TROY, MICHIGAN – While discussing plans for a suicide prevention forum, Mayor Janice Daniels told a diversity-promoting group this month that she would recruit experts to speak about the “dangerous” homosexual lifestyle.
But a newly released audio recording of the meeting reveals Daniels did not call homosexuality a mental illness, as first suggested by one attendee.
The recording of the Jan. 9 exchange occurred during Daniels’ office hours at the Troy Community Center. The tape, obtained by The Detroit News through the Freedom of Information Act, includes a heated debate over plans for a suicide and bullying prevention event suggested by members of Troy High School’s gay-straight alliance.
The group had been urging Daniels to get involved after she gained national media attention for her use of the word “queer” in a Facebook posting in June 2011.
Skye Curtis, 17, a leader of the student group, initially claimed she heard the mayor say she would recruit a psychiatrist for the event who would explain that homosexuality is a “mental disease.” Curtis later said in an online blog that she misheard the mayor’s comment. Curtis could not be immediately reached Monday.
In the recording, Daniels told Curtis and Amy Weber, a youth mentor supporting the group, that she was planning to recommend a separate, city-sponsored suicide prevention seminar.
Daniels said she wanted to bring together the city, schools, advocacy organizations and family counselors to “make sure people of all ages never consider suicide as an option.”
Weber and the students had shown up for Daniels’ office hours to urge her to participate in the youth project after they claimed her use of the gay slur upset some students.
The mayor responded by saying: “If I do, I’m not sure any of you will be satisfied… I will bring in psychiatrists who will tell you that the homosexual lifestyle is dangerous.”
Daniels could not be reached Monday.
Weber said Monday that since the meeting, the student alliance and representatives from the group C.A.R.E.: the Troy Diversity Coalition (Celebrate, Accept, Respect and Empathize), have been organizing a Peace Day. The celebration, planned for March, will focus on diversity and unity and is expected to include motivational speakers, religious leaders, video presentations and comedy, she said.
Weber says Daniels is welcome to be a part of the event.
“The door will be open to all people who come with their hearts open,” she said.
In terms of Daniels’ “dangerous” comment, Weber said she would have liked the mayor to clarify what she meant, but added that she’s moving forward and wants to “make something positive of all of this.”
“This has always been about trying to put our differences aside for the greater good,” she said.
The controversy erupted in December after it was discovered that the mayor made the Facebook comment, “I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.” Daniels has said the remark was meant to be a joke and was made before she decided to run for mayor.
Daniels has said she’s been threatened and bullied over the incident.
from The Detroit News
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Mayor’s Facebook Slam On Gay Marriage Draws Widespread Criticism

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Maxim Kupreev

RUSSIA – Gay activists in Russia are planning to ask air passengers to boycott Aeroflot, Russia’s leading airline and not to use its services until the creation of equal conditions for all workers.
The call comes following the revelation that gay flight attendant Maxim Kupreev was forced by his employers to enter into heterosexual marriage with his former high school girl friend following his announcement last year to create an LGBT group within the company to fight for the protection of the rights of homosexual employees.
The boycott is set to be launched on February 9 at a rally outside the head office of Aeroflot on Arbat Streetin Moscow.
“We have already worked out a number of slogans which underline a double meaning of the word ‘marriage’ in Russian which we are going to communicate with the public in the context of Aeroflot’s activities,” Nikolai Alekseev, , founder of Moscow Pride , told Gay Star News.
The Russian for ‘marriage’ is ‘brak’, and it also means ‘defect’.
Protesters will be asking the public to defect from the airline, he said.
According to internal Aeroflot sources reported by GayRussia.eu, 25-years-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 who got the right to fly Aeroflot for 10% of the fare – and other company privileges.
In order to register marriage with Mr. Kupreev, Ms. Mikhailova had to dissolve her real marriage to Grigoriy Andreykin. The divorce was finalised on October 11 last year.
“Aeroflot effectively broke a real marriage and created a sham one,” Alekseev said.
The creation of and LGBT group in Aeroflot was announced on June 20, 2011. At this time, Kupreev, the founder of the group said that the group would fight for the direct inclusion of discrimination ban on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity into internal documents of Aeroflot. His group also planned to fight for the recognition of same sex partners of the employees.
