Excerpted from Too Much Information?, by Peggy Noonan, published May 5, 2005, by Wall Street Journal:

I was at a wedding, standing just off the dance floor, when a pleasant young man in his 20s approached, introduced himself and asked where I’d had my hair done. I shook his offered hand and began to answer, but before I could he said, “I’m gay, by the way.”

I nodded as if this were my business, but thought: I wonder why a total stranger thinks I want to know what he wishes to do with his genitals? What an odd way to say hello.

We live in a time in which people routinely violate their own privacy.

I don’t think the young man lacked a sense of privacy. I suspect if I’d said, “Tell me your annual salary,” he would have bridled. That’s personal.

Maybe he wanted me to approve (“That’s wonderful!”) or disapprove (“Unclean!”). Maybe he felt compelled to announce his orientation because homosexuals are so often told that not to declare is to be closeted, and to be closeted is shameful. Maybe he was doing what he thinks he must to do to show integrity.

Whatever his thinking, it has occurred to me that in the old, clucking, busybody America it was not unusual to meet people who needed to be told, “That’s none of your business.”

But in the new and infinitely stranger America there are a lot of people who need to be told, “Buddy, that’s none of my business.”

Or, as people began saying about five years ago, “Too much information!”

Continue reading in Wall Street Journal…

Excerpted from The Undercover Agent Comes in from the Cold, by Robert K Elder, published Oct 16, 2006, by Chicago Tribune:

While buying surface-to-air missiles and counterfeit $100 bills from Chinese nationals, he facilitated offshore trysts for pedophiles and scored crystal meth from a Los Angeles gang.

But Wallace had a secret: His name wasn’t Wallace at all.

“Robert William Wallace” was a front, a name taken by undercover FBI agent Robert Hamer…

The final sting

In Hamer’s final undercover sting, in 2005, the bureau targeted the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an organization that advocates sex with children.

For most of that career, he posed as tough guys, gentlemen thugs. Transforming into a homosexual pedophile wasn’t easy. Hamer found the group’s appetites repulsive and worried about blending in.

“When I first started posing as a boy lover, I thought I looked too much like a cop. I was a little too macho,” he says. “I thought, ‘What am I going to do to throw them off?’ It was almost like the heavens opened up
and said, ‘Handicapped.’ And that’s what I did.”

Hamer went to the Salvation Army, bought a cane for $5 and hobbled his way to eight convictions. Over three years, Hamer became part of the association’s inner circle, eventually helping to facilitate a boat trip
to Mexico for men to have sex with boys.

Prosecutors said that David Mayer, a Chicago flight attendant and psychologist, suggested the trip to Mexico at a NAMBLA convention in 2004. On a surveillance tape, Mayer said he kept his job as a flight
attendant so he could travel overseas to places where underage sex for hire was commonplace.

In February 2005, the FBI arrested Mayer and two colleagues on a San Diego dock for alleged interstate travel for the purpose of illicit sex. To keep his cover, Hamer pretended to faint when his fellow agents
carted him off. Mayer received a sentence of more than three years in federal prison.

From Man-Boy Love Association Member Stung By FBI, by Matt O’Connor, published Aug 21, 2006, by Chicago Tribune:

A flight attendant from Chicago…David C. Mayer, 51, was about to board a boat to Mexico when he was arrested last year. He and six others snared in the FBI investigation thought they were traveling to a bed-and-breakfast that provided boys for their sexual pleasure, authorities charged.

A federal judge in San Diego sentenced Mayer to 37 months in prison on Aug. 11.

Mayer had pleaded guilty to the sex offense on the condition he be allowed to appeal the judge’s refusal to dismiss the charge on 1st Amendment grounds.

The defense alleged the government had over-reached after an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, secretly tape-recording discussions at annual conventions in 2003 and 2004.

Within half an hour of meeting the FBI agent at the 2004 convention, Mayer expressed frustration at the group’s political agenda, authorities said. The organization, formed in 1978, is dedicated to eliminating age-of-consent laws.

Mayer wanted advice on traveling abroad to have sex with young boys, according to court records.

“I don’t know who’s lying to who or if … they’re lying to themselves and saying, ‘This is all political. This is all to change society,'” Mayer said of conference organizers in the tape-recorded conversation. “[Expletive], it’s like, bring on the boys.”

