Kelly Sans Culotte

Manhattan

2012-01-28T20:26:00.001-06:00

Is so beautiful from the Williamsburg Bridge in the afternoon.

Post-Racial Missouri?

2012-01-26T11:36:00.001-06:00

In Ecuador-UPDATED

2012-01-24T08:10:00.002-06:00

Lesbian who led fight against 'gay conversion' clinics appointed to Presidential Cabinet.

Totally cool. h/t Andrés Duque.

ADDITION: On the other hand, Human Rights Watch reports:

In a referendum held in May 2011, President Rafael Correa obtained a popular mandate for constitutional reforms that could significantly increase government powers to constrain media and influence the appointment and dismissal of judges.

Those involved in protests in which there are outbreaks of violence may be prosecuted on inflated and inappropriate terrorism charges. Criminal defamation laws that restrict freedom of expression remain in force and Correa has used them repeatedly against his critics. Some articles of a draft communications law in the legislature since 2009 could open the door to media censorship.

Not cool.

Happy New Year, Again!

2012-01-23T19:18:00.003-06:00

Went out for lunch downtown today during jury duty, and saw a huge line at the Buddhist temple on Centre Street. My favorite places were closed, but I'll catch them tomorrow, maybe. Went into that book store instead on Prince Street and ogled the POD machine with a book actually coming out. On paper and everything!

On MLK Day

2012-01-16T16:17:00.002-06:00

Read this post from Dream and Hustle

Well, Martin Luther King Jr Ain’t Alive in 2012 But You Are…

Every year around this time, I have to hear this question “If Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today..” and I’m sick of it. Only these coward punk clowns we have in the Black media would let a question like this come out of their mouth and you should look closely as anybody who want to ask this kind of question for discussion. Bottom line is Martin Luther King, Jr ain’t in 2012 but we are here in 2012 and what we going to do while me and you are alive right here and right now?

I’m getting up in age a little bit and to be honest on Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, it brings my attention to all of the fake civil rights, Black socialites and these sideways hustle bloggers we got running around this day and age pretending they something extra or outstanding me and you supposed to admire, real talk. Ain’t none of them willing to die for this like Martin Luther King Jr and I hope they understand where I come from when I let them know I can careless about who they think they are or supposed to be around me.

Every year, they come around and ask this question about “Martin Luther King would have turned 83 today, what would he think if he was alive today?” and not realize I think they are a straight bench and tussy deodorant coward for even asking that ignorant question. We are the only people who instead of honor our past with the present; we use the present to ask stupid questions about past people about if they were alive today.

Every year, we got some little punk well-dressed kid reciting the “I have a Dream” speech trying to sound like Martin Luther King with the audience clapping and some old wrinkled auntie with a smirk on her face as her nephew preaching from the podium. Real talk, I don’t know if that overrated brat and the whole audience participating are mocking Martin Luther King. However, we got kids that age here in 2012 actually building villages in Africa as we speak right now using the Internet to raise money.

continue...

Shit Guys Say to Lesbians

2012-01-16T11:19:00.002-06:00

So funny, featuring the maker of Lizzy the Lesbian.

This Is How to Deal with Bullying

2012-01-14T10:51:00.002-06:00

Read Lesson 469 – Protecting the youngest members of our flock against bullying, a great post about how to deal with bullying.

In our town we had a recent tragedy in which a young life was lost. Due to the child’s age, details have not been released but there are rumors that bullying may have played a part.

I’m tired of some of these passive anti-bullying campaigns that sound good (Why don’t we all just try and get along?) but which are proving to be completely ineffective. Like the dads in the 1950′s who brought boxing gloves home for their sons in order to teach them how to punch the bully, I’ve decided to teach my youngest kids how to fight back.

Read about her solution. It comes from a writer, so it's totally verbal.

The Trouble with Progressives

2012-01-07T11:30:00.005-06:00

This week President Obama signed the NDAA and its indefinite detention provisions into law. The ACLU released a statement declaring:

“President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law” and “Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back the constitutional excesses of George Bush in the war on terror was extinguished today."

I wouldn't have know about it if I hadn't come across a Glen Greenwald piece on Progressives and Ron Paul. I'm not thrilled that he reduces "progressive" objections to Ron Paul to that racist newsletter. There are plenty of others. But he most imporantly asks why "progressives" attack Ron Paul for racism, but stay mute on absolutely enormous problems with Obama, from civil liberties to racial profiling.

It’s perfectly rational and reasonable for progressives to decide that the evils of their candidate are outweighed by the evils of the GOP candidate, whether Ron Paul or anyone else. An honest line of reasoning in this regard would go as follows:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

Greenwald continues:

Without my adopting it, that is at least an honest, candid, and rational way to defend one’s choice. It is the classic lesser-of-two-evils rationale, the key being that it explicitly recognizes that both sides are “evil”: meaning it is not a Good v. Evil contest but a More Evil v. Less Evil contest. But that is not the discussion that takes place because few progressives want to acknowledge that the candidate they are supporting — again — is someone who will continue to do these evil things with their blessing. Instead, we hear only a dishonest one-sided argument that emphasizes Paul’s evils while ignoring Obama’s (progressives frequently ask: how can any progressive consider an anti-choice candidate but don’t ask themselves: how can any progressive support a child-killing, secrecy-obsessed, whistleblower-persecuting Drug Warrior?).

Is this why Democrats and "progressives" were so excited about Occupy Wall Street and proclaiming themselves the 99%? That screaming and shouting about economic injustice seemed to let them reclaim their moral high ground without addressing their complicity in other important issues?

Spring?

2012-01-05T08:46:00.004-06:00

Passing the Chrystie Garden yesterday I saw tons of little yellow blooms on the forsythia! Now. In January!

Auld lang whatever

2012-01-03T13:09:00.001-06:00

Years, who needs 'em? I've got the same enormous list of to-do's that I had last week, last year ago. Gonna make something of it?

An African response to Clinton's pro-LGBT statement

2011-12-24T09:08:00.005-06:00

Ugandan activist, FRANK MUGISHA, who took over from the murdered activist, David Kato, was thrilled at Clinton's statement last month. For him, it couldn't come too soon.

WHEN Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this month that the United States would use diplomacy to encourage respect for gay rights around the world, my heart leapt. I knew her words — “gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world”— to be true, but in my country they are too often ignored.

The right to marry whom we love is far from our minds. Across Africa, the “gay rights” we are fighting for are more stark — the right to life itself. Here, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people suffer brutal attacks, yet cannot report them to the police for fear of additional violence, humiliation, rape or imprisonment at the hands of the authorities.

Read the whole thing.

I was distressed beyond belief when I heard so many Western activists sneering at her statement, and claiming "the U.S. is just trying to burnish their image in time for the elections. They're getting involved where they don't belong. And don't have credibility anyway. Look what they're doing here there and yon." What assholes. It's easy to be jaded when you're sitting pretty in New York or London or LA.

For better and worse, what the U.S. does has a huge, outsized impact. We have tremendous power to improve life for others. And tremendous power to screw it up. When U.S. or British politicians get it wrong, we should rip them a new one, but when they get it right we should applaud like crazy and push them to go even further.

Especially in the case of LGBT rights in Africa, where American fundamentalists are actively spreading homophobia. It's only right that other Americans take responsibility and work against it.

New Particle Discovered

2011-12-22T10:12:00.002-06:00

The BBC quotes Prof Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), that "The new particle is made up of a 'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark', which are then bound together."

I don't know what that means, but I like the sound of it.

Egyptian Women Protest

2011-12-20T15:01:00.002-06:00

Refusing to step down, the Egyptian military government is doing anything it can to end protests, firing bullets into crowds, beating demonstrators. One woman was stripped and beaten, drug along the ground in her underwear, sparking a massive protest by women.

One BBC journalist reported

They came from across the social spectrum - poor women, religious women in hijabs, and others with flowing hair and designer sunglasses - united in their outrage at the behaviour of Egypt's military and police.

