Via AmericaBloggay: Spock is gay

The new Spock, not the old Spock.

I'm impressed he came out.  And how, and why.

Last year, the Times, in profiling him for Angels, noted that “the blogosphere is rife with speculation about his sexuality” but that “he prefers not to feed the rumor mill with either substantiation or dismissal.” That has changed. A little while later in our conversation, speaking of the cultural bipolarity that can see gay marriage legalized in New York in the same year that yet another gay teenager, Jamey Rodemeyer, was bullied and killed himself, Quinto says, “And again, as a gay man I look at that and say there’s a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say ‘Why? Where’s this disparity coming from, and why can’t we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?’ We’re terrified of facing ourselves.

Today's NSFW Posting:

Lawrence O'Donnell - The WE DO Campaign

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma: Avoiding Disappointments

 October 15, 2011

Avoiding Disappointments

How do we avoid misguided faith? We practice awareness and non-attachment. Seeing attachment, aversion, expectation, and disappointment as they arise allows the mind to understand and to disengage from them. Awareness breaks the spell; the mind is no longer enchanted when we see the defilement for what it is. When a defilement has no hold on the mind, suffering ceases. Awareness can simply wait and observe the next present moment as it arises. These moments gradually refine faith, and skillful wisdom increasingly arises in daily life.

– Steve Armstrong, "Got Attitude?"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Via AmericaBlogGay: Another teacher caught ranting on Facebook about the gays

I just don't know how you can continue to teach kids when you've publicly stated your disdain for an entire class of those kids. And there this: 

John Paragano, a lawyer and former member of the Union Township Committee, said he had been offended by Ms. Knox’s comments, and questioned her ability to enforce the state’s tough new anti-bullying law. 

“Teachers are at the forefront of that, enforcing that,” Mr. Paragano said. “My concern is that if this teacher has these feelings, is she going to call out the bullying of a gay, lesbian and transgender person?”

Are teachers permitted to be racists and anti-Semites? How about a klansman, can he be a teacher during the day and wear his white hood at night? I find it hard to believe that someone like that would stay for long as a school teacher, First Amendment or not.

Via JMG: Concerned Women Are Concernstipated About Homosexuals On Television

Concerned woman Janet Shaw Crouse longs for the days of nursery rhyme romances. Because all those homosexuals on television are destroying true love. Or something!

Looking back, it’s amazing how much our simple nursery rhymes taught us about life, including the natural progression of relationships. Intuitively, we knew these axioms to be true and passed them down throughout the generations. But these days, as conventional wisdom is increasingly convoluted, it isn’t surprising that many have rejected the order of romance first, marriage second, and finally childbearing, instead creating their own rules of the game. Indeed, gone are the days of Brady Brunch families and June Cleaver-style households; they have morphed into ABC’s “Modern Family“ — a show promoted as “redefining what family means,” and portrayed as “one big straight-gay, multicultural, traditional, happy family.” Hence, every day it seems, a new tide of case studies surfaces on the shores of our Hollywood-esque world of hook-ups, shack-ups, babydaddys, and babymommas, attempting to prove how “liberated” we are, unbound by the shackles of tradition.

Labels: Concerned Women Of America, hags, hate groups

reposted from Joe

Via AmericaBlogGay: Kelsey Grammer thinks the Tea Party is nuts, disagrees with them on gay marriage

Republican Kelsey Grammer was asked last night by Piers Morgan about his allegiance to the Tea Party. 

Says Grammer: “I’m not sure they say anything that I would object to. I’ve just been told that they’re lunatics."

Morgan tells him that most of the Tea Party is opposed to gay marriage. 

"I wouldn't sign on to that. Absolutely. I played several [gay characters]. I guess I'm more Libertarian in that way. I think marriage is up to two people that love each other. And if you find the church that you want to get married in you go right ahead ..In my mind the state of marriage is something that has been endorsed by the idea that it is a sacrament within the context of a faith...the word marriage comes out of the religious side of our experience and our history. So I tend to think our government shouldn't be involved in any way..."

TowleRoad:has the video of the interview as well.

Ron Paul on Gay Marriage

The We Do Campaign - Asheville, NC

Via JMG: Evil Gays Are Brainwashing America!

Rick Perry's BFF and Dallas megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffress says that gays are using Chinese brainwashing techniques to zombify America into accepting their evil agenda. Jeffress made the networks last week for telling the nation that Mormonism is a cult. He also says the Catholic Church is run by Satan.