A spokeswoman for American Airlines confirmed that Mayer, formerly of the 1200 block of North Sandburg Terrace, had worked for the airline for almost 20 years until his arrest last year.

Mayer was also a licensed clinical social worker until late 2003, according to state regulatory authorities, but he had never been the subject of disciplinary action.

Read the rest of this article »

If the homosexual activist group GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) is recommending a new show, it must be pretty bad for traditional values. So watch out for “Wedding Wars,” a new movie produced by A&E debuting tonight (Monday, Dec. 11, 9:00 PM EST, 8:00 Central) and which is the subject of the giddy online post, below, by GLAAD.

Just what America needs: more homosexual propaganda on TV. Yep, every day I’m reminded just how disenfranchised this poor, beleaguered “gay minority” is. Who are they kidding? The homosexual activist lobby has elite power — far disproportionate to their tiny numbers — and they aren’t afraid to use it.

If you have any doubts about how ludicrous it is to say that the “gay marriage” movement has ANYTHING in common with the noble civil rights struggle that ended state-sponsored segregation in this country, check out this link for the annual “Aspen Gay and Lesbian Ski Week” (note the appropriate theme of the Seven Deadly Sins). Talk about wealth, power, and privilege.

We can chuckle at the symbolism of actor John Stamos’ career path, from playing a caring father of twins in “Full House” to playing a homosexual party planner in “Wedding Wars.” But the downward evolution of the fight for “equality” in America — from Selma to Aspen, from ending horrible Jim Crow laws to shilling for counterfeit “marriage,” from stigmatizing racist bigotry to scoffing at Christian morality — is a sober reminder of the corruption of civil rights in this nation.

A&E need not have bothered with its condescending GLAAD “public service” announcement (actress Julianne Moore lecturing us about “freedom and equality”) running alongside the show. Looks like the whole “Wedding Wars” movie is designed to promote GLAAD’s perspective. Memo to GLAAD and A&E: homosexual practice will always be wrong, no matter how many millions of dollars worth of PC programming you throw at the public. “Gay marriage” is the ultimate rebellion against a God who lovingly created men and women for each other, united in marriage to raise children.

Which takes us to an aspect of the ongoing “gay” crusade that many Americans are only now beginning to understand. So often pro-family advocates are asked why we care so much about “what two people do in their bedroom,” “why can’t we just leave them alone?” etc., as if homosexuality is a private matter that just sort of exists without demanding attention. For some, of course, it is. But “Wedding Wars” shows us the flip side of the “gay” movement, which proudly DEMANDS approval at every opportunity, and feels the need to ridicule Judeo-Christian values in order to score points for the “gay” cause.

Makes sense: sinful lifestyles cannot be elevated to normal and even “Christian” status unless sin itself is redefined, and normalcy and Christianity are brought lower.

This seeming pathological drive for approval (tolerance is passe) is why proud homosexuality will remain the most divisive social issue this country has faced in a long time. The “gay” activists won’t leave us alone. They can’t. To achieve their revolutionary, egalitarian goal of treating homosexuality the same as heterosexuality in our culture, they and their increasingly radical straight allies are forced to discredit and destroy a lot of good, Bible-based tradition — and turn the hearts of America’s children against God’s created purpose for sexuality.

There are other sins like pornography, pre-marital sex and abortion that war against tradition, but none has the organizational, insider power that homosexuality now has, nor the massive chip on their shoulder that drives self-styled “queer” activists, compulsively, to sneer at normalcy and true religion.

Yes, “gay”-friendly Hollywood is laughing at us and our supposedly antiquated beliefs. But I have to believe that although confirmed liberals might watch and enjoy shows like “Wedding Wars,” the average American is put off by the overkill of “gay, gay, gay” in the popular culture. Please take a minute to remind yourself that God is right and GLAAD is wrong, then tell A&E what you think about their latest sellout to the homosexual lobby. — Peter LaBarbera

TAKE ACTION – Tell A&E that you do not appreciate
programming that promotes homosexuality.

GLAAD writes:

The A&E Network will premiere Wedding Wars on Monday, Dec. 11 at 9pm ET, a comedic take on the battle for marriage equality starring John Stamos (ER), Eric Dane (Grey’s Anatomy) and James Brolin (The Reagans).