If the military council was hoping to stamp out the Tahrir protests then the vicious beating of a woman protester at the weekend, and the video of it that has a now gone around the world, has had the opposite effect. It could be the spark that re-ignites the broad-based demonstrations that have faded in recent weeks.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2011-12-05T11:46:00.001-06:00

Somewhat amusing Christmas Disorders and Carols

Ten Year Anniversary of Monstrous Bush Orders

2011-11-21T10:04:00.003-06:00

It's just a week past the 10th anniversary of George W. Bush's monstrous order enabling kidnappings, indefinite detention, secret military tribunals and hidden prisons for any suspect in what he called the War on Terror.

George W. Bush
Military Order - Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism
November 13, 2001

By the authority vested in me as President and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution (Public Law 107-40, 115 Stat. 224) and sections 821 and 836 of title 10, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Findings.

(a) International terrorists, including members of al Qaida, have carried out attacks on United States diplomatic and military personnel and facilities abroad and on citizens and property within the United States on a scale that has created a state of armed conflict that requires the use of the United States Armed Forces.

(b) In light of grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, on the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in the national capital region, on the World Trade Center in New York, and on civilian aircraft such as in Pennsylvania, I proclaimed a national emergency on September 14, 2001 (Proc. 7463, Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks).

(c) Individuals acting alone and in concert involved in international terrorism possess both the capability and the intention to undertake further terrorist attacks against the United States that, if not detected and prevented, will cause mass deaths, mass injuries, and massive destruction of property, and may place at risk the continuity of the operations of the United States Government.

(d) The ability of the United States to protect the United States and its citizens, and to help its allies and other cooperating nations protect their nations and their citizens, from such further terrorist attacks depends in significant part upon using the United States Armed Forces to identify terrorists and those who support them, to disrupt their activities, and to eliminate their ability to conduct or support such attacks.

(e) To protect the United States and its citizens, and for the effective conduct of military operations and prevention of terrorist attacks, it is necessary for individuals subject to this order pursuant to section 2 hereof to be detained, and, when tried, to be tried for violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws by military tribunals.

(f) Given the danger to the safety of the United States and the nature of international terrorism, and to the extent provided by and under this order, I find consistent with section 836 of title 10, United States Code, that it is not practicable to apply in military commissions under this order the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts.

(g) Having fully considered the magnitude of the potential deaths, injuries, and property destruction that would result from potential acts of terrorism against the United States, and the probability that such acts will occur, I have determined that an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes, that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling government interest, and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency.

Sec. 2. Definition and Policy.

(a) The term "individual subject to this order" shall mean any individual who is not a United States citizen with respect to whom I determine from time to time in writing that:

(1) there is reason to believe that such individual, at the relevant times, (i) is or was a member of the organization known as al Qaida; (ii) has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefore, that have caused, threaten to cause, or have as their aim to cause, injury to or adverse effects on the United States, its citizens, national security, foreign policy, or economy; or (iii) has knowingly harbored one or more individuals described in subparagraphs (i) or (ii) of subsection 2(a)(1) of this order; and

(2) it is in the interest of the United States that such individual be subject to this order.

(b) It is the policy of the United States that the Secretary of Defense shall take all necessary measures to ensure that any individual subject to this order is detained in accordance with section 3, and, if the individual is to be tried, that such individual is tried only in accordance with section 4.

(c) It is further the policy of the United States that any individual subject to this order who is not already under the control of the Secretary of Defense but who is under the control of any other officer or agent of the United States or any State shall, upon delivery of a copy of such written determination to such officer or agent, forthwith be placed under the control of the Secretary of Defense.

Sec. 3. Detention Authority of the Secretary of Defense. Any individual subject to this order shall be -

(a) detained at an appropriate location designated by the Secretary of Defense outside or within the United States;

(b) treated humanely, without any adverse distinction based on race, color, religion, gender, birth, wealth, or any similar criteria;

(c) afforded adequate food, drinking water, shelter, clothing, and medical treatment;

(d) allowed the free exercise of religion consistent with the requirements of such detention; and

(e) detained in accordance with such other conditions as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe.

Sec. 4. Authority of the Secretary of Defense Regarding Trials of Individuals Subject to this Order.

(a) Any individual subject to this order shall, when tried, be tried by military commission for any and all offenses triable by military commission that such individual is alleged to have committed, and may be punished in accordance with the penalties provided under applicable law, including life imprisonment or death.

(b) As a military function and in light of the findings in section 1, including subsection (f) thereof, the Secretary of Defense shall issue such orders and regulations, including orders for the appointment of one or more military commissions, as may be necessary to carry out subsection (a) of this section.

(c) Orders and regulations issued under subsection (b) of this section shall include, but not be limited to, rules for the conduct of the proceedings of military commissions, including pretrial, trial, and post-trial procedures, modes of proof, issuance of process, and qualifications of attorneys, which shall at a minimum provide for -

(1) military commissions to sit at any time and any place, consistent with such guidance regarding time and place as the Secretary of Defense may provide;

(2) a full and fair trial, with the military commission sitting as the triers of both fact and law;

(3) admission of such evidence as would, in the opinion of the presiding officer of the military commission (or instead, if any other member of the commission so requests at the time the presiding officer renders that opinion, the opinion of the commission rendered at that time by a majority of the commission), have probative value to a reasonable person;

(4) in a manner consistent with the protection of information classified or classifiable under Executive Order 12958 of April 17, 1995, as amended, or any successor Executive Order, protected by statute or rule from unauthorized disclosure, or otherwise protected by law, (A) the handling of, admission into evidence of, and access to materials and information, and (B) the conduct, closure of, and access to proceedings;

(5) conduct of the prosecution by one or more attorneys designated by the Secretary of Defense and conduct of the defense by attorneys for the individual subject to this order;

(6) conviction only upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the members of the commission present at the time of the vote, a majority being present;

(7) sentencing only upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the members of the commission present at the time of the vote, a majority being present; and

(8) submission of the record of the trial, including any conviction or sentence, for review and final decision by me or by the Secretary of Defense if so designated by me for that purpose.

Sec. 5. Obligation of Other Agencies to Assist the Secretary of Defense.

Departments, agencies, entities, and officers of the United States shall, to the maximum extent permitted by law, provide to the Secretary of Defense such assistance as he may request to implement this order.

Sec. 6. Additional Authorities of the Secretary of Defense.

(a) As a military function and in light of the findings in section 1, the Secretary of Defense shall issue such orders and regulations as may be necessary to carry out any of the provisions of this order.

(b) The Secretary of Defense may perform any of his functions or duties, and may exercise any of the powers provided to him under this order (other than under section 4(c)(8) hereof) in accordance with section 113(d) of title 10, United States Code.

Sec. 7. Relationship to Other Law and Forums.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to -

(1) authorize the disclosure of state secrets to any person not otherwise authorized to have access to them;

(2) limit the authority of the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces or the power of the President to grant reprieves and pardons; or

(3) limit the lawful authority of the Secretary of Defense, any military commander, or any other officer or agent of the United States or of any State to detain or try any person who is not an individual subject to this order.

(b) With respect to any individual subject to this order -

(1) military tribunals shall have exclusive jurisdiction with respect to offenses by the individual; and

(2) the individual shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on the individual's behalf, in

(i) any court of the United States, or any State thereof, (ii) any court of any foreign nation, or (iii) any international tribunal.

(c) This order is not intended to and does not create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by any party, against the United States, its departments, agencies, or other entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

(d) For purposes of this order, the term "State" includes any State, district, territory, or possession of the United States.

(e) I reserve the authority to direct the Secretary of Defense, at any time hereafter, to transfer to a governmental authority control of any individual subject to this order. Nothing in this order shall be construed to limit the authority of any such governmental authority to prosecute any individual for whom control is transferred.

Sec. 8. Publication.

This order shall be published in the Federal Register.

George W. Bush
The White House,
November 13, 2001.

Note: This military order was published in the Federal Register on November 16. Citation: George W. Bush: "Military Order - Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism," November 13, 2001.

Tea Party Vs. OWS

2011-11-13T11:49:00.002-06:00

Interesting post by Will Wilkinson, Tea Party vs. OWS: The psychology and ideology of responsibility. He uses as a starting point poll results that show

Conservatives and Republicans overwhelmingly attributed poverty to the personal failings of the poor themselves (lazy, drunk, etc.) while Democrats and liberals consistently offered social explanations like poor schools and lousy jobs for poverty. Later he looked at the inverse question, the reasons respondents give for others obtaining wealth (2010b). Generally he found that Democrats and liberals attributed wealth to connections or being born into a wealthy family, while Republicans and conservatives declared wealth comes from hard work.

