Thursday, February 19. 2009Transphobic PETA AdRemember a while back ago when I posted that Apple ad that used supermodel Gisele Bundchen juxtaposed with a very masculine looking male model in a dress for a cheap gender laugh? Yeah I figured you didn't so watch it now then read about PETA's Transphobic ad on The Colonic. Tuesday, January 20. 2009White House's support for the LGBT community
As President Obama sworn-in earlier today as the 44th President of the United States, White House has launched its new website, WhiteHouse.gov. Inside the agenda of the new office, listed under civil rights, is Obama's promise to support the LGBT community:
1. Expand Hate Crimes Statutes 2. Fight Workplace Discrimination 3. Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples 4. Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage 5. Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell 6. Expand Adoption Rights 7. Promote AIDS Prevention 8. Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS It's official. Tuesday, December 9. 2008You Suck Rufus Wainright
The Self-Involved Bourgeois Airhead Award for December 2008 goes to Rufus Wainright. The decision is unanimous and he certainly deserves it. In an interview with the right leaning New York Press this week he said:
“Oddly enough, I’m actually not a huge gay marriage supporter. I personally don’t want to get married but I think that any law or amendment to the constitution that deals with sex and love should just be banned in general. I don’t think any government should encroach on what goes on in the bedroom at all. Frankly, if you want to marry a dog, why don’t you go ahead and marry a dog, I don’t care. I’m a complete libertarian and so I really disagree with it.”Oddly enough I am not married to my American partner because the law here currently forbids it, Rufus. Oddly enough, as a foreign national (like you Rufus, because I’ve just remembered you’re Canadian, but you’re also – crucially – famous and rich) I can see the value of it. It would have saved me tens of thousands of dollars I could ill afford in legal fees to immigration attorneys. I could have used that money to do other things. I might have bought a nice pair of Ray Bans or an opera ticket. I mean did you even know that heterosexual couples in bi-national relationships can pay $30 and get hitched in city hall – immigration’s usually a snap for them – but homosexual couples face stiff lawyers fees, uncertainty, discrimination, and chance. Every day. We don’t even have the luxury of idle speculation about man on dog hypothetical nuptials because we’re – I dunno – so busy fighting for our fucking lives. Continue reading "You Suck Rufus Wainright" Can I be de-baptized?
This coming Wednesday will be Human Rights Day (as well as the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The United Nations General Assembly will hold a special meeting to commemorate the occasion.
During the meeting, the General Assembly will call for a de-criminalization of homosexuality for all the countries. Currently, being gay can land you in prisons or get you executed in more than 80 countries. This will be the be the first international human rights convention that acknowledges the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. Oh, and guess who will be opposing it? The Vatican. In other words, the Vatican doesn’t think that we should stop persecuting, or let’s just say, killing, GLBT people. I shouldn’t be so surprised by their constant effort to “protect traditional marriage” by sacrificing the gays. However, it also brings up so much anger and issues that I have with this religion I was brought up in, so much that I wish I could de-baptize myself right now, even though I refuse to call myself a Catholic anymore. P.S. To be fair, the Organisation of The Islamic Conference will also be opposing it. However, I'll leave it to my Islamic friends to get their frustrations out. Tuesday, November 25. 2008Judge Rules Florida Gay Adoption Ban "Unconstitutional"
Less than a month after Floridians voted to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a Miami judge has ruled that a 31-year-old law in the Sunshine State prohibiting gay couples from adopting children is unconstitutional. It's a victory for civil rights activists and supporters who suffered several blows on November 4th, including an Arkansas measure blocking "unmarried" (read: gay) couples from fostering or adopting children in that state. "It is clear that sexual orientation is not a predictor of a person's ability to parent," Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman wrote in her 53-page ruling. "A child in need of love, safety and stability does not first consider the sexual orientation of his parent. The exclusion causes some children to be deprived of a permanent placement with a family that is best suited to their needs." An appeal is expected to be filed on behalf of the state Department of Children & Families. John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney who chaired the November vote against gay couples responded: "Everywhere in the law where children are affected, the standard must always be what is in the best interest of the child. What is stunning to me is that when it comes to dealing with gays, that standard goes out the window. Children do better with a mother and a father." Perhaps, but children with two dads or two moms do better than kids with none at all.
