"Call In Gay" Same-Sex Marriage Allies Say

Planned Work Stoppages Part Of Protest Against Recent Rulings Against Gays And Lesbians

(AP)  Some same-sex marriage supporters are urging people to "call in gay" Wednesday to show how much the country relies on gays and lesbians, but others question whether it's wise to encourage skipping work given the nation's economic distress.

Organizers of "Day Without a Gay" - scheduled to coincide with International Human Rights Day and modeled after similar work stoppages by Latino immigrants - also are encouraging people to perform volunteer work and refrain from spending money.

Sean Hetherington, a West Hollywood comedian and personal trainer, dreamed up the idea with his boyfriend, Aaron Hartzler, after reading online that a few angry gay-rights activists were calling for a daylong strike to protest California voters' passage last month of Proposition 8, which reversed this year's state Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage.

The couple thought it would be more effective and less divisive if people were asked to perform community service instead of staying home with their wallets shut. Dozens of nonprofit agencies, from the National Women's Law Center in Washington to a Methodist church in Fresno collecting food for the homeless, have posted opportunities for volunteers on the couple's Web site.

"We are all for a boycott if that is what brings about a sense of community for people," said Hetherington, 30, who plans to spend Wednesday volunteering at an inner-city school. "You can take away from the economy and give back in other ways."

Hetherington said he's been getting 100 e-mails an hour from people looking for volunteer opportunities, and that his "Day Without a Gay" Web site has gotten 100,000 hits since mid-November.

Despite Hartzler and Hetherington's attempt to fashion a positive approach, some organizers of the street demonstrations that drew massive crowds in many cities last month have been reluctant to embrace the concept, saying that it could be at best impractical and at worst counterproductive to "call in gay."

"It's extra-challenging for people to think about taking off work as a form of protest, given that we are talking about people who may not be out (as gay) at work, and given the current economic situation and job market," said Jules Graves, 38, coordinator of the Colorado Queer Straight Alliance. "There is really not any assurance employers would appreciate it for what it is."

Graves' group nonetheless is arranging for interested participants to volunteer at the local African Community Center in Denver. The agency said it could find projects to keep 20 people busy, but so far only 10 have pledged to show up, said Graves.

Join The Impact, the online community that launched protests last month over the passage of gay marriage bans in California, Florida and Arizona, has urged people to withdraw $80 from their bank accounts Wednesday to demonstrate gays' spending power, and to devote the time they might otherwise spend watching TV or surfing the Internet to volunteer work.

Witeck-Combs Communications, a public relations firm in Washington that specializes in the gay and lesbian market, published a study this year that estimated that gay and lesbian consumers spend $700 billion annually.

Bob Witeck, the firm's chief executive officer, said it would be difficult to measure the success of Wednesday's strike since gay employees occupy so many fields. And rather than suspending all consumer spending for the day, gay rights supporters would have a bigger impact if they devoted their dollars to gay-friendly businesses year-round, Witeck said.

"Our community leaders who are running book stores, newspapers, flower shops, coffee houses, bars and many, many other things are hurting right now, so paying attention to their needs during this hard time is an effective form of activism," he said.

Hetherington said he has been careful to design Day Without a Gay - he came up with the name after the film "A Day Without a Mexican" and liked it because it rhymed - so no one feels excluded or threatened.

He has specifically urged high school students not to walk out of their classes and assured college students they won't be disloyal to the cause if they go ahead and take their final exams. He also has listed opportunities - ranging from writing letters to members of Congress about federal gay rights legislation to spreading the word about Wednesday on social networking sites - for gay marriage backers who cannot miss work.

Scott Craig, a 5th-grade teacher at Independence Charter School in Philadelphia, had no problem requesting and being granted the day off. So many of the school's 60 teachers were eager to show support for gay rights they had to make sure enough stayed behind to staff classrooms.

About 25 teachers plan to take Wednesday off and to have their work covered by substitutes while they discuss ways to introduce gay issues to their students and volunteer at the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Craig said. A letter telling parents why so many teachers would be out went home Monday.

"We want to get the conversation going in the community that gay is not bad," Craig said. "For kids to hear that in a positive light can be life-changing."