He arrives somewhere in the middle.

I've come to accept, for example, that diffuse cultural forces, such as racism or sexism or nationalism or intergenerational poverty, can deprive an individual of her rightful liberty without any single person doing anything to violate her basic rights. This takes me a long way toward standard liberalism. But I find that my gut nevertheless leans right on issues of personal responsibility.

I agree that many people are in dire straits and suffering for absolutely no fault of their own, and that policies ought to be in place to provide meaningful material assistance. Still, I find I want an ethos of effort and individual responsibility to prevail, and I continue to think people who chose their way into trouble need to be told exactly what Welch seems to be telling the OWS folk: we're not going to feel too sorry for you if you made some bad decisions about taking out mortgages and/or student loans, even if everybody you knew was making them too.

In plenty of circumstances in which people are suffering due to no fault of their own, I think they need both material assistance and the conviction that they can improve their lives if they really try.

I buy that.

Ohio Voters Show Sense

2011-11-09T09:15:00.002-06:00

Ohio voters overwhelmingly reject the re-write of Ohio's collective bargaining rights of public employees, 61 percent to 39 percent.

"I think there is no question this is a major black eye for the governor," said Ohio State University election law professor Dan Tokaji. "He made the scaling back of collective bargaining rights really the signature issue of the first part of his administration, so this is a huge blow.

"The implications are quite significant and they really go beyond this issue," Tokaji said. "It will be a sign of a re-emergence of the Democratic party which has used the referendum to fight back despite Republicans controlling state government."

America's First Lesbian Homecoming Couple

2011-10-31T08:33:00.003-05:00

Not only cute, but smart.

Arellano posted a statement to those who opposed her on her Facebook wall that read: "For all the girls who think tradition should be continued, go back to the kitchen, stop having sex before you're married, get out of school and job system, don't have an opinion, don't own any property, give up the right to marry who you love, don't vote, and allow your husband to do whatever he pleases to you. Think about the meaning of tradition when you use it in your argument against us."

This Scumbag For NYC Mayor?

2011-10-29T13:48:00.003-05:00

The delightful NYPD head Ray Kelly on officers demonstrating over arrests in the ticket fixing scandal: "I think it’s understandable that officers rally around when there’s a time of trouble.”

The charged officers, accused of extending favors, seemed to have received a favor of their own from authorities. They were spared a “perp walk,” the ritual in which suspects are walked to their booking or arraignment while news photographers and videographers document their shame.

Instead, the officers were loaded into black vans at the Central Booking garage, then driven around the corner into a garage in the courthouse.

Bring on the police state.

Can U.S. Manufacturing Recover?

2011-10-18T16:43:00.002-05:00

Maybe. Clyde Prestowitz thinks it can.

The truth is that the U.S. economy cannot experience a significant, stable, and lasting recovery with out some kind of a manufacturing renaissance

...

Fortunately , two recent and important studies indicate that it will. The conventional wisdom to the contrary notwithstanding, Booz & Company's report on the Future of American Manufacturing suggests that production from an American base can be quite competitive except in only a relatively small number of manufacturing industry sectors. It shows that in about half of such sectors, U.S. manufacturers are at present, fully competitive both in supplying the U.S. market and at supplying overseas markets. These are the areas such as aerospace, microprocessors, oil well drilling equipment, and medical instrumentation. In addition, however , it shows that in another 40 percent of industry sectors, U.S.-based producers are presently neck and neck with foreign producer for supplying the U.S. market and that with just a few tweaks, they could be dominant producers for their products in the U.S. market. That means that U.S. based manufacturing can compete in the U.S. market on a head to head basis with foreign producers in about 90 percent of industry sectors. Thus, instead of its present 10 percent of GDP, U.S. manufacturing should, like Germany's, account for around 20 percent of GDP.

My Discovery of the Weekend -- Complaints Choirs!

2011-10-17T11:16:00.003-05:00

Absolutely brilliant! Check out Complaints Choirs.

The Finns are my favorite!

Zombies!

2011-10-12T08:16:00.004-05:00

Real or fake blood? Emergency crews were freaked out at first when they got called to a film set in Toronto where a platform had collapsed.

They're preparing for the real thing in Omaha where hardware stores are offering tips on zombie proofing your house, though one writer was skeptical about their effectiveness.

... being quite knowledgeable in the field, the only truly useful anti-zombie tools in the store were the chain saws and short-handled sledge hammers. If Westlake were to take the problem seriously, they would begin stocking baseball bats, pump-action 12-gauge shotguns and grenades.

For more tips check out Zombies: A Survival Guide.

Occupy Wall Street, Not so Radical

2011-10-11T08:25:00.002-05:00

I find myself agreeing with David Brooks, in his The Milquetoast Radicals

A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. They will have nothing to say about the way Americans have overconsumed and overborrowed. These are problems that implicate a much broader swath of society than the top 1 percent.

They will have no realistic proposal to reduce the debt or sustain the welfare state. Even if you tax away 50 percent of the income of those making between $1 million and $10 million, you only reduce the national debt by 1 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. If you confiscate all the income of those making more than $10 million, you reduce the debt by 2 percent. You would still be nibbling only meekly around the edges.

The 99-versus-1 frame is also extremely self-limiting. If you think all problems flow from a small sliver of American society, then all your solutions are going to be small, too. The policy proposals that have been floating around the Occupy Wall Street movement — a financial transfer tax, forgiveness for student loans — are marginal.

Read the whole thing.

I'm not even sure that we should be looking to the protesters for ideas, at least not this first wave. I'm used to activists coming up with their own solutions and proposals, but I think the function Occupy Wall Street demos serve is a lot more basic, showing just how fed up people are over the crappy economy and sleazy banks and corporations, and more importantly that they aren't just grumbling in their homes. They are pissed enough to take to the streets, which is actually extremely rare in the U.S.

What I hope is that this display gives courage to the people actually thinking about these problems so that they propose real solutions, instead of the half- and quarter- measures we usually get from politicians and pundits. And that, if real solutions do get proposed, the angry populace will be thoughtful enough to recognize these solutions, return to the streets, and pressure politicians to get them implemented.

Segolene In Tears

2011-10-10T08:44:00.003-05:00

Most of the votes are in for the center-left (Socialist) primary in France, and former presidential candidate Segolene Royal was a long way from the top. Fourth, to be exact.

Ah, Segolene. The outsider candidate put forward by the people in 2007 to go against Sarkozy, but failed because a resentful party refused to throw their weight behind her. The woman who then won control of the party by member votes, but whose votes were stolen in favor of Martine Aubry. (This is documented, not just whiny backbiting). And now her ideas were poached, before she was sent back down to the minor leagues.

Disgusted by the display, voters from the banlieu, that supported her in numbers in 2008 and afterwards, just stayed home, leaving on the field of battle top dog, Segolene's ex and uberinsider Francois Hollande. 2nd, Ms. Aubry. The two will face each other in a runoff on October 16.

But by unexpectedly coming in third, antiglobalizationist Arnaud Montebourg may decide the second round. He's expected to throw his support behind Aubry who is further to the left than Hollande.

Is the Tea Party Over?

2011-10-10T08:36:00.002-05:00

Nice NYTimes column by Bill Keller asking if the Tea Party, that was supposed to be a huge force in this election, was all a media creation, and if they're on their way out.

The answer, he says, is whether or not they can push Texas Gov Rick Perry past the Republican primaries.

Killing Citizens

2011-10-09T08:20:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reveals how a Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen.
Repulsive.

Anita Hill Anniversary

2011-10-07T11:59:00.001-05:00

The Washington Post reports that for Anita Hill, the Clarence Thomas hearings never really ended

Twenty years ago, when Anita Hill returned home from the contentious Senate hearings during which she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, people told her not to worry — her name would be forgotten in a matter of months.