Stamos plays Shel, a gay party planner, who agrees to organize the nuptials for straight brother Ben (Dane) and Maggie (Bonnie Somerville), the governor of Maine’s (Brolin) daughter. After Shel finds out that Ben, a campaign manager for his future father-in-law, is behind the governor’s speech against marriage equality, he decides to go on strike for equal rights. Shel’s strike picks up steam and eventually spreads nationwide, showing the extent that gay and lesbian people make up the workforce of this country.

“A&E’s original movie Wedding Wars offers a fresh, entertaining take on marriage equality — and how people are growing to realize that banning their gay family members, friends and acquaintances from marrying is both unfair and hurtful to everyone,” says GLAAD President Neil G. Giuliano. “This is the kind of storytelling that can invest more and more people in our lives and our families, and we’re thrilled that millions of A&E viewers will soon be able to see this movie and share it with their loved ones and friends.”

During the world premiere broadcast of Wedding Wars, A&E will air an award-winning GLAAD public service announcement starring Julianne Moore.

Produced by Storyline Entertainment in association with Sony Pictures Television,Wedding Wars is directed by Jim Fall (Trick, The Lizzie McGuire Movie) from a script by Stephen Mazur (Liar, Liar). Storyline Entertainment’s Craig Zadan and Neil Meron serve as executive producers.

by Sonja Dalton

Julianne Moore is the spokesperson for GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) in what they call “an award-winning GLAAD public service announcement.”

To view the Julianne Moore PDF,
please click HERE.

In the continuing quest to conflate special status for sexual perversion with civil rights for black Americans, the piece begins with a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”

Then the actress says: “I love this country. I love it for the principles it was founded upon, where every American is created equal, regardless of skin color or sexual orientation…”

It would come as quite a surprise to George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the other God-fearing leaders of the American Revolution to learn that they had “sexual orientation” (homosexuality) in mind while drafting the Declaration of Independence, framing the Constitution and drafting the Federalist Papers.

General Washington approved the court martial of Lt. Gotthold Frederick Enslin from the Continental Army for attempted sodomy on another soldier, so we don’t think he would have agreed with Moore’s and GLAAD’s revisionist history.

Moore goes on to say: “People who love those of the same gender were created as every other American — equal…”

People who have sex with people of the same sex were indeed created equal; however, they choose a lifestyle which is not morally equal nor equally valuable to society. In this country, now that the Supreme Court has declared sodomy a de facto constitutional right, they are at liberty to have deviant sex anywhere in the USA with any consenting adult — but they cannot reasonably expect to enjoy universal approval and respect any more than an adulterer can.

Julianne Moore says: “Promote freedom — Embrace equality.”

GLAAD is an odd group to speak out for “freedom.” They haven’t exactly stood up for the rights of former homosexuals to tell their stories, but instead have worked to keep those stories from reaching the public. (GLAAD justifies its censorious impluse against ex-gays and others in the pro-family movement by saying it is protecting the airwaves from “hate.”)

So now GLAAD is again exploit America’s noble civil rights movement for its own ends, which will include curtailing the “freedom” of those who object publicly to homosexual behavior.

Let’s examine what the Scriptures say about true freedom.

The Bible teaches: “Promote freedom — Embrace Jesus Christ” – the Son of God, who affirmed His Father’s design for marriage and sexuality, and who said…

“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.
Then you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free…
If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.”

–John 8:31-41

When the Bible speaks of freedom, its inspired authors are referring to freedom from the ceremonial Law of Moses and the requirement for constant blood sacrifice, which was necessitated by their sins. Through baptism into the death of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:3-4), we can be fully released from the spiritual consequence of sin, which is eternal death (Romans 8:23), a permanent separation from God’s glory, His provision and His mercy.

The disciples of Jesus do not use their freedom as an occasion to indulge the sinful nature (Galatians 5:13-14) and they do not allow sin to reign in their bodies (Romans 8:11-14); instead they become slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:18).

Ironic, is it not, that those who promote a lifestyle which is physically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful, would call it “freedom”? Do not be deceived.

TAKE ACTION – Begin now to let President Bush know that you oppose Federal Hate Crimes legislation.

Excerpted from Gay-Rights Activists Hopeful About Agenda’s New Prospects, by Johanna Neuman, published Dec 3, 2006, by Los Angeles Times:

Groups say they’re close to getting a hate crimes measure passed in the new Congress

…With Democrats about to take control of Congress, some of its other legislative goals appear within reach — including making violence against gays a hate crime and outlawing workplace discrimination.