The next day official spokesperson of the airline, 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.
Kupreev 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.
In July 2011 gay activists tried to picket the central office of Aeroflot in support of the first LGBT group in the major Russian company and to denounce the pressure on its founders.
But the Moscow authorities banned the event over “security concerns”. And the organisers of the picket, who planned to defy the ban, cancelled the event at the request of Kupreev.
Both the Taganskiy District Court and the Moscow City Court later ruled that the ban was lawful. This decision last year is expected to be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
On Friday January 27, Moscow Pride activists officially notified Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin about their intention to conduct a rally on February 9, the 89th anniversary of the creation of civil aviation in Russia and birthday of Aeroflot.
They plan to condemn discrimination policy of the state owned airline against homosexual workers and will demand dismissal of Aeroflot from the global airline alliance, Sky Team, which is led by Air France – KLM and includes American carrier Delta.
The reply of Moscow Government to the notification of gay activists concerning the rally is expected next week. But organisers have already said that they will conduct the event irrespective of the authorities’ decision.
It has become a routine practice for Moscow authorities to ban all public events of the LGBT community. Despite the ruling of the European Court in the case of Alekseyev v. Russia concerning the illegal bans of Moscow Prides in 2006-2008, Moscow authorities banned the Pride again in May 2011.
from Gay Russia

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE – Martha Boggs, owner of the Bistro at the Bijou, says she ordered state Sen. Stacey Campfield out of her Gay Street restaurant and banned him from brunch Sunday in disgust over his recent remarks about gays and the origin of the AIDS virus.
“When I saw him at the front door, I told him to leave,” Boggs said Monday. “It’s just my way to show support for the gay community and stand up to somebody I think is a bully. He’s really gone from being stupid to dangerous. I think he needs to know what it feels like to be discriminated against.”
Campfield responded with a blog post comparing himself to Jesus Christ and to the civil-rights demonstrators of the 1960s.
“Unfortunately some people do not let facts get in the way of their prejudice,” he wrote. “I guess some people still support segregation. Just segregation of thought.”
Campfield, R-Knoxville, has made national headlines as sponsor of the so-called “don’t say gay bill. Campfield calls the bill, “don’t teach gay.”
The bill passed the state Senate last year after being revised to permit only sexuality involving “natural human reproduction” to be discussed in public schools. It still awaits a House vote.
Campfield made national news again last week after he blamed the AIDS virus on a gay airline pilot having sex with monkeys and called the disease “virtually impossible” to contract via heterosexual intercourse. He made the comments during a radio interview on Sirius XM’s gay-lesbian channel, OutQ.
Boggs said she’s tolerated Campfield’s business in the past, but those remarks crossed the line.
“He’s been here two or three times before,” she said. “I just wanted to make my point. He didn’t have much to say. He left graciously.”
The sign out front Monday read, “Today’s Special: Fried Chicken. Crispy Chicken Livers. No Stacey.”
Campfield, fresh from a radio appearance where he touted his “open-door policy” and said, “I’ll talk to anybody. I don’t care who they are,” wouldn’t talk to the News Sentinel unless he could pick the reporter.
“I’ve been burned too many times,” he said.
He wrote on his blog that he took his money and his friends — talk-radio host Hubert Smith, comedian Spanky Brown and photographer and blogger Dan Andrews — “to a more gracious host” at Latitude 35 on Market Square.
“Some people have told me my civil rights were violated under the 1964 civil-rights act in that a person cannot be denied service based on their religious beliefs,” he wrote. “(I am Catholic and the Catholic Church does not support the act of homosexuality) I had not thought about that much.”
Smith said the four headed to brunch Sunday after the senator appeared on Smith’s show that morning on WUTK-FM 90.3. Smith suggested the Bistro at the Bijou, which sponsors the show.
They walked in and walked out in about 30 seconds or less.
“I did not hear the words, because when I walked in, it had already begun,” Smith said. “The only thing I know is the man walked in and wanted to be seated. I did see him put up a mild defense. It’s not for me to say who’s right or wrong. Stacy didn’t need me to defend him, and Martha wasn’t going to be persuaded, either. I felt uncomfortable about it, because I invited the man there.”