But two things have become clear this week as she has re-entered the debate: The raw tensions over race, gender and politics raised by the hearings have not been forgotten. And Anita Hill is acting like a woman who wants her name remembered.

Read the whole article

Ezra Klein on Occupying Wall Street

2011-10-06T16:28:00.001-05:00

Worth reading in its entirety, but here's a snippet:

One very possible future for the movement is that it splits in two: The Occupy Wall Street effort, with its more radical aims and means, continues, and the “We Are the 99 Percent” movement becomes something broader and more directly engaged with the political process. Another is that it fizzles: The radical protest in Zucotti Park peters out, and the effort to create a more mainstream version fails. Another possibility is that it fractures: Just as there are hundreds of distinct tea party groups organized under separate and competing national coalitions, you could imagine a lot of different efforts organized under one name but representing diverse and contradicting ideas.

Queers on Wall Street

2011-10-06T16:19:00.002-05:00

Check out an interesting article in Gay City News. At least queers are not disappearing and erasing themselves in the mix.

Jake Goodman from Queer Rising, a grassroots group that has worked in New York and elsewhere on issues ranging from marriage equality to repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, has participated in several Occupy Wall Street marches and spent a good deal of time at Zuccotti Park.

“We’ve been telling people there are queer people in every movement, in every gender, in every race, and this is a movement of the people,” Goodman told Gay City News.

One of the messages he aims to get across involves the duplicity of corporations that seem progressive on LGBT issues but have a dark side, as well.

“One of the most politically important and relevant messages here is that corporations will one day boast of their LGBTQ work, but then on the other side, is that they are giving money to right-wing candidates,” he argued. “This is a movement where we can bring ourselves and bring our own interests, but also that of the American people, of which we are a part.”

Also present, Queerocracy, an ACT-UP ally.

Gay Marriage Progress in France

2011-10-05T08:20:00.005-05:00

In recent elections, the left seized control of their Senate for the first time in generations.

The French site Yagg reports that Socialist bigwig, François Hollande, has promised that, "Marriage for same-sex couples will be part of the texts that we'll adopt as soon as the legislature opens."

At the same time, he told Yagg, it might take time to get everybody on board, because while the majority was accepting, there was also a freaked out vocal minority of intolerant people.

Was that hedging? There's also the small matter that the Senate has less teeth than the National Assembly.

Read the complete interview with Hollande in French.

Hating Local

2011-10-04T15:05:00.005-05:00

Whenever I hear politicians all happy about keeping it "local" or "traditional", I'm always a little suspicious. Even when it comes to food. I mean, I like a good tomato as much as the next person. But it makes me think of my grandmother confessing how happy she was to get the hell off a failing farm, even if it meant moving to the city and working in a factory. And she was secretly thrilled to get her tubes tied after her fourth kid when the doctor said another baby would kill her.

Moving to the city liberated her from husband, preacher, midwife, poverty... like it liberated generations of queers. Including me. Sometimes globalization is good.

The Best Apples

2011-10-01T12:48:00.002-05:00

...are liberated from apple trees along the road. No one cares. There are a ton on the ground. Leap over the ditch and do it! With honey, they make good applesauce.

Cool Science

2011-09-25T08:43:00.001-05:00

Reuters reports that

the CERN research institute near Geneva said measurements over three years had shown neutrinos pumped to a receiver in Gran Sasso, Italy, had arrived 60 nanoseconds sooner than light would have done -- a tiny difference that could nonetheless undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity.

Too cool.

Death Penalty

2011-09-23T13:30:00.001-05:00

Check out this post from the Field Negro,

"Field, you had a lot to say about Troy Davis. Why nothing about the white man who was put to death yesterday in Texas?"

Oh yes, Lawrence Brewer, the white supremacist who was tried and convicted of dragging James Byrd, Jr. to death. (Shout out to Dick Gregory for being in Huntsville, Texas and protesting the death of even this scumbag.)

See the rest.

Good Riddance

2011-09-20T15:35:00.003-05:00

DADT is finally over. Will the world end? Will the military collapse? Will we start losing those wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? (Which we were clearly winning before.)

Great Dyke Comic Blog

2011-09-16T08:45:00.001-05:00

forever since breakfast

Transgender Health

2011-09-15T07:23:00.001-05:00

Check out the August article in the New York Times, The High Price of Looking Like a Woman. Horrible.

Dang

2011-09-12T07:54:00.002-05:00

Really got to get that temper under control, hon. See ya next year.

Go Serena!

2011-09-11T08:22:00.002-05:00

Nah, I don't feel like writing about floods or earthquakes or hurricanes or bombs. Just good old fashioned grrrll power.

Japan!

2011-07-19T08:08:00.002-05:00

Act for Equality in Women's World Cup Soccer

2011-06-25T09:08:00.002-05:00

Now that marriage equality has been won in New York State, it's time to move on to the really important stuff -- equality in soccer.

This week, the coach of Nigeria’s women’s football team told the New York Times that she has dealt with “the big problem” of lesbianism on the team. She made her point clear: love between two women is a “dirty issue”.

But there’s something we can do about it. In the battle against bigotry and discrimination, FIFA, football’s world governing body, has real moral authority, and they can use that authority to take a clear stand against this outrageous discrimination.

With the Women’s World Cup launching this weekend, take a moment to ask FIFA president Joseph Blatter to play by FIFAs rules, and investigate the harassment and termination of players “suspected” of being gay.

Sign the petition.
http://www.allout.org/fifa

Queers Demonstrate in France

2011-06-20T08:40:00.004-05:00

French queers have begun to declare themselves a force in national politics just in time for the upcoming presidential elections. The slogan for LGBT Pride this year, "In 2011, I march. In 2012, I vote."

Finally.

Posterboy for Trans Rights in Argentina

2011-05-09T07:32:00.001-05:00

Check out Blabbeando to find out how Alejandro Iglesias became a posterboy for trans rights in Argentina.

Justice? in Paris, Texas

2011-05-06T11:14:00.002-05:00

Check out the Field Negro for the rest of this story.

"(Paris, TX) – April 14, 2011 - Local residents and others are seeking financial assistance for the legal defense of a Paris man accused of sexual assault in a case civil rights activists state is one of several that illustrates racism within the town’s criminal justice system. Bobby Yates, a 51 year-old African American Paris resident, who lost his lower limbs in a hunting accident over two decades ago and who is also paralyzed, is set to stand trial this month for the alleged sexual assault of a 16 year-old white female, who came to his home with two adult white males at 2 a.m. on March 18, 2008. Yates called 911 for help and can be heard on a 911 tape on the morning of the alleged incident, stating the group beat him and requesting police help with forcing them to leave his home..."

Not Celebrating, Sorry

2011-05-02T11:20:00.003-05:00

Can't rejoice at death, even Bin Laden's.

Sign the petition against "sissy boot camps" in Malaysia

2011-04-30T07:14:00.001-05:00

Click here to Shut down "sissy boot camps" in Malaysia

Last week, Malaysia rounded up 66 teenage male students who were deemed "effeminate" and sent them to a government sponsored camp because it was feared they "could end up gay or transsexual". Despite public outcry, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has not assured that such camps will never happen again.

We have less than a week to let Malaysia know the world is watching: we will deliver the petition next week at the ASEAN summit, where Prime Minister Razak will be in the international spotlight.

Find the petition at Allout.org

To All the phobes

2011-04-25T12:32:00.002-05:00

Antigay NYS Senator Ruben Diaz is up to his old tricks, and so are too many of his xenophobic homo critics. Argh.

Just read Blabbeando for the details of antigay antiabortion march he's planning, and the xenophobic diatribes in the readers' comments at Joe.My.God

Again. Argh.

Righteous War

2011-03-24T09:25:00.002-05:00

Orwell gets it right. As usual.

