Adam Lambert, you deserve to be up on the charts. Smile. Heart. Yes, you do. I not going to lie, not the biggest, most fanatic, American Idol fan. But, my friends kept telling me about this Adam Lambert guy. Well, if there is anyone that has been a part of that show and deserves a great career, it’s him. Personally, it’s not his personality, which seems to grab a lot of people. I could care less what he does or does not do in his personal life. His vocal range is rather impeccable. So, with the advent of his Oprah appearance and me running downstairs to catch his video on VH1, when I heard my roomies watching it in the AM…
Adam Lambert “Whataya Want From Me” (the music video)
ps-took the other post down…this one does a little more justice for me.
She sat Tuesday morning in the center row of the small downtown courtroom, a young woman with dark hair and a white bandage covering her right eye. Aside from her father and a friend, she was alone.
She was there on her own, but in a sense, thousands of people sat with her.
Lindsay Harmon was attacked outside Roxy’s, a downtown gay bar, early on New Year’s morning. She and some friends were, she said, taunted with gay slurs by a passing group of men and women. After a verbal back-and-forth, Harmon was knifed in the eye and upper arm. Suzanne-Deanna Grover, 21, was arrested last week and charged not just with assault, but with a hate crime.
I am glad that District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III decided to prosecute the case this way. If Harmon was attacked because she is a lesbian, it is an assault not just on one person, but on a way of life. That is why the story was front-page news, and not just another gruesome but fairly common attack.
Aside from anything else, the hate crime charge sends a message: Being attacked simply because you are gay will not be condoned or ignored by society. This may not seem like much to most of us. But most of us cannot—in certain places and circumstances—be legally fired from a job, denied an apartment or not have a marriage acknowledged because of our sexual orientation.
“It is an acknowledgment that this is seen as a crime against a group of people, not just a single person,” said Tim Moran, publisher of Outcome, a locally based gay online newspaper.
That is what the hate crime law is about. The punishment hammer comes down harder because you attack not just one person, but—by extension—thousands.
I know that people disagree about whether the law is justifiable or accomplishes anything. I think it is not only necessary, but healthy. A society that looks the other way is as potentially frightening as a knife to the eye. Take the “So what?” attitude to the extreme, and you are in Nazi Germany, where the state did not just condone group hate— it institutionalized it.
Granted, America today is thankfully light-years removed from 1930s Germany. I think that the hate crimes law cements the condemnation.
“We’re talking about creating a climate [whereby] this cannot be accepted in our society,” Sedita said.
Other than self-defense, I cannot think of a good reason to pummel, stab or shoot anyone. Assaulting someone because of what he or she represents gives new meaning to the term “senseless violence.” As Moran said, “Being a [gay] human being is not a reason to get beaten up.”
I give Sedita credit for sending a message about hate crime. Motive is never easy to prove, especially in a late-night confrontation outside a bar among people who have knocked back a few.
Predictably, authorities say there are a handful of different witness versions about who said what to whom. Sources say Grover contends that she acted in self-defense and that somebody in Harmon’s group uttered a racial slur. As I said, this thing could get messy.
“I thought there was sufficient evidence to charge it,” Sedita said. “Whether it passes muster with a grand jury or a trial jury will be up to them.”
Chances are that in the months between the grand jury hearing evidence and a jury rendering its verdict, the hate crime charge will be jettisoned because it does not fit or is too tough to prove. If so, fine. What I think matters is that Sedita did not reject it out of hand. That, in itself, sends a message to the gay community, from the larger society.
There were just a couple of people sitting Tuesday with Lindsay Harmon in the courtroom. In a legal sense, an army stood behind her.
If you want to get a good debate going, any time, any place, then all you have to do is utter the word bisexual, and you’re sure to get a lot of reaction. These people who claim they enjoy sex with both men and women scare the hell out of the rest of us, as a perceived threat to 99.9% of the population. Why do we care so much if a person dares to be open to sexual experiences with both genders? I’ve taken my informal poll, and here is what I’ve come up with.