Some people claim that marriage is for making babies.
That is just not the case. Lots of people get married intending not to have children. Lots of postmenopausal women or otherwise infertile people get married.

I got married without a decision to have children. Years later we decided, and had a child. Now we are empty nesters. Our marriage is not useless because we have no children in the house.

[guysdigdirt]

Same S*E*X marriage is an oxymoron. You must have a male and a female in the equation. A Marriage is the combining of two different things to make a whole new thing. Sorry folks but there is just no way two people of the same s*e*x can be married. When a man and a women join they often bear fruit in the form a brand new human being. It is a wonderful and magical thing. G*a*y people can''''t pull that off. I love my G*A*Y friends but they just can''''t get it even though they are products of a relationship between two people of the opposite s*e*x joining. With all due respect, Gay-activists, you can''''t change biology or history just with you iron will. Fight for your unions, get your benefits and try to be happy. Leave us married folks to our thing, please? An Apple with a sticker that calls it a orange does not make it an orange.
Posted by BlackYowe

Well said.

[guysdigdirt]

guysdigdirt: i am very tired of theists proffering up empty proxy threats.
Posted by HonestAbe8

Well done. You did not use some obscure reasoning or spin, you just stated your arguement straight away.

Now do you feel better for telling us all that? It means nothing, but I am sure you are used to your comments getting that reaction.

[honestabe8]

guysdigdirt: i am very tired of theists proffering up empty proxy threats.

[impeach_o]

and what is the end result of this ''stunt''????

a total waste of time..JUST LIKE EVERYTHING THESE F@GGOTS EVER COME UP WITH...

[impeach_o]

I cannot fear retaliation from your cartoon god.


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Posted by HonestAbe8 at 02:50 PM : Dec 11, 2008
+ report abuse


********************

when you attack ..you fear and when you fear it means you believe..

[impeach_o]

think that we should find a Nativity Scene and put another statue of Mary & Joseph standing beside each other. Two Mary''''s Standing Together & The Two Joe''''s standing beside each other in front of the Baby Jesus Crib. That wouldn''''t that be cool. Another QUEER idea maybe?


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Posted by pepperwood2 at 10:51 PM : Dec 10, 2008
+ report abuse

************
if you are 10 years old..then YES THAT WOULD BE A FUNNY IDEA but at your age...its pretty idotic..

so because religious people does not surrender themselves to you 100% means you are up to pranks and childish stunts???

what a bunch of insecure sissies

[guysdigdirt]

Like knocking up a 13 year old virgin? Is this something that is "godly".
Posted by HonestAbe8

Typical person that cannot come to the table with a legit arguement, find some obtuse issue and bend it to make yourself feel like you are OK for what you are doing.

Stick to the relevant facts. Don''t point blame unless you, and your side, are guiltless. Stop the spin, be honest in your arguement. Or just be quiet. Oh, and calling names is not helping your cause.

[honestabe8]

tennysonk: well, bully for the holy babble. Godly desires? Like knocking up a 13 year old virgin? Is this something that is "godly". And, before you go blathering your empty proxy threats, I cannot fear retaliation from your cartoon god.

[tennysonk]

It is a pity that the world seems to have gone crazy. For anyone to think of disrupting commerce simply to fight for the (Gay) right to practise unnatural sexual relations reveals the extent homosexuals will go to force their choice, of yielding to their ungodly desires, on the whole of society.

The Holy Bible records that Homosexuals are highly intolerant of those who object to their choice to yield to their ungodly desires (Genesis 19:9; Judges 19:22-28). Their vicious campaign is therefore not a surprise.

The wrath of God will someday fall on this world that is being hijacked by homosexuals and those with a mindset to do the things that are abominable to the one and only true God of the Holy Bible.

[blackyowe]

Same S*E*X marriage is an oxymoron. You must have a male and a female in the equation. A Marriage is the combining of two different things to make a whole new thing. Sorry folks but there is just no way two people of the same s*e*x can be married. When a man and a women join they often bear fruit in the form a brand new human being. It is a wonderful and magical thing. G*a*y people can''t pull that off. I love my G*A*Y friends but they just can''t get it even though they are products of a relationship between two people of the opposite s*e*x joining. With all due respect, Gay-activists, you can''t change biology or history just with you iron will. Fight for your unions, get your benefits and try to be happy. Leave us married folks to our thing, please? An Apple with a sticker that calls it a orange does not make it an orange.