I am not shocked by the Church condoning the war, as many people profess to be – nearly always people who are not religious believers themselves, I notice. If you accept government you accept war, and if you accept war you must in most cases desire one side or the other to win. I can never work up any disgust over bishops blessing the colours of regiments, etc. All that kind of thing is founded on a sentimental idea that fighting is incompatible with loving your enemies. Actually you can only love your enemies if you are willing to kill them in certain circumstances. But what is disgusting about services like these is the absence of any kind of self-criticism. Apparently God is expected to help us on the ground that we are better than the Germans. In the set prayer composed for the occasion God is asked “to turn the hearts of our enemies, and to help us to forgive them; to give them repentance for their misdoings, and a readiness to make amends.” Nothing about our enemies forgiving us. It seems to me that Christian attitude would be that we are no better than our enemies, we are all miserable sinners, but that it so happens that it would be better if our cause prevailed and therefore that it is legitimate to pray for this…….

Annie Lennox on Int'l Women's Day

2011-03-08T10:28:00.002-06:00

In her Huffpost article, Reclaiming Feminism, Annie Lennox writes

It shocks, disappoints and angers me that in a world where man has traveled to the moon and where we can connect to people anywhere on earth instantly online, men and women are still not equal.

The statistics are sobering. Across the globe, gender-based violence causes more deaths and disabilities among women of child-bearing age than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined. Even in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, it's safer to be a soldier than a woman. Women do two-thirds of the world's work for a paltry 10 percent of the world's income and own just 1 percent of the means of production.

As Regimes Fall in Arab World, Al Qaeda Sees History Fly By

2011-03-01T07:55:00.002-06:00

Cause for celebration reported by the NYTimes

For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.

In fact, the motley opposition movements that have appeared so suddenly and proved so powerful have shunned the two central tenets of the Qaeda credo: murderous violence and religious fanaticism. The demonstrators have used force defensively, treated Islam as an afterthought and embraced democracy, which is anathema to Osama bin Laden and his followers.

Read the whole article.

Now, if only Americans would re-embrace democracy and secularism we could finally get somewhere.

Recy Taylor: A Symbol of Jim Crow's Forgotten Horror

2011-02-20T09:57:00.003-06:00

The Root asks: After her brutal gang rape, Recy Taylor became a global symbol of American injustice and helped inspire the civil rights movement. So why has nobody heard of her today?
h/t Field Negro

Also, read this great article giving Rosa Parks her props. She wasn't just some feeble little lady who refused to give her seat to a white man because she was tired, she was a fierce anti-rape activist.

My Polluted Kentucky Home

2011-02-20T09:42:00.002-06:00

In this op-ed at NYTimes.com Kentucky writer Silas House indicts not just greedy Kentucky politicians, but America at large for sacrificing the people of Appalachia for their need for cheap coal.

The news media and the rest of the country typically think of mountaintop removal as an environmental problem. But it’s a human crisis as well, scraping away not just coal but also the freedoms of Appalachian residents, people who have always been told they are of less value than the resources they live above.

Over the past six years I’ve visited dozens of people who live at the edge of mountaintop removal sites. They bathe their children in water that has arsenic levels as high as 130 times what the E.P.A. deems safe to drink.

Their roads are routinely destroyed by overloaded trucks; their air is clouded with pollutants. Their schools sit below ponds holding billions of gallons of sludge. Their children lose sleep worrying that the sludge dams will break, releasing the sludge down upon them. It happened 40 years ago at Buffalo Creek, W.Va., killing 125 people, and it could happen again today.

It’s a horrible way to live. And yet, as it does in many other impoverished quarters of America, the news too often avoids covering Appalachia as if it were a no man’s land.

When a 3-year-old Virginia boy was crushed to death in his crib after a half-ton boulder was accidentally (and illegally) dislodged by a mining company, it barely made the national news. Many people around here believe the omission reflected that the child lived in a trailer home in the heart of coal country.

Read it all!

EGYPT EGYPT EGYPT

2011-02-14T11:32:00.001-06:00

Great NYTimes article giving background on the youth movement that helped create the conditions for revolution.

On a lighter note

2011-01-31T12:30:00.000-06:00

Read this post from Who Is IOZ.

American Murderer in Uganda

2011-01-29T16:06:00.002-06:00

Blogger Joe.My.God explains American preacher Scott Lively's complicity in the murder of gay Ugandan activist David Kato.

The newspaper articles and Kato's murder came after months of international outrage over Uganda's proposed and still-pending "kill gays" bill, legislation that orders the death penalty for homosexuals in some cases and life imprisonment in others.

The inspiration for Uganda's gay death penalty bill, and surely, Kato's murder, arises from the work of American evangelists, chief among them the repulsive anti-gay activist Scott Lively, whose infamous book The Pink Swastika blames the rise of the Nazi Party and the Holocaust on gay men. One year ago, the New York Times profiled Lively's hand in Uganda's burgeoning pogrom against homosexuals, which began after Lively hosted a three-day meeting attended by thousands of Ugandan police, teachers, and politicians.

Read the complete entry.

h/t Andrés Duque

sNOwy NYC

2011-01-28T12:06:00.003-06:00

It's pretty, but please stop now.

Wednesday - mercredi .

Thursday morning - jeudi matin

Gay Activist Killed in Uganda

2011-01-27T11:50:00.002-06:00

Today, the Huff post published a story reporting that David Kato, a gay man in Uganda, was bludgeoned to death in his own home by a neighbor with a hammer.

David had spoken out for gay rights, was one of the high profile plaintiffs who successfully sued Uganda's Rolling Stone for publishing a list of 100 "homos" and calling for their death. He lost his life because he publicly stood up for equality. But no one in the government of Uganda has taken the same risk as David.

The U.S. government refuses to stand up for people like David too -- to take action forcing Uganda to protect human rights.

Just miles away from where David was murdered, Jerry P. Lanier, U.S. ambassador to Uganda, lives quietly. He might know, by now, about the violent death David faced, but he has not spoken out in David's defense, he has not acted in David's honor.

The time for negotiation and polite public statements is over.

The United States needs to force the Ugandan government to stand up for its LGBT citizens. It needs to demand that government officials publicly support LGBT rights, abandon their pursuit of the gay death penalty bill, fully investigate David's murder and arrest the culprit.

Ugandan Lesbian At Risk of Deportation from UK-updated

2011-01-26T11:38:00.003-06:00

Brenda Namigadde, a young Ugandan lesbian is scheduled to be deported from the UK this Friday and sent back to the life-threatening persecution she fled from eight years ago.

A journalist was even contacted by David Bahati, Ugandan MP, and author of the proposed 'Kill the gays' bill, saying Brenda Namigadde would be welcome at home if she would only "repent and reform." Otherwise, he promised prison -- or worse.

Please sign the urgent petition to keep her safe.

http://www.AllOut.org/Brenda

Born Gay

2011-01-26T07:31:00.001-06:00

A nice blog, showing pictures of queers when they were kids. Only wish there were more baby dykes.

Still Repulsive

2011-01-09T08:47:00.002-06:00

In the New York Times, a pissed off Bob Herbert assesses Obama's economic "recovery."

Consider the extremes. President Obama is redesigning his administration to make it even friendlier toward big business and the megabanks, which is to say the rich, who flourish no matter what is going on with the economy in this country. (They flourish even when they’re hard at work destroying the economy.) Meanwhile, we hear not a word — not so much as a peep — about the poor, whose ranks are spreading like a wildfire in a drought.
...
Nearly 44 million people were living in poverty in 2009, which was more than 14 percent of the American population and a jump of four million from the previous year. Anyone who thinks things are much better now is delirious. More than 15 million children are poor — one of every five kids in the United States. More than a quarter of all blacks and a similar percentage of Hispanics are poor.

Are we doing anything about this? No. Our government officials, from the president on down, are too busy kissing the bejeweled fingers of the megarich.

Live Free or Die?

2011-01-02T10:04:00.002-06:00

Daily Kos reports that the "Live Free or Die" State, New Hampshire, is about to choose option B for its LGBT citizens as the wave of incoming Republican legislators promises to dump same-sex marriage.

The Fantastic Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner

2010-12-27T15:59:00.003-06:00

The Gay City News article "Dykes Outside the Box" is here. The videos are also now up. Just click on the links. Naw, i wasn't in the mood to embed.

Ellen Kushner on Getting Married -- Twice!
Swordspoint author Ellen Kushner talks about what it meant to get legally married to her partner Delia Sherman. Plus the unexpected benefits of same-sex relationships.

Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner on Mannerpunk and Modesty
Writers Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman talk about the origins of fantasy of manners which drew from a variety of sources including pre-Raphaelite painters, Victorian novelists, and "Man from U.N.C.L.E." in addition to icons C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Plus the truth about how the movement was named, a plug for the upcoming release of Bordertown, and a brief digression on the usefulness of modesty.

How America Cemented It's Worldwide Influence

2010-12-26T08:06:00.003-06:00

Spam. Who knew? GIs apparently spread it in through Europe, Hawaii (home of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor), Japan, Guam and eventually Korea..

The BBC author notes:

It conjures up a strange new perspective on World War II - GIs struggling to get over the beaches of Normandy and across the sands of Iwo Jima before their arteries clogged up. But it makes you wonder if this is the reason why they put Spam in brick-shaped tins, because America used it to build its influence in a hungry post-war world.

You can find an outpouring of feeling towards the spiced ham product expressed here in spam-ku.

Big Saturday

2010-12-19T15:09:00.002-06:00

Movement forward in lesbian and gay rights with the repeal of the antigay military policy Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but a setback for young immigrants (including queer ones) with the stonewalling, yes stonewalling, of the Dream Act.

Kentucky Creationist Theme Park

2010-12-05T11:33:00.002-06:00

Thinkprogress reported a couple days ago,

that Kentucky’s Democratic governor Steve Beshear announced yesterday that a creationism theme park — dubbed “Ark Encounter” — is expected to open in the state in 2014. The governor boasted that the park would have a $250 million impact on the local economy annually. The park “will feature a 500-foot-long wooden replica of Noah’s Ark containing live animals such as juvenile giraffes.”

Them's my peeps!

Thanksgiving Horror Stories

2010-11-24T13:51:00.005-06:00

Skip the NYTimes story and go directly to the comments. Most seem a little benign. No queers coming out. No blood and guts. Even a disgusting amount of optimism. But occasionally you find a #38

my worst thanksgiving…..when my dad decided to leave us and a huge fight ensued cause he was writing love notes to my mums bff who was there whilest we were watching the football game….

Or maybe it was the thanksgiving my mums other friend had a nervous break down at our house and broke everything in sight and cut her arm very badly….

No no I think it was last year when my mum was taking my uncle to pick up my g-pas bike with my g-ma and he had a heart attack hit a curb and died instantly while my mom and g-ma were following him in the car…and saw his body in the street….

Take your pick….

I can’t wait to see what this year holds…. “ /

— I win

Yep, you do.

# 118

I was attending UC Santa Barbara in the late 70’s, far away from my family in New Mexico. But an older brother was living in the Bay area and I managed to bum a ride up to San Francisco where he picked me up. Just the two of us, we had hot dogs and drank Wild Turkey. It was great fun.
— George
#

# 120. November 22, 2010 2:38 pm Link

The most hilarious Thanksgiving I had was 10 years ago. I had just moved back to San Francisco and was sharing an apartment with a friend. We decided to host thanksgiving with our other good friend, for her brother visiting from Georgia and some other people I barely knew. We spent a lot of time shopping and planning dishes, with each of the three of us insisting on certain traditional family recipes. On thanksgiving day, my friends proceeded to get drunk as pigs. The conservative Georgia good ole boy got stoned with the gay Israeli guy and his friend who regaled us with explicit stories about hooking up for sex in the city. My co-hosts were so drunk that they could not help with any cooking. Or so they claimed. But they did manage to stand in the doorway to the tiny kitchen, sloshing wine out of their glasses and yelling that I was not making cooking the food correctly. I cooked it all – the ginormous turkey, stuffing, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, green beans, pie, cranberry sauce and god knows what else. My friends’ one contribution to serving the meal was to find extra hot pads to keep the hot plates of food from scorching the table – which we later realized were wadded up underpants. I have never laughed so hard at Thanksgiving before or since. The dirty dishes lingered for about a week – until I finally got sick of it and cleaned them.
— Monty G

KY: Not all headstompin' wingnuts

2010-11-05T08:11:00.002-05:00

Wednesday, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund announced

that more openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) candidates won election to public office in the U.S. in 2010 than in any year in America’s history. At least 106 of the group’s record-breaking 164 endorsed candidates were winners as of Wednesday morning, including Providence, R.I., Mayor David Cicilline, who will become the fourth openly gay Member of Congress when the House convenes in January.

Especially happy news for me : Jim Gray’s election as mayor of Lexington, Kentucky’s second-largest city.
http://www.gaypolitics.com/2010/11/03/record-number-of-lgbt-candidates-elected-to-office/

Back to the, Umm, Future

2010-10-28T17:00:00.001-05:00

I did it, booked a plane, finally booked a room. Uh huh. I'm going to Kentucky.

Catskills in August

2010-10-23T14:17:00.002-05:00

Dan Savage "Apology"

2010-10-15T11:51:00.003-05:00

I love Savage Love, especially here when he responds to an email from a Christian whose feelings were hurt by recent statements regarding "people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying." I'm posting it in full because I wish I had written it.

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: Fuck your feelings.

A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying. Why the hell not?

Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.

And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children.

Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians," and the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays, give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to Mom and Dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh—day in, day out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call Mom and Dad.

Photos of Israeli Girl Soldiers

2010-09-25T13:48:00.001-05:00

Almost pin-ups. Extremely beautiful photos.

facebook bug

2010-09-23T14:27:00.003-05:00

Is anybody else having weird things happen? Every time I try to access the site I get sent to Free.fr.

It started a couple hours ago when I tried to access the Lesbian Avenger Documentary Project page on FB.

So I Left Town

2010-09-13T13:01:00.001-05:00

I'm back in the city now, a battle-scarred veteran of the Great Mice Wars of 2010. Posting will resume, kind of, anyway.

RIP Candice Boyce

2010-08-06T14:56:00.002-05:00

Candice Boyce, activist, community organizer, lesbian, African American, and an original Salsa Soul Sister, died August 2, after a long illness.

Candice is quoted in the Wikipedia entry on Salsa Soul Sisters noting that at the time of the group's founding, "there was no other place for women of color to go and sit down and talk about what it means to be a black lesbian in America." The founders hoped to create "an organization that is helpful and inspiring to third world gay women" and to "share in the strengthening and productivity of the whole gay community."

To a large extent they were successful in their mission. They created safe spaces for an embattled community, published magazines, encouraged art and literature. That group evolved into African Ancestral Lesbians United for Social Change which remains strong almost two generations later. And relative youngsters like Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Julia Roxanne Wallace who made a short video about the Salsa Soul Sisters have acknowledged their debt to Candice.

I remember her as an extraordinarily intelligent, kind, committed activist, words you don't always find in the same sentence.

I'm not exactly one to quote religious texts, but I ran across this one a day or two ago, from the Pirkei Avot and it had something to say about activism and social justice, something to say about Candice: you are not obligated to complete the work; neither are you permitted to desist from it.

In this increasingly now-driven society, few of us persevere without victory in sight. Candice did. I think that's part of what gave her her strength and equilibrium. And like so many others, I'm incredibly grateful for her life and work.

There is a viewing and hour of remembrance tonight Friday, August 6 at
J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home
179-24 Linden Blvd.
Jamaica, NY 11434
(718) 526-5656

The viewing is 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

The hour of remembrances of Candice begins at 7:00 p.m.

Services will be held from on
Saturday, August 7, 2010, 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

And internment on
Saturday, August 7, 2010 at
Mt. Holiness Memorial Park
Butler, NJ

Bloomberg Gets It Right On Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-06T13:14:00.003-05:00

I don't agree with everything the guy says or does, but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg got it exactly right in his defense of the Muslim community center and mosque to be built near the site of the former WTC.

Kudos, especially, for putting it into historical perspective.

Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue - and they were turned down.

In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies - and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion - and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780's - St. Peter's on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

Read his comments in full.

A Good Week

2010-08-06T07:41:00.003-05:00

Elena Kagan was finally confirmed by the Senate, letting her take her place on the Supreme Court. And proponents of Prop H8 got a good spanking from the U.S. District Court, when the ban on same-sex marriage was overturned in California. A summary included in the ruling:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Judge Walker also wrote “That the majority of California voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant as ‘fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

While this is true, activists shouldn't consider it reason to abandon grassroots organizing efforts to create cultural change. Court victories are not enough. Especially if you want them to be globally enforced.

