A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Via JMG: BREAKING: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) Agrees To Support DADT Repeal
Adam Bink is reporting on Open Left that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) has agreed to be the final necessary vote to move the DADT repeal out the Senate Armed Services Committee and onto the floor for a full vote.
In the House, repeal sponsor Rep. Patrick Murphy says he has the necessary votes to pass the bill.I was told Sen. Nelson's message is going to be that this isn't about the next election... what the [Lieberman-Levin] amendment does is "remove the politics and puts the policy at DOD first." He will emphasize that nothing will happen until after the review is completed and implementation is planned, and that's the way it oughta be handled. He will further emphasize that the current policy is "just not honest" and "just not the way it should be handled". Big, big, big news. As I reported last night, Sen. Bayh is a "soft yes", and if he fully commits, we will have the votes in hand on the Armed Services Committee.
Labels: Congress, DADT, military, Senate
reposted by JMGVia JMG: TONIGHT: Missionaries Of Hate
Tonight at 10PM CurrentTV will air Missionaries Of Hate, a documentary about anti-gay American evangelicals working in Africa to further the brutalization of LGBT people there.
Just as it was during the life and times of Harvey Milk, the movement against homosexuality in Uganda is being led by a group of conservative Christian evangelicals. And the arguments they’re using are an echo of Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children campaign. "I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children,” Bryant said in 1977. “Therefore, they must recruit our children.” More than 30 years later, our cameras were rolling as Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa brought a young woman to a press conference to testify about how she had been allegedly recruited to be a lesbian. “American money...is being used to seduce our children into homosexuality,” Ssempa said. “This bill is in response and desire to protect our children.” The connection, while decades apart, is perhaps not so surprising if you believe those who trace the current anti-gay campaign in Uganda back to March 2009. That’s when three American evangelicals were invited to speak at a conference in the country about how Africans can protect themselves from homosexuality. Being gay in Uganda was never easy. But according to many local gay and human rights advocates, it was that conference where the depiction of homosexuality as predatory by nature gained currency in Uganda.Here is the trailer for tonight's show.
Labels: Africa, Christianists, religion, Scott Lively, Uganda
reposted from Joe