Monthly Archives: March 2011

GOP kills Civil Unions in Colorado

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After the State Senate passed Senate Bill 172, Colorado’s Civil Union Bill, last week the bill was sent to the House Judiciary Committee were it was promptly declared dead on arrival. Republicans voted to halt all progress on the bill, preventing it from going to the floor for full consideration. From the press release:

“Senate Bill 172 deserves to be heard in a fair and open discussion by the full Colorado House of Representatives. We join you in urging the House Judiciary Committee to send the bill to their colleagues for a full House vote,” wrote Governor John Hickenlooper. “We look forward to the day when all Coloradans, regardless of sexual orientation, are afforded the same legal rights as their neighbors, their co-workers, their friends, and their family members.”

“This is not the end. We are looking at all options moving forward. We are not turning our backs on Colorado families and kids. And we will win. Whether it’s today or tomorrow or next year or the next – we will win. Gay and lesbian couples in this state will have the full protection under the law,” said Clark.

The list of Judiciary members can be found here. Maybe a few (thousand) emails will convince them to get on the right side of history with this one and let the bill move to the floor instead of killing it with procedural nonsense.

Sailor might be discharged even after DADT repeal

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Today Petty Officer 2nd Class Derek Morado goes in front of a panel about being discharged under DADT. His case has been sitting dormate since 2009, when he was outed for posting a picture of him kissing another man on Myspace.

Morado’s hearing is at the Lemoore Naval Air Station, the recommendation on whether or not to discharge Morado will go to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus for approval. It’s also possible for Mabus to hold off his decision until after the repeal takes effect.

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Devastation in Japan

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This week the official death toll topped 11,000 with 16,000 still missing.  So much is being made of the nuclear fallout in Japan, and rightfully so, but let’s not forget that hundreds of thousands whose everyday lives will be changed forever.  Picture credit:  This Week In Pictures:  March 24-31 by MSNBC.  You can click the image to see in a larger view.

“That is not a real woman, it’s a man.”

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File this under “Why allowing transgender people to get the right birth certificate is important”:

Local resident Amber Anderton watched a horrifying scene play out in front of her this past Thursday at the DMV located at 1095 Motor Ave. (approx. 200 N 1000 W) in Salt Lake City, as a transgender woman sat down at the photo station to renew her license. “When the DMV worker looked at her,” says Amber, “he immediately left and got another employee, whispered in their ear and they both began laughing as they looked back at the woman. They both then went and got security who escorted the woman back to a supervisor’s office. When they came back out the woman was taken to the restroom where she had to scrub off her makeup and pull her hair back before they would let her take her license photo.”

Marching up to the supervisor (who refused to identify more than his first name, John), Amber said, “How dare you treat people this way! Would you make any other woman take off her makeup to get her licensed removed?” The supervisor coldly responded that “That is not a real woman, it’s a man.”

 

Was Gandhi Gay?

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Gandhi, the man, some say god, who brought independence to India and eternal symbol of peace, left his wife for another man.

This is the claim of Pulitzer-Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld makes in his new biography Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and his Struggle With India. The biography shows a more human side of Gandhi and also insists that Gandhi, if not gay, was at the very least bisexual.

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Not so fast

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Score one for the ACLU:

A Terrebonne Parish girl will be allowed to wear a tuxedo to her senior prom after all. Nason Authement, parish secondary education supervisor, says an exception to the policy that boys must wear tuxes or suits and girls must wear dresses or gowns will be made for 19-year-old Monique Verdin. Authement says the policy is based on long-held tradition, but will probably be changed now that attorneys have said it would not hold up in court.  The ACLU of Louisiana says schools barring girls in tuxes or boys in dresses, or barring same-sex dates, are in violation of the law.

It’s things like this that make me wonder if people who claim that heterosexuality is the only acceptable and ‘natural’ expression of human sexuality really understand just how institutionalized gender roles and heteronormativism is. There’s no reason why a girl shouldn’t be able to wear a tux or a guy can’t wear a dress except that we as a society have long thought that boys and girls should dress in certain ways.

Richard Simmons gets you fit to fly on Air New Zealand

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Air New Zealand in-flight video featuring Richard Simmons, being his crazy Richard Simmons self. Not going to sugar coat it, I couldn’t watch it all the way through the first time, but it’s too terrible not to share. You are welcome. :-)

Magazine for Gay Troops Launched Today

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OutServe just launched a magazine to help those who identify as GLBT and are serving in the military.

The magazine features information about the repeal and implementation of DADT, other OutServe chapters, and any other information that might interest the GLBT community currently serving in the military. Right now the magazine in only available as a .pdf file, but the goal is to be ready for print by next issue.

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Praying the gay away wasn’t enough

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In a somewhat novel twist on the whole, “Anti-gay Christian pastor turns out to be queer” bit I present to you the story of Brent Girouex. Mr. Girouex was a youth pastor at Victory Fellowship Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa who took upon himself to cure members of his flock of their sexuality by… having sexual contact with them. He wanted “to help (the teen) with homosexual urges by praying while he had sexual contact with him”. Of course you’d think that squaring the circle of combating homosexual urges by having homosexual experiences would be rather difficult but no the former youth pastor has an answer for that one too. He says , “When they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind.”

Or at least that’s what he’s telling police.

Somehow I suspect that it had more to do with feeding the evil thoughts that youth pastor man was having then trying to ‘help’ the kids. Though I’m sure Brent, like a lot of right-wingers who have trouble accepting the reality of human sexuality, was probably just trying to rationalize away his own behavior more than anything else.

Mr. Girouex was arrested on 60 counts of suspicion of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist but is now free on a $30,000 bond.