Human beings are desperate to categorize everything in life, to use labels to gain understanding and feel safe in their world. I’m way ahead of you. Yes. I know that bisexuality is just another label. So why the adverse reaction to bisexuality then? To most of us, bisexuals are completely outside of our experience and world. There are so few self-proclaimed bisexuals out there, that most of us don’t really know anyone who is brave enough to say that about themself. Our fear of the unknown is probably one reason that explains why many people are afraid of bisexuals, perceiving them at some very gut level, to be “other than,” like freaks of nature.
Many arguments are bandied about in regard to sexuality. An assertion made on the popular Seinfeld Show, about the subject of bisexuality, was that bisexuality is just a stop on the way to Gaytown. There may be some truth to that. In an attempt to fit into the world at large, I can see why a person who is having a hard time “coming out” of the closet might say that they were bisexual, to test the waters, giving themself an easy retreat back to the hetero world if they get scared, or decide against “coming out” altogether.
If you’re bisexual, it stands to reason that you will be viewed as undecided, or wishy-washy. On a positive note, you may be considered quite avant garde, having evolved to a level where you relate to others on a more spiritual level, with the sex being a mere expression of your love for your beloved’s true essence. This argument does hold up logically, when you consider that few of us would say that we fall in love with a particular breast or penis, reacting sexually to body parts instead of their personality and character.
I have argued on occasion that I believe we would all be bisexual if we lived in a free-thinking, highly evolved society, devoid of stereotypes and oppressive religions, where people are taught what to think, instead of how to think. I have fallen in love with men and women. Please don’t stop reading this blog, just because I admitted to that. I identify as a lesbian. But the truth of the matter is, if I were stranded on a desert island with a handful of people after a plane crash, I could conceivably end up in the arms of a man instead of a woman. The mental connection is more important to me than the physical connection. In a big world, I prefer women, but in a smaller space, I could conceivably pick an interesting and intelligent man over a boring or unintelligent woman. I bet most lesbians would have to admit the same thing, if they were pushed into a corner on the subject.
Don’t misinterpret my last sentence. I love sex. But sex for me is about showing a person how much I love them, not worshipping what a “great body” they have, or shooting for the ultimate sexual experience. My best sexual experiences have been more about emotion, than the perfect orgasm or some interesting new position. Basically, if I love you, and feel loved by you, the sex will be great for me.
Don’t judge me for what I am about to say, but I prefer identifying as a lesbian instead of a bisexual, even given my earlier argument that we are all bisexual at some basic level. For the reasons listed above, I am not willing to be as alone or forsaken as most bisexual women I have met. Lesbians and heteros alike are scared to death of bisexuals. Being a lesbian has been challenging enough, but at least I have a group of women going through the experience with me. There is comfort in numbers. We all need a social network where we feel accepted by others. The whole “sacrificial lamb” things holds no allure for me.
One of the reasons I believe so few women can commit to bisexuality is because most lesbians I know will not date a bisexual woman. Lesbians want a committed lesbian. The idea of their beloved changing teams unexpectedly, or transmitting a disease gotten from some promiscuous male, is enough to keep most lesbians shying away from bisexual women.
With sexuality so wrapped up in life roles and family expectations, most people want some sense of what to expect from another person. If I go to a party and I’m a straight girl, should I worry about “her” around my boyfriend, or be afraid she’ll make a pass at me if I let my guard down when I’m tipsy from my third glass of wine. As stupid as that sounds to me and most other lesbians, I know from talking to straight women, that some of them are thinking this way.
I admire the Bisexuals, as brave souls, willing to defy the norm to a level that, even the most rebellious homos are afraid to confront. Bisexuals may be the most sexually honest people on the planet. The only group of people who seem more intent on rocking the boat than the bisexuals are the trangenders/transsexuals. But that’s another topic for another day.
Maybe someday our society won’t care so much about how we dress or who we love. Now that would be something. That would definitely be progress.
On Monday, the defense in the Proposition 8 court case called their first witness to the stand, but not before lawyers arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs asked Jude Vaughn Walker to view several “simulcasts” that the founders of ProtectMarriage.com paid for to aid the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. Despite heavy protests from the defense, Judge Walker allowed the tapes to be shown.
