Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Reposted from JMG: Andrew Sullivan On Gay Deportations
"The US government regards gay Americans as sub-human in their needs and wants and rights. Their loves and relationships mean nothing under the law every time they encounter federal authoritah. Aaron and I are total strangers to one another in the eyes of federal law. And because we are legally married, I am paradoxically more vulnerable to being deported than I would be if I were single - because it's plain that I intend to reside in the US indefinitely, even though my visa has an expiration date."So I'm a risk - hence my huge anxiety if I ever leave the country. I am lucky to be able to apply for a Green Card on my own merits, under the rubric of what's called extraordinary ability in my field (it's still in process). But most people are not so lucky. They just fall in love. Only to have their own government rip their marriage apart, or force the American into exile. If this isn't wrong, what is?" - Andrew Sullivan, commenting on the news that the foreign partner of legally married binational gay couples may still be deported.
Repost from GetEqual:
Dear Daniel,
In December, when President Obama signed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010," I breathed a sigh of relief. Although there is still work to do to make repeal fully inclusive and get it implemented, my hope was that at least now we would not lose another servicemember because of that discriminatory law. After so many discharges even as late as last year [1], I thought we were finally out of the woods.
Sadly, I thought wrong.
A short time ago, we were contacted by an active-duty servicemember who -- despite the repeal of this horrible law -- is still going through the process of being discharged. The process started for him on November 8, 2009, when someone anonymously outed him after seeing his MySpace page.
Within weeks, his discharge process began -- but it limped along while the government waffled about what to do about repeal. A year went by before he got any kind of update, each day believing it was his last day to serve his country. After the repeal bill was signed into law, he believed his case to be over.
But Derek got bad news earlier this month. Despite DADT repeal, his case is still being pursued and his hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. With implementation still not in place, is this the Navy's attempt to slip in another discharge or bully him with a hearing...just because they still can?
Click here to show your support for Derek and to fight back against his discharge!
Derek joined the Navy right after high school -- here are his own words:
This lengthy matter has been tearing me up; it has destroyed relationships and displaced loved ones who were relying on me. But even after the U.S. Government has made it clear they don’t want this law in effect the Navy has said that, because the paperwork has been submitted and the policy is technically still active, they have no choice but to continue.
I have been in the U.S. Navy since I graduated high school. It’s all I know and all I want to do. I have dreams of grandeur, hopes of retiring a young, highly-decorated, respected senior enlisted sailor. My resolve is weakened but not broken. I just have to place my fate in the hands of three strangers -- strangers who I hope have strong moral convictions and like-minded sentiments to my own.
Get Out! Get Active! GetEQUAL!
Robin McGehee, Director
----
[1] "Servicemembers United: An 'unusually high' 261 discharges under DADT in FY 2010" -- http://gay.americablog.com/2011/03/261-discharges-under-dadt-in-fy-2010.html
Via AMERICAblog Gay: 'There is light at the end of the tunnel for binational couples'
Lavi Soloway has a guest column over at Karen Ocamb's LGBT POV where he dissects the latest news from the United States Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) relating to binational couples and DOMA. A lot has happened over the past couple days. Yesterday, USCIS confirmed to Metro Weekly that cases relating to same-sex couples have been put in "abeyance," pending resolution of DOMA.
Lavi, an immigration lawyer who also writes the blog, Stop The Deportations, explains what it means and who it helps for now:
Lavi, an immigration lawyer who also writes the blog, Stop The Deportations, explains what it means and who it helps for now:
This development will have the greatest impact on two groups of couples:DOMA really has to go.
1. Married gay and lesbian couples where the foreign spouse lawfully entered the United States but is now an “overstay” and without lawful status. For these couples, the filing of an alien relative petition and application for adjustment of status to permanent resident should automatically give temporary lawful status to the foreign spouse for the duration of the period that the case is pending. If these applications are in fact held in abeyance until DOMA’s final demise, this could mean that couples who have wrestled for years with the nightmare of deportation, separation and instability caused by a lack of lawful status may now be on the verge of a new reality. The foreign spouse will not only receive (temporary) lawful status, but also employment authorization and potentially other benefits, as long as they have a pending green card application. Unfortunately, despite the temptation that this will present to many couples, for many it will be better to wait until there is greater certainty about this policy and the future of DOMA.
