Check This Out: The Estate Sale Blog and OpEdNews!!

It's all hitting the fan at once!


My Estate Sale Blog is finally up
and now ... an interview with OpEdNews profiles my plight with Section 8!

The Reverend Dan Vojir's Section 8 Story: Why San Francisco Is Heaven And Sweetwater, TN is Hell

OK, read the post below to find out about my own story. It may not be the most moving, but it sure is the most pertinent in regards to the concept of "compassionate housing" and why we should remonstrate against organizations like Sweetwater Housing Authority and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Sweetwater, TN Goes To Rome: Now CATHOLIC BISHOPS Tell HUD To Take A Hike!

My Own Story Re: HUD, Housing and Compassion

Who'd have thought that little Sweetwater, TN could garner such an august following! The Sweetwater Housing Authority may have started a revolution amongst faith-based agencies in regards to housing discrimination and sexual orientation. Below is part of the letter to HUD by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

" ... the proposed addition of these new classifications (“sexual orientation” and “gender identity”) in HUD regulations may, perhaps unintentionally, cause a type of discrimination not contemplated in the proposed rule.  Specifically, the regulations may force faith-based and other organizations, as a condition of participating in HUD programs and in contravention of their religious beliefs, to facilitate shared housing arrangements between persons who are not joined in the legal union of one man and one woman."

In other words, "we're compassionate, but not that compassionate." 


I'll admit that I have a somewhat personal stake in all of this, so please bear with me and keep in mind that there is a point to this anecdote: 


In 1999, while not exactly "riding high" on life, my situation was good: I had married a wonderful man named Michael (the ceremony and reception composed one of the biggest gay weddings you've ever seen), we lived in a loft in San Francisco that I was able to remake into a "victorian," I hosted a syndicated radio program interviewing authors and celebrities (e.g. Steve Allen and William F. Buckley) while promoting books and publishing them as well. In the meantime, Michael produced and directed plays (twelve years later - next week, in fact - he will be receiving the Bay Area Critics Circle Gene Price Award for his contribution to theater). We had a black "diva kitty" named Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside who preened for guests in his white rhinestone collar. Yes, life was more than good. 


By 2002, however, the DotCom Bust had taken a toll on us: the loft went into foreclosure and we were thankful for the Housing Authority's Section 8. True, we were placed in the most dangerous section of San Francisco (pastime: reporting gunshots at night), but we knew we were lucky that the City of San Francisco and the State of California were more compassionate than other places in instituting their non-discrimination policies regarding sexual orientation. The 5 years we were in the Bay View district saw a deterioration in Michael's health (and mine, for a while) and our typically kind San Francisco neighbors helped us through my pneumocistus  and his three forms of cancer. We tried to give back to our community by helping the local kids  (I was honored with a Jefferson Award) and engineering outings to places like Great America. 


Fast forward to the present: although not partners any longer, Michael and I live together in a Section 8 that is quiet and beautiful ( necessary elements since he has been declared terminal with liver cancer) and I have been his IHSS caregiver for more than five years. He is now in his final stage of his cancer and doctors are stressing "comfort care." 


Looking back to our situation in 2002, neither of us would have survived this long if we'd been in a place like Sweetwater, TN.* You know it. Nine years of care and support, love and compassion would never have existed. Places like Sweetwater demonstrate to us all that compassion has its limits when it comes up against certain tenets of "faith." 


Now even the Catholic Church is setting limits on compassion. The letter to HUD proves it. When George Bush's Faith-Based Initiative passed, this is the kind of thing many of us knew would come to pass: "we're doling out dollars and charity on OUR terms, not yours!" 


Sweetwater and Rome. God helpe us if this epidemic of righteousness becomes a pandemic of inhumanity. 

* The Sweetwater Housing Authority Executive Director, Vicki Barnes, might take the advice of Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abbey) who, when asked by a homophobe what he could do to help improve the quality of his neighborhood after two gay men moved into it, she replied:

 "You could move."