Labels: assholery, batshittery, bigotry, closet cases, con men, Dallas, hate groups, hate speech, liars, scam artists

reposted from Joe

Via JMG: FOTF Reveals Shocking News That Major GOP Candidates Hate Gay People

Focus On The Family's Stuart Shepard really wants you to find his YouTube clips and therefore tags them with seven different spellings of his name.

Labels: 2012 elections, Family Reseach Council, Focus On The Family, GOP, hate groups, Values Voters Summit

reposted from Joe

Rachel Maddow On Gay Rights Pioneer Frank Kameny

Via JMG: B.A.R. Endorses Bevan Dufty

San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter has endorsed Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who would become the city's first openly gay mayor if elected.

We're not endorsing Dufty just because he is gay. But political recommendations are part of our responsibility as the leading LGBT newspaper and it would be significant for America's gayest city to have an out mayor. It's important to us that one day San Francisco have a gay mayor and Dufty is as qualified as anyone else in the field. The late Harvey Milk often urged LGBTs to elect their own. We find it curious that Dufty could not secure the top spot from either of the city's LGBT Democratic clubs; the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club left him off entirely.

Last week Dufty made national news when he launched an ad campaign featuring his young daughter, the first such political ad from a gay candidate.

Labels: 2011 elections, Bevan Dufty, San Francisco

reposted from Joe

We Do Campaign: Monroe & Lupe's Story

Via Tricycle Daily Dharma:

 October 13, 2011

Praise and Criticism

If we really stop to think about praise and criticism, we will see they do not have the least importance. Whether we receive praise or criticism is of no account. The only important thing is that we have a pure motivation, and let the law of cause and effect be our witness. If we are really honest, we can see that it makes no difference whether we receive praise and acclaim. The whole world might sing our praises, but if we have done something wrong, then we will still have to suffer the consequences for ourselves, and we cannot escape them. If we act only out of a pure motivation, all the beings of the three realms can criticize and rebuke us, but none of them will be able to cause us to suffer.

– The Dalai Lama, "Bad Reputation"
Read the entire article in the Tricycle Wisdom Collection

Via AmericaBlofGay: "Frank Kameny, the modest, stubborn man who helped start the gay rights movement."

Kameny died last night. Linda Hirshman has a short article up on Slate about how important Kameny really was to the movement. I love this snippet: 

And when the American Psychiatric Association, which defined homosexuality as a mental disorder, decided to hold a meeting in Kameny’s hometown, he quickly organized the disorganized protesters of the GLF and the alphabet soup of other burgeoning gay organizations to disrupt the meeting. They then and force the shrinks to listen to their claims that they were not crazy. 

When the moment came, the protesters upended the psychiatrists’ convocation, and actual fighting broke out, with the doctors using the medals they had just been awarded to beat back the invading homosexuals. Kameny, seeing that the designated protest speaker had been pushed out of the meeting room, leaped onto the stage. “I saw that nothing was going to happen unless I did it,” he recalled. The psychiatrists had taken away the microphone, but “I never needed a microphone. And I knew exactly what to say because I had been speaking about how wrong they were for years.”

And so Frank Kameny proceeded to regale the assembled professionals with his recitation of how their diagnosis of homosexuality as a mental illness was unscientific, groundless, immoral and harmful. Two years later, the APA took homosexuality out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Not Crazy. Two years after that, the federal government explicitly rescinded Executive Order 10450.

Via Just Out:

John Smid, The former leader of Exodus International’s Love in Action ministry, now says that homosexuality is an intrinsic part of a person’s being, not a behavior one can repent from — and admits that he’s never actually met a truly “ex-gay” man.


Smid, who resigned as Executive Director of Love in Action in 2008, posted an essay on the website of his new ministry Grace Rivers explaining that he no longer believes that one can repent of being gay:

So often people will say someone needs to “repent” from homosexuality. It is something that actually cannot be repented of! People are, or they are not, homosexual. It is an intrinsic part of their being or personally, my being. One cannot repent of something that is unchangeable. I have gone through a tremendous amount of grief over the many years that I spoke of change, repentance, reorientation and such, when, barring some kind of miracle, none of this can occur with homosexuality… we as Christians pervert the gospel as it relates to homosexuality as though homosexuals aren’t welcome in the kingdom unless they repent (which many interpret to change). But since homosexuality is not “repentable” then we put homosexuals into an impossible bind…

Make the jump here to read the entire article

Via JMG: Perry Quotes Gay Poet Langston Hughes

Just as Rick Santorum did several weeks ago, during last night's GOP debate Rick Perry quoted legendary gay poet Langston Hughes. Santorum never used the quote again when told of its source.

Labels: debate watch, gay writers, poetry, Rick Perry

reposted from Joe