Join The Impact MA

Money Talks: Protest the Boston DNC fundraiser to demand LGBT rights!
Demanding strong action from Pres. Obama and the Democrats!

WHEN: Tuesday, June 23rd, at 4:15pm

WHERE: At Fenway Park, near Gate B, at the corner of Van Ness St. and Ipswich St. This is where the entrance to the fundraiser is, which is being held on the right roof deck of Fenway Park.

WHY: More has been accomplished for LGBT civil rights in the past 6 days than in the past 6 months due to public pressure. This is a way to keep that public pressure on.

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DETAILS:
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As we've all seen, we've gotten more in the past 6 days for the LGBT community than we have in the past 6 months. Once this firestorm of criticism and public pressure began over the repugnant DOMA brief, we began hearing that the Hate Crimes bill may pass very soon. Then once the boycotting began of the DNC fundraiser in Washington, DC, we then learned about the relocation benefits memorandum which seemed to be a direction reaction to the boycott.

Money talks folks and we have a HUGE opportunity here. Putting on this protest will be emblematic of a larger issue at hand for the Obama administration and the Dems. No longer is the protest singled out just in Washington, DC, but now they're spreading. If the Obama administration and the Dems want to tamper down frustrations, the only way for them to do so will be to take concrete strong action to pass substantive LGBT civil rights measures. Let's make them do it!

See the facebook event here.


Thanks to everyone who marched with us at Pride. We had a blast! We'll put up pictures soon. In the meantime, if you'd like to join us for our protest this thursday or our upcoming canvassing trips to Maine, email us at info@jointheimpactma.com.


Protest Judge’s Decision to Free Convicted Gaybasher—No Jail Time!
On Thursday, June 18th, at 4pm, Join the Impact MA and the Anti-Violence Project will protest a shocking miscarriage of justice in the case of an admitted gaybasher who left two victims lying in the street with brain injuries. The protest will take place on the sidewalks outside the Boston Municipal Court in downtown Boston/North End, at the corner of New Chardon and Merrimac Streets, near Haymarket Station on the Orange Line.

On May 27, 2009, Framingham resident Fabio Brandao pled guilty to the brutal homophobic beating of three gay men and their female companion that occurred in Boston’s South End last August. Throughout the attack the victims were cursed as “fucking faggots.” Brandao was convicted on nine counts including criminal violations of civil rights and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He did not cooperate with authorities to identify his three fellow assailants.

Brandao will serve no jail time despite having left two victims lying in the street with brain injuries. He received a suspended sentence from Judge Thomas Horgan of the Boston Municipal Court. He will undergo “anger management” counseling, as though that could cure his violent homophobia. The victims were traumatized all over again by the insensitivity Judge Horgan displayed to their suffering.

The Brandao sentence is symptomatic of a larger problem that still persists 40 years after Stonewall. Violence against LGBT people is treated less seriously by the authorities than violence against straights. In an eerie parallel from 1988, Boston resident Jim Brinning was brutally attacked as he left a gay bar on Huntington Avenue, with his assailants beating him up and taunting him as a “faggot.” He was beaten so badly that his face “looked like the inside of a watermelon,” as one newspaper columnist described it. Two perpetrators were caught, but, like Brandao, they got off in Boston Municipal Court.

The injustice in Jim Brinning’s case helped generate a change in the law, so that hate crimes resulting in bodily injury to victims are now eligible for fifteen year sentences to state prison. Hate crimes are marked for enhanced punishment, because, as the United State Supreme Court has explained, “bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.” See Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 476, 488 (1993). Hate crimes are like terrorism, because they seek to intimidate a whole group of people as they go about their daily lives. Hate crimes must be punished, lest violent bigots sense open season to targeting group they hate.

The change in the law made no difference to Judge Horgan. He ignored the legislative intent for stiffened penalties for hate crimes, in a brazen act of judicial nullification. Instead of the legally prescribed punishment he administered a mere slap on the wrist for a henious crime of violence. Judge Horgan’s indulgence toward a brutal gaybasher leaves all LGBT people in Greater Boston less safe. This blatant failure of justice is intolerable.

Join our peaceful protest on Thursday, 18 June 2009, at 4 PM, on the sidewalks outside the Boston Municipal Court, at the corner of New Chardon and Merrimac Streets downtown (near Haymarket Station.) Come and add your voice to the outrage over Brandao being a free man, while his victims suffer from lasting trauma and scars. For more information, please contact Don Gorton at dgorton@verizon.net.


Thank You!

Thanks to everyone who came to the Day of Decision rally! You all make me so proud to be a Bostonian. There's some pictures and news articles posted to the facebook page. If you'd like to get involved with Join the Impact or with our ongoing efforts to help out organizers in Maine, we'd love to have you. Please email us at info@jointheimpactma.com!




7pm. Copley. Tuesday, May 26. The day the CA Supreme Court decides the legality of Prop 8

This Tuesday, the California Supreme Court will rule on Proposition 8. Regardless of the verdict, we need to take a stand!

Join us, 7pm at Copley Square on the night of the Supreme Court ruling for a rally to celebrate the overturning of this hateful anti-gay law or to protest this blatant denial of civil rights.

If the verdict is against marriage equality - we will be holding a New Orleans style funeral procession to display that the California courts have killed marriage equality but celebrate our chance to keep fighting - especially in Maine right now! We will not let this happen in our backyard!.

If the verdict is to uphold marriage equality - expect an all-out celebration!

