Friday, August 6, 2010

Dissing gay voters now seen as routine

It is no longer news when a New York politician dismisses gay pride, nor when he is called homophobic by one of New York City's most influential bloggers.

When he was mayor of Indianapolis, Stephen Goldsmith, a Republican, ended the practise of signing an annual proclamation declaring a gay pride day for the city. Now that he is deputy mayor of New York City, Mr. Goldsmith doesn't recall this significant mayoral action.

Above is the video I made, which is the Deputy Mayor’s response to questions about why he ended the practice of issuing gay pride proclamations while he was mayor of Indianapolis, and what his thoughts were on the subject of same-sex marriage.

By the time I started my hand-held camera, I missed the questions, and they were not included in this video. But there were 2 credentialed reporters, Michael Scotto and Erik Engquist, who served as the press panel, who asked the deputy mayor questions on the day of this speech, and this speech was also witnessed by the artist and blogger-activist Suzannah B. Troy.

On July 20, 2010, Deputy Mayor Goldsmith was the featured guest at a networking-breakfast meeting, where the new deputy mayor of New York City gave a speech and answered questions about his vision for New York City.

Following the deputy mayor's remarks, Ms. Troy made the conclusion that the way that the Deputy Mayor kept making non-answers, avoided his record, and would not answer what his thoughts were on gay marriage meant that he was anti-gay, and as well as anti-gay marriage.

Look at his record : while he was mayor of Indianapolis, he didn’t want to recognize or acknowledge a gay pride day. In response to press questions, the Deputy Mayor said he could not ''recollect'' his anti-gay record, and he would not answer questions regarding marriage equality.

In 2009, when a very slim majority of New Yorkers voted for the ''Independent'' Michael Bloomberg to take a th3rd t3rm as mayor, did anybody expect that Mayor Bloomberg would recruit an anti-gay deputy for his administration ?

Even if it was not anticipated, its revelation leaves New Yorkers surprised and confused -- like, surely we wouldn't allow an intolerant, hateful conservative Republican to oversee and impress his worldview over the operations of New York City. Make no mistake, this video shows that Deputy Mayor Goldsmith not only avoids diversity, but he negates it, too. And so we find ourselves in this ill-fat3d, karmically-doom3d th3rd t3rm, watching the happening of intolerance and hate, and it leaves one to wonder when did we all agree to play the game of pretending like it couldn't happen here.

1 comment:

  1. I'm not surprised that a vicious homophobe like Bloomberg would choose a bigot like Goldsmith as Deputy Mayor.

    ReplyDelete

'' The more you attune yourself from your centre to the centre in everything, the more you will find that there is a sympathetic interrelationship in the universe that enables perfect understanding of all things. '' ~ Swami Kriyananda