UK: Where Are All the Lesbians?

2010-08-02T09:52:00.003-05:00

In Britain, Jane Czyzselska reports in The Guardian that

Out of 39 hours of some of the most popular BBC1 shows, just 29 seconds featured lesbians, a study commissioned by the gay charity Stonewall has found. Here's a blow-by-blow account of this quantum of airtime: a homophobic exchange between Eastenders' Roxy, Pat and Bianca; and a "playful" introduction of Jeremy Clarkson by Jonathan Ross in which Ross describes the provocative petrolhead as a man not loved by lesbians. (He got that right. Clarkson repeatedly decries "big, weird dungaree-wearing lesbian parents" or "black lesbian Muslims", while lusting after "the proper ones in stockings that you find on the internet".)

She also added

Things are looking up: this autumn BBC3 will screen a six-part lesbian drama, Lip Service, which throws light on a group of Glaswegian twentysomethings. Its not exactly Shakespeare, but its depiction of young lesbians is right on the money. When DIVA magazine spoke to the show's lesbian writer and creator Harriet Braun she explained, "It's a story and I can only aim to tell it as authentically as I can." Amen to that.

H/T WomensViewsOnNews.org

The Kids Are Alright

2010-07-27T07:11:00.003-05:00

So, I ran across this post in Bully Blogger a little late, but it offers an interesting critique of the movie as a finely acted but stereotypical and conservative ordeal characterizing "lesbian desire as a flickering flame always on the verge of extinction and of lesbian-male rivalry as always a mismatch."

While the film’s moral outcome is supposed to favor the women and leave Paul out in the cold, it actually delivers, whether the film means to or not, a scathing critique of gay marriage. If the message here is “see gay marriages are just like straight ones – we all face the same problems,” then surely the outcome of the film would be the end of marriage, the desire to find other kinds of arrangements that work? But no, this film, like many a heterosexual drama that turns the family inside out only to return to it at the film’s end, shows that marriage is sexless, families turn rotten with familiarity, lesbians over parent and then it asks us to invest hope into this very arrangement.

I knew there was a reason I haven't felt compelled to see this movie.

More World Cup

2010-07-26T09:35:00.003-05:00

This time in women's under 20 (u20) class. Yesterday, Nigeria knocked out the defending champion U.S. which blamed fatigue. Other semifinalists are Germany, Colombia, and South Korea.

Check out the FIFA site to see girls doing it for themselves.

Video NYC Dyke March 2010

2010-07-09T16:11:00.003-05:00

Here you are, the 18th annual New York City Dyke March, brought to you originally by the Lesbian Avengers.

Progress in Cuba?

2010-07-07T17:54:00.002-05:00

A couple of minutes ago, the New York Times reported that "the Cuban government on Wednesday released five political prisoners and agreed to set 47 others free in the coming months, a dramatic move that may save the life of a prominent dissident who has been on a four-month-long hunger strike to push for the liberation of inmates."

You have to read pretty far down to find that the prisoners and families were flown direct to Spain, not for a vacation as the Times seems to imply, but to get rid of them, fulfilling the predictions of bloggers like Yoani Sanchez who earlier today wrote,

Whispers come and go. In them, the word “liberation” has been stuck to a term with nefarious connotations: “deportation.” “They will go directly from the prisons to the planes,” a gentleman who keeps his ear glued to the radio told me, based on what he hears on the prohibited broadcasts from the North. Forced expatriation, expulsion, exile, has been standard practice to get rid of dissenters. “If you don’t like it, leave,” they tell you from the time you’re small; “Get up and go,” they spit at you if you insist on complaining; “Why’d you come back?” is the greeting if you dare to return and continue to point out what you don’t like. The ability to rid themselves of the inconvenient, the skill to push off the island platform anyone who opposes them, this is a talent in which our leaders are quite adept.

Moratinos would have to have a very large plane to fit all those who obstruct the island’s authoritarians. Not even a jumbo jet could transport all those potentially at risk of going to prison for their ideas or their civil actions. A veritable airline with weekly flights would be necessary to remove all those who don’t agree with the administration of Raul Castro. But, as it turns out, many of us do not want to go. Because the decision to live here or there is something as personal as choosing a partner, or naming a child; it is not permissible that so many Cubans find themselves caught between the walls of prison and the sword of exile. It is immoral to force emigration on those who might be released in the coming days.

One question, simple and logical, jumps out at us with regards to this issue: Wouldn’t it be better if the ones they carried on this plane were “them”?

Spies in Sunnyside

2010-06-30T09:40:00.002-05:00

This article wonders just what the sleeper Rusky spies could have learned about Washington doings while living in New Jersey, and this, besides describing their ordinary lives, describes exchanges of info and cash, including meets at a restaurant in Sunnyside, Queens. Yes, the Sunnyside, New York where my mother-in-law lives. Maybe I'm in some surveillance tapes.

Video Break

2010-06-30T09:38:00.001-05:00

Watch baby moose(s) in sprinkler.

h/t Megan McArdle

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome- Updated

2010-06-24T14:53:00.003-05:00

(Apparently I began to grouse way too early about XMRV connections. Neuroskeptic reports that these findings were convincingly contradicted by some other reputable studies. Including a different federal one. And Grant Jacobs, on the same subject, makes a convincing plea to calm down and let the science evolve. Dang. I'm persuaded. I will remove the asshat tag, though I'm still suspicious of the CDC).

Well, another scientist (male this time), confirmed the association between the XMRV retrovirus and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And now that the news has broken, we also find the FDA & NIH have "independently confirmed the Lombardi group [which published the original Science paper] findings.”

Just when were they going to share this little tidbit? Were they trying to keep it quiet, so they could steal CFS research funds again, or what? Asshats. That should have been front page news in the NY Times, not buried in a Wall Street Journal blog.

Soccer: French Implosion

2010-06-19T16:26:00.002-05:00

Nicolas Anelka SENT HOME After Trashing Coach Raymond Domenech.

Wish somebody would send home Domenech, the worst French coach ever.

The BBC reported a month ago that Laurent Blanc will quit as Bordeaux coach and replace Raymond Domenech as manager of France after this summer's World Cup.

This should have been done, oh, four years ago.

Dykes to Watch Out For

2010-06-19T10:43:00.002-05:00

In honor of LGBT pride, Go magazine publishes 100 Women We Love Class of 2010

"As the first decade of the new millennium comes to an end, we take a moment to celebrate 100 out lesbians who have made the past year one of inspiring change and amazing progress."

Nice list, but why didn't they use the word lesbian or dyke or something in the friggin title? Seriously.

Cuba: Yoani Nails the Reality

2010-06-19T10:27:00.002-05:00

In her paper, Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez nails the current reality,

With the help of Soviet subsidies, state paternalism stripped citizens of their individual and community responsibilities, and established a sort of barter system between freedom and privileges. The state gave out job promotions, electrical appliances, housing, vacations, and other material goods and perks as rewards for obedience and in recognition of support of the government's priorities — including participation in political rallies, membership in the Communist Party, adherence to atheism, and so on... Now that the state is out of money and there are no more rights to exchange for benefits, the demand for freedom is on the rise.

Worth downloading the pdf to read in full.

En español.

Oil Spill

2010-06-17T18:54:00.003-05:00

Just a reminder that BP isn't the one and only propagating this kind of disaster. As the New York Times and Ta-Nehisi Coates reminds us, Shell and Exxon Mobil are responsible for spills in Nigeria that have leaked about 11 million gallons of oil into the Niger delta every year for the last 50 years.

About that Gaza Blockade

2010-06-07T15:49:00.003-05:00

The point of the Gaza blockade is not particularly to keep weapon-type things from reaching insurgents in Gaza, but to topple Hamas by impoverishing and infuriating the people who elected them.

h/t Megan McArdle who wrote
"I know that terrorists can be fiendishly clever, but there is no real evidence, only unconfirmed rumors among the intel community, that Hamas actually has the Coriander Bomb. Most experts put them at least 5-8 years away from developing that sort of destructive technology."

