Gay Rights
stcynic | September 25, 2006For those ADF and AFA types who think that Gay/Straight Alliance clubs are horrible and shouldn't be allowed, look at this article that details the testimony of a man at a pretrial hearing for 4 thugs, one of them 15 years old, who beat several men nearly to death after a gay pride event in San Diego in July.
The gang next went after a man who was sitting on a bench. "They just beat him ... They just kept beating him," Mullins testified.
The gang then attacked another man in some bushes. "They yelled 'faggot' at him," Mullins told the court.
This is something gays face all the time. It's not…
stcynic | September 24, 2006Every once in a while you come across something so ridiculous that it makes you laugh out loud. For me, it usually happens while reading the Worldnutdaily. And this column by Les Kinsolving provides more than a few chuckles. He's got gays on the brain, you see, and it appears to be making him a bit paranoid. I love this line:
This latter article has no mention of what would happen to our armed forces recruiting if Don't-ask-don't-tell were abolished. Army recruits would be subject to the orders of sodomist sergeants in their barracks. Submariners would be under the orders of freely identified…
stcynic | September 23, 2006Religious right uber-nut Peter LaBarbera is quite distressed with the new HRC report on gay friendly companies. You see, they're all for the free market until someone sells a product they disapprove of or refuses to fire someone they regard as sinful. And I love this kind of rhetoric:
The battle to restore corporate neutrality on the homosexual issue will be a long and tough one, but it must be fought.
Ah, yes, "corporate neutrality." A delicious little catchphrase, but let's break it down. He actually seems to be arguing that if companies have policies barring discrimination against gay…
stcynic | September 22, 2006Gay rights activists have launched a campaign nationwide to get the military's ban on gays serving openly in the armed forces lifted. The timing is probably as good as it could be with recruiting shortfalls in the news and a military that is seriously stretched thin. And the fact that they keep throwing out Arabic translators, a specialty the Pentagon admits is in extreme short supply and is putting our soldiers at risk and impeding our ability to fight terrorism, for being gay just makes the situation worse. And naturally, the conservative press is not happy about it:
"I think the people…
stcynic | September 22, 2006Wayne Besen, author and gay rights activist, reports on his trip to see an "ex-gay" evangelist named Tim Wilkins at a revival meeting in North Carolina. He makes a couple of very important points about the entire ex-gay scam.
Equally surprising was that Wilkins unwittingly admitted that he was not cured, but merely suppressing his sexuality. He tried to spin this message by reducing the deep, intrinsic identity of "sexual orientation" to a nagging "temptation." However, it was striking how after 30 years of ex-gay ministry and marriage, Wilkins was no more than a wink from a twink away from…
stcynic | September 20, 2006Pam Spaulding has a post up about the most Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign. As in previous years, the report documents a major increase in efforts by corporations to provide benefits and protections to gay and lesbian employees. 138 major companies received a perfect 100 rating from HRC, as opposed to 101 in 2005. Pam is absolutely right when she says:
While our government, which is supposed to represent us, drags its feet on civil equality and fairness, corporate America is the one venue where equality for LGBT citizens has been on a constant, positive trajectory.
I…
stcynic | September 19, 2006Agape Press got pretty much everything wrong in this report on the upcoming gay pride event in Jerusalem. Here's the full text:
Homosexual activists are making some demands of Israel's highest court in efforts to promote their deadly lifestyle in the Holy City. At a recent summer festival in Jerusalem, homosexuals were denied the right to have a parade in the streets, but they have been besieging the government ever since with their demands. Jewish Orthodox Rabbi Yehuda Levin says the homosexual activists "want to make Jerusalem the 'gay tourism capital of the world'" and have now gone before…
stcynic | September 19, 2006Here's a website devoted to fighting the proposed gay marriage ban in Wisconsin. And the story on the front page demonstrates why the fight for gay marriage matters - because real people with real families suffer under the status quo. I'll paste a long story from that site below the fold:
Lynn and Jean had been together for 15 years when they adopted Katy. Jean had many students who came from homes that lacked the support and love children deserve, and she and Lynn knew they could provide a healthy, happy home for a child who needed one.
Katy was home for only nine months when Jean was…
stcynic | September 18, 2006I reported last week that the organizers of a gay pride event were taking the city of Jerusalem to court in Israel for not granting them a permit for a rescheduled march. The court brought the two sides together and they reached agreement that the march would take place November 10th. Now they just have to have enough police protection to deal with the nutball Jews and the nutball Muslims who have threatened violence if the march takes place. Last year, one nut stabbled 3 marchers at the event.
stcynic | September 16, 2006The Michigan House of Representatives passed a bill that allows adoption agencies to refuse to place children in any situation that violates their "written religious or moral convictions or policies." A second bill passed at the same time forbids the state from considering any such policies when making decisions regarding contracts or funding. Obviously, this is aimed primarily at religious adoption agencies that would refuse to place children with gay couples or individuals, or perhaps even with single people, or people of a different faith. The first law states:
A child placing agency is…
stcynic | September 16, 2006The ADF has filed suit in state court in New York over the state's public employee pension fund recognizing gay marriages performed elsewhere.
