"Three shark in attacks in Florida, million of sharks in the ocean, and no one will go in the water. Hundreds and thousands of children raped in churches and people still send their kids to church. It's crazy. You should be sending your kids to gay bars. There they will be be safe." - Dan Savage, speaking on his latest podcast.Labels: Catholic Church, Dan Savage, molestation, scandal
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Paul Eaton, who lead the invasion forces in Iraq, has strongly endorsed the repeal of DADT. "Discrimination based on sexual orientation is inappropriate in our society." Listen to the entire clip, the guy knows his stuff. Easton's son is a third generation West Point graduate now serving in the infantry.
Labels: army, DADT, LGBT rights, military
Two elderly male otters died within an hour of each other at a New Zealand zoo yesterday. Handlers say that the second one probably died of heartbreak after watching his mate pass away. Zookeeper John Miller said the Asian otters, who were 19 and 16 years-old, had been best friends for 15 years. It's thought that having each other for company kept them alive beyond the normal otter life-span of 14 years. According to handler Gail Sutton, the pair lived to nearly 100 in human years. 'They were a great pair of otters, they were interested in what was happening,' she said. The pair had been unwell for a couple of weeks but after completing treatment they were returned to their enclosure, only to be discovered dead the next morning. 'We were devastated and we couldn't work out quite what had happened with them,' Ms Sutton said. 'It brought a tear to my eye and it's making me well up now.' 'The only consolation from this is that they both went together because if one had gone without the other, the remaining one would have been really lost.'Sniff.
Labels: gay animals, New Zealand, obituary
reposted via JMG
Concerned Women For America have issued an endorsement of the plan for Christian children to walk out of school during GLSEN's Day Of Silence. The pro-homosexual "Day of Silence" (DOS) is coming to your child's school again. The nationally scheduled date is April 16, 2010. While wearing the mask of a "safe schools" program, this is actually a movement to silence any criticism of homosexuality. It is a homosexual activism day. Day of Silence is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and was created by GLSEN's founder and former Executive Director, Kevin Jennings. Jennings now heads the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program at the U.S. Department of Education. The Day of Silence is just one of the homosexual indoctrination programs operating in our schools.Among the Christian groups endorsing (PDF) the beating, bullying and torture of LGBT youth: American Family Association, Americans For Truth, Liberty Counsel, Mission America, MassResistance, PFOX, and many others.
"Gay" students and teachers are asked to go the entire day without speaking as a protest to the bullying and harassment students receive over their "sexual orientation." This is a manufactured crisis of violence upon gender-confused students. Adult homosexual activists have manufactured it to promote a political agenda, but instead they are ruining young lives, putting children at risk because of deadly behaviors, and forcing gender confusion on the vulnerable.
The goal behind the Day of Silence is not to make schools safe but to silence Christian voices and the voices of those who do not approve of homosexuality. Students who do not support homosexuality have a right to say that sex between two males or two females is repulsive. They also have a right to say people aren't born homosexual without being called bigoted or hateful.
