The Constitution and every one of our original civil and criminal laws, were written by and for the benefit and protection of White, wealthy Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied men. Why, then, do these folks cry foul every time minority groups legally petition the Government for an opportunity to share in those rights and benefits?

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After yesterday's post entitled Give the Underdogs a Bone, we received several comments accusing us of wanting "special rights" for LGBTQ people.

Needless to say, most of the negative comments were from "straight" White men.

The Constitution and every one of our original civil and criminal laws, including the tax code, were written with the purpose and intention of benefiting and protecting the rights and privileges of White, wealthy Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied men.

Every citizen who is NOT White, wealthy, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied or male – which is most of us – have had to scratch and claw our way under the umbrella of legal rights, benefits and protections – many of which are paid for by our tax dollars.

There are a couple of ways to accomplished this:

1. We can use our literal majority (there are more of us than them) to forcibly take our share by revolting, rioting, looting and terrorizing, or
2. We could petition the Government, vote, lobby, protest, and do everything within the law to try to try force those with power to share it.
   

We always choose option 2., with varying degrees of success!

Either way, whichever method we use to fight against power and privilege, we seem to rile up folks who are offended by our audacity -- how dare we even try to achieve equality!

Apparently, to them -- whether violent or non-violent -- we are a threat.

Speaking of White, wealthy, Christian, "heterosexual" men, we heard MSNBC's Tucker Carlson say something extremely hypocritical on his show last week and we wanted to call him out on it (no pun intended – OK, we intended a pun).

But first, a bit of background on Carlson, who grew up steeped in wealth and privilege:

"[Carlson] is a son of Richard Warner Carlson, a former banker, Los Angeles local news anchor, U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles, director of the U.S. Information Agency, and president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. His mother is the former Patricia Caroline Swanson. He has one sibling, Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson. Carlson's maternal grandmother, Roberta Fulbright Swanson, was a sister of U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, while his Swedish immigrant great-grandfather Carl A. Carlson founded Swanson, the frozen-foods conglomerate.
Carlson attended St. George's School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. After graduation, he majored in history at the private liberal arts Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, but did not receive a degree."

A right-wing conservative (he says he is a Libertarian but his words belie that claim), Carlson often can be heard railing against the evils of "big" Government programs that purport to help the poor. He decries what he calls "special rights" for minorities – especially the poor, women, Blacks and gays.

Carlson, age 38, has his own hour-long talk show on MSNBC - a job we are sure he earned by working harder than any of the other millions of journalism students who put themselves through college and managed to graduate!

Each weekday, Carlson has access to a megaphone which he uses to broadcast his opinion -- no doubt based on his vast worldly experience -- to millions of viewers.

But we digress. Back to the point of this post...

On Wednesday, September 26, Carlson and guests were discussing the case of the Jena Six (6 Black Louisiana teens arrested for attempted murder after beating up a White teen because a noose was hung in a tree at the school all of the boys attend).

Carlson was upset over the fact that thousands of civil rights marchers had gathered in Jena to protest the disparity of treatment toward these Black boys who were charged with attempted murder for a school-yard fight and where one had already been tried, convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison. The jury was all White as were the judge and prosecutor in the case.

Carlson just couldn't wrap his little wealthy, privileged, White male mind around the reason people were protesting:

"Here's a very simple question. Which is-I think hanging a noose is... disgusting. However is that worse than violence? People are acting like that's worse than violence. Violence is always the worst thing, is it not?"

Interesting to hear Carlson opine that violence is never called for – no matter the provocation.

Especially given that only a few months ago, he admitted that while in high school, he and another friend bashed a gay man who "bothered" him in a men's room in Georgetown.

Watch:

Please email Carlson and demand that – on the air – he explain the discrepancy between his calls for a non-violent reaction to a race-based hate crime and his own violent reaction to a proposition by a gay (according to Carlson) man!

Let's make this post GO VIRAL! Add your own comment, pass it on to everyone you know and ask them to do the same!

We know you can do it! Help us make Carlson explain himself!

Authors Website: http://www.rainbowlaw.com

Authors Bio:

Rainbow Law is Elisia and Carrie Ross-Stone, lesbian civil rights activists, life partners and grandmothers. We own and operate Rainbow Law, an online service offering legal information and free and affordable legal documents for gay and lesbian families.

We also publish RainbowZine (http://www.rainbowzine.com), a progressive LGBTQ newsletter and we Blog at http://RAINBOWbLAWg/.blogspot.com.

In 2003 and 2004, we rode our bicycles across the country to advocate for marriage equality. Lesbian Grandmothers from Mars, a documentary about the ride, premiered at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco in 2005.

And if all of that is not enoiugh to keep us busy, we are building our own house with our own hands out of recycled materials. The building project is online at http://www.BuiltfromTrash.com.