…With the realignment of the House and Senate next month, gay and lesbian groups say they are tantalizingly close to having enough votes to ensure passage of at least the hate crimes bill, and perhaps the discrimination measure, which once failed in the Senate by one vote.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is [“gay”], said the hate crimes bill had a “very good chance of going to George Bush’s desk … in the first half of the year.”

He said the discrimination measure might be further off, noting that Democrats may not want to push for too much too soon.

…Some gay-rights activists now are demanding that the bill include transgender individuals, which could complicate passage.

And social conservatives contend that hate crimes bills in Sweden and Canada have squelched religious expression. “Pastors have been prosecuted for saying these things [about homosexuality] from the Bible, in their own churches,” said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for the conservative Concerned Women for America.

…Gay-rights activists say they expect the Democratic leadership to allow just one of their issues to get attention soon after the party takes control, for fear of alienating conservative Democrats. The hate crimes bill has the best chance of early passage, advocates say, because it has support of law enforcement groups.

…With a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, social conservatives will be looking to the White House for help. “We’ll likely be relying on the president to veto,” McClusky said.

Gay-rights activists acknowledge that President Bush could be a problem, given his base of religious conservatives, but are not convinced he would use his veto power.

“Given the broad, broad public support, I’d be very surprised if President Bush would actually veto” the hate crimes bill, said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a civil rights group.

…Gay-rights groups say they have already won an important victory: They can now play offense instead of defense.

For background on this debate, see PFOX Official: Homosexual Activists Want to Censor Ex-‘Gay’ Message, by Jim Brown, published Nov 16, 2006, by Agape Press.

From MCPS [Montgomery County, Maryland, Public Schools] Flyer Distribution Policy: Should Organizations Be Allowed to Distribute Material with Report Cards?, Pia Nargundkar vs Iliya Smithka, published Nov 28, 2006, by Silver Chips (student newspaper at Montgomery Blair High School):

Iliya Smithka says YES: Organizations have the right to free speech within schools.

According to the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) website, flyers can be sent home with Blair students when report cards are handed out, on Nov. 10, Feb. 1 and April 11. On Nov. 10, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) distributed an inoffensive and informational flyer about the organization, much to the displeasure of many students and parents. These same students and parents must realize that the flyer policy supports nonprofit organizations’ right to free speech and a free market society.

Read the rest of this article »

AN Americans For Truth SPECIAL REPORT

How Does a Teenager Get Started in Homosexual “Sex Work”? Just ask the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force…

It’s about time that Christian Americans learn to distinguish between the man or woman struggling with homosexual temptations–to whom we should extend a loving hand and God’s grace to help them overcome–and a “gay” activist movement bent on destroying all sexual and gender norms in the culture.

Last month, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force held its 2006 Creating Change conference at the Westin Crown Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. Americans For Truth sent reporters to the Nov. 10-12 event–and they witnessed the farthest thing from heartland values that you can imagine. Our representatives were forced to go undercover because the Task Force bans conservative critics from its conferences. (Years ago, I was kicked out of a Task Force conference while attending a workshop on “public sex,” led by a panelist who runs a pornographic “cruising” site for men looking for anonymous sex with other men. No joke.)

Is it any wonder that Task Force leaders are not “proud” of their radical agenda but seek instead to hide it from the public? And yet they have the audacity to compare their movement to Martin Luther King’s.

As the leftist arm of the homosexual movement, the Task Force’s annual “Creating Change” conference — now in its 19th year — tells us where they want to take America. “Sex work” for teenagers? Don’t judge it as wrong. Prostitution? Legalize it but don’t tax it. Partnering with sexual sadists, pornographers and “fetishists”? Hey, they have their “rights,” too.

The new rallying cry for the “gay” Left is “Sexual Freedom.” This is to the sloganeering homosexual militant what “people’s democracy” was (is) to the Communist cadre: Orwellian Newspeak for an extreme agenda that threatens children, undermines natural families, and ultimately helps destroy societies.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s crusade for sexual anarchy — which we will lay out in future articles — is the logical result of a movement that is constantly discovering new rights based on sexual and gender aberrations. Of course, the Task Force cannot say “No” to the sadomasochists and the prostitution advocates, etc.: if rights can be based on homosexual behavior — a sin so grievous that it was an unspoken taboo not too long ago — why stop at these other sex/gender “orientations”?

