Equality Maryland accuses transgender and equality advocate allies of making threatening calls to their staff and making threats of physical violence against delegates to the Maryland House of representatives!
Equality Maryland alleges that:
These self destructive blanket accusations were made by EQMD to justify its censoring of dissension by deleting comments and banning former members. These unsubstantiated accusation are libellous and sure to disenfranchise even more of its membership who have become increasingly aware of EQMD's oppression.
The FAQ – Censorship, HB 235 and the EQMD Facebook page makes accusations that threats were made not only by marriage advocates who questioned their controversial strategy but transgender people who object to HB235.
Equality Maryland claims it began its censorship after the marriage "vote was taken". This is untrue. Equality Maryland began its censorship of the entire LGBT community on February eighth after Baltimore journalist Danna LaRocca questioned Equality Maryland not about HB235, but its commitment to racial diversity.
Equality advocate David Toth, former Board President of Equality Maryland from Oct 2004 to Jan 2011 is now being censored as well.
The below comment by David Toth on the EQMD note was copied by a friend prior to it being deleted by Equality Maryland........
David B Toth: I have to agree somewhat with T.A. The community would like answers as to why EqMD along with the LGBT caucus and national partnes made this decission. What makes sending it back to committee so "right." There are so many people who put ...alot of effort in volunteering, and than those of us who have put money and time in other ways (even if not seen by all the staff), do you think that they deserved to have the House take a vote, even if it would not pass, to see where the Delegates stand on the issue. Either way the bill was going to die and have to be reintroduced next year."In this screenshot Mike Toth comment's about the above deleted comment to a person who's was already censored!
Equality Maryland's FAQ stated they are deleting comments because they are "racists" or "threats of violence or intimidation towards our staff, legislative allies, and volunteers."
Once again unsubstantiated allegations of violence made against Equality Maryland. This time the deleted comments were supposedly made against Morgan Meneses-Sheets, Executive Director.
IT IS TIME FOR THIS TO STOP!!!!
Equality Maryland you are also invited to attend the March rally against HB235 organized by Maryland residents of Transmaryland attended and supported by our national community.
Indeed this is just one more effort by eqMD to quash the will of the transgender
people but this time they have stepped too far over the line. If Equality Maryland could prove these accusations of threatened violence, the LGBT people would ostracize the offenders, never to return to our community and I as a member of EQMD would stand by Morgan Meneses-Sheets in doing so!
But in absence of that.......
Many marriage equality advocates like myself now agree Morgan Meneses-Sheets must resign. Freedom of speech, marriage equality, our very civil rights movement is under attack. Marriage equality and transgender civil rights are suffering.
Morgan Meneses-Sheets must resign.
2 comments:
It’s pretty clear to former Equality Maryland supporters that they delete all of the posts that show their strategy in a bad light. It’s started out as just very bad public relations. They thought they could keep a handful of posts from a handful of people off of the site to give the impression of unity and consensus. That handful grew to the point that national bloggers were writing about it. But still it was only the transgender community that was being censored.
Then Equality Maryland dumped their marriage minded friends. After all of their victory celebrations and cocktail parties they finally decided to just give up on marriage for this year. Now their base was upset. Key players among their supporters in the LG community were being treated the same as transgender folk.
What to do? What to do?
Their new thread “FAQ – Censorship, HB 235 and the EQMD Facebook page” was supposed to convince their supporters that they resorted to Stalinism because transgender activists were supposedly doing despicable things. All was supposed to be right with their world once they pointed the finger at the scapegoat. Their supporters didn’t buy it though.
Gays and lesbians started coming out of the woodwork saying that they had been censored too, and that they hadn’t said anything nasty. They had only asked for answers. As you said, even their former board president was censored.
As for me I posted back in late January and the first week in February about the lack of racial diversity. I also called them out for using offensive comments about Catholics, who comprise 25% of the electorate. And I berated them for using a sex toy shop as a venue for a fundraising event. The link they had on FB led to a page with a picture of a woman about to swallow a dildo. I tried to explain to them that the opposition is reading their posts. Rather than taking that as advice they were offended.
You and others have been following the disappearing posts quite well Kelli. Thank you.
As for Equality Maryland calling people racists?
Well ain’t that the pot!
http://www.baltimoreoutloud.com/k2-fetch-latest/city-desk-a-view-from-mt-vernon-as-i-see-it/item/360-sharp-street-apartheid
great post. keep up the great work, Planetransgender.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/hb235/
(petition to amend Maryland's House Bill 235 (HB235), the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, to add Public Accommodation so trans people are FULLY protected)
please sign this!! thank you. ♥
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