
Would we all agree that snowballs have been thrown? Does it really matter that much who threw the first snowball or snowballs? Do we need to know who threw the first snowball(s) in this ongoing snowball fight? Or, is the real question WHY is the snowball fight continuing unabated?
And while this fight has been going on and seems to have escalated to pitchforks and torches being passed out at the snowball forts, in the grand scheme of things...
• is the upcoming Latisha Green Hate Crime Murder Trial receiving our attention?• is the hate expressed at the young, trans woman Angie Zapata Hate Crime Murder being forgotten?
• is our community focused on passing the Matthew Sheppard Act -- the federal hate crime legislation?
• is our community making calls to ensure the passage of a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)?
• have we highlighted that the Department of Justice (DOJ) isn't going to appeal the Diane Schroer trans federal government discrimination case decision?
• is our community taking notice that an apparent hate crime murder of an apparently gay sailor is being called "not a hate crime" by the United States Navy?
I don't care to rehash how and why the snowball fight began at The Blend and the blogosphere in the first place, or who and when the first snowballs were thrown. But now, o now, of course, the snowball fight has taken on a life of its own -- I don't think anything I do at this point will affect an end to the snowball fight. Nothing. What this snowball fight has done is leave me asking bigger picture questions. In the grand scheme of things: What is important to our community? -- What is the bottom line for our community? -- What are the priorities for our community?
Note from Pam: Just so people know, Kynn decided to engage in sock puppetry (as "Caoimhe") and got herself banned again. If you're banned, you're certainly not welcome to come back and pretend to be someone else advocating for the banned person. Take a look.
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