2. Married gay and lesbian couples who are already facing removal (deportation) proceedings. It is now likely that we will be able to stop virtually all deportation proceedings involving married gay and lesbian couples who have filed green card petitions/applications and who are, but for DOMA, otherwise eligible to receive a green card based on their marriage. Even couples in removal (deportation) proceedings must proceed cautiously when considering whether to marry and file a green card petition/application based on that marriage. However, unlike those who are not in proceedings, the risk of deportation is very real, and the likelihood is that this new development will provide protection to almost every couple facing deportation, if they are currently in proceedings.
There is light at the end of the tunnel for binational couples. The individual stories of binational couples suffering separation, exile or the threat of deportation continue to be our most important weapon in the fight against DOMA. There is still a long road ahead before we achieve full equality and we cannot be complacent.
John Boehner is going to be spending a lot of your tax dollars defending a law that is based on pure bigotry.
Via AMERICAblog Gay: Obama admin. now says 'abeyances' for binational couples could last only a week
Don't get too excited about the earlier news about binational same-sex couples. The light at the end of the tunnel might get a harder to see. Seems the "abeyance" we learned about yesterday might be short-lived -- like just a week long.
Actually, this is more of what I'd expect from the Department of Homeland Security:
Actually, this is more of what I'd expect from the Department of Homeland Security:
Despite statements from leading organizations – most prominently, Immigration Equality – suggesting that the cases would be held in abeyance until DOMA’s constitutionality is settled, a DHS official told Metro Weekly on Monday night that the abeyance could last for as little as a week.Seriously, Janet Napolitano, don't you have real security issues to worry about? And, don't think the Obama administration won't split families apart. They're deporting more people than Bush did.
“[P]ursuant to CIS’s routine practice when there’s a new law or regulation that will potentially affect their resolution of certain cases, they hold [the cases] in abeyance until they get the final guidance from the general counsel’s office,” the official said. “DHS expects this issue to be resolved imminently.”
After that abeyance has ended, the official notes, “[I]n individual cases, USCIS has always had the authority to exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis, in light of the unique circumstances of that particular case.”
DOMA really needs to go. Too bad our friends on Capitol Hill didn't try to repeal that law when they controlled the House and had 60 votes in the Senate. But, that was back in 2009 - 2010, when the White House didn't understand that actually passing pro-LGBT legislation was good politics. So, now, we wait for the courts and John Boehner will be using your tax dollars to fight against your equality.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Via JMG: HomoQuotable - Dan Savage
"I'm against making people feel uncomfortable or unsafe in their own homes. Even bigots. And staging protests outside people's homes is a tactic usually employed by rightwing anti-abortion activists and the KKK back in the day. I don't think this is a tactic that gay rights movement should endorse or adopt."To bring this down to a personal level: I say a lot of shit that pisses off the religious right. I don't want rightwing anti-gay haters turning up on the sidewalk outside my house, annoying my neighbors, and, most importantly, making my son feel unsafe in his own home. (Honestly sometimes I'm surprised that they haven't; I'd even go so far to express my gratitude—yes, to the haters—that they haven't.) Protesting outside people's homes? I don't think they should do that to us, any of us, and I don't think we should do that to them, any of them. Not Tony, not Maggie, not these florists." - Dan Savage, responding to the protest outside of the home of an anti-gay Canadian florist.
Via JMG: Quote Of The Day - Randy Thomasson
"This shows that you cannot trust the Democrat legislators, the homosexual agenda people at all, and you cannot trust the teachers unions -- the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers boldly and brashly supported this bill in committee. They want children in the classrooms statewide to be taught that they can be homosexual or bisexual or transsexual -- or they ought to be -- and that they'll enjoy it." - Save California spokesbigot Randy Thomasson, responding to a bill that requires that LGBT people be depicted positively in public school textbooks.The bill, sponsored by openly gay state Sen. Mark Leno, advanced out of a Senate committee last week.
Thank you! 34000 visits! Obrigado! 34.000 vistantes!
Thank you folks for coming by to see what I have been reading and doing... we have streaked past 34000 visits... I am so very honored!
Obrigado pessoal por terem vindo para ver o que tenho lido, feito, e continuo fazendo. Hoje temos mais que 34.000 vistantes... Eu estou muito honrado!
Daniel
Obrigado pessoal por terem vindo para ver o que tenho lido, feito, e continuo fazendo. Hoje temos mais que 34.000 vistantes... Eu estou muito honrado!
Daniel
Monday, March 28, 2011
Via HimalayaCrafts: I think I have here...