Relatedly, there's an interesting interview with a Mexican-American Catholic author Richard Rodriguez in Salon today examining the real fears behind the church's scapegoating of gay couples who wish to marry and start their own families. Check it out here. Thursday, November 20. 2008Change Is Coming
Barack Obama and Joe Biden have unveiled their plan to strengthen civil rights, including support for the LGBT community. According to the Office of the President-elect, Obama plans to expand hate crimes statutes, and though there's no specific details about what the new administration will do on that front moving forward, Obama's record as an Illinois State senator is clear: He helped expand hate-crime legislation in the state. He also supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and believes that there should be a federal legal remedy to discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace.
While both Obama and Vice President-elect Biden do not support redefining "marriage," they do support full civil unions with all of the federal rights afforded to straight married couples. Separate but equal, some might say, but a step in the right direction. Obama opposed Proposition 8 in California, wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, is against a Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, and wants to expand adoption rights. In an effort to avoid the mistakes made by President Bill Clinton in the early '90s, Obama aims to repeal the U.S Military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy by working with military leaders on the issue. The next president also plans to promote AIDS prevention by implementing more than just an abstinence-first agenda, using common-sense approaches to contraception and even supporting more taboo issues like contraception education in the prison system and lifting the federal ban on needle exchange. Now here's where I start preaching. It's nice to have a progressive voice in the Oval Office, but it our responsibility to hold Obama and Biden accountable and make sure they live up to their promises, particularly on these issues. For more information, check out the official Office of the President-elect transition website.
Posted by Sal Paradise
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16:12
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Defined tags for this entry: 2008 election, aids prevention, barack obama, civil rights, don't ask, don't tell, gay marriage, prop 8
Saturday, November 15. 2008HISTORIC TRAGIC - Thoughts on the 2008 electionYou end up like a dog that’s been beat too muchI have a feeling that the word “historic” is going to become as overused in the coming weeks and years as “tragic” was in referring to “the events of…” you know the rest. Both words appropriately describe the outcome of the 2008 U.S. elections, but I will try to find others. I started watching election returns while unpacking winter clothes, and gasped as Pennsylvania was called for Obama, knowing that meant he probably won. I didn’t vote for him: I didn’t like his non-universal health care plan; his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq seemed vague; his plan for addressing climate change and renewable energy even more vague; and he didn’t support equal marriage rights for all. I proudly voted for Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party, whose positions are in alignment with my values. Another gasp when Virginia was called. This the state which until just 41 years ago outlawed inter-racial marriage. Mildred Delores, a black woman, married Richard Loving, a white man in Washington D.C. in 1958 to avoid the marriage ban. But upon their return to Virginia, police raided their home in the middle of the night, and arrested them - for being married. They were later convicted. Yes, the police actually invaded their home hoping to catch them having sex, also a crime. This isn’t ancient history, this isn’t slave times, this is in my lifetime. This could have happened to Barack Obama’s parents if they lived in Virginia. In 1967 the United States Supreme Court overturned the conviction. In its decision, the Court wrote that marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man.” And that “to deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.” Is it such a stretch to substitute “another race” with “same sex”? Without that ruling who knows when, if ever, Virginia would have decriminalized interracial marriage. And now in 2008 Obama has won the state! Remarkable! (Note that despite the Supreme Court ruling laws like Virginia’s remained on the books in several states until 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its law against mixed-race marriage. Good ol’ Alabama. Forever bringing up the rear.) So by this time things began to feel so momentous I needed to join friends at the local bar, which was packed with cheering and clapping people watching the results come in on the television. When a dramatic fire broke out down the block, only half the people left the bar to watch the fire; the rest, including me, remained glued to the television waiting