Meanwhile, the Task Force’s director, Matt Foreman, regularly blasts pro-family Christians and groups like American For Truth as “extremists” and “homophobes.” Reality check: there is nothing more extreme than the Gay Task Force’s agenda of casting aside all laws proscribing immoral and unhealthy sexual conduct.

While many homosexuals take issue with this or that aspect of the Task Force’s “loony left” agenda, Americans need to recognize that, collectively, the organized homosexual activist movement — those pushing to change our laws and make homosexuality and transsexuality easy for youth to embrace — constitutes one of the greatest evils facing our culture today.

Now, I hear some of you objecting that the Task Force conference does not represent the “gay mainstream.” True, but the NGLTF’s other agenda of domesticated, “monogamous” homosexuality is nearly as extreme as what’s described below because it presents a “good” side to perversion — that is, sin — for young people to emulate.

Regularizing sin (deviance) or repackaging it to appear more like normal heterosexual relationships does not make it right.

For those tempted to embrace homosexual monogamy as an acceptable compromise, ask yourself: how do two men consummate their “gay marriage”?

The likelihood that you don’t even want to think about answering that question bespeaks the evilness of organized homosexuality and the illicit nature of all “gay” sex. Supporting “civil unions” as a compromise is merely a capitulation to an agenda that seeks to enshrine wrong and sometimes deadly behavior as a “good” for society.

Tear off the veneer of “gay” propaganda and underneath you will see that this issue has little to do with “equality” or “civil rights” and everything to do with a revolutionary assault on nature and a time-tested Judeo-Christian morality that has served Western civilization well.

So why are we losing to this extreme movement? One reason is that the Task Force’s agenda is so perverse that most Americans cannot fathom it, while others simply don’t want to face the truth that committed activists are actually mobilizing around such deviance. Still others, their minds softened by the outreach of “gay” friends and family, have taken a “live and let live” approach even though in their gut they recognize the danger of normalizing things like “gay adoption,” “gay marriage” and “GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered] youth.”

So the “gays” — organized, wealthy and single-minded — win incrementally because “good people do nothing.”

So what should we do? In my view there are three options:

1) LIBERAL OPTION: embrace the lie, throw away common sense and centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition, and support homosexuality and gender confusion as civil rights. Watch and cheer as Americans’ First Amendment rights to live out their faith and disagree with homosexuality get superseded by “gays” demanding “sexual freedom” in its various manifestations;

2) “FEEL GOOD” COMPROMISE: support the “middle ground” of civil unions/domestic partnership. (We won’t call it “marriage,” but the media will.) This actually rewards homosexual activism by legitimizing “gay” relationships — thus creating a faulty paradigm of “acceptable, responsible” homosexuality. This option will confuse youth and help all homosexuals rationalize their immoral relationships. It also will embolden “gay” advocates in their struggle to legalize “same-sex marriage”;

3) STAND ON PRINICIPLE: recognize that homosexual behavior and homosexual relationships are always wrong and must not be rewarded by our government or by our laws. Resist all attempts to confirm youth in counterfeit homosexual, bisexual or “transgender” identities. Extend the hope of the life-changing Gospel to homosexual strugglers while fighting the “gay” political/cultural agenda with everything you’ve got.

We at Americans For Truth hope that you will join us in pursuing Option Three. God bless. — Peter LaBarbera

——————————

Creating Change, Corrupting Children: The ‘Gay’ Task Force’s Evil Agenda

By Americans For Truth staffers

At the Creating Change conference (Nov 8-12, 2006), organized by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, at least three teenagers (some still in high school) listened from the front row while a panel discussed “sex work” — prostitution, stripping, and pornography films — and sex worker “rights.”

According the NLGTF’s website, Creating Change is the largest GLBT organizing conference. Over 2,000 homosexual activists were reportedly in attendance in Kansas City.

The Task Force scheduled a panel discussion for Saturday (Nov 11) entitled “What’s $ Got to Do With It?: Sex Work, Economics, and Class.” The description of this session in the conference program states:

“We all know that transgender, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals (as well as those in our communities who don’t identify with those terms) are involved in exchanging sexual services for money, or other necessities, also known as sex work.

“Whether as street-based workers, exotic dancers, pro-dommes, pornography actresses and actors, or in any other aspect, you’ll find gender and sexual minorities.”

