Tag Archives: Mike Signorile

Gay History – June 16, 1990: Queer Nation “Takes Back The Night”. Michelangelo Signorile Arrested.

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June 16th. 1990

The newly formed activist group Queer Nation holds a Take Back the Night march in New York, protesting hate crimes against gays.

Over 1,000 people attend.

Via the NY Times,  June 18, 1990:

What began as a peaceful march through Greenwich Village late Saturday night to protest violence against homosexuals broke up into clashes, chases, and threats early yesterday morning when hecklers taunted demonstrators as the march drew toward its conclusion.

 In one incident, about 1,000 advocates of gay rights were walking along Broadway at about 1 A.M., carrying a black and white banner that read “Queers Take Back the Night”‘ when some spectators yelled anti-gay remarks at the crowd.  More than 50 marchers chased the men down Astor Place and around the corner to Ninth Street.  Police officers on foot and officers riding motor scooters on sidewalks also pursued the hecklers. Demonstrators said that three men ran away and that two or three other men sought refuge in an apartment building on Ninth Street. The police guarded the building, the Randall House, as an angry crowd taunted them and demanded that the men be arrested.

“This shows graphically the type of problems we face,” said Gary Konecky, a 33-year-old accountant from Bellerose, L.I., who was one of those chasing the men. “I have no idea what would have happened if we caught them.” “They exacerbated the situation by charging at the person when someone called them names,” said Deputy Inspector Charles Campisi, commander of the Sixth Precinct, who walked in front of the crowd during the four-hour march. “It was a long, tough night.”

The crowd resumed marching when the police, who used another exit to leave with the men, stopped guarding the building. When the Randall House doorman was asked where the police took the men, he pointed toward the basement. The police said no charges were brought as a result of the incident.

The march was organized by Queer Nation, a group formed in March to protest anti-gay violence against homosexuals and to draw more attention to the rights of homosexuals and lesbians.

At 11:20 P.M., about 20 demonstrators rushed at former Mayor Edward I. Koch, shouting “Shame! Shame!” after he walked past the march near Eighth Street with two bodyguards on his way back from seeing the movie “Dick Tracy.” A dozen police officers encircled him and rushed him safely into his apartment. “I would say I was startled, certainly not frightened,” Mr. Koch said later in a telephone interview. “I haven’t been subject to this kind of demonstration or action or invective since I left the mayoralty.”

 A spokesman for the sponsoring group, Scott Gorenstein, said: “For years we’ve been trying to get that man’s attention. Tonight we did.” 

 Inspector Campisi said there were six arrests during the march. Three men were arrested and charged with menacing, aggravated harassment, and illegal weapon possession after the police said they were brandishing weapons and taunting homosexuals on Bleecker Street between Grove and Christopher Streets at 2:25 A.M. after the march broke up.  Arrested were Alija Dokovic, 21 years old, of 1050 39th Street, Brooklyn, who the police said had a golf club; Jose Cruz, 16 years old, of 3207 Eighth Avenue of Brooklyn, who was said to have had a baseball bat, and Steven Mendez, 18 years old, of 926 47th Street, Brooklyn, who the police said had a folding knife. All three are from the Borough Park section.

Inspector Campisi said three marchers were arrested on disorderly conduct charges, issued summonses, and released. Mr. Gorenstein, the spokesman for the group, said he only knew of two marchers being arrested: Michelangelo Signorile, 29, a writer, and Lori Cohen, a lawyer, whose age was not available. Mr. Gorenstein said they argued with police officers after the clash on Broadway. 

GAY HISTORY 101

Queer Nation was an LGBT activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, by HIV/AIDS activists from ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of anti-gay and lesbian violence on the streets and prejudice in the arts and media. The group is known for its confrontational tactics, its slogans, and the practice of outing.

