Marriage equality is an essential aspect of Justice and peace in America. Marriage equality will lead our nation to being a worldwide symbol of what liberty and justice means for all citizens in this great nation and not some. The term superpower will be redifined as meaning we lead the way for Justice, fairness and equality for all the world to see!

Melissa

Your pice this Saturday did not give us that REAL story on The Mormon Church. They are so toxic gay folks & their quest for equal rights. Just this, below, from their own page is enough to show that:

‘What is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' attitude regarding homosexuality and same sex marriage?’

And under that headline was (in part) this: “In the Bible Paul preached to the Romans that homosexual behavior was sinful (see Romans 1:24-32). In Old Testament times Moses included in his law that homosexual relations were against God’s law (see Leviticus 20:13”

And further: “We want to help these people, to strengthen them, to assist them with their problems and to help them with their difficulties. But we cannot stand idle if they indulge in immoral activity, if they try to uphold and defend and live in a so-called same-sex marriage situation. To permit such would be to make light of the very serious and sacred foundation of God-sanctioned marriage and its very purpose, the rearing of families” (Ensign, Nov. 1998, 71).”

I've, many times, seen you become quite passionate about a few issues like women's rights & etc. But you gave these folks a pass on this; a big one. Romney has already indicated he is with his church's views on same sex marriage. But this was a 'giggle piece' with no tough questions and leaving me thinking that folks watching didn't really get to know the Mormon Church; not the real one.

Y'know, I'd love to see HRC do a series of celebrity videos promoting LGBT people's right to work...which, by the way, isn't constitutionally banned in 31 states like same-sex marriage is.

Of course, when you're talking about an organization run by a group of white folks (mostly men) who are required to raise or donate $50,000 a year in order to be on HRC's Executive Board and have a voice in the organization's agenda, I guess the intense focus on saving money on taxes with federal marriage rights rather than on protecting the jobs of the LGBT working class who are being crushed in this economy isn't really too surprising.

Must be nice to be so wealthy that you can afford to donate at that level and not have to worry about what you and your family will do if you're fired or evicted from your home just for being LGBT. Unfortunately, most of us aren't quite as well off as the folks running the Human Rights Campaign.

That saturday show was some, boot licking, "yes sir boss" type, sorry negro attitude. Why have scared negros on the air talking to white supremist. Let a real black person on who is not afriad of speaking the truth. I had hope that MHP being married to a black man, was not going to be compromised, but I was wrong. Just another jig dancer for white supremist.

I personally do not support same sex marriage cause it is not a right but a priveledge that man has come up with GOD instituted marriage between a man and a woman, We can try to fix it to suit our own conscience but in GOD sight it's abomination to him and we have to get ready to face him for this cause GOD is not please with this and some other issues that are facing this country

Melissa everytime I think about the comment that Mitt Romney said he is not going to discuss President Obama and Rev. Wright makes my blood boil. When I think about what President Obama went through in 2008 and now today he is still being attacked on the same dead issue I feel Mitt Romney is not doing enough to stop the talk. The statement I cannot stop people from saying things is a coward's way of saying I will kiss all butts to get what I want. For a supposedly religion man he has sold himself to the devil and will pay in the end. The devil always get what he or she have paid greats amount of money for. I do not care there are African Americans in the Mormon Church; I feel there are those die hard Mormons that hate the African American in their supposedly lilly white church. When did the Mormons stop believing their founder Brigham Young in regards to African Americans? I don't think they have stop believing their founder and I truly believe there are those true to the word believers that Brigham Young teachings regarding African Americans should not be changed. Just look at how old the civil rights have been in effect but there are those that think minorities do not have rights in this country including President Obama. Minorities also do not have rights in voting. So do I believe the Mormon Church people like Mitt Romney; NO I do not.

I really do like your program and I generally agree with your viewpoints. However, your segment on the LDS Church was too patronizing and missed the mark. Many legitimate criticisms of Mormon practices and attitudes went silent. I am not referring to their religious beliefs or church ordinances but rather their outward view of non-Mormons.