Update on The Sacred And Profane: Sweetwater, Tennessee's War On The American Family

Our last post might have left readers wondering where the precise definition of the American Family by AFA and Family Research Council can be found. Well, in answer to the AFA's prayers, we've been able to actually locate it: Sweetwater, Tennessee has all the mythical nuclear family needs, right down to its traditional bigotry. 


ours after we posted an OpEdNews article, The American Family: Sacred or Profane?, this bit of insane bigotry was posted by Joe.My.God:

In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) invited public comment on proposed new rules banning discrimination against LGBT people in all its programs. That prompted Vicki Barnes, the executive director of Tennessee's Sweetwater Housing Authority to fire off a letter to HUD in which she compares gay people to murderers, cult members, prostitutes and drug dealers.

Here is probably the most ironic and damaging section of the letter:

2. This is not a matter of discrimination. In choosing to name a group of people such as the Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), you are choosing to group together a group of people who are not of the same race, but have made a personal and moral life style choice. Other groups who make a personal life style choice are drug user and sellers, gang members, prostitutes, cults and murderers. You are saying any group of persons can call themselves a family. This will cause chaos in the communities and take away the security and stability of the families and would promote the following:

Ms. Barnes goes on to write that recognition of LGBT families would "promote" VIOLENCE, DRUGS, DRUG DEALING, NOT WORKING, and PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY ABUSED CHILDREN.

We could all dismiss Ms. Barnes' mindless screed to her living under a rock named Sweetwater, but this would mean prejudice on our part against the poor and uneducated (most of Sweetwater's 6,000 populace is below poverty level). But Sweetwater hardly considers itself a rock. 

Irony Abounds

Sweetwater bills itself as "The Sweetest Town In Tennessee" and the First Baptist Church of Sweetwater focuses on inclusiveness and love:

You can find that sense of belonging at First Baptist Church. If you visit us, you'll recognize that we have a strong love for each other. We believe that there is compassion, hope, and community for everyone through faith in Jesus Christ.   

Thoughts of isolation aside, here's a look at Sweetwater's website. The historic, pristine, folksy, postcard-perfect little town is extremely WASP and mentions nothing about past slavery and Jim Crow atrocities. It's congressional representative, John J. Duncan, Jr. comes from a long line of Southern Baptist legislative adherents and is a darling of the Family Research Council and the NRA.* It's self-promotion as a squeaky-clean town runs counterintuitive to its need for any Section 8 housing or HUD support: pity the poor people who have to find subsidized housing, since they must be looked upon as the lowest of indigent slackers. In addition, Sweetwater's continuous and constant appeal is for people to move there!


The outlook of towns like Sweetwater is imperative to today's Right Wing in forging behind with it's mythical vision of the American Family: steeped in hallowed "tradition", it helps uber-conservatives with its veneer of decency and righteousness. What Ms. Barnes letter underscores is that it is only a veneer. And a pretty tacky one at that. Sweetwater is a town built of ubiquitous buzzwords. And while it is not completely isolated (surrounded as it is by neighboring Knoxville's Wal-Marts), it would not survive in the real world of diversity and global awareness. It is fit to live alongside Lexington, KY's Creation Museum or Heritage U.S.A., but not fit to deal with the 21st century. 


If this sounds like un-American, small town mom-and-apple-pie bashing ... well, it isn't. Instead, it may be one way of relating the insidiousness of the Right in using stock images and pawning them off as the REAL America. Even Sweetwater realizes that it's image is one of the past. But it promotes its past as one you can live in today, and that just isn't right. History is full of beautiful, romantic images, but it is also rife with covert portraits of racism, discrimination and religious intolerance.

As I've noted before, today's real American Family is under attack, and Sweetwater, TN is leading the battle.

* wikipedia: On John J. Duncan, Jr.:
The Family Research Council rated him as a 92% or above since 2002^[2] and the NRA has rated him in equally positive terms.^[2] He is a frequent contributor to Chronicles, a magazine associated with the paleoconservative movement.