While You Were Sleeping

"Standard Bearers"

Bryan Stevenson A lovely little bigot who co-sponsored HB328 which aims to prohibits public institutions that receive state funds from adopting a discrimination policy that exceeds current federal protections against discrimination. In other words, if your city, college, school or organization has an anti-discrimination policy -- they'd get none of your tax dollars.

Brad Roark He's also sponsored some lovely Jesus-loving bills including: HB452 which aims to establishes an alternative to a traditional marriage called a covenant marriage.

Too Scared to Take a Stand

Robin Wright-Jones No stranger to this blog.

GSA Defenders

Michael Daus Just tell him thanks!

Rick Johnson Him, too!

This was taken directly from the PROMO press release. In this day and age, it's hard to tell whether this was done strictly out of hateful bigotry or calculated political gain.

Either way, it's a sick, sad example of how politics in the state of Missouri is about backwoods fear-mongering instead of progressive reform. This should come as no surprise to me, but on a day when two little girls are dead, presumably at the hands of one girl's father, I really fucking wanna know who the hell is watching out for the kids?

I am more than pissed that my state rep (who is the Minority Caucus Chairwoman) didn't take a stand. I guess as long as homos keep renovating her district, we're alright - but those of us getting the shit kicked out of us at school are disposable? And I'm telling her so, too!

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While you were sound asleep last night, the Missouri General Assembly was attacking LGBT youth.

At 2:00 a.m., the debate over public school funding got sidetracked to a discussion over homosexuality.

Representatives Stevenson and Roark proposed an amendment to SB 287 that would prohibit public schools from having policies or activities that advocate or support homosexuality.

They wanted to ban Gay/Straight Alliances!

"I don't think a majority of Missourians approve of that type of lifestyle," Roark said "There are certain standards when there are state tax dollars involved."

Several Representatives who support LGBT youth rose to our defense.

Rep. Mike Daus grilled Rep. Roark about his comments and stressed the importance of support groups for LGBT youth.

Rep. Rick Johnson said, "Students who are gay are subjected to discrimination and ridicule and violence and death. To say these students should not be supported...in some way is the absolute wrong way to go."

The amendment passed 81 - 47. However, under procedural rules, the amendment was not included in the funding bill and is, therefore, no longer a part of the legislation.

This was a malicious attempt to put pro-LGBT equality legislators on the hot seat and force them to make a public stance in our favor in hopes to use this against them in the next election.

The extreme right wing in our legislature was counting on the fact that you were asleep last night...and they are counting on the fact that you will remain asleep today and in the future so that they can continue to discriminate, ridicule and bash the youth of our community.

The time is now – we must wake up!

Below you will find a list of how the legislators voted. Please email or call your legislator and either thank him/her or demand to know why they voted to attack the youth of our state. You can find contact information by going to www.house.mo.gov.

Also, no matter where you live in the state, take a moment to tell Representatives Daus and Johnson just how much you appreciate their support and attentiveness to our issues at such a late hour of the night.

"Yes" - Supported the amendment to eliminate Gay/Straight Alliances from public schools.
"No" - Opposed the amendment to eliminate Gay/Straight Alliances from public schools.
"Present" - Signifies that the Representative was present but unwilling to take a stand either way on the issue.
"Absent" - Signifies that the Representative was not present and therefore no record exists as to how he/she felt about the issue.

"Yes"
Avery, Baker (123), Bearden, Behnen, Bivins, Black, Bringer, Brown (30), Bruns, Byrd, Casey, Chinn, Cooper (120), Cooper (158), Cunningham (145), Cunningham (86), Davis, Day, Dethrow, Dusenberg, Emery, Ervin, Faith, Fisher, Flook, Franz, Guest, Hobbs, Hunter, Icet, Jones, Kelly, Kingery, Kraus, Lager, Lembke, Lipke, Loehner, May, McGhee, Munzlinger, Muschany, Nance, Nieves, Nolte, Parker, Parson, Phillips, Pollock, Pratt, Quinn, Rector, Roark, Robb, Ruestman, Rupp, Salva, Sander, Sater, Schaaf, Schad, Selby, Self, Shoemyer, Silvey, Skaggs, Smith (118), Stefanick, Stevenson, St. Onge, Sutherland, Swinger, Tilley, Wagner, Wallace, Wells, Wislon (130), Witte, Wright (137), Yates, Speaker Jetton.

"No"
Aull, Baker (25), Bland, Bowman, Brooks, Brown (50), Burnett, Chappelle-Nadal, Corcoran, Curls, Darrough, Daus, Donnelly, Dougherty, Fares, Fraser, Harris (23), Harris (110), Haywood, Henke, Hoskins, Hubbard, Hughes, Johnson (47), Johnson (90), Jolly, Kratky, Lampe, LeVota, Liese, Low (39), Lowe (44), Meiners, Moore, Oxford, Page, Schlottach, Storch, Villa, Vogt, Walsh, Walton, Weter, Wildberger, Yaeger, Young, Zweifel.

"Present"
Dempsey, El-Amin, George, Johnson (61), Kuessner, Marsh, Pearce, Robinson, Schneider, Smith (14), Spreng, Threlkeld, Viebrock, Whorton, Wilson (119), Wood, Wright-Jones.

"Absent"
Bean, Boykins, Cooper (155), Deeken, Densison, Dixon, Goodman, Jackson, Meadows, Myers, Portwood, Richard, Roorda, Rucker, Schoemehl, Wasson, Wright (159)