[pepperwood2]

I think that we should find a Nativity Scene and put another statue of Mary & Joseph standing beside each other. Two Mary''s Standing Together & The Two Joe''s standing beside each other in front of the Baby Jesus Crib. That wouldn''t that be cool. Another QUEER idea maybe?

[mrmeatspin]

how about we make tommorrow ANOTHER "CALL A G@Y" day????

lets do it for a whole month..

I wonder what this idiotic stunt accomplished

[guysdigdirt]

You are living in a past that will eventually be so archaic that this conversation would be irrelevant.
Posted by Flight-321

I am sad to say you are right. One day the Prop 8s of the world will be done and ggays will take from others what is precious to them.

If you shove it down the throats of others long enough eventually some will swallow and you only need 50% plus one vote.

But that does not make it right. Partial birth abortion is legal, not right though. The mother is giving birth, the head emerges but the body is still inside the mother''s body, the doctor inserts a needle in the baby''s head and scrambles the brain, killing the child, painfully. Legal, yes. Wrong, yes, in the very deepest terms it is wrong.

This will happen with ggay marriage too, evil and wrong to take something from others, but will one day likely become legal. Legal but wrong.

[guysdigdirt]

I HAVE NOT ATTEMPTED TO TAKE AWAY ANY OF YOUR RIGHTS SO STAY OUT OF MINE!
Posted by Flight-321

YOu do not have the right to take something from me, you think you are more important than I am? How can you decide to take something from me and think that is OK, all the while telling me to stay out of your business.

Hypocrite!!!

[guysdigdirt]

I have heard a lot of talk about those who want marriage to continue meaning one man and one woman being terrible people as they withold rights.

Why can''t the ggay community get the privledges marriage allows, but not change marriage to suit their own needs? Why not come up with a ggay union that will carry all the same privledges as marriage.

Why take something from someone else just to get what you want, that is kind of like robbery isn''t it?

[guysdigdirt]

Just allow people the same rights you have and then we can have a conversation from a level in which one of us can come down off his soapbox and look the other one in the eye!
Posted by Flight-321

Or can that be said
"stop trying to pervert the meaning of the word marriage to suit your own desires and then you can come down off your soapbox and be a normal person."

[guysdigdirt]

Like I said before I am not the one trying to withhold fundemenatl rights away from someone else. YOU ARE and people like you and YOU are the ones that have hurt and continue to rip away at the "fabric" of our society.
Posted by Flight-321

You can lie to yourself all you want, it does not make it true. How is it a right for you to change the defenition of a word to suit your desires? What if I decided to change the definition of ggay to mean a child molester? Can I just do that and it would be OK with you? No.(and no I do not think ggays all molest children any more than all straight people do.)

So tell me the downside to coming up with your own ggay union and getting all privledges that come with it? Or is it just easier for you to take the meaning of marriage and mold it to your own needs, regardless of others?

[guysdigdirt]

No...I will not marry a woman. That is like me telling YOU to marry a MAN. If that is not who you are then it just does not work out! As far as your BS that oh I CAN get married. Get a life!

I HAVE NOT ATTEMPTED TO TAKE AWAY ANY OF YOUR RIGHTS SO STAY OUT OF MINE!
Posted by Flight-321

I did not tell you to marry anyone. You can stay single all you want.

And Yes, you did try and take my rights. You tried to change the defenition of marriage to suit your selfish desires.

Marriage is one man and one woman, if you dont like it... I am sorry.

[guysdigdirt]

Lets see, it would have all the same legal and tax benefits as marriage, all the same connotations of marriage...but we have to call it something else. That''''s like saying, Ok, black kids can go to school, get the same education and all as white kids, but they cannot go to the same school as the white kids.
Posted by ccdsswrkr08

No, stop the pitty spin. It is more like you would like the add a public restroom. There is one now for men, and another for women, you want there to be one for men and women who do not want to go into their own restrooms. Or are you saying you want the men to be able to go into the women''s, at will, and vice-versa? It is about gender, not color.