This is a weekly roundup of news related to the gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and otherwise “other” community.

• Proof that non-heterosexual orientation is destructive towards a healthy military environment,… or not… the British Armed Forces are holding their third annual Joint Service LGBT conference.  Despite the repeated warnings of our brave Congressmen on this side of the Pond, you can almost hear the Queen’s military crumbling under the fear and suspicion that openly gay servicemembers create:
  

  All three services have approved the two day event, at which service personnel will be updated on developments in diversity training, participate in presentations and workshops, and take advantage of a social networking opportunity for personnel and their partners.

More below…

Hey, everyone: just a short hello from Washington D.C., where I and a few other thousand people marched from the White House to the Capitol building.  Later tonight or tomorrow people will be around to post pictures from the demonstration, including a few of your favorite bloggers.  And not-so-favorite, I guess.  Don’t worry: my feelings aren’t hurt.

A quick impression: lots of people, and especially lots of young people.  Crowds that have no business hanging out together, in other circumstances.  Libertarians marching side-by-side with militant socialists.  A thin and pathetic line of conservatives along the street, warning us that we’re all traitors.  Some expected musical accompaniment (guitars, bongo drums) and some quite unexpected (solo horn, a family quartet backed by accordion).  Students groups, feminist groups, civil rights groups, 9-11 truthers, proletarian newspaper distributors, the good, the bad, and the nutty, all moving in a mass towards the Capitol, at least for once under the banner of a common goal. 

It’s a start, at least.  I hope y’all have plans for the 21st, as well.

Welcome to a weekly roundup of news related to the gay, lesbian, trans, and otherwise “other” community.

• After Bill Richardson’s much-discussed comment in the HRC debate, the discussion over choice as a factor in sexual orientation continues with a new study on “ex-gays” published by InterVarsity Press (h/t Box Turtle Bulletin).  Of course, they can be counted on for total scientific rigor:
  

  Founded in 1947 as an extension of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, InterVarsity Press serves those in the university, the church and the world by publishing thoughtful Christian books that equip and encourage people to follow Jesus as Savior and Lord in all of life.

  The relationship between sexuality, biology, environment, and choice has never been an easy one to understand, much less encapsulate in a single soundbite – but something makes me a bit suspicious of scientific studies in which science is not the end goal.  Is that fair?

More below the fold…

This diary is a submission for Progressive Historians’ symposium on 9/11.  Details here.

Let’s look at two famous articles from the immediate aftermath of the events in the U.S. on 9/11/2001. 

The first, and the more famous of the two as being emblematic of international attitude, was the front-page editorial on France’s Le Monde: “Nous Sommes Tous Américains” (We’re All Americans), by Jean-Marie Colombani.  The article is often cited as a sign of world solidarity behind the United States in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (the latter often left out of discussions, for whatever reason), and the failed attack on the White House.  This was the main headline on the largest-circulation newspaper in the most traditionally anti-American of our allies.

The second, and the source of an endlessly regurgitated soundbite over the following years, was an article in Vanity Fair by Graydon Carter predicting the new age of sincerity, a sentiment soon echoed in newspapers around the country.  Carter (and others) were convinced that among the ways the United States would change irrevocably was in the adoption of a new seriousness in our attitudes, and an inability to treat everyday life with the same flimsy, fluffy detachment that had been so “cool”.  In Time, Roger Rosenblatt gave the sentiment its most repeated form: after so great a tragedy, irony was dead. 

It’s easy enough to criticize these sentiments with the benefit of hindsight, just as it’s easy to score a quick laugh by juxtaposing the two soundbites in the title (as I did, shamelessly).  What interests me instead are two phenomena: the way the myths of those articles have overshadowed the articles themselves (and their contexts), and the strange fittingness of Colombani’s title – whether he intended it or not.

Welcome to a weekly news roundup of news related to the gay, lesbian, trans, and otherwise “other” community.  I haven’t yet decided on the final form for this kind of roundup, so suggestions are much appreciated:

• September will be a busy month for pro-LGBT legislation.  The Senate is considering a Hate Crimes Prevention act (also known as “The Matthew Shepard Act“), which would allow the Justice Department to aid local law enforcement in crimes motivated by bigotry.  The text of this one seems a little too ambiguous to be comfortable: the Justice Department would be able to claim jurisdiction over local law enforcement if it feels the locals are “unwilling” to prosecute hate crimes.  Nonetheless, it has an impressive list of supporters.

See below for more…

Greetings, literature-loving DocuDharmists (do we have a name for readers yet?), and welcome to the latest installment of my series on writers great and small, ancient and modern, popular and obscure.  Last week we spent time with the grand dean of Czech literature, Karel Capek, and watched him weave his humanistic philosophy through a dizzying mix of comedy, science fiction, and drama.  This week’s subject stuck mainly to one genre – lyric poetry – but she used her deceptively simple lines to open a world of equally dizzying complexity.

If you think you know everyone’s favorite New England agoraphobe, think again!  Let’s jump back to 19th century Amherst for tea and sympathy with one of America’s leading poetic voices.