Right and Feminist Groups in “Not Me” Contest over Gay Rights

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What with Mother Jones being referred to as a “liberal stalwart” (Chicago Tribune) and a “porno-political remnant of the nineteen sixties” (the NRA), you’d think that our readers would be leftist–and, err, sex-positive–enough to support gay rights. But nobody seems willing to support the gay cause. Check out a couple of comments from one of my recent blog posts on GLBT issues:

I, personally, am not anti-gay BUT…if one owns a small business then one’s views count. If you can’t stand flaming queens then why would you employ one? Laws aren’t going to force you to hire one, your personal tastes will sort out who gets the job. My point in general is that, as OWNER of a business, who the fu*k is going to tell me how to run it?

Homosexuality is a perversion and no one should be forced to hire perverts.

Well, some feminists don’t want to help the queers any more than these Mother Jones readers do. The Maryland Court of Appeals is currently considering a claim that banning gay marriage constitutes a violation of the state’s Equal Rights Amendment. (The Massachusetts gay marriage decision partially relied on that state’s ERA.) Die-hard supporters still trying to win a national ERA are pissed, the American Prospect reports:

Idella Moore of 4ERA, penned a Women’s E-News column titled “The ERA has nothing to do with Gay Marriage” in which she wrote, “…[T]oday we must battle not only long-time opponents of the amendment, but defend this amendment against misinterpretation by those whom most would consider our natural allies.”

Meanwhile, the die-hard opponents of the ERA to whom Moore refers are simultaneously accusing her of being the gay-lover. An article in the National Review gloated, “Mrs. Schlafly not only had the right idea when she fought the Equal Rights Amendment during the 70s, but predictions she made back then are still accurate today.” Schlafly had predicted that the “ERA would legalize the granting of marriage licenses to same-sex couples and generally implement the gay and lesbian agenda.”

And we all know that granting the 4 percent of Americans who are openly gay the right to marry will bring this country to its knees even faster than the journalism of this “pro-terrorist rag” (Lyndon LaRouche).

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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