for Obama’s speech. Yet another powerful moment was seeing Jesse Jackson, who was there when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in the motel in Memphis, also waiting for Obama, with tears streaming down his cheeks. I went home elated that intelligence would return to the White House, after a long eight year drought. And while it is great to have that long chain of white male heads of state broken, on another level it really didn’t matter to me. I mean, look at Clarence Thomas, or Condoleezza Rice, or even Colin Powell, who lied to the world about Iraq. People whose politics and policies I abhor don’t get my support simply for representing a minority group. So my excitement for Obama went beyond the novelty of his race, and centered on his obvious intelligence and leadership qualities. I think I went to bed around 2:30 a.m., before west coast returns were all in. (By the way, it is being said that Condoleezza Rice was rejected from consideration as John McCain’s running mate because she may be a lesbian. So they chose a woman who did not know that Africa was a continent over a PhD with 30 years of international and government experience who might be gay.) Continue reading "HISTORIC TRAGIC - Thoughts on the 2008 election"
Posted by Guest Contributors
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Thursday, November 13. 2008Olbermann: Gay Marriage Is a Question of Love
Keith Olbermann is known for his outspoken, often angry rants on everything from the Iraq War to Sarah Palin's alleged shopping sprees, but earlier this week he struck a more saddened tone when he spoke about the passage of Proposition 8 in California last week. His "Special Comment" on the issue is currently the most viewed video on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann website:
Posted by Sal Paradise
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11:29
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Defined tags for this entry: countdown with keith olbermann, gay marriage, keith olbermann, mormon church, prop 8, religion, united human rights
Tuesday, November 11. 2008Catholics (who) support marriage rights for same-gender couples
A joint press release (read below) was released yesterday by major Catholics reform groups, expresses their support of same-sex marriage rights to bishops who are meeting at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, MD. And at the same time, during the first day of the conference today, president Cardinal Francis George urges bishops to continue to confront President-elect Obama's support on abortion rights. Had Obama supported same-sex marriage, you know for sure that would be their #1 agenda.
As a sidenote, Andrew Sullivan pointed out earlier today that the SF Coronicle reported on how the Catholics were in fact working with the Mormons on their Prop. 8 battle. Continue reading "Catholics (who) support marriage rights for same-gender couples"
Posted by Wajaja
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10:27
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Defined tags for this entry: andrew sullivan, california, catholics, marriage equality, maryland, obama
Friday, November 7. 2008One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
The election of Barack Obama, who included the phrase "gay and straight" in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night, is a cause for celebration in the LGBT community, as the next president likely won't be writing us out of the Constitution anytime soon. But this week was also marked by several ballot initiatives that impinge the progress gays and lesbians have seen in regard to marriage and family. Despite a state Supreme Court ruling that granted same-sex couples the right to marry and opposition by Obama and Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, California voters passed Proposition 8, which amends the state constitution by defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. A staggering $74 million was spent on the proposition, including millions raised by the Mormon Church. Prop 8 wasn't the only dark cloud hanging over Obama's victory: Amendments banning same-sex marriage were also passed in neighboring state Arizona as well as Florida. The Sunshine State already prohibits gays from adopting children and now Arkansas can be added to that list. The state passed an initiative prohibiting unmarried couples from adopting or fostering children, a victory for religious fundamentalists and homophobes but a loss for gay couples that want to start a family. The biggest losers however, are the children currently living in the state's dismal foster care system. If you live in California, Arkansas, Arizona or Florida, you can take action by contacting your local representative.
Posted by Sal Paradise
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12:30
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Defined tags for this entry: arkansas, arnold schwarzenegger, barack obama, california, foster care, gay adoption, gay marriage, politics, presidential election, prop 8
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