O seu trabalho é descobrir o seu trabalho, e depois, com todo o seu coração, doar-se a ele. ~ Buda
Your work is to discover your work
And then with all your heart
To give yourself to it. ~ Buddha
And then with all your heart
To give yourself to it. ~ Buddha
Namaste
Via JMG: A Pastor Sees The Light
Pastor Murray Richmond says he used to preach against homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but not anymore.
Why had we singled out homosexuality as a litmus test for True Christianity in the first place? Why had it become such a lightning rod for self-righteousness? One reason, I think, is that it's easy to condemn homosexuality if you are not gay. It is much harder than condemning pride, or lust or greed, things that most practicing Christians have struggled with. It is all too easy to make homosexuality about "those people," and not me. If I were to judge someone for their inflated sense of pride, or their tendency to worship various cultural idols, I would feel some personal stake, some cringe of self-judgment. Not so with homosexuality.Read Richmond's full essay at Salon.com.
Now I am wondering why, if two gay people want to commit their lives to one another, they should ever be denied that chance. No church or pastor should be forced to perform those ceremonies, and they can choose not to recognize gay marriage for their adherents. But the constitution of the Presbyterian Church does not explicitly forbid a pastor from being a thief, a murderer, or an egotistical jerk. It is not designed to do these things. It does prohibit a gay person from becoming a pastor. All I can ask is: Why?
Via JMG: NETHERLANDS: Ten Years Of Marriage
Ten years ago this week, the Netherlands become the world's first nation to legalize same-sex marriage. Veteran reporter Rex Wockner was in Amsterdam's City Hall that night and today he reposts this excerpt from his report on the proceedings: Amid an international media frenzy, the weddings took place at City Hall as the law became effective at the stroke of midnight. Mayor Job Cohen officiated. As Cohen finished his opening remarks at 11:58 p.m., the audience in the City Council chambers began syncopated clapping as they waited for the room's clock to click over to 12:00. When it clicked, cheers erupted.Wocker notes: "In the intervening 10 years, 14,813 of the Netherlands' 55,000 gay couples have gotten married, according to Statistics Netherlands. Of those couples, 7,522 were female and 7,291 were male. There have been 1,078 same-sex divorces, 734 of them by female couples."
RELATED: Canada legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2005 in a ruling that made legal a gay wedding that had taken place in January 2001. Call it "ten years with an asterisk."
Via JMG: Matt Damon On Kissing Michael Douglas
"I never thought I would get to kiss Michael Douglas. I kind of think of it in algebra terms, back to my high-school days. It's like the transitive property - by kissing Michael Douglas, I am making out with Catherine. I was actually kind of upset that I never got to kiss Catherine. But now I get to kiss Michael. I thought it would have been better if I could have at least kissed them both." - Matt Damon, on his kissing scenes with Michael Douglas in the upcoming Liberace bio-pic.Sunday, March 27, 2011
Via JMG: HomoQuotable - Bruce Bawer
"In 1989, thousands of gay activists, angry at the Vatican for preaching abstinence instead of safe sex, rallied outside a church in New York, some of them actually going inside and disrupting a worship service. In 2011, faced with far worse provocations by a faith that, unlike Roman Catholicism, poses a mortal threat to gays, gay-rights groups in London not only decided to remain silent lest they 'offend' Muslims, but in addition chose to turn on their own, denouncing fellow gays as 'racists' and 'Islamophobes' for feeling obliged to stand up — even if in the meekest of ways — to people who would, without question, murder them if they had the power to do so."No, the officers of London’s gay-rights organizations, and the commenters at Pink News, aren’t the only people in West who have responded to Muslim bullying with cowardly toadying. But British gays should damn well understand, at this point, that there’s no place for them in the sharia-run Britain to which millions of British Muslims openly aspire and that the Archbishop of Canterbury has already accepted as inevitable. If they’re so desperate not to offend Muslims, they’d better kill themselves pronto — for, as they still somehow fail to grasp, their very existence is an offense to these people." - Bruce Bawer, writing for the right-wing Pajamas Media about London's "Gay-Free Zone" controversy.
reposted from Joe
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Via Belirico: MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Takes on the Catholic Church Over LGBTs
Filed by: Karen Ocamb
March 25, 2011 1:00 PM
The late author and AIDS activist Paul Monette must be doing a little jig in heaven right now. Wednesday night Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word, called out the antigay 
Catholic Church in an articulate, explosive, captivating fulmination that promoted goosebumps and teary eyes.
