We are with Garden State Equality on Kelly

Garden State Equality (GSE) sent out an email today that opposes Ocean County politico Jack Kelly getting a $100,000 per year patronage appointment to the State Parole Board.  On Monday, Governor Christie re-nominated Kelly, a long-time Ocean County Freeholder and life-long patronage job holder, who ran for the Republican nomination for Congress in District 3 in 2008.  Kelly's appointment to the Parole Board must be approved by the full Senate.

GSE says they oppose Kelly's appointment for the very narrow reason that they "cannot allow him to be in a position of power to continue to do harm to the LGBT community again."  That's the problem when you see everything through the lens of sexual identity. 

Believe it or not, the term "LGBT" is already outdated.  Real "progressives" use "LGBTQIA" as their designation.  This includes "Queer," "Intersex" and "Asexual." 

Others take it much further and include designations like "Bear," described below:

Bear Community: a part of the queer community composed of queer men similar in looks and interests, most of them big, hairy, friendly and affectionate.  The community aims to provide spaces where one feels wanted, desired, and liked.  It nourishes and values an individual’s process of making friends, of learning self-care and self-love through the unity and support of the community.  Bears, Cubs, Otters, Wolves, Chasers, Admirers and other wildlife comprise what has come to be known as the Brotherhood of Bears and/or the Bear community.  See also: Ursula

(SOURCE:  University of California at Davis, LGBTQIA Resource Center)

These designations owe more to the commercial marketing of products or political marketing for donations that they do our shared human reality.  

Whether or not you are "big and hairy" doesn't change your human needs for food and shelter.  It doesn't mean you breathe differently, bleed a different color, or suffer disease and death differently.  We are all human beings and we share a lot more than groups like GSE want us to think about. 

A jobless economy, high property taxes, foreclosure, and homelessness doesn't give you a pass because you are a member of the "Bear Community."  Here's a news flash for GSE and its "allies" -- just as our common humanity transcends our sexual habits, there are human concerns that have nothing to do with how individuals do or don't achieve orgasms.

One of these human concerns is justice.  Human beings living here in America expect a certain fairness.  Regardless of what we do with our sexual equipment, we don't like the idea of someone getting a $100,000 taxpayer-funded job based on who he knows, not what he knows. 

And this isn't the first time for Jack Kelly, back in 2008, he was slammed by fellow Republicans for earlier patronage scams:

"(Kelly was criticized for his) former employment with the South Jersey Transportation Authority and the payments in lieu of health benefits he received through that job while also receiving tax-payer funded benefits as an Ocean County freeholder... both of the jobs Kelly held while working at Atlantic City International Airport -- airport analyst and airport business manager --were created on the day Kelly was hired and neither job was publicly advertised.  There was no need or justification for those positions, and Jack Kelly did not meet qualifications for either of them... the qualifications listed for the jobs include a college degree and at least five-years of experience in the aviation field. Kelly had neither." 

(SOURCE:  Atlantic City Press, May 2, 2008)

Just how is politician Jack Kelly now qualified to serve on the State Parole Board?  Has he written a book on the subject that we don't know about?

The arguments against Jack Kelly's appointment to the  State Parole Board are stronger because of the common morality that we share as human beings, our shared sense of right and wrong.  GSE screws that all to hell when they make it narrowly about THEM and THEM ALONE.

It makes us ask the question, would GSE be supporting Jack Kelly if he were a Democrat and a member of the LGBTQIA "Bear Community"?  And it certainly doesn't help when they point to the "moral" outrage of career political hacks like Senators Ray "Lord of Ass" Lesniak and Loretta "Mother Roach" Weinberg.  For years, Ray Lesniak (his Lordship to the rest of you) was the poster boy for the corrupt practice of pay-to-play -- while Mother Roach has sat quietly while some of the biggest turds on earth have been appointed to high office.

It is a pity that GSE threw our common shared morality out the window in its pursuit of a narrow-minded, juvenile, narcissistic grievance narrative.  It's like they are telling us that they don't give a crap about anybody not represented by a letter in the LGBTQIA... alphabet.  That's how they are with their so-called bathroom legislation when they say "shut up and do what we tell you to do" to girls and women who don't want to share a toilet with someone sporting a penis.  

GSE has lost its common morality.  It has become like so many others who have put their bullshit before their humanity.