To be clear, the primary topic under consideration was prostitution. The program continues:

“…The stigma connected to sex outside of heterosexual, monogamous, inside-marriage-only norms affects the lives of both queers and sex workers. …And sex workers across the US, often time with LGBT sex worker activists at the forefront, are demanding respect for their rights.

“This workshop will explore the diversity and contradictions of the sex industry involving issues of sexuality, gender, race, class and more, with an emphasis on encouraging participants to support sex workers’ fight for their rights. Panelists will discuss alternatives to criminalization, the maximization of health and safety for sex workers, and how feminist, queer theory, and sexuality discussions engage the issue of sex work.”

There were 77 seats available in the meeting room, very few empty, with an additional 8 or 10 people standing. In the front row, directly in front of the panel, sat teenage students from Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (“BAGLY” — “a youth-led, adult-supported social support organization”).

Four adults formed the panel: Darby Hickey, Carol Queen, Gennifer Hirano, and Tyrone Hanley.

Darby Hickey is a male-to-female transvestite (pictured left), with red hair, and was wearing sunglasses, a tight t-shirt and a short plaid pleated skirt. He (God made him male) serves as program coordinator for Different Avenues, a non-profit that offers classes on “communication and negotiating” and counseling on “safer” sex and HIV. In his “Friendster” profile, Darby describes himself as “Christian” and “just a poor girl caught up in the life of glamour and luxury due to my moral corruption and participation in illegal and fraudulent activities.”

Carol Queen is a world-renowned pervert (and proud of it), board member of Woodhull Foundation and creator of “Masturbate-a-thon.” You can read her review of Creating Change on her blog, “Chronicles of Sex Positive Culture” — including her summary of Thursday’s all day “Sexual Freedom Institute.”

Gennifer Hirano is also known as “AsianPrincess” — “an Asian cowgirl in pink braids, bikini top, and thong who often sings ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ while giving an Asian man a lap dance” according to an article by Karen Eng. She is affiliated with SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project), and describes herself as a “Queer Bitch Whore Revolutionary.” An interview published in Asian Week reveals that Ms. Hirano performed at Crazy Horse, a full nude club in San Francisco’s SOMA district — while she was a grade school teacher in San Mateo (she resigned June 30, 2006).

Tyrone Hanley of HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) also serves as president of Youth Alliance DC.

So what did these four GLBT role models have to say to the audience — and more importantly, to teenagers — about “sex work”?

NGLTF’s emerging policy position on prostitution
The Task Force panel advocates “decriminalization” of all sex work — as opposed to “legalization” which would subject prostitution income to taxation and allow for “government control of women’s bodies.”

Gennifer Hirano (pictured right) expressed frustration that she was constrained as a grade school teacher from being “out” as a sex worker.

Darby Hickey said that “sex exchange is a right” and “a tool for survival.”

Tyrone Hanley said that in DC, about 40% of sex workers are women, 40% are trans, and 20% are men. Of the trans prostitutes, nearly all are black or “of color” men who “lack access to the resources to achieve their transition goals” and who are excluded from legitimate employment, even among homosexual professionals and business owners who occupy “a position of power” in DC.

“How do you get started?”
One of the teenage boys on the front row raised his hand and asked: “How do you get started?” He explained: “We suspect that one of the youth in our group is leaning toward sex work. What should we do?”

The panelists did not suggest deterring the youth from pursuing sex work or encouraging the youth to think about a college education. They suggested listening, remaining non-judgmental, and perhaps discussing safety, “but not to the extent that he feels stigmatized.”

“Jesus and all that horrible stuff”
An audience member made reference to a ministry in Kansas City that provides services to prostitutes, homosexual and heterosexual, but “tells them about Jesus and all that horrible stuff.” She asked, “How do we organize against it?”

Carol Queen agreed that to offer services to prostitutes or the homeless while requiring Bible study or prayer is “coercive.” She suggested “creating alternative space without the Christian thing.”

“White supremacy”
Gennifer Hirano closed the session saying that “the police are not my friend.” She suggested that if sex workers, strippers, and porn stars could “overcome sexism” they would “form an alliance to f*ck the police.” As a “Queer Bitch Whore Revolutionary” (with a masters degree) she said “I am a sex worker because of white supremacy” and that “every sex act with a client is an act of revolution.”

Indeed.