Gay Rights
stcynic | December 15, 2005Ever on the lookout for any company who dares to acknowledge that there are gay people on the planet, the American Fascist Family Association is now targeting Walmart because - ohmygod! - they're looking for ways to market products to gay people to get a share of the half a trillion dollars they have to spend:
AFA spokesman Randy Sharp says his organization has obtained a copy of a Wal-Mart staff memo inviting home office associates to a seminar on December 16 entitled "Why Market to Gay America?" The memo, dated December 8, notes that America's homosexual community has $610 billion in…
stcynic | December 15, 2005Sadly, we have yet another frightening case of government thought police activity regarding someone giving anti-gay opinions, this time in Great Britain. Lynette Burrows, the British equivalent of what we would (misaptly) call a "family values" lobbyist here, went on a talk show to discuss Britain's new civil partnerships act. She is opposed to gay adoptions and said so on the show:
During the programme, she said she did not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. She added that placing boys with two homosexuals for adoption was as obvious a risk as placing a girl with two…
stcynic | December 15, 2005How about a little applause sent Ford's way for not caving in to an American Family Association boycott. The AFA started a boycott of Ford because - gasp! - Ford takes out ads in gay magazines and provides funding for events sponsored by gay organizations. According to Donald Wildmon, not only is being gay an abomination, but so is selling a car to a gay person. Because ya know, maybe if they had to walk everywhere they'd reconsider their deviant lifestyle. Or something. Nice to see the bigots get told to get bent. Bravo, Ford.
stcynic | December 3, 2005Jason Kuznicki links to this report from the American Psychological Association that reviews three decades of research on children with gay parents. That review concludes, unsurprisingly to anyone familiar with such research, that children of gay parents are no different than children of straight parents:
But while gay- and lesbian-headed families face a slate of challenges that more traditional families avoid-from legal hassles and homophobia to everyday tasks, such as figuring out how to fill out school forms-research shows that the children with gay or lesbian parents do as well as…
stcynic | November 30, 2005In a victory for free speech, a Swedish minister who was charged and convicted under that nation's "hate speech" laws has had that conviction overturned by the Supreme Court of Sweden in a unanimous ruling. The Ake Green case is similar in some ways to the Stephen Boissoin case in Canada, but in Green's case he was actually convicted in a criminal trial for things he said during a sermon at his Pentecostal church and was sent to prison:
The Swedish Supreme Court has acquitted a pentecostal minister of charges he violated the nation's hate-speech laws when he labeled homosexuality a "deep…
stcynic | November 4, 2005Most people are probably familiar with the recent Kansas case involving Matthew Limon. Limon was convicted of having sex with an underage boy (he was 18, the other was 14) and sentenced to over 17 years in prison. If his partner had been female, for the same action he would have received a maximum sentence of 15 months. The ACLU filed suit, arguing that the vast disparity in punishments for the same crime was a violation of equal protection. The Kansas Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously in Limon's favor and ordered him released after nearly 6 years in prison. But raj gave me a link to…
stcynic | November 3, 2005Dale Carpenter, one of the most articulate defenders of gay marriage, is guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy this week, after gay marriage opponent Maggie Gallagher blogged there a couple weeks ago. Carpenter is doing an excellent job of rebutting Gallagher's claims and the arguments offered by opponents of gay marriage in general. His latest post takes on the procreation argument and shreds it quite thoroughly. I strongly suggest you scroll through and find his posts from the last few days. Definitely worth reading.
stcynic | October 26, 2005The Ku Klux Klan has received permission to hold a rally in Austin in support of the proposal to outlaw same-sex marriage in the Texas Constitution, and the planned demonstration has managed to unite forces on both sides of the debate heading into the Nov. 8 election.
"I hate to say that we don't need friends like that, but we don't need friends like that," said state Rep. Warren Chisum, a Pampa Republican leading the push to pass Proposition 2, which would define marriage in the constitution as a union between one man and one woman.
"I want nothing to do with the KKK," he said...
