Why You Should Give A Damn!

Newsletter Archive

Newsletter #4, November, 2005

Election News & New Project

by Davina Kotulski, Ph.D.

As you may know by now, Texans have voted gays out of their state constitution and the Texas Bill of Rights. LGBT Texans now know that their lives are worth less than their straight neighbors and co-workers. They now feel the slap from the same helping hands that brought relief to their fellow Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi. It seems like as many strides forward as we make, our opponents are celebrate three times as many victories against us, waging more and better battles. California, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Alabama are next. We are close to 20 states with constitutional amendments denying same-sex couples even the most basic relationship rights like being able to be at our partner’s bedside in the emergency room.

At times I find myself feeling helpless to stop these amendments. The only thing that really seems to work is to take a fence-sitter or neutral bystander and educate them so that they can become an outspoken advocate. Or to keep at the anti-gay marriage person and work to neutralize their stance with education and take their stinger out, leaving them less passionate about thwarting our rights and equality. Knowing someone who has been hurt by not having marriage equality and a clear explanation of why marriage equality is an equal rights issue seems to be the only way I’ve seen to make this happen.

The Freedom to Marry movie has been an incredible tool to introduce people to same-sex couples and their real life needs for marriage equality. I’ve traveled with this film across the country and witnessed its success. In Indiana, a young straight Catholic student told me this film made him understand why gay people wanted relationship rights and he declared to a local paper that he now was in support of civil unions, a huge step forward for him since he had come to the viewing of the film against all rights for LGBT couples.

This film has had enormous success being shown on PBS in June of this year, Free Speech TV and Pink TV presently, and now it is going to be shown on QTV. Freedom to Marry has been shown in several different countries and in many languages and has won numerous audience awards throughout the country. When people view Freedom to Marry, they are moved on the scale towards supporting marriage equality.

This month an incredible opportunity gas presented itself to create a Spanish/Latino version of Freedom to Marry bringing in new people and making a film that directly speaks to Latino voters about why they should give a damn about gay marriage (sorry, couldn’t resist). This is a project that you can help bring to life by making a donation to filmmakers Carmen Goodyear and Laurie York at Turtle Time Farms Productions. Your donation will help with production costs of the Latino Version of this film which will then be distributed throughout Latino communities at cost in California, Arizona, Florida, and more. Please send your donation to:

Turtle Time Productions
P.O. Box 51
Albion, CA 95410

Help us defeat these anti-gay constitutional amendments.

Thanks for making a difference!