Tag: lesbian

Welcome to a weekly roundup of news related to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise ‘Other’ community.

Quickie roundup this week since I’m out of town for Turkey Day:

• German scientist invents spray-on condoms
• Bush administration seeks stricter travel bans on people who are HIV+
• Yesterday, November 20th, was National Transgender Day of Remembrance.  One of the main reasons for the day is a candlelight vigil remembering victims of anti-trans violence
• A Pennsylvania state court has struck down the law expanding hate crimes coverage based on gender or sexuality.  (h/t Pam’s House Blend)
  

  Repent America founder and leader Michael Marcavage and others affiliated with the group argued that the amendment was passed unconstitutionally because it was inserted into legislation that was originally a bill concerning agricultural vandalism and crop destruction.

  “Repent America”???

• The nation of Hungary is planning to pass legislation creating domestic partnership rights for unmarried couples, both same sex and otherwise. (h/t Box Turtle Bulletin).   Just don’t tell NBC’s Brian Williams, who believes that marriage is under attack!

That’s all from me, folks: have a safe and happy holiday tomorrow, and I’ll see everyone when I get back!

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

• Civil Unions are not equal to Marriage.  That’s the finding of a recent commission on New Jersey’s attempt to give same-sex couples full and equal partnership under the law while appeasing those who cringe at the expansion of the word “marriage”.  From a New York Times editorial:
  

  It is hardly a surprise that New Jersey’s civil union law is not working very well. During the past several weeks, dozens of same-sex couples have testified that the law has not provided the equal benefits that were promised when it passed.

  Now, the special commission that heard the testimony has made it official: the civil union law has been a “failure.” Frank Vespa-Papaleo, who is chairman of the commission as well as the state’s director of civil rights, said the law is not as effective “as if the word ‘marriage’ were used.”

  I don’t know if I’d call it a resounding “failure” if only a few private employers are dodging the law (most couples will still get benefits, and the state recognizes them as full and equal), but there’s no doubt that separate-but-equal status will always encourage dissenters to focus on the “separate” instead of the “equal”.

• Speaking of which, laws that specifically invoke “married couples” are often cynical ways of passing anti-gay legislation without having to wear one’s bigotry on one’s sleeve.  Throw in an extra phrase like “for the good of the children”, and you have toxic legislation like the Arkansas ballot initiative to outlaw adoption and foster parenting … except for married couples.  It’s for the good of the children, of course.  (n/t Mombian)  A nice touch: the Arkansas News Bureau calls it what it is: a gay adoption ban.
• Terrance at the Republic of T has dedicated this round of installments of his excellent Hate Crimes Project to anti-trans violence.  Today’s focuses on the murder of Thalia Mosqueda, a trans woman whose murderer argued that he was disgusted by her alleged advances because “he wasn’t gay”:
  

  Panic is a strange thing. We know all about “gay panic,” but what about “trans panic,” which seems to be at the root of so many anti-trans hate crimes like the murders of Bella Evangelista, Emonie Spaulding, Ukea Davis & Stephanie Thomas, and Nireah Johnson, just to name a few?

  Well-worth reading the whole series.

They came from different places . . . different as much in how they lived their lives as in where they lived them.

Debbie’s cousin, Laurie, cancer survivor, came from Hesperia, CA.  Better here than in fire country.  And Debbie’s twin brother Jim, a lawyer, and his new bride Nooshin came from near the La Brea tar pits.  So there was some tension about back home.

Robyn was supremely thrilled that people came from Oregon.  Her sister Jan, a cardiologist from Corvallis, and Jan’s son Ian, newly graduated from Santa Clara and embarking on an internship in PR with the University of Washington athletic department, and Robyn would see each other for the first time since 1993.  They were all younger back then.  We were pretty much different people on that occasion.

And there were some amazing women and men, who happen to be friends, who had been invited.  There could be . . . and will be . . . a paragraph (and more) written about each and everyone of them of them, but not here, and not now.  These people were Debbie’s and Robyn’s colleagues at Bloomfield College, their family at this time in our lives, their new cousins and brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.  And there were a couple of students, one of who was taking the ‘official’ photos (which have not been received yet, but which will be shown when they become available), witnesses from another viewpoint…another world.  And they brought with them children from still another. 

Learning was going to take place.

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

• If you really need your heart broken today, check out the state of Iraqi LGBT, a group that has been running safe houses in Iraq for people who’d otherwise be targets for brutal anti-gay violence.  Two of their shelters are scheduled to close due to lack of funds, and a recent attempt to raise money yielded relatively slim results.  The situation in Iraq is dire:
  

  Violence against all the gay community has intensified sharply since late 2005, when Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa (religious decree) which declared that gays and lesbians should be “killed in the worst, most severe way”.

  Though there are many crises in Iraq, this is a rare one that we can have a direct impact on, since the houses provide shelter for victims under threat of violence.  Read through the site if you have the stomach for it, and please consider making a donation to maintain the shelters.