The simulcasts were reportedly broadcast to evangelical voters ahead of the 2008 ballot. As always, full transcripts of the trial events can be found at the American Foundation for Equal Rights and live blogging transcripts (unedited and summarized) can be seen at the Courage Campaign website, but the following were just some of the statements that were played to the court:
“[If gay marriage is allowed] then pedophiles would have to be allowed to marry 6-7-8 year olds. The man from Massachusetts who petitioned to marry his horse after [same-sex] marriage was instituted in Massachusetts. He’d have to be allowed to do so. Mothers and sons, sisters and brothers, any, any combination would have to be allowed.”
A man who petitioned to marry his horse – petitioned, but never did get that marriage license, yet Massachusetts allowed gay marriage. Anyone else seeing the problem with that argument? I don’t recall the stampede of mothers trying to marry their sons, or fathers racing to marry their daughters or their livestock when gay marriage was legalized in California during the interim of marriage bans. So, no to bestiality, no to incest, no to pedophilia and no to the “slippery slope” fallacy. What have we left out? Oh right, polygamy:
“Second of all, the polygamists are waiting in the wings because if a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman based on the fact that you have the right to marry whoever you want to marry, then the polygamists are going to use that exact same argument and they’re probably going to win.”
And then there was the statement that no one really expected, the one where gay marriage was compared to 9/11:
“I think a helpful way to think about this is to compare it to 9/11 because a lot of us are asking: How does this directly affect us? Well I wasn’t directly affected by 9/11 and my guess is most of you weren’t either in the sense I didn’t know somebody who crashed the plane in the building. I didn’t know somebody who was in the building. But after 9/11 the world was a fundamentally different place and that has affected me. The change in the redefinition of marriage is the same type of thing.”
These simulcasts will be entered as evidence with the plaintiffs intention being that they demonstrate that Proposition 8 was motivated by anti-gay animus and that the backers of Proposition 8 traded on prejudice in order to secure victory at the ballot. For a full summary of what the six minutes of footage contained, click here.
The defense then called their first witness to the stand, Prof. Kenneth Miller, a professor at the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College. Miller testified that LGBTs are a politically powerful class in California. From the LA Times:
“Gay and lesbian interests are well-represented, can get anything they like passed through the Legislature, raise millions and millions of dollars,” Miller said. “You just can’t with a straight face say gays and lesbians are a politically weak minority in California.”
Prof. Miller pointed to the fact that LGBTs were able to raise some $43 million to try to defeat Proposition 8, which was around $3.4 million more than the Yes on Prop. 8 team had managed, with a similar pattern being replicated in Maine during the marriage equality fight there. Miller also cited the fact that neither the Californian Governor nor the Attorney General would defend Proposition 8 when it came to the trial, and used this as evidence that LGBTs enjoy political favor.
However, cross-examination under David Boies forced Professor Kenneth Miller to put his testimony into the wider context of national politics where the landscape doesn’t look quite so rosy.
Boies cited the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as examples of legislation that specifically targets LGBTs and discriminates against them. Although Miller would not be sold on this being directly comparable to Proposition 8, when he was asked “Is there any other minority you can identify that is discharged from the military when they are doing a perfectly good job just because somebody discovers their status?” by David Boies, Miller was forced to reply, “I’m not aware of any.” Miller then appeared to agree that both laws added up to “official discrimination.”
Professor Miller also flubbed several questions regarding early leaders of the LGBT movement, was unable to tell the court how many states currently protected LGBTs from sexual orientation discrimination, whether California had specific state protections itself, and on several occasions was not able to answer questions on whether LGBTs had more or less political power than African-Americans. This is despite the fact that a greater portion of Miller’s scholarly work has centered on examining the African-American community. You can read lawyer Shannon Minter’s analysis on why Professor Miller’s testimony seemed strangely narrow in focus by clicking here.
Millers status as an “expert” witness was therefore called into question. From Equal Rights Foundation:
On Monday, Miller admitted that he based his testimony in part on materials provided to him by the attorneys defending Prop. 8, instead of relying on his own “expert” research. Beyond that, he testified that he could not remember whether attorneys provided at least 65 percent of the materials he based his research on, totalling well over 200 documents, articles, etc.
