« The president of Out Professionals is spreading lies | Main | Jonathan Vargas at Porno Bingo Wednesday Sept 19th! »
September 17, 2007
The latest on Out Professionals
It saddens me to learn that OutProfessionals just decided to continue with their discriminatory policy which does not allow adult entertainment companies to place their job openings on their online job bank. Apparently, the board of OutProfessionals had a long meeting the other day. Some board members were opposed to the policy and wanted it changed but in the end the majority voted to keep the existing policy intact.
Now I understand that a networking organization for gay professionals would not post ads for adult performers (or any performers, for that matter) on their site—even though I consider my actors to be consummate professionals. But ads for accountants, editors, or cameramen? That's plainly ridiculous and deprives their membership of information about attractive, well paying job opportunities. Just ask my Finance Director if its different to do financials for a widget company or an adult production company. I believe he will tell you that working for Lucas Entertainment is professionally more challenging and certainly a lot more fun.
A tiny organization like OutProfessionals wouldn't be worth so many words, except that for me there is a point of principle at stake here. OutProfessionals is practicing the kind of gay-on-gay discrimination that's still all too common and poisons our community. It's the same mindset that will make some gays or lesbians complain about gay pride parades because they are "too messy and don't show our community in the right light"; or bitch about drag queens because they are "too outrageous"; or argue that we should behave just like straight people in order to be tolerated.
Well, I believe that we shouldn't ask for tolerance because we are "just like the straight majority." I believe we should demand recognition for our community in all its wonderful diversity—and that includes for many of us a positive attitude about sex as a celebration of our inner selves.
One of the ironies in all this is that OutProfessionals is holding its meetings at the LGBT Community Center—a wonderful organization that is dedicated precisely to allowing the LGBT community flourish and nurture all its different aspects. It's an organization that fights for the civil rights of LGBT people, that fights against oppression and discrimination, that's dedicated to inclusiveness and that certainly abhors LGBT people discriminating against their own. The LGBT Center (and the meeting spaces that OutProfessionals use) is largely financed by contributions from the community—and I believe most of the Center's contributors share the Center's values and not OutProfessionals'.
I have said before that for me there is a profound matter of principle at stake here and so I will not let this issue go. But I need your help.
If you believe that LGBT organizations should not discriminate against gay-owned businesses which serve our community, please e-mail Carl Pritzkat, Vice President of the Board of OutProfessionals at carlp@mediapolis.com.
If you believe that the LGBT Community Center should not host LGBT groups which discriminate against their own, please e-mail Richard Burns, the Executive Director of the Center at richard@gaycenter.org.
And if you feel like it, please cc me at michael@lucasentertainment.com so I can collect your opinions and take action.
Posted by Michael at September 17, 2007 10:40 AM
Comments
I was in the Center the other night, having a BM, when suddenly in the next stall over there was motion and I thought maybe Larry Craig was in there or something.
But when I was washing my hands, the person came out of that stall and I realized it was somebody I knew. He told me that his contact lens had fallen out and he had to get down on the floor to look for it.
As he was rinsing it off with saline solution in front of the sink, we started speaking about this OutProfessionals business. Right when he said the name Michael Tracy, three toilets got flushed at once.
Let's face it; the only reason OutProfessionals decided to maintain this ridiculous and hypocritical policy is that Michelle Tracy understood it as a personal matter and so politicked as best she could with other members of the board not to have it changed.
Tracy in response to complaints from people other than Michael had said that if Michael had approached the board about the matter a compromise could have been reached.
So where is the compromise?
You're telling me that at this board meeting, Michelle Tracy was urging the other board members to offer a compromise and that they refused?
I don't think so!!!!!
Without Tracy as the OutProfessionals board president, this obnoxious policy would have been changed.
Shame on Michelle Tracy.
Shame, shame, shame.
Posted by: Tight Hole at September 18, 2007 08:19 AM
Below is the text of the e-mail I sent in this regard to Richard Burns. Carl Pritzkat received a similar message from me. I urge people to give serious thought to this, and to communicate with Pritzkat and Burns about it.
Dear Mr. Burns:
I strenuously object to OutProfessionals being permitted to use the facilities of
the Center. My reasons for this are detailed below.
Of particular concern is their wretched hypocrisy in running help-wanted ads from
finance sector companies invested in countries that regularly violate basic human
rights.
I happen to know that one of the financial concerns that recently had a help-wanted
ad on OutProfessionals is invested in Dubai, where Sharia law is the law of the
land.
The foreign workers there are subjected to it; women who become pregnant out of
wedlock are sentenced to 275 lashes.
Gays there have no rights, period. They have sometimes be sentenced to forced hormone
injections just because they are gay.
Why is it acceptable to run a help-wanted ad that contributes to the fortunes of
such an objectionable country, but not acceptable to run a help-wanted ad from an
adult entertainment company which only provides entertainment to those who want
it?
In the WWII era, people's failure to speak up for what was right early led to
Hitler and the Nazis gaining a stranglehold on power and traumatizing the world.
Do you actually think we are in less danger from the Sharia-monsters in Dubai and
elsewhere than we were from Hitler? I'll bet you two towers in downtown Manhattan
that we are not.
George W. Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush was an investment banker who bankrolled
the Nazi's rise to power.
Which kind of human beings are we? The kind that allow such a thing to happen,
when we have the power to speak up against it, or the kind with the courage of our
convictions to say "That will not happen on our watch?"
I am the latter type.
It is absolutely vomitous that OutProfessionals manifestly believes it is more important
to "closet" adult entertainment companies than it is to censure financial
firms that contribute to the oppression and even murders of innocent people. If
you think that's hyperbole, try getting whipped 275 times. Try taking a forced
course of hormone injections.
So, Mr. Burns, in which camp do you place yourself?
Many thanks,
Scott Rose
Posted by: Scott Rose at September 18, 2007 08:24 AM
Raising hand to become an editor for Lucas Entertainment.
Posted by: Uncle Zoloft at September 18, 2007 09:41 AM