I have lived in a community where there was a sizable Mormon minority, which I found to be an unfavorable distortion on every day life. My aunt and cousins were Mormons. So this is what shapes my perspective. What I saw from my family, my work environment, and my community was a group of people that:

1. Never seem to understand or care about the social impact their large families present to society. Depending on population mix, this can cause schools to be overpopulated with too little tax base to offset costs, class room sizes unfavorably large, curriculum aberrations, and thorny subjects like AIDS and sex education to be sidestepped;

2. Tend to dominate social functions like Boys Scouts, youth sports, local politics by saturating those organizations with Mormon volunteers, Mormon hired staff, or elected officials who are Mormon. Most typically, the level of involvement is disproportionate to the Mormon population, marginalizes others, and eventually pushes out any non-Mormon participation;

3. Reverse discrimination has been shown to be rampant in organizations, both in the public and private sectors, which have a Mormon presence. Preference is given to hiring, pay, and promotion to both men and women with the right resume. At best, this is crony capitalism and at worst it is religious discrimination against non-Mormons. It isn’t limited to “mom and pop” businesses, it even affects Fortune 500 Companies;

4. Just like the work force, if you aren’t a Mormon your children will find that there Mormon neighbors aren’t very likely to open their homes to your children nor are their children likely to be allowed to mingle with yours at your home. I coached soccer one year and the first question asked at the end of the first practice was raised by a Mormon youth wanting to know who else was Mormon. I’m sorry but I was raised in a multiethnic and mixed religious community and the issue of religion never was breached on the playground or elsewhere. It wasn’t until we grew to young adults did religious compatibility become an issue;

5. Never question the authority of their religious leaders. This is K Street on steroids. Look what happened with Evan Mecham in Arizona in the late 1980’s. Mormon Arizonans were beside themselves when one of their own came out and lampooned Mecham for his political corruption. A couple of election cycles back, Representative John Doolittle from California was re-elected to Congress even though he was waist deep in the Jack Abramoff scandal. The refrain from his Mormon constitutes, just like Mecham’s, was that he was above wrong doing because God had selected him for his important office. Lastly, I remember a gynecologist in eastern Idaho by the name of Withers who was accused of sexual misconduct. Because of his standing in the LDS’ hierarchy the testimony of over 100 women was discounted and he walked with a minor fine and a suspended sentence. This smacks of some of the same duplicity as the Catholic Church and its protection of pedophile priests.

6. Lastly, the humanity of non-Mormons is diminished in the eyes of the faithful. Literally, a nonbeliever is a heathen. As such a nonbeliever is excluded from religious practices like marriages and funerals even if they involve their own family members. I think this lack of humanity is why Mitt Romney is such an unrepentant liar when it comes to comments he has made about Barack Obama. He is dead wrong and unapologetic.

Perhaps a good segway for a follow-up to your show today would be for you to interview non-Mormons having to make a go of it in a Mormon environment like Idaho. I think if you spent time pealing back the self-defensiveness you would find a different view of the LDS church than what was portrayed today and one that would probably shake your own views of this institution.

Generally I don’t like to push my ideas onto others but I get really bothered by someone who has to self identify his or her religious credentials. I really don’t think it’s appropriate for a politician, journalist, or talking head to introduce religion as a means to evaluate their standing or expertise unless they want to teach Sunday School.

It was great to see Mara Keisling on the show again talking about Cece McDonald, but yet I can't yet help but be disappointed. Black women's hair gets the better part of an hour but an African-American trans woman jailed for defending herself from a hate crime gets little more than five minutes? C'mon MHP, you can do far better than this. I know you can for a fact because you proved it conclusively a few weeks ago.

In addition, you missed some great opportunities here. On my own show last Thursday, I talked about Cece's sentencing too. I drew comparisons to the Trayvon Martin case and the differences in how the system works when we're talking about a white man chasing down and taking the life of a young black man versus when we're talking about a young black trans woman taking the life of a white man in the course of defending herself from a hate crime. I also talked about how the judge in the Cece McDonald case allowed Cece's previous conviction for check fraud into evidence but not the previous convictions of her attackers nor the fact that Dean Schmitz had a swastika tattooed on his chest and had shouted bigoted racial and anti-trans epithets at her and her friends before the attack.