Cross-examination will continue on Tuesday when the defense is also expected to call their second and final expert witness. If you’re thinking their witnesses are a bit thin on the ground compared to the 17 that were produced by the plaintiffs, the defense originally had many more, but, for various reasons, several of their witnesses dropped out just ahead of the trail, many of them saying that they feared retaliation from the gay community.
The witness taking the stand on Tuesday is David Blankenhorn, founder and president of the Institute for American Values, an organization that promotes “traditional” marriage.
As always, the Courage Campaign is running a live blog on the Prop. 8 trial so that you can keep track of events in the court room as they happen. You can follow it by clicking here.
The American Foundation for Equal Rights is now making available full transcripts of the trial events. You can find those here.
You can also follow the case on Twitter via the Twitter Feed of the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
Lady Gaga can be proud because she is the newest victim of the Westboro’s baptist Church aka the crazy Fred Phelps clan. Daughter Meghan made a parody of Poker Face in which she says Lady Gaygay, God hates Gaga and Gaga has a whorish face.(look it up on youtube, on Meghan Phelps lady Gaga) That coming from a girl with a face only the devil could love is pretty funny. If that church hates you that means you did something good. It is also pretty funny they call it satan’s music while to make this parody they must have listened to it millions of times.
Two Italian gays are on a hunger strike for marriage equality over there. One of them ended up in the hospital after being gay-bashed and they realized that they had no rights if one of them passed away. Back in November they walked into city halls with 23 other couples requesting to get married but were refused. The couple is streaming things live on the web. They have already lost energy to get out of the house and one of them has passed out a few times but they vow not to quit, even if it means death. Pretty brave but also a bit much. There are other ways.
The ladies of the View had a discussion about monogamy in gay relationships and according to Joy Behar the gays she knows were less bothered by infidelity than straight couples. Whoopie said the gays she knows do care about monogamy and even Elisabeth said she though gays care about that. I think it is for every individual different but Joy has a point. Definitely for gays from Joy’s generation cheating does not necessarily mean the end of a relationship. Men can separate sex and love better than women so I think it is a gay thing but only when there are 2 men involved. In a lesbian relationship it is a very different scenario. I also think for younger gay men with the possibility of marriage, civil unions and even having kids the views are more changing to a heterosexual relationship but it is still 2 men. Apparently most straight men cheat as well, they just don’t say it
One of our public elementary schools here in British Columbia has a Led Zeppelin poster hanging in the music room. This poster is called a “supplementary instructional resource,” meaning that it is not an official District-sanctioned learning resource, but it is a resource selected by the music teacher, at his discretion, to assist teaching the music learning outcomes to elementary students, as required by the curriculum.
There are a number of obvious problems with this poster apparent to those who care about children:
Jimmy Page confessed that the Led Zeppelin band was about drugs from the very beginning to the very end, at least for him. People are dead because of this drug-rock era, including performers, band managers, and countless fans. The School District states that it “supports efforts designed to prevent and intervene in substance abuse among students.” Similarly, the district and individual schools are opposed to tobacco usage. It would be ludicrous for a school to celebrate the Marlboro man by hanging a poster of him inside a classroom. This would constitute implied endorsement of tobacco usage in conflict with the school’s policy against tobacco usage. The District confesses in their policies that school teachers “may be perceived as role models for pupils.”
Said poster cannot help small children learn how to play the recorder or sing “do-re-mi.” To argue that it is an learning resource for five to twelve-year-olds is laughable.
God help us if one of our children browses the Led Zeppelin CD section in Wal-mart or HMV– they might stumble upon the oft-banned child-porn Egyptian-god-worshiping album cover.
I brought a complaint to the school about this poster, suggesting that our goal of caring for our children’s health with regards to substance abuse reasonably includes refraining from implicitly endorsing substance abuse.
The school’s “sensitive materials” committee (principal + music teacher + one parent) reviewed my complaint and concluded that the poster was harmless, and valuable enough to remain stapled to the wall.
I then brought the complaint to the School District. After several months of letters being sent back and forth, they finally informed me that they had no official policy in place to deal with these “supplemental” resources; they would only review parent-submitted complaints about the official [and less potentially controversial] materials. This pack of unbelievers have policy papers coming out their ears, except when a policy paper might actually be useful in morality, ethics, or any such demonstration of love toward any subset of human beings in our community.