Campfield wrote on his blog that Boggs “came up and started yelling at me calling me names and telling me they were not going to serve me because of my alleged beliefs saying I hate gays.”
Smith and Andrews said they didn’t hear the whole conversation but don’t recall any yelling.
“It was a heated moment,” Andrews said. “She was passionate. She told him with passion that she didn’t want him there. I really didn’t think this would be a global phenomenon, or I would have been taking notes.”
The story lit up websites and blogs in the day that followed. About 3,000 people posted their support on the Bistro’s Facebook page by Monday night.
“I’m a married heterosexual woman,” Boggs said. “I had no intention of doing this for publicity, but he’s an embarrassment to the state. If more people voted, we wouldn’t have people like him in office.”
Campfield hasn’t expressed any regrets.
“As Jesus said, ‘If you are not welcomed in a town shake the dust off your feet and move on,’ ” he wrote on his blog. “I just figured this is another example of the open-minded tolerant left. They claim tolerances for divergent points of view. Until someone actually has one. Then they don’t know how to handle it.”
The restaurant confrontation marks the third time Campfield’s been booted from a public place. University of Tennessee Police escorted Campfield out of Neyland Stadium after he showed up for a football game on Halloween 2009 wearing a Mexican-style wrestler’s mask.
Security guards removed Campfield and another man, Roger “Bill” Bates, from the annual Duncan Family Barbecue at the Civic Coliseum in 2002 when the pair scuffled over a sign Campfield carried mocking then-Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, as the “Tax ‘n’ Spend Governor.”
Campfield wasn’t charged in either case.
from KNOX News
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Senator Stacey Campfield On Gays Fucking Monkeys

WASHINGTON – A 21-month investigation into allegations that the Federal Air Marshal Service has a hostile work environment — rife with discrimination and retaliation — has concluded that no “widespread” problem exists, according to an internal government e-mail obtained by CNN.
But, investigators also concluded, a large number of air marshals think those problems exist.
The e-mail is the first glimpse into the long-awaited investigative report, which is scheduled to be released to the public on February 9.
Whistle-blowers in the air marshal’s Orlando, Florida, field office triggered the investigation in early 2010 when they alleged that supervisors used a “Jeopardy!”-style whiteboard to demean and ridicule rank-and-file officers. The board contained derogatory terms to allude to gays, lesbians and African-Americans, they said.
But the investigation grew to include other field offices and other accusations, and the Department of Homeland Security’s internal e-mail Tuesday said Office of Inspector General investigators have interviewed more than 300 DHS employees.
While investigators have remained silent about their work, air marshals contacted by CNN say they provided evidence of a wide range of misconduct, including a supervisor who ran a private security business while at work, supervisors who perjured themselves in sworn testimony against subordinates, and instances of favoritism, racism, sexism and discrimination.
A Federal Air Marshal Service spokeswoman declined to comment on the pending report and government e-mail Tuesday. But several air marshals said they are eager to read the report, and say they will dispute any conclusion that discrimination and retaliation are not widespread.
“We’re going to tear the report apart,” one air marshal, who asked not to be identified, said Tuesday. “We’re going to take and review the report and we’re going to look at our conclusions, because we know what we gave them.”
The internal DHS e-mail summarizes the report’s findings.
“The (OIG) concluded that there was no widespread discrimination or retaliation within (the Federal Air Marshal Service),” it says. “However, the report does suggest that a large segment of our workforce feels that retaliation and discrimination exists.”
Supervisors have a responsibility to “dispel” the perception that the service is rife with discrimination and retaliation, it continues.
In addition to the normal investigative techniques, the OIG took the unusual step of surveying the air marshal workforce. The survey asked air marshals if favoritism ever played a role in promotions, job evaluations and mission assignments; whether air marshals have ever been discriminated against or harassed on the job; and whether they feel they can report misconduct without fear of retaliation.
In August 2011, the Department of Homeland Security declined a CNN Freedom of Information Act request for the survey results, saying that the documents involved an ongoing investigation. It also said the results could reveal the total number of air marshals, which is classified.
A House committee has scheduled a hearing on the air marshals on Feb. 16.
from CNN
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