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.
Via the Economist: In 2008 Maine had the second highest concentration of gay households, with over eight in every 1,000 households said to be headed by partners of the same sex, according to research based on census data by the Williams Institute, a gay rights think-tank at UCLA. Those states where gay marriage is legal or where same-sex partnerships are recognised have a higher proportion of same-sex couples than the national average of 4.7. The District of Columbia is home to most gay households with over 14 for every 1,000
I'm an unmarried heterosexual woman, and since I probably won't be using my right to get married, I would like to give it away. I would like to sell it to the highest bidder and donate the proceeds to an organization that supports LGBT rights since the government designed to protect all of us is picking and choosing based on what they think is icky, weird, or unkown to them.
Bid now, and you can have my super wonderful privilege and legal ability to get married as many times as you want in a classy place like the one pictured. You don't have to know the person, you don't have to like them, you don't have to think through your decision to get married or anything - you can just do it! Because you can! Come on, it's cool to get married, and think of the pictures you'll have to show people of this person that they will definitely think is so wrong for you and probably is! But heavens to BETSY, do NOT marry someone of the same gender because that would be a mockery of the institution of marriage. And if it doesn't work out, just get divorced. Half the cool people who get married do that anyway.
If eBay somehow allows the auction to remain, Jamie is donating the proceeds to the Point Foundation, a scholarship fund for LGBT students. Jamie Frevele, our straight ally hero for the day!
"I have long advocated using the term 'bigot' sparingly when referring to gay-rights opponents. It’s not that I don’t think bigotry is a serious problem. On the contrary, it’s vital to identify bigotry for what it is and to expose its tragic effects. It’s also important to learn the lessons of history, including the ways in which bigotry can hide behind religion, concern for children’s welfare, and other seemingly benign motives.
"But there’s a difference between identifying bigotry, on the one hand, and labeling any and all people who disagree with us as bigots, on the other. Such labeling tends to function as a conversation-stopper, cutting us off from the 'moveable middle' and ultimately harming our progress. It’s also unfair to the many decent people who genuinely strive to understand us even where, for sincere and complex reasons, they cannot accept our position. [snip]
"Many of our opponents are fundamentally decent people. For both principled and pragmatic reasons, we don’t want to saddle them with an identity that suggests their being beyond redemption. In other words, we don’t want to label them 'bigots' prematurely. At the same time, we don’t want to shrink from identifying the evil of anti-gay bigotry, wherever and whenever it occurs. And so, we can distinguish. We can point out the sin of bigotry forcefully while using the epithet of 'bigot' sparingly (though that epithet, too, has its uses). Because, in the end, we do know it when we see it." - John Corvino, writing for Independent Gay Forum.
WASHINGTON, DC – Right on the heels of last week’s vote on gay marriage in the New York State Senate, Maggie Gallagher’s National Organization for Marriage could well be facing its 3rd investigation into its 2 year old operation.
In an IRS letter recently received by Ben Katzenberg on behalf of Californians Against Hate (letter below or CLICK HERE), Sunita Lough, Director, EO Examinations said, “Thank you for the information you submitted regarding the National Organization for Marriage PAC New York. The Internal Revenue Service has an ongoing examination program to ensure that exempt organizations comply with the applicable provisions of the Internal Revenue Code…. Internal Revenue Code section 6103 protects the privacy of tax returns and tax return information of all taxpayers. Therefore, we cannot disclose the status of any investigation.”
NOM is already the subject of investigations in California and Maine. Both complaints were filed by Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate. The California investigation (Case #08/735) is in its 2nd year. That investigation covers the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) and NOM for not reporting in-kind expenditures on behalf of the Yes on Prop 8 campaign.
The Maine investigation began when that state’s Ethics Commission voted on October 1, 2009 to investigate NOM for not filing as a PAC in the recent election there to ban same-sex marriage. NOM should have filed as a PAC when it raised $5,000. It raised well over $1.8 million, and still refused to file as required under Maine elevation law.
“In Maine they refused to release the names of their donors, even after Federal Judge D. Brock Hornby and Maine State Attorney General Janet Mills ordered them to,” said Karger. This type of blatant disregard for the law is inconceivable. NOM is not above the law.”
“Soon Maggie Gallagher and her sidekick, Brian Brown (NOM executive director) are going to get caught.”
“NOM has spent nearly $20 million around the country in the past 2 years in at least 11 states, but apparently does not believe in following either state or federal laws.”