Monette, as some may remember, tore up a photo of the Pope during a Creating Change conference (caught on tape for the excellent 1996 documentary Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End) to protest the enormous and deadly sway the Church had over its followers.
It's a practice the Catholic Church appears to continue today, with some US Bishops threatening to withhold communion from Pro-Choice politicians and chastising the United Nations for its "radical agenda" to re-define gender. This at the same time the US is pushing the UN to expand it's recognition of human rights to include LGBT people. Here's the statement from the US UN Ambassador Susan E. Rice:
Continue reading "MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Takes on the Catholic Church Over LGBTs" »
Catholic Church in an articulate, explosive, captivating fulmination that promoted goosebumps and teary eyes.Monette, as some may remember, tore up a photo of the Pope during a Creating Change conference (caught on tape for the excellent 1996 documentary Paul Monette: The Brink of Summer's End) to protest the enormous and deadly sway the Church had over its followers.
It's a practice the Catholic Church appears to continue today, with some US Bishops threatening to withhold communion from Pro-Choice politicians and chastising the United Nations for its "radical agenda" to re-define gender. This at the same time the US is pushing the UN to expand it's recognition of human rights to include LGBT people. Here's the statement from the US UN Ambassador Susan E. Rice:
Continue reading "MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Takes on the Catholic Church Over LGBTs" »
ViBelirico: Bioware's Dragon Age II Has Gay Scene that Some Straight Gamers Don't Like
Filed by: Alex Blaze
March 25, 2011 3:00 PM
Dragon Age II has a gay love story in it that's cute that led some straight gamers to complain. You see, since the majority of people are straight, that means that everything has to be washed clean of homosexuality lest it befuddle their minds:
But I don't have to respond. Bioware's response is definitely worth reading:
Continue reading "Bioware's Dragon Age II Has Gay Scene that Some Straight Gamers Don't Like" »
It's a lot longer, but you get his point. While LGB people watch tons of movies, play lots of games, read lots of books, and watch lots of TV centered around heterosexuality, for a straight person to have to put up with a gay story (among straight love stories) in a video game is just too much.When I say BioWare neglected The Straight Male Gamer, I don't mean that they ignored male gamers. The romance options, Isabella and Merrill, were clearly designed for the straight male gamers in mind. Unfortunately, those choices are what one would call "exotic" choices. They appeal to a subset of male gamers and while its true you can't make a romance option everyone will love, with Isabella and Merrill it seems like they weren't even going for an option most males will like. And the fact is, they could have. They had the resources to add another romance option, but instead chose to implement a gay romance with Anders.
I'm certain that some will declare "That's only fair!" but lets be honest. I'll be generous and assume that 5% of all Dragon Age 2 players are actually homosexuals. I'll be even more generous and assume that the Anders romance was liked by every homosexual. Are you really telling me that you could not have written another straight romance that would have pleased more than 5% of your fans?
But I don't have to respond. Bioware's response is definitely worth reading:
Continue reading "Bioware's Dragon Age II Has Gay Scene that Some Straight Gamers Don't Like" »
Via JMG: TENNESSEE: Housing Official Says Gays Are Like Murderers and Drug Dealers
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. According to Barnes, if HUD's proposed rules are adopted, landlords will opt out of Section 8 programs rather than "be bullied into accepting tenants who have chosen a lifestyle that goes against their moral convictions." Screen shots of Barnes' detestable letter are below.
I've posted Barnes' full letter to my Scribd account. I believe we'll have a little project here, come Monday.(Tipped by JMG reader James)
Via JMG: Liz Taylor Leaves Estate To AIDS Charities
Most of Elizabeth Taylor's massive fortune will go to the two AIDS charities with whom she was most famously associated. Screen queen Elizabeth Taylor has left behind a fortune worth at least $600 million, much of which is expected to go to the AIDS charities she championed for decades. Her famous jewelry collection, valued at an eye-popping $150 million in 2002, is likely to be auctioned off with the bulk of the proceeds going to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and amfAR, the AIDS charity she helped found in 1985, according to WFLD/Fox TV Chicago. "From what I understand, she seems to have been very wise about her investments," said a financial planner who has worked with other Hollywood A-listers. At the time of her 1994 divorce from her last husband, Larry Fortensky, Taylor's net worth was estimated at $608.4 million. That figure could now be well in excess of $1 billion. During the 1990s, Taylor reportedly earned about $2 per second, or about $63 million per year. Her famed perfume, White Diamonds, earned more than $70 million last year, according to reports.Our hero, even in death.
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