• Congratulations to Singapore, which just decriminalized sodomy…. Whoops: only if you’re straight!  The Singapore parliament finally released legal restrictions on oral and anal sex, provided the participants = one man + one woman. In a seriously bizarre statement, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the government could not allow decriminalization of anti-family homosexuality, but then delivered this nugget:
  

  Gays “are free to lead their lives and pursue their social activities,” the Prime Minister said, citing the existence of gay websites and gay bars…

  Lee said keeping the statute unchanged, while not aggressively enforcing it, remained the best option.

  (h/t Towleroad)

• In happier news, I’m sure you’ve heard that some character in some ludicrously popular series was apparently gay.  Major props to author J. K. Rowling, who just assured that her novels will be burned in schools for many decades to come.

  Seriously, major props to her: there’s no reason she had to go back and announce that a dead character in a completed series was gay, other than to stick it to the fundies.  Maybe I’ll actually read her books now, in gratitude!

Welcome to a weekly roundup of news related to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise “Other” community.

First, a friendly PSA: tomorrow is National Coming Out Day.  There are two very important things that members of the queer community can do: 1. come out to people who don’t already know, and 2. remind people who do.  As someone (I forget who) at the yearlykos LGBT caucus noted, even the friends and family who already know don’t intuitively realize that being queer is a 24/7, 365 day a year proposition: it helps to remind them that your difficulties didn’t end when they accepted you.  Good advice, as far as I’m concerned.

In the meantime, a more stylish PSA from GLAAD, featuring some actor dude:

News and stuff below the fold:

My partner and I spent an hour on Wednesday with the college’s chaplain, getting a start on the design of our civil union ceremony.  We live in New Jersey and have been domestic partners since this state provided that acknowledgment of our relationship and on October 20^th will upgrade that designation to civil union.  Some day, we hope to have that designation changed to “married.” 

You see, regardless of what people have been saying about transfolks, we do have sexual orientations.  Most of us are members of our GLB communities either before or after our transitions…or both.

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

• First openly gay person to have a celestial body named after him?  The honor goes to George Takei, famous for his role as Star Trek‘s Hikaru Sulu, who came out in 2005 and has been working as an LGBT activist ever since – And now his name will grace the asteroid formerly known as 1994 GT9. (h/t Mombian, also mentioned in ek’s Morning News) By the way, if you’ve never seen Takei’s hilarious response to Tim Hardaway’s anti-gay comments, watch it now!
• Senator Barack Obama has called on President Bush to reconsider his veto threat (yeah, right!) against the Hate Crimes Act, which recently passed in the Senate.  Obama was one of the bill’s co-sponsors.  In other candidate news: gaining some ground since his gaffes at the HRC-sponsored debate, Governor Bill Richardson has said he’d refuse an honorary chairmanship of the Boy Scouts of America, on the grounds of their discriminatory policies.
• You know we’re achieving progress when we’re upgraded from comparisons to animal-lovers and murderers to comparisons to… kleptomaniacs!  The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church made the comparison in a speech yesterday in front of the Council of Europe (h/t Towleroad):
  

  Attempts are made to justify homosexuality by calling it a disease, the patriarch said. Yet kleptomania can also be considered a disease, he argued. “Why then no one advertises kleptomania while homosexuality gets advertised via gay parades?” he said.
    “It is advertisement that is being forced on people who are a very long way from it,” Alexy said.

  Dear Alesha (can I call you Alesha?): Your anti-gay speech is also advertisement that is being forced on people who are a very long way from it.  But I suppose we shouldn’t expect better from former KGB, now should we?

More below…

Welcome to a weekly round up of news related to the gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and otherwise “Other” community.

• We’ll start off with grin-worthy story from the least expected place.  While attending the hyper-right wing “Family Impact Summit” (or: “How can we use neutral rhetoric to support an agenda of hate?”), Jim at Box Turtle Bulletin watched as a member of the audience – a lesbian and mother of a seven-year-old – put the panelists in their place.  And all she did was ask simple, straightforward questions that cut through the thick haze of b.s. that passes for ‘evidence’:
  

  Peter Sprigg [from the Family Research Council] jumped in to assert that “without question” the best family structure was headed by a man and a woman. But Cathy persisted:

  …But now you’re devaluing, what, over fifty percent of the children who live with one parent or that one parent as died or that they’re divorced and now they’re just living with one parent. You’re devaluing them and that’s not fair.

  Right on.  It’s a shame someone has to make such obvious points, but we’ve learned not to accept better from this crowd: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’intrate.  At least for today, we can applaud one woman who braved that viper’s nest.

• Here’s what happens when you don’t have enough brave people: fearing a split in the Anglican Church over ordination of gay clergy and recognition of same-sex marriage, the American branch has caved to the demands of bigotry and supported a moratorium on both.  This, despite widespread support for by U.S. Episcopal leaders:
  

  The leaders of the 2.3 million US Episcopalians, however, reaffirmed their commitment to the civil rights of homosexuals and opposed “actions or policies that does violence to them, encourages violence towards them or violates their dignity as children of God.”

  Nevertheless, violation of their dignity as children of God will continue “until a broader consensus is reached.”  (h/t Pam’s House Blend)

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…