“Additionally, no one has yet to see any federal reporting by NOM of its National Organization for Marriage Educational Fund. This is their 501(c)3 charitable organization. There is no telling how many more millions of dollars they have raised and spent through this entity. It was formed in 2008, and their filings should have been available to the public well before now. We have requested this information from the IRS and have not received it as of today.”
“NOM’s 501(c)4 finally released its required 990 tax filings for 2007 and 2008 over one year late, and only after repeated requests were filed with the IRS by our organization and several other media outlets.”
“The Congress of the Untied States should launch an official investigation of the National Organization for Marriage at once,” concluded Karger.
NOM is believed to be a front group for the Mormon Church. See our web site www.Mormongate.com for details.
"Two adults who are consenting and who are like-minded and within their mental capacities should be allowed to be with each other. I think it's an outrage."
- Anti-marriage equality NY Sen. Hiram Monserrate, clearly oblivious to the meaning of irony, complaining that a court order prevents him from seeing the woman whose face he slashed with a broken glass.
In response to the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration, a document calling for the disobedience of LGBT rights laws and co-signed by hundreds of religious leaders, comes The Affirmation Declaration, which calls for pro-LGBT people of faith to sign on as supporters of civil equality. An excerpt from the just-posted document:
We assert that the pain brought upon our GLBTI brethren in the name of God is not an expression of love. It is not love to bring shame and self-loathing upon people. It is not love to tell parents not to accept their gay children because their affirmation will supposedly make their children not want to change. It certainly is not love to teach the damnable heresy that GLBTI people cannot be saved or go to Heaven until they have been delivered from their natural orientation.
We also call attention to the horrible spiritual effect that antigay theology has had on the secular world. We are deeply troubled by the number of people who have been made to despise Christianity because of the oppressive and tyrannical acts of our Christian brethren. However well intentioned they may believe themselves to be, they continue to short-circuit the gospel of Jesus Christ by imposing their religious beliefs upon the general population. Whether homosexuality is sinful or not, opposing same-sex marriage is not only counterproductive to evangelistic ministry, but it is diametrically opposed to the concept of religious freedom—something that the proponents of the Manhattan Declaration claim to cherish. It appears that what they, instead, champion is their freedom to impose their religious beliefs on others. We reject this hypocritical opposition to same-sex marriage, and stand for true religious liberty in the United States of America and the world.
These ever present sins against the GLBTI community are not faithful expressions of God’s love, as is so often claimed. The attestation to the contrary expressed in the Manhattan Declaration only demonstrates the blind religious fervor that so many of our brethren are lost in. Like the Pharisees of old, they continue to believe that such cruelties actually serve the God who is love. But, this is not the type of love that Scripture defines for us.
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.
To My Republican and Independent Friends: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 2010.
“We all know what bigotry is,” a friend said to me recently. But do we?
I mean, most of us have experienced it, and we can point to clear historical examples. But can we define it, articulating what those examples all have in common? Or is it more like Justice Potter Stewart’s grasp of pornography: “I know it when I see it”?
The Black Gay Men's Network today published a full-page ad in the NYC daily newspaper Metro in reaction to attacks on the LGBT community by black clergy and in response to "ex-gay" preacher Donnie McClurkin's recent outrageous and hateful rantings, which were posted to YouTube. It reads in part:
Pastor Donnie McClurkin -We love you brother and in ways the traditional church cannot because we understand your pain. You are not a man who loves men because of being molested as a child. That grave and despicable tragedy broke your spirit and damaged your mind; however it did not have the capacity to change your DNA. There is so much love in our community for you. We want to see you healed and whole. Whenever you are ready, come home and we'll love you until it doesn't hurt anymore. That's how we do!
A silly story in theWall Street Journalannounces that baring one's chest hair with a plunging neckline, a phenomenon mostly associated with the gold-chain laden disco era, is apparently back. The paper calls the fad "heavage." SRSLY.
Vik Mohindra, a 27-year-old graduate student from Toronto, confesses that his guy friends sometimes tease him about his heavage. "I would not recommend it to someone who isn't confident with their body and overall sense of style," says Mr. Mohindra, who says he works out three to four days a week and has a "defined" chest. Male cleavage, particularly on the silver screen, has long played a prominent role in popular culture. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. had his chest on display throughout the 1920s in films like 1924's "The Thief of Bagdad" and "The Iron Mask" in 1929. A dashing Errol Flynn showed man cleavage in the 1930s, most memorably in 1938's "The Adventures of Robin Hood." These actors made skin-flashing practically de rigueur for certain swashbuckling roles. The aesthetic continued well into the 1950s and the 1960s, says menswear historian Robert Bryan, author of the new book "American Fashion Menswear." Among those celebrated for their heavage were Marlon Brando (in the 1951 film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire") and Sean Connery as James Bond in the 1960s. The last time man cleavage was so prevalent in the U.S. was in the 1970s -- "the golden age of male chest hair," says Mr. Bryan. Epitomized by John Travolta in 1977's "Saturday Night Fever," the convention back then was to skip enough shirt buttons to show off a thick forest of hair, perhaps topped with a gold medallion as a sign of virility.