Those issues would have dovetailed nicely with the issues raised during your discussion of stop-and-frisk during the previous hour. Personally, I'd have loved to hear what Rev. Al and your other guests might have had to say about those issues in addition to hearing Mara's take.

I guess that after the terrific panel on trans issues you did a few weeks ago, I'd just come to expect more, that you'd dig a little deeper into this important issue than just scratching the surface and limiting the discussion exclusively to the issue of Cece being placed in a men's prison. That's an important issue, of course, but it doesn't come close to covering the full extent of the injustice and victimization the legal system inflicted upon Cece McDonald because she had the misfortune of causing the death of a white person while being both black and trans.

Here's hoping you'll do better, much better, next time.

Oh and one more thing I didn't think of until after my editing time on the previous post ran out:

On my own show I also talked about how the Minnesota legal system gave Cece McDonald a true Hobson's choice: Forcing her to choose between accepting the prosecution's contentions of her own guilt in defending herself and accepting another two years or more in a men's prison with a downgraded conviction by pleading guilty of manslaughter or standing up for herself and making her case in court but risking more than 40 years in prison with a potential jury conviction on a murder charge.

That's another issue I'd have loved to have heard Mara and your panelists take on, and another missed opportunity for you and your viewers.

Good hair day. thanks.

She took women out of the labor fields or who were washer women, like Madame C.J. Walker, and employed 75,000 Poro Agents," she added. Read her story below:
Personal Information about ANNIE MALONE
Born Annie Minerva Turnbo, August 9, 1869, in Metropolis, IL; daughter of Robert (a farmer) and Isabella (Cook) Turnbo; married Mr. Pope, c. 1903 (marriage ended); married Aaron Malone, c. 1921 (divorced, 1927); died, 1957.
Career
Founder of hair care product line for African Americans; developed business into the Poro System, a network of franchised agent-operators who operated salons under Malone's guidelines using Poro products. She founded Poro College, 1917, in St. Louis, MO, the first school for the training of beauty culture specialists for African American clientele and was also actively involved in numerous philanthropic organizations.
Life's Work
Annie Turnbo Malone was one of the richest African American women in the United States at one time just a generation after slavery had ended in the country. Founder of an extremely successful line of hair-care products, Malone exhibited both a sharp mind for marketing as well as anoverly generous cash disbursement policy. As her business grew increasingly prosperous, Malone neglected to keep a tight rein on in-house finances, while at the same time bestowing large sums of money to worthy charitable organizations; such policies eventually spelled the end of her large enterprise. Malone's dramatic rise in the hair-care field has often been overshadowed by that of one of her former employees, Madame C. J. Walker, but it was Malone, historians assert, who developed the first successful formulas and marketing strategies aimed at straightening African American hair without damaging it.
Born August 9, 1869, on a farm in Metropolis, Illinois, Malone was the tenth of eleven children of Robert and Isabella Turnbo. Unfortunately her parents died at an early age and Annie Minerva was taken in by an older sister in Peoria, Illinois. As with young women, her own hairstyle was a particular preoccupation, but she grew dissatisfied with the methods then in use by African American women of her generation that involved goose fat, soap, or other oils for straightening purposes. Stronger products on the market damaged the hair follicles or scalp in their efforts to straighten naturally kinky hair. Malone formulated and perfected a line of products that was sold in local stores around her home in Lovejoy, Illinois, by 1900. One of her products was called the Wonderful Hair Grower, and it is thought that around this time Malone invented the pressing iron and comb, a hair-straightening device.
In 1902, Malone relocated from Lovejoy to St. Louis, Missouri, in an effort to expand her business opportunities. She successfully conducted door-to-door sales by herself and three assistants; they offered free hair treatments to women on the spot in an effort to sell the products. Malone undertook a sales tour of the South in 1903; records show she also wed around this time, but she and her husband were divorced when he attempted to exert control over her thriving business. She also opened her own salon, and a year later her "Poro" products, as she called them, were being sold throughout the Midwest. The word "poro" is a West African term that denotes an organization whose aim is to discipline and enhance the body in both physical and spiritual form. She copyrighted the name in 1906. Poro's sales were spurred by Malone's understanding and use of modern business practices, such as press conferences, advertisements in African American newspapers, and the hiring of women as the most convincing sales staff for her products. One of those agents was Madame C. J. Walker.