Here are some of Queer Nation’s first actions:

  • April 20, 1990:  Queer Nation members show up en masse at Macy’s department store where Olympic gold medallist Greg Louganis is promoting a new swimsuit line. Queers arrive with WHEATIES cereal boxes with a swimmer’s picture pasted on the front, to recall the time the cereal maker rejected Louganis as a spokesperson, ostensibly because he is gay.
  • April 26, 1990:  Responding to the 120% increase in violence against gays and lesbians, Queer Nationals climb the billboard on the roof of Badlands, a Greenwich Village bar, and hangs a 40-foot banner that reads: “Dykes and Fags Bash Back!”
  • April 28, 1990:  A pipe bomb explodes in Uncle Charlie’s, a Greenwich Village gay bar, injuring three. In protest, Queer Nation mobilizes 1000 gays and lesbians in a matter of hours. Angry marchers fill the streets, carrying the banner “Dykes and Fags Bash Back.”

Happy Anniversary Mike Signorile !

Mike Signorile Rips To Shreds Bisexual and Gay Dems Who Voted For The Government Shutdown

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Mike Signorelli

Bisexual Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema and gay New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, both Democrats, voted with House GOP to shut down the government and are being taken to task (and rightfully so) over their decisions.

Michelangelo Signorile tears them apart in a new HuffPost piece and sheds some light on the DINO’s (Democrats In Name Only) voting record and the disgrace they have brought the LGBT community.

“Since taking office, Sinema has voted with the GOP against economic justice issues that progressives, including LGBT activists, view as crucial. Both she and U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), an openly gay former Clinton aide, also elected for the first time in 2012, have voted with big banks and Wall Street time and again. Right out of the gate, Maloney, who took a lot of Wall Street money, voted with the GOP on the debt ceiling early this year, and actually co-sponsored a bill that would roll back reforms of the very Wall Street practices that led to the economic collapse. He even voted with the GOP to take authority over the Keystone XL project from the president. Like Sinema, he also voted to jeopardize Obamacare or shut down the government. And he too was supported in his election campaign by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign, and other gay and progressive groups, touted as a progressive.

Think about this: On what is arguably the most important debate in Congress, two of nine Democrats who voted with the tea party-led blackmailers are openly gay or bisexual. Two of only five openly gay or bisexual members of the House voted with the extreme far right to undermine the president. Veteran recording industry executive Howie Klein, the founder of the progressive Blue America PAC and an openly gay man himself, has been criticizing both of them for their votes for months. He told me that Sinema had been calling him throughout last year’s campaign, looking for money. He’d known her and liked her, having served with her on the board of People for the American Way, but he told me that when he had her fully vetted, he was “horrified” by her record. Blue America is now actively recruiting a candidate to run in the Democratic primary against Sinema.

Some say it’s better to have Democrats like Sinema and Maloney than to possibly have a Republican in the seat. If it means they have to vote with the GOP, especially if the vote isn’t pivotal, then so be it, the thinking goes. But that breeds the most cynical kind of politics and drives people away from participating when we need to bring them in.”

This is what happens when the Gay and Lesbian Victory fund backs candidates just because they are LGBT and not because of their issues at large.

 

AFA’s Bryan Fischer Goes Batshittier! – Claims Mike Signorile Supports Anti-Gay Death Penalty!

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Crazy as a fucking loon AFA spokesthing and radio host Bryan Fischer is trying to justify his support for Uganda’s anti-gay law know as the “Kill the Gays Bill” by insanely claiming,, that progressive gay radio host Michelangelo Signorile endorses a death penalty for gay people.

Fischer is death grasping  on a remark Signorile made to a homoCON GOP  Romney supporter during a heated pre-election debate. Signorile said suicide would be “much easier than waiting for the slow, painful death that Mitt Romney will bring you.  Later Signorelli apologized. (And I’ll never know why because he told the truth) But somewhere in Fischers most probably venereal diseased swiss cheese mind he tries to make the correlation between Signorelli’s statement and Uganda’s hateful bill to justify himself.

Insanity doesn’t run in Bryan Fischer’s family.  It fucking gallops!