Labels: bigotry, bullying, Concerned Women Of America, Day Of Silence, education, gay youth, GLSEN, religion
"We stood firm for the civil rights of every Iowan by saying loudly and clearly that any and all efforts to add discriminatory amendments to our state constitution have no place in our state constitution. Regardless of our personal views, we have a line that needs to be drawn between the executive branch and the judicial branch and I think Iowans are ready to move on and accept that unanimous decision." - Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, congratulating the state legislature for refusing to consider a constitutional amendment overturning same-sex marriage. This week is the one year anniversary of marriage equality in Iowa.Labels: Iowa, LGBT rights, marriage equality, Quote Of The Day
another great repost lifted from JMG
"The folly of the SPLC’s expanding 'hate' dragnet is that it threatens to engulf all religious/moral opposition to homosexuality. Indeed, it would be revealing to query the top 25 'GLBT' activist across the nation and ask them if they would also label, as Matt Barber pokes fun HERE, the following as 'hate groups': Family Research Council, AFA, the Roman Catholic Church, Focus on the Family, the Southern Baptist Convention and ADF. Wayne Besen, Evan Hurst, Joe Jervis, Jeremy Hooper, Rea Carey: take up the challenge!" - Peter LaBarbera, in his seventh consecutive post whining about being named a hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center.Labels: civil rights, hate groups, hate speech, LGBT rights, Peter LaBarbera, religion
This weekend's feature article in New York Times Magazine deals with homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Here's an excerpt: Various forms of same-sex sexual activity have been recorded in more than 450 different species of animals by now, from flamingos to bison to beetles to guppies to warthogs. A female koala might force another female against a tree and mount her, while throwing back her head and releasing what one scientist described as “exhalated belchlike sounds.” Male Amazon River dolphins have been known to penetrate each other in the blowhole. Within most species, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadically, and there appear to be few cases of individual animals who engage in it exclusively. For more than a century, this kind of observation was usually tacked onto scientific papers as a curiosity, if it was reported at all, and not pursued as a legitimate research subject. Biologists tried to explain away what they’d seen, or dismissed it as theoretically meaningless — an isolated glitch in an otherwise elegant Darwinian universe where every facet of an animal’s behavior is geared toward reproducing. One primatologist speculated that the real reason two male orangutans were fellating each other was nutritional.Wingnut logic: Homosexual acts are not natural! Then why do so many animals do it? What are you, an ANIMAL? Well, yes.
In recent years though, more biologists have been looking objectively at same-sex sexuality in animals — approaching it as real science. For Young, the existence of so many female-female albatross pairs disproved assumptions that she didn’t even realize she’d been making and, in the process, raised a chain of progressively more complicated questions. One of the prickliest, it seemed, was how a scientist is even supposed to talk about any of this, given how eager the rest of us have been to twist the sex lives of animals into allegories of our own. “This colony is literally the largest proportion of — I don’t know what the correct term is: ‘homosexual animals’? — in the world,” Young told me. “Which I’m sure some people think is a great thing, and others might think is not.”
Labels: gay animals, nature, New York Times, science
The percentage of people saying homosexuality is "never justifiable" is diving in all the countries surveyed. Including here, until starting around 2000, thanks to Karl Rove and the Bush II years. Still, I suppose we should at least by heartened by the overall change since the survey began.Labels: Dubya, homosexuality, Karl Rove, surveys
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- After years of keeping quiet about his personal life, pop star Ricky Martin has announced that he is gay.
"I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man," Ricky said in a message posted on his offical Web site. "I am very blessed to be who I am."
make the jump here to read the full article
The musical version of Armistead Maupin's Tales Of The City will see its world premiere in San Francisco next summer. "Tales of the City," a new musical adaptation of Armistead Maupin's famed stories - created with veterans of "Avenue Q" and members of the rock band Scissor Sisters - will receive its world premiere in the American Conservatory Theater's 2010-11 season. Bill Irwin, Harold Pinter, and a new take on Sartre's "No Exit" are also featured in the ambitious lineup to be announced today by Artistic Director Carey Perloff, along with the previously announced, three-theater staging of Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brother/Sister Plays" trilogy.Like uncountable thousands of gay men, I decided I needed to live in San Francisco once I read the first volume of Tales In The City. And in 1994 I practically tackled Armistead Maupin for an autograph in the middle of Fifth Avenue as he lead the television cast of Tales Of The City to their place in the Stonewall 25 Pride parade. He kindly introduced me around and to this day I can't even remember meeting anyone else. Laura Linney? Olympia Dukakis? Who knows? Today's bonus cool points: Both Maupin and Avenue Q's Jeff Whitty are JMG readers.
"It's a wonderful valentine to the community in which we live," Perloff says of "Tales," noting that Maupin began his opus as a series of columns in The Chronicle. It's the kind of San Francisco story, like her own "The Tosca Project" this season, "that's a big part of the kind of work we want to make at ACT." Perloff acknowledges that "Tales" has Broadway aspirations, with the participation of "Avenue Q" librettist Jeff Whitty and director Jason Moore, and Scissors songwriters Jake Shears and John Garden. But the premiere "is an ACT production for ACT's audience," she says. "Clearly it's an extraordinary team, and it would be surprising if it didn't have a longer life. But that isn't the first imperative, which is to do a fantastic production for a fantastic city."