Things I've Missed

2010-06-04T09:04:00.003-05:00

In the last couple weeks, I've meant to post about the move to phase out Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but I'm so totally underwhelmed by congressional and White House support for something so non-controversial among anybody but the extreme right wing, that I'm not motivated to acclaim it. If they'd done it five years ago, sure, yippee.

Then there's the massacre by Israeli defense forces of the aid flotilla bound for Gaza. Could I use another word besides massacre? Nope, pretty much the vocabulary for the killing of unarmed people stuck on a boat even if they did get feisty with pipes.

Cuban Diplomat Does a Mike Tyson in Norway

2010-05-24T14:52:00.004-05:00

Increasingly criticized in Europe for human rights violations at home, one Cuban diplomat in Norway does a Mike Tyson and bites a demonstrator. Seriously.

Amy Parker provides a revision of the google translation.

################

Alexandra Joner said to have been bitten on the hand by an angry employee at the Cuban Embassy in Oslo on Saturday.
OFStine Barstad

The seven women were holding a demonstration outside the Cuban Embassy in connection with an international march for democracy in Cuba Saturday morning.

The staff at the embassy were provoked by very small protest, where demonstrators held up a banner and balloons.

"Everything was quiet, but the police came after ten minutes and said we should leave, because it was an illegal demonstration, since we had not gotten a permit. I said it was fine, and we began to pack up," Kjersti Garcia told Aftenposten.no

She runs a Facebook group for Democracy in Cuba along with Barbara Joner.
The demonstration included her daughters of 12 and 19.

Dancer Alexandra Joner, who is half Cuban, stood across the street and filmed the demonstration.

"Then a woman who is employed at the embassy came out, took the camera and pressed it into her face to take a picture of her. She pushed her away, and was bitten on the hand, " an upset Kjersti Garcia told Aftenposten.no.

The police came running to when they saw the commotion, but were, according to Garcia little interested in recording that that Joner was bitten in the hand by the embassy employee.

"He just said that we were not allowed to be there," she said.

Even Jørstad, operations manager of the Oslo police, confirmed to Aftenposten.no that the demonstration took place, but did not have information about someone having been bitten.

"Everything got quiet. After ten minutes talking, the patrol responsible for the demonstration asked them to leave. They did," says Jorstad.

The embassy's telephone is not staffed Saturday and the embassy employee said to have bitten Joner will not talk to Aftenposten.

"Today there were about five protesters outside the embassy, blocking the entrance without permission. At the same time, there were about 30 friends of Cuba in the embassy who had a celebration in solidarity with Cuba. The police came and took these provocative illegal demonstrators away. That's all we can say," she writes in a text message to Aftenposten.no.

She will not comment on whether anyone was bitten during the incident.

Barbara Joner, who is the mother of Alexandra, is very upset about the incident.

"Physical violence from diplomats does not belong in a democratic country. The diplomats have immunity and cannot be punished, they should not get away with attacking Norwegian citizens," she said.

Joner went straight to the emergency room, where she received a tetanus injection and had the wound tended. She has received two different types of penicillin to take to avoid infection.

"She is very shocked. She is not accustomed to violence," said her mother.

Demonstrators tried to report the incident to police Saturday but were told to come back on Tuesday because of low staffing over the Pentecost holiday.

Los Fans

2010-05-09T07:24:00.004-05:00

Baseball and basketball become the unlikely battlegrounds for fighting the anti-immigrant measures in Arizona.

Violence Against Women In Haiti

2010-04-30T11:41:00.002-05:00

Haitian women testify on video about an epidemic of rape in the camps for the internally displaced.

Haitian Women Testify from Adam Stofsky on Vimeo.

Uh Huh

2010-04-27T12:51:00.001-05:00

Yep. You said it.

Safety Regulators As Silly as Global Warming

2010-04-12T12:34:00.005-05:00

Think Progress calls out Massey CEO Don Blankenship who was busy contesting safety violations and sneering at regulators at the same time 29 workers were dying in his coal mine.

Writing for the Censors

2010-04-11T08:13:00.003-05:00

I really like the Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez. A collection of her posts is coming out in Chile under the title "Cuba Libre."

When her copies were seized on the way in, she didn't get pissed, but took a mental leap forward and imagined the censors and inspectors who blocked her books.

They were probably already warned by the listeners who constantly monitor my telephone; they might even have been warned not to read the contents. If three years of publishing in cyberspace would serve to bring my voice only to these grim censors, I would have sufficient reason to be satisfied. Something of me would remain inside them, just as their repressive presence has marked my chronicles, my book has pushed them to leap toward freedom.

If anything, the transgression of her work is its generosity and very cautious hope, two qualities that are redefining what it means to be a dissident these days.

The landscape also shifted with the February death of hunger-striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an Afro-Cuban political prisoner demanding better conditions in jail and the release of 26 ailing political prisoners. Guillermo Farinas, another Afro-Cuban dissident, has picked up the torch, refusing to eat or drink until the 26 sick prisoners are released.

"Ladies in White," wives and mothers of government opponents jailed in the 2003 crackdown, have continued to march regularly despite being harassed by "spontaneous" mobs brought in by the government in buses.

Health Care etc

2010-03-30T06:07:00.005-05:00

Kudos, I guess, to Obama's success in getting the health care bill passed. Excuse me though, if I don't jump up and down at whoever's bright idea it was to get fence-sitting Democrats on board by promising an Executive Order banning federal funding of abortion health care services. Ummm. No. Hard to get out the pompoms.

Then there's the ongoing stranglehold of insurance companies brought in to lobby from the very start behind closed doors. Nope I haven't forgotten that either...

But as they say, better than nothing in terms of health reform. And maybe more importantly a defeat would have signaled the end of the administration.

In the days since the Obama admin's been bolstered somewhat in my estimation by getting a handshake on an antinukes treaty with Russia, Obama's foray to Afghanistan, and Hillary's visit with half the government in tow to Mexico where the drug war has dang near brought the state to its knees.

So yes, I'm glad health care reform passed, giving Obama a little momentum. Showing folks his admin can take care of business. If they wants to. If they're forced into a corner where they have to bare their little rat teeth.

Can't imagine what queers would have to do to get results. Have a cappuccino or maybe Molotov cocktail party.

At the moment it seems only individuals like baby dykes in Mississippi are getting results.

La costumbre de la infamia: The Habit of Infamy

2010-03-15T07:45:00.003-05:00

If you can read Spanish this article by ANTONIO MUÑOZ MOLINA is worth a go. Piece starts with an anecdote about a writer in the former Communist bloc, and ends with a recent hunger-striking death in Cuba. A quick highlight.

Algunos bajaban la cabeza o miraban hacia otro lado para no ver aquel chato dedo acusatorio. Ésa ha sido la actitud de una parte de la intelectualidad occidental hacia los sufrimientos de las víctimas de los regímenes comunistas. Mirar para otro lado, callar por miedo a que lo acusen incómodamente a uno de cómplice de la reacción. Al fin y al cabo hay causas mucho más seguras que garantizan sin riesgo la vanidad de sentirse solidario, el certificado irrefutable de progresismo que le permite a uno la impunidad moral, aparte de un cierto número de beneficios prácticos que tampoco son desdeñables. Ya se sabe el peligro que se corre cuando se atreve uno a no marcar el paso de la ortodoxia, tan querida entre quienes al parecer tienen por oficio la libertad de la imaginación y la rebeldía del pensamiento. Hay, por lo tanto, quien calla y otorga, quien firma estratégicamente algunos manifiestos, quien tal vez llega a darse cuenta de ciertos horrores pero elige callar "para no favorecer al enemigo", no sea que alguien diga que se ha vuelto de derechas. Hay, en una gran parte de la izquierda democrática europea y americana, una resistencia sorda a aceptar que la opresión y el crimen cometidos en nombre de la justicia son tan repulsivos como los que se cometen en nombre de la superioridad racial.

The Wrong Kind of Green

2010-03-10T12:51:00.003-06:00

Read Johann Hari describing how conservation groups have sided with big-time polluters instead of real science.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left."

While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path--one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

Go, Johnny Weir

2010-03-03T04:32:00.001-06:00