You may recall Ted Cox, the straight, formerly Mormon, reporter who went undercover at an "ex-gay" conversion therapy retreats in two states. Cox was unable to tell his story because his publisher feared legal reprisals if Cox were to break the confidentiality agreement the "ex-gays" made him sign. This week Cox has broken the agreement in an interview with Alternet.
Last month we learned that Uganda, where being gay can already bring a life sentence, was considering a death penalty for homosexual acts in certain situations. The proposed new law is now before Uganda's parliament.
Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality bill currently before Uganda's parliament. If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender, or a "person of authority" over the other partner, or if the "victim" is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty. Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police with 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests. "The bill is haunting us," said Mugisha, 25, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex groups that will all be banned under the law. "If this passes we will have to leave the country."
Over at Box Turtle Bulletin, Timothy Kincaid and Jim Burroway have been tracking the connection to the bill by American right-wing Christians, in particular by the secretive "Family," which includes as members prominent GOP politicians like Sen. John Ensign and SC Gov. Mark Sanford. The push for the "kill gays" bill in Uganda is being promoted and funded by the Family. Go to Box Turtle Bulletin for an exhaustive recounting of the ties between Uganda, the Family, and the Christianist right.
Among those with close ties to Ugandans promoting the "kill gays" bill is Saddleback megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, who has hosted many appearance by Ugandan Pastor Martin Ssempa, one of the bill's leading advocates. Warren has since denounced Ssempa's extreme anti-gay stance. But yesterday on Meet The Press, Warren refused to distance himself from "kill gays" bill itself, saying, "I never take sides." Of course, we know differently from Warren's endorsement of Proposition 8.
What we are seeing in Uganda is a vivid depiction of what some on the Christian right would like to see in America. They are testing the waters there, dipping their vile toes into Uganda's government, seeing just how far they can take an anti-gay pogrom. Watch closely.
Five for Fred is asking its supporters to spread awareness and donate $5.00 (the priceof a latte + tip) to help with Fred's costly legal battle. He's a citizen activist fighting against a team of high-priced lawyers from the National Organization for Marriage and the Christian Right legal organization, the Alliance Defense Fund. They want to silence him.
Los Angeles Times Condemns The Manhattan Declaration
In an editorial published yesterday, the Los Angeles Timesstrongly condemned the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration, calling it "irresponsible and dangerous" and warning that the document may embolden anti-abortion terrorists.
The impression left is that the legal environment in which churches must operate is reminiscent of the Roman Empire that threw Christians to the lions. Never mind that advocates of same-sex civil marriage and legal abortion have made significant concessions to believers or that religious groups have recourse to courts, which have aggressively protected the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, exempting believers in some cases from having to comply with applicable laws.
This apocalyptic argument for lawbreaking is disingenuous, but it is also dangerous. Did the Roman Catholic bishops who signed the manifesto consider how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don't like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare reform? They need to be reminded that this is a nation of laws, not of men -- even holy men.
Meanwhile Bill O'Reilly complains on Townhall that the "secular media" has given the Manhattan Declaration little attention and wonders "are people of faith as upset as some of their leadership with the secularism of America?"
Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. The World AIDS Day theme for 2009 is 'Universal Access and Human Rights'. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done. According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.2 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. During 2007 some 2.5 million people became newly infected with the virus. Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35. Around 95% of people with HIV and AIDS live in developing nations. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world
AIDS attacks the body… Prejudice attacks the spirit… One is caused by a virus. One is caused by ignorance. BOTH KILL!!
PLEASE WEAR RED ON TUESDAY 1ST DECEMBER, 2009 to show support for people who have AIDS, those who have died from it and those who are working towards a cure.
This ESPN story is breaking all over the sporting news. Brian Burke, president and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, "a most public example of hockey machismo," has a gay son, and accepts him. Not only that, but the son, Brendan, plays hockey for Miami University. As an out player, he is helping break down the walls of homophobia in sports.
JMG says:
Brian Burke, president and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, "a most public example of hockey machismo," has a gay son, and accepts him. Not only that, but the son, Brendan, plays hockey for Miami University. As an out player, he is helping