Walker learned well from Malone; after working for her around 1905, Walker left to develop her own hair care line and complexion cream. The next year Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, and opened an office there; an eastern division opened the next year with an office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 1910 Walker had headquartered her operations in Indianapolis and constructed a manufacturing facility; she was a millionaire when she died in 1919. Walker is often erroneously hailed as a pioneer in African American hair care products and straightening processes, though historical data indicates that Malone was indeed the true groundbreaker.
Still, Malone's enterprise thrived well during the first decades of the twentieth century, and by 1910 she had opened larger offices at 3100 Pine Street in St. Louis. In 1917 she opened the doors of Poro College, the first cosmetology school geared toward training specialists for African American hair. It was a large, lavish facility that included well-equipped classrooms, an auditorium, an ice cream parlor and bakery, and a theater--as well as the manufacturing facilities for Poro products. Office space housed several prominent local and national African American organizations, and the college was soon a center of activity and influence in St. Louis's African American community; it also provided a large number of jobs. The college itself offered training courses for women interested in joining the Poro System's franchised agent-operator network. To Malone, deportment and appearance were as crucial to success as hair-care knowledge, and such specifics were an integral part of the curriculum.
Malone married the husband from which she took her best-known name in 1921, but her union with Aaron Malone would prove a disastrous one for the company. Malone's Poro System continued to expand, and it was estimated that at one point in the 1920s her personal worth had reached $14 million. Thousands of Poro agents were doing business throughout the United States and the Caribbean. Malone moved out of the famed St. Louis facilities in 1930 when she opened new headquarters in Chicago. There, at 44th and South Parkway, sat what became known as the Poro Block.
During much of the 1920s, however, the Malones had been involved in a debilitating power struggle that was kept hidden from all but a few closest to the Poro System's executive offices, in which her husband was ensconced as chief manager and president. That position was terminated when the two finally divorced in 1927, but before that Aaron Malone had worked long and hard to gain support from other prominent African Americans in his bid to take over the company when he eventually filed for divorce. In court, he claimed that the vast success of his wife's business was due to the connections he had brought to their union, contacts he had made prior to 1921, and thus asked to the court to award him half the company. Annie Malone's own charitable nature ultimately saved her, however; she had become a generous contributor to a number of organizations geared toward helping African American women; such largesse helped sway opinion in her favor, and Poro was saved when she agreed to pay her husband a $200,000 settlement.
These interminable internal and later public battles spelled the beginning of the end for Malone's Poro empire. She sold her St. Louis property, and run-ins with the federal government over her failure to pay excise taxes (levied on goods like hair care products that are classified as luxury items); she was also negligent in paying real estate taxes and by 1951 the government had seized control of the company. Tragically, much of Malone's wealth had gone into more worthy causes over the years. She reportedly supported a pair of students at every African American land-grant college in the country; orphanages for African American children regularly received donations of $5,000, and during the 1920s alone she reportedly gave $60,000 to the St. Louis Colored Young Women's Christian Association, the Tuskegee Institute, and Howard University Medical School. Within her company Malone was equally magnanimous. Five-year employees received diamond rings, and punctuality and attendance were rewarded as well.
Malone belonged to numerous philanthropic groups as well, further reflecting her dedication to improving the lives of African Americans. The National Negro Business League, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and the Colored Women's Federated Clubs of St. Louis all benefited from Malone's energy and prominent name. The St. Louis Colored Orphans Home was eventually named after her. On May 10, 1957, Malone died of a stroke in a Chicago hospital. Sadly, her worth had dwindled to a mere $100,000 by the time of her death. She was buried at the famous Burr Oaks cemetery in Chicago at the age of 87.