Author Archives: David Bishop

About David Bishop

Full-time student living in California's Central Valley. Have a passion for politics, technology and film. In my spare time I'm usually curled up with a book, having a drink with friends or exploring the nooks and crannies of urban environments.

Orbitz reconsiders advertising on Fox News

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A few weeks ago several GLBT organizations joined up with Media Matters’ “Drop Fox” campaign to urge Orbitz to stop advertising on the Fox News Channel. The petition they circulated recognized Orbitz’s history of being gay-friendly while pointing out Fox’s history of perpetuating lies about gay people including:

  • Fox News gave Mike Huckabee his own show despite a history of comparing homosexuality to drug abuse, incest, pedophilia, and necrophilia. Huckabee has repeatedly used his Fox platform to campaign against gay marriage, even insultingly suggesting that marriage equality poses a threat to stable society. Continue reading →

Two sides of his mouth

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Most politicians running for the Presidency of the United States face a dilemma: they need to appeal to the base of their party to reach the general election while not going so far to the extremes that they become distasteful to the public at large. Some people resolve this conflict by taking a few stances that are mainstream on certain issues and other stances that are more right or left-wing on others. While other people say one thing to one audience and something completely different to another (although that’s become less common with the rise of digital media).

Mitt Romney on the other hand does none of those things. Mitt’s problem is that he tries to split the difference and winds up looking fake to moderates and lefties while being regarded as apostate by conservatives. His stance on gay issues is pretty typical of this: he says he opposes discrimination of gay people except when it comes to marriage. So he thinks you should be able to work and pay all the taxes you can but not enjoy the full benefits of citizenship. Classy, ain’t it?

 

“Pride comes in all ages” says the AARP

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The AARP launched a GLBT focused subsection of their website today with the headline “Pride Comes in All Ages”. Says the site:

Welcome to AARP’s online home for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. This page is designed to spotlight articles on news, personal finance, relationships, travel and other topics of concern to older gay Americans, and their family and friends. It also provides information about AARP’s positions and advocacy efforts in this arena.

The site currently features an estate planning tips for LGBT couples, the gay man’s guide to dating over 50, LGBT-friendly vacations, and an interview with Dan Savage and an invitation to visitors to contact the AARP’s Prism Network on how to make the website more relevant to their lives.

Lesbian Syrian Blogger Goes Missing

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Last month I shared a story the story of Amina Abdalla, a lesbian blogger with dual citizenship in Syria and the United States living and chronicling the uprising in Syria, and how two men came for her but backed down after her father stepped up to them. Now comes the sad news that Amina has gone missing and her family isn’t quite sure who took her:

Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. She had gone to meet a person involved with the Local Coordinating Committee and was accompanied by a friend.

Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated. Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father. Continue reading →

Dan Savage and Terry Miller speak at Google

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Following the release of the It Gets Better Book and the ad for Google Chrome featuring the It Gets Better project the people at Google invited Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller to speak at their campus in Mountain View. The talk is both humorous and touching, talking about the real impact that the It  Gets Better project has had on saving kids lives and empowering gay people. It also features a Q&A session where Google employees ask Dan and Terry about the effects of the projects and how things have changed since the rash of highly publicized suicides of gay teens last summer. Watch:

Marriage News Watch

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The people over at Stop8.org have migrated to a larger platform called Marriage News Watch, focusing on national and global issues instead of just California’s battle over Proposition 8. Here’s the most recent episode featuring an update on the dysfunction of Equality Maryland, the progress of marriage equality in New York and the latest update on Proposition 8 progress through the courts:

Ken Mehlman on Gay Marriage

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Ken Mehlman, who managed the 2004 Bush campaign that focused so heavily on the denying gay people the right to marry through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, came out last year and has now recorded a segment for Big Think explaining why he thinks Republicans should support marriage equality:

I’m still undecided whether Mehlman is a hypocrite of the worst sort or if he represents a coup for gay rights as a high-powered Republican who’s willing to try to convince other Republicans that gay people aren’t going to eat their babies. Either way this video represents at least one step toward him making amends for all the damage he did while in the Bush administration.