Speakers include Sue Hyde from the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Arline Isaacson from the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, Gary Daffin, from Multicultural AIDS Coalition as well as the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus, and others.

Spread the word and be prepared! This event brought to you by Join the Impact MA - the same group that brought you last November's Prop 8 rally, January's DOMA protest, and much more!




Protest the Ex-Gay Deception!

Join the Impact MA is shining a spotlight on the fraudulent ex-gay movement in two events in late April. First, people are rallying outside Park Street Station near the Brewer Fountain in Boston at noon on Tuesday, April 28th to protest the “leadership training” Exodus International is conducting at Park Street Church. Second, noted author and expert Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out, will speak at a forum on the ex-gay movement at MIT at 7 PM the evening of the 28th.

Exodus is the world’s largest ex-gay ministry. It falsely promises Google searchers “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.” From its perspective, Exodus ministers to individuals who are “tortured” by homosexuality (as former pastor Rev. Ted Haggard put it.) It trains religious leaders, clergy and laypeople to reach out to troubled homosexuals to encourage them to change to being heterosexuals. LGBT advocates counter that the only thing that needs to change is the homophobia the ex-gay movement feeds on.

Of course all Exodus can offer lesbians and gays is an ersatz heterosexuality based on mortifying one’s God-given nature. Exodus does not want people to know that it is impossible to replace a same-sex sexual orientation with opposite-sex attraction. Reputable medical and scientific authorities reject so-called “reparative therapy.” Having been exiled from the scientific community, the ex-gays continue with a faith-based program to assimilate gays and lesbians, Borg-style. They do not want attention given to the warnings from the American Psychiatric Association: “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.” The prejudice Exodus represents lets them deny the harm they do.

As they reach out to gay people who are down on themselves, Exodus wears a mask of compassion. But they are shedding crocodile tears for suffering their own compatriots have set out to exacerbate. Exodus International is supported by the religious right in America, and fits into a multi-pronged offensive to suppress LGBT visibility and equality. On various fronts, the religious right runs interference in the pursuit of happiness by LGBT people who are simply trying to live and let live. In a most egregious example, right-wing activists oppose anti-bullying best practices which address the link to homophobia, which contributed to the recent suicide of an 11-year old boy in Springfield, MA. Anti-gay zealots would rather leave bullying unchecked, on the tenth anniversary of the Columbine Massacre, than allow LGBT-inclusive school safety strategies. Some right-wing extremists see bullying as a useful mechanism for discouraging homosexuality and gender non-conformity among adolescents.

If the Anita Bryant’s and John Briggs’ of the world had their way, LGBT people could be fired from their jobs, evicted from their apartments, and sent to prison. Before Stonewall—40 years ago—gays and lesbians could be involuntarily committed to mental institutions and forced to undergo cruel “conversion therapy,” including the torture technique of aversive conditioning. There was no pretense of compassion like today.

Consider further the insistence that LGBT people be denied the protections against hate crimes that other groups enjoy, lest our safety from bigoted violence somehow interfere with anti-gay hate speech. Conservative “Christian” groups have called for boycotts of companies that provide equal benefits to their LGBT employees. How many fundamentalists assume that because God holds gays and lesbians in contempt, they should too?

Although they know they can’t, the ex-gay vultures would like to take society back 40 years. They would prefer that Stonewall had never happened, and that no LGBT community had ever emerged and organized. While a handshake may have eclipsed the basher’s fist as the preferred way to make contact with a struggling gay person, the ex-gay groups perpetuate the stigma attached to homosexuality which rationalizes the homophobia the basher gives the most powerful expression to.

As long as Exodus International is in fellowship with organizations which seek to stack the social contract against LGBT happiness, they cannot pose as friends of any LGBT person, troubled or otherwise. When they say they only “help” those who want to “leave” homosexuality, they leave unspoken the efforts of their co-religionists to make the lives of LGBT so miserable that some at the margins are driven to seek a way out (even though there is no scientifically valid means to change sexual orientation.) Homophobia is the life-blood of the ex-gay movement, and their work depends on LGBT people having the social status that leads bullies to taunt their targets as “gay,” to mean simply the worst thing one child can call another. We are affected by the hate they perpetuate and we protest the campaign against equality they aid and abet.

For more information on the anti-Exodus protest see the flyer or facebook page

For more information on the planned Day of Decision events, see facebook.

We have two very exciting events coming up. On April 7th, join us as we help out with MTPC's lobby day at the statehouse. More info is on our facebook event. On April 15th, tax day, we need volunteers to step up, adopt-a-post office, and hold an event to proclaim "Equal Taxes, Equal Rights." All of the info you need is on our webpage so sign up today!


Thank You MA!

Over the past weeks, many of you have been calling your state legislator and asking them to co-sponsor "An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes." This bill ensures that the transgender community is protected in our states nondiscrimination laws and hate crimes legislation. Thanks to a lot of hard work by many people, there are 104 co-sponsors to the bill - including a majority in both the house and the senate!

Check out the bap below to find out if your legislators are cosponsors. If they are, give them a call to say "thank you." Districts of the current co-sponsors are in green. Districts in red have not yet signed on to the bill. Click on the map to get names and phone numbers, or fill out the form below. Be sure to check both the senate and the house.

Also, be sure to sign up for our facebook group to get updates on future events. We will be helping out with MTPC's lobby day on April 7th, hosting tax day rallies on April 15th, countering Fred Phelp's message of hate on March 13th, and more. But, you have to sign up to learn more!

Some map data from www.govtrack.us.