Officials…
stcynic | October 25, 2005Josh Claybourn passes along this link about a proposed law in Indiana that would make protesting at a military funeral a felony. There's some background required to understand it though. It involves the infamous Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, the cretins behind God Hates Fags. You will find no more loathsome people on the face of this planet than Phelps and his followers, most of whom are members of his own family. In the last couple years, Phelps' cult of idiocy has been protesting at funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq, claiming that they were killed as God's punishment…
stcynic | October 24, 2005The Worldnutdaily is making a huge deal today about a new book alleging that the Lawrence decision - the Supreme Court ruling that declared state sodomy laws unconstitutional - was based upon a setup, an intentional arrest for the purpose of challenging a law in court. And naturally, they're trying to profit by selling that book after reporting on it, as is their typical modus operandi. How Stages Sex Crime Fooled Supreme Court is the headline of the article, and it cites a book by a Texas judge claiming that the whole situation was concocted solely for the purpose of getting John Geddes…
stcynic | October 18, 2005My partner-in-blogging, Jason Kuznicki, has posted yet another reminder of why I think his voice is such a vital one. In a long and brilliant essay he takes on many subjects related to gay rights and equality. In the process, he hits on the situation in Canada with Stephen Boissoin, an anti-gay minister who is up on human rights charges. Jason, as always, stands on principle:
Look, I'm as gay as they get. And I'm even an atheist. Yet all the same, I have to feel sympathy for the guy. Something terribly wrong is being done to him-even while, yes, he really is saying something that I find…
stcynic | October 15, 2005The Rev. Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition - think Jerry Falwell, minus the charm - recently said on American Family Radio that once someone is into the "gay lifestyle", the only thing that can save them is exorcism. He says he bases this on discussions with "many psychotherapists" who are also Christian. Sadly, they do not yet have a cure for either stupidity or bigotry. Listen to the statement here.
stcynic | October 13, 2005Here's a real gem from the Worldnutdaily, from someone named Jane Chastain:
President Bush has done more than any president in history to advance gay rights
I'll give you a couple minutes to pick your jaw up off the floor....okay, ready? Want her evidence for this? Get this:
"The Bush administration allowed money set aside for the families of the 9-11 victims to go to domestic partners."
Egads! How horribly pro-gay could they be! They allowed maybe two dozen homosexuals who had lost their partners to share in the benefits given to those who lost loved ones in that great tragedy. Why, this is…
stcynic | October 2, 2005An email received by Andrew Sullivan:
"It's always been clear to me that you have a fine mind and the ability to write, but these talents are attenuated by your unremitting homosexuality - the emotional need to have aberrant sex. Clearly, your perversion and deviancy have affected your reason. Thus, you have no credibility as an observer of the current social and political climate. You are simply another frustrated fag who is trying very hard to legitimize his sexual perversion by striking out against anyone who wants to maintain thousands of years of normalcy. God, what must the average and…
stcynic | October 1, 2005Connecticut, the first state to vote to allow civil unions with all the rights of marriage to gay couples, made it official today as that law went into effect. Undoubtedly, we will see the collapse of heterosexual marriage in that state within months as straight couples stop loving each other or caring for their children, just as we evil gay rights supporters have planned all along (rubbing hands together while cackling).
stcynic | September 21, 2005The Worldnutdaily has an article up amusingly titled America's Pro-Homosexual Giants. No, it's not about a bunch of huge men in leather leading a pride parade. It's a list of all the companies who scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. Of course, the WND thinks these are horrible companies out to destroy "family values", but what would you expect from that pack of dullards?
The great news is that there is a major trend toward companies being more open and supportive of gay employees. They are scored on such things as whether they offer health benefits for the…
stcynic | September 15, 2005Jason Kuznicki has an excellent post up at Positive Liberty about a contradiction in the military's handling of gay soldiers. On the one hand, they adamantly claim that allowing gays to serve in the military undermines morale and unit cohesion (the same exact arguments they made 60 years ago against allowing blacks to serve in "white" units, incidentally), but on the other hand when wartime comes around they suddenly stop discharging those who admit to being gay. The military has long denied that they have such a double standard, but a 1999 Unit Commander's Handbook has been uncovered that…
stcynic | September 14, 2005The Massachusetts legislature has, for the second year in a row, voted down a bill that would put a referendum on the state ballot to do away with gay marriages, as ordered by the state supreme court, and have civil unions instead. Interestingly, the vote was stronger this year than last, with many legislators who voted for the measure last year voting against it this year. Last year the vote was 105-92 against it, this year it was an overwhelming 157-39. And here is an interesting quote from one legislator, who went from being a sponsor of the bill to voting against it in one year:
"Gay…
stcynic | September 14, 2005This story really cracks me up. It seems that the world is suddenly overflowing with gay penguins. At Central Park Zoo in New York, there are two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who appear to be in a gay relationship. They nuzzle each other and behave just like other sets of mates. They have sex with each other. When the zoo put female penguins in to entice them to mate with them, they had no interest at all. But they apparently make great parents:
At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds…
stcynic | September 10, 2005Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, right? Here's one I fully agree with the Worldnutdaily on. A Canadian minister named Stephen Boissoin has been brought up on charges before the Human Rights Commission of Alberta, his home province, because he submitted a letter to a newspaper condemning homosexuality. A professor from the University of Calgary, Darrell Lund, filed the charges and is demanding that Boissoin be fined (he could be fined as much as $7000) and be forced to apologize. This is nothing short of outrageous.
Boissoin is wrong, dead wrong, in his opinions about homosexuals.…