[iBLASTinside] I Am Less of a Citizen; I Have Less Rights in Georgia

[Feeder]

To see iBLASTinside's original blog post, click here...

How the Fight for the Right to Marry Stops My Right to Work

First let me assure all my readers that I’m not sitting at home crying over spilled milk that is a great job working for an incredibly gaping asshole of a man who made my work*existence a living hell.**I remain pissed at him but even more angry at an HR organization that allowed one manager — just one — to get away with what I consider blackmail and bullying. This man perpetuates this by going to people with whom I have worked and has effectively cut them off from me. These are friends (or people I counted as friends). But now they are afraid of their own jobs for associating with me.

Hell, the company is threatening a major, on-air spokesman I hired (who isn’t gay) due to his friendship with me. He lives across the country and barely even knew about the event, but suddenly there’s this lack of need for this extremely talented, on-air personality under contract.

I guess they’re going to get rid of anything associated with me.

But that’s not the focus of this piece.

As I went around speaking with attorneys and learning more about my so-called “rights” in the state of Georgia, I became even more disillusioned about being a citizen of this state. I know I’m a minority. And I’m not talking about the whole Gay thing. I’m talking about voting for Democrats. My relatives all vote Republican. So imagine my surprise at a recent get together at the warm and supportive atmosphere I received.

I’m not kidding.

“You got screwed!” were the first words one of my raging, Palin-loving Republican cousins said to me as I entered the house for the holiday gathering. He screeched this prior *to “Merry Christmas” or “Happy New Year.”

This was echoed many times over. And as they asked what happened and I told them my dismissal came from a dislike from me being gay, they scoffed and told me to sue. “Surely that’s illegal.”

“No, it’s not illegal,” I said.

“It can’t be,” they’d said in some form or another. “It’s some form of discrimination.”

Then I would calmly explain: “Remember hearing about ‘special rights’ that you thought we were asking for?” There would be this pause and a quizzical look on their face and then they’d nod. “Well, we were just asking for regular old rights like the right to work. But y’all wanted to make sure we didn’t get those too, so what just happened to me is down right legal.”

Now what my cousins weren’t saying is I’m not dressing in women’s clothes or smokin’ crystal meth or molesting little babies — the devil-worshiping, pure evil images they have of crack whore gay*molesters. Which if they knew of the rest of this blog, they might reconsider. But they know me as the great uncle, the caring son, the understated intellectual shy cousin.

So now they’re sitting there, thinking of all the things that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin has told them. And they can’t*reconcile*it with what’s happened to me.

They know I’ve done great work. They’ve seen and followed some of my work online and they know it’s successful. It’s fun stuff. It’s cool. They know of the promotions and the rewards.

So it’s time I explain what I can’t understand. I can’t understand why my leaders have chosen to draw a line in the sand and call it marriage. I don’t know why my e-mails and messages about my situations go unanswered. I can’t comprehend why Kathy Griffin and Ellen Degeneres won’t jump to my defense when I send them an e-mail. Or God forbid, the ACLU or Lambda Legal Defense. Why I can’t find a Gay attorney who doesn’t want less than $5,000 to take my case.

Everyone, it seems, is more worried about dead Tyler Clementi or the right to marry. I could only get attention to my cause if I killed myself, which would be okay except when the company terminated me, they ended the $300,000 windfall for my 21-month-old nephew.

So I live on, trying to get someone to take a case, maybe to see if we can embarrass the company. Surprisingly, when I explain that I’m concerned about embarrassing the family, they’re all fine with that. But they sympathize with the concern that I might never find a job again. So they agree that maybe, I should be quiet.

In the state of Georgia, I don’t have a right to have a job and certainly no right to marry. I can’t adopt. I can fuck. And I have the right to be bullied at work. And take it.

More...

[Hotload84]

I walked through the new Jewish History museum here in Philadelphia the other day. Various displays commemorated the struggles of the Jews to obtain the full rights of citizenship, both in America and in Europe. It occurred to me the word "Jewish" could be replaced with "gay" and the historical arguments would apply without any challenge. So, iBLASTinside, no, we don't have the full spectrum of rights the straight majority grant themselves, regardless of the state in which one lives.