Labels: Armistead Maupin, books, Broadway, Jeff Whitty, musical theater, San Francisco, Scissor Sisters
another repost from JMG
Retired Presbyterian minister Jane Spahr may face a church court trial for officiating same-sex marriages. Even though the marriages were legal at the time. This is the second time Spahr is facing church sanctions. Spahr, who lives with her son and 6-year-old granddaughter in San Francisco, freely acknowledges the church's allegations that she married a lesbian couple in June, 2008, and 15 other same-sex couples that year. “This is what we are called to do,” Spahr said, asserting, as she did before, that she conducted the marriages as a “matter of conscience.” But there is a new twist to the case. The 16 marriages that allegedly violate Presbyterian church law were conducted during the five-month period in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal in California. Spahr's defender in the case, Scott Clark, said the church is “trying to sanction a minister for performing legal marriages. This is unprecedented.” JoAn Blackstone, who is the prosecutor, said the distinction is immaterial. The marriages may well have been legal under state law, she said, but were “expressly prohibited” by the same ruling that acquitted Spahr in 2008. Blackstone said the case hinges on “a narrow issue of church law” and is unrelated to the public debate over same-sex marriage.Interestingly, it appears that the church's "prosecutor" in the case is also a longtime gay rights advocate, something she says is irrelevant to the issue.
Labels: California, gay weddings, marriage equality, religion
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Remember when Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill declaring the state exempt from the Matthew Shepard Act? It turns out the asshats cited the wrong federal bill number in their legislation and Oklahoma is actually now exempt from federal laws about reporting racial and religious discrimination.
In trying to strip gays and lesbians of their rights, the Oklahoma State Senate inadvertently cited the wrong section of the U.S. code. The bill stripped protections under Title 18 U.S. Code Section 245, but protections for sexual orientation and gender identity is actually under Section 249. From the bill:Section 24A.12. Except as otherwise provided by state or local law, the Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma and agency attorneys authorized by law, the office of the district attorney of any county of the state, and the office of the municipal attorney of any municipality may keep its litigation files and investigatory reports confidential, except they shall keep their litigation files and investigatory reports confidential upon request of any federal agency when such request is made for the purpose of an attempt to investigate or prosecute an individual or individuals pursuant to 18 U.S.C. Section 245, except for those records of any individuals convicted pursuant to Section 850 of Title 21 of the Oklahoma Statutes.Section 245 of the Code refers to race and religious protections. Therefore, Oklahoma actually passed a statute allowing state law enforcement officials to keep information about crimes motivated by race or religion out of the hands of federal authorities.
Labels: dumbassery, HA HA HA, Matthew Shepard Act, Oklahoma
via JMG
Despite months of strenuous opposition from the right, openly lesbian Chai Feldblum has been appointed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly reports: Feldblum was nominated by President Barack Obama on Sept. 14, 2009, more than six months ago. Her confirmation hearing was held two months later, on Nov. 19, and her nomination received a favorable vote from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on Dec. 10. Earlier this month, however, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed that a hold was being placed on all of the President's EEOC nominees, keeping them from receiving a vote of the full Senate.Christianist groups like the Illinois Family Institute (former home to Peter LaBarbera) had turned opposition to "radical activist" Feldblum into a fundraising campaign.
Obama granted a recess appointment today to all the EEOC nominees, including his nominee to serve as chair of the Commission, Jacqueline A. Berrien. Berrien, according to the White House, has served as the associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund since September 2004. In announcing the move, Obama said in a statement, ''The United States Senate has the responsibility to approve or disapprove of my nominees. But if, in the interest of scoring political points, Republicans in the Senate refuse to exercise that responsibility, I must act in the interest of the American people and exercise my authority to fill these positions on an interim basis.''
Labels: Barack Obama, Chai Feldblum, lesbians, Obama administration