In 2004, NY Attorney General Elliot Spitzer issued a legal opinion stating that the New York is obligated to recognize same-sex marriages performed in areas where same-sex marriages are legal.
New York State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi followed that with a directive that the New York State Retirement System would respect legal out-of-state marriages between same-sex couples for the purposes of pension benefits.
The ADF is arguing that since the state…
stcynic | September 13, 2006Pam Spaulding highlights an ad that the Pentagon took out in the Washington Post that said the Army is seeking linguists with a specialty in Arabic. Well what a coincidence, you dolts. Maybe if you hadn't booted out every gay Arab-speaking linguist the Army has - and lied to the public to cover up the fact that you had actually booted out 3 times more than you said - you wouldn't be so short-handed. This policy is actually damaging our national security and it's time it was ended.
stcynic | September 13, 2006The group that was organizing the World Pride event in Jerusalem is asking the High Court of Justice there to force the police to issue a permit. They already had to cancel the event once because of the outbreak of hostilities with Lebanon a few weeks ago. They had applied for a date of September 21st, but the city said they would not have the manpower to police the event that day because it is the day before the start of the high holidays.
he police force suggested, however, that if Open House selected another date a permit might be granted.
Last week Open House, the LGBT Community Center in…
stcynic | September 12, 2006As the nation pauses to reflect on the 5th anniversary of 9/11, I think it's impotant to look at how that event affected so many gay Americans. Can't imagine why that would have any effect on gay people distinct from its effect on straight people? It hadn't occured to me either, until I read this essay by Kevin Cathcart, the Executive Director of Lambda Legal. He points out some of those ways, like those who had partners who died in the crash but without the legal and financial protections of marriage:
Roughly two dozen lesbians and gay men that we know of lost a partner in the September 11th…
stcynic | September 6, 2006Color me surprised after reading this op-ed by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson. Long considered one of the most conservative judges on the Federal bench, he has been on virtually every short list for a Supreme Court nomination since 2001. Yet he comes out against both state and federal constitutional amendments against gay marriage. That's on top of the fact that it is highly unusual for a sitting judge to so boldly assert his opinion on an ongoing political controversy. But he makes some really good points, including one about how such amendments may very well backfire on those who advanced them:…
stcynic | September 1, 2006Walmart has decided to join the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, in an obvious attempt to sell products to a group of people with significant disposable income. The result, predictably, is a major freakout by the religious right. Now I know, we hear from conservatives all the time about free markets and capitalism, but you don't think they actualy mean it, do you? Also predictably, the Worldnutdaily is leading the chorus of outrage. This article contains lots of ridiculous statements, but it begins by describing what's going on:
"It is correct that we have a dialogue with the (…
stcynic | August 30, 2006Ahnold signed into law this week a bill that adds sexual orientation to the state's anti-discrimination statutes. Naturally, the religious right is in full freak out mode over it and making absolutely hysterical claims about it. I love the way Agape Press describes the bill:
Shock and dismay -- that's how pro-family groups in California are reacting to news this morning that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that gives homosexuals new and far-reaching powers.
The bill, SB 1441, adds sexual orientation to already existing provisions in the state's law that prohibit…
stcynic | August 8, 2006George Clinton (I really hope it was the George Clinton) emailed me with this link to a story about anti-gay bigots in Latvia. The city of Riga refused to issue a permit for a gay pride parade, but that wasn't good enough for these cretins. They couldn't even let a group of gay rights activists attend church in peace. On the way out, they threw eggs at them and dumped bags of feces over their heads.
Anti-gay demonstrators hurled feces and eggs at gay rights activists and their supporters who were leaving a church service in the Latvian capital on Saturday.
About 20 protesters had gathered…
stcynic | August 8, 2006Here's a follow up article on the Lakeway Inn in Meade, Kansas. That's the little restaurant and B&B that has a small rainbow flag hanging outside that anti-gay bigots presumed had something to do with homosexuality and thus threw a major hissy fit, cutting up the flag and starting boycotts and protests. This is a hopeful turn:
"We're getting 200 e-mails a day," J.R. says.
To give financial support to the Lakeway for standing its ground, people out of the area are calling up to rent rooms by credit card with no intention of spending the night.
The southwest chapter of the Kansas Equality…
stcynic | August 8, 2006Agape Press has a column full of great wailing and gnashing of teeth over the San Diego City Council issing a proclamation welcoming the 25th annual gay pride parade in that town, an event that brings some 100,000 people into the city to spend lots of money. The column complains about things taking place that are "too offensive to describe in print" and in the middle there is a link to pictures from the parade, in between two warnings in big red capital letters proclaiming:
CAUTION! THESE ARE VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES!
Here's the link. Go look at those pictures and see if you can see anything "too…