So, I brought my complaint to the Provincial ministries of Education and Health, as the ‘resource’ obviously pertains to both health and education. To my delight, the current Minister of Education in BC is also a doctor who likely has some thoughts on health. My simple question to our Provincial politicians was, “How might we reasonably understand this poster hanging in the children’s music room in the context of health, the prevention of substance abuse, and educational principles?”
I also pointed out to them that the provincial School Act calls for inculcation of the “highest morality” in school conduct.1
After several months of ignoring my letters and delegating the matter to other ministries and other MLAs, the province eventually got back to me with a letter confessing their neglect in reviewing the complaint, justifying this recklessness by referring to the very same brainless pieces of policy papers that the District had attempted to placate me with.
Now the matter is sitting on the desk of the Prime Minister of our nation. It is such a difficult one to deal with, it needed to come to this. Where is a wise man when we need one?
We understand that “the darkness has not understood” the light. (John 1:5; NIV.) I am realizing that the more immersed we are in the light, the more difficulty we have understanding the darkness. What a strange planet this is.
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Footnote:
1. When this sentence about inculcating the highest morality [BC School Act; Section 76] was originally formulated in Ontario prior to being compromised by conspicuous modification, “highest morality” referred explicitly to the Bible. I’m curious about how many people in Canada have any clue as to where to even find “morality,” much less where to find it in its “highest form,” and then to actually take a stand for it. Canadians stand for such maniacal nonsense as the official “Gay Welcoming Whistler” for our 2010 Olympics. Hey, we’re all sinners, but do we really need official celebrations of certain variations of sin? Why do we not have a “Fornicators-and-Adulterers-Club Whistler Welcoming,” a “Teenagers-who-Do-Not-Keep-Their-Pants-On-and-Prefer-Abortion Welcoming,” or a “Shack-up-and-Ruin-a-Family-Society Welcoming” for the Olympics? My children do not really need to be exposed to a warm welcome from a particular ‘proud’ sexual group. In those ridiculous “old-fashioned” days, kids did not even learn about sex until they were teenagers. Now those parents who have some concern about strangers teaching sexuality to their children must preempt the school system to teach their six-year-olds about “homosexuality.” The so-called ’secular’ fools of our nation are working overtime to get various messages of sexual immorality to the kids in case, of course, they have that universal human tendency to be sexually immoral and require a whole lot of extra help in a culture that is so discriminatory against the perverse! Apparently, the universal strategy is to teach kids to be proud of their sin. Guess what, gays, you do not have a monopoly on sin or perversion– you are really not that special. We all need to be saved from the wretches we are.
We would really rather not be talking about sex with our tiny children, but we accept that compared to many Canadian parents, we are the strange ones– we read that big fairytale Bible that is the world’s most influential book, written across 1500 years by 40 authors, all witnessing to that One who remains the unchanging living witness in our hearts today. We would love to show unconditional love to our fellow sinners, while yet not compromising the truth or neglecting to show the kind of love that comes in the form of admonishment; meanwhile, our nation is ushering in Islam and Shariah law, which will see to it that the sexually immoral are beaten, whipped, and/or executed; they prefer not to defer wrath and punishment to their Allah-god. But Canadians do not talk about Islam, because it helps them believe that the infection really is not happening. Satan has told us that we create our own realities by dreams and wishes invented in our [deceitfully wicked] hearts. We generally appreciate that lie, because we would rather do anything than submit to the God we hate. Even feminists, of all people, find some benefit in collaborating with the preachers and victims of Islam. If they can work together at some attempt to take a swipe at Jesus Christ, they can always stab each other in the back later.
There is a problem here for the enemies of the King of kings: His kingdom is not of this world; therefore, policy/legal swipes at Christians do not touch His kingdom. Even Satan is not so stupid as to plot that kind of failing tactic. When you say that the age of Christianity is over, you will discover that it is just beginning. If this pathetic militant world has not even managed to get rid of those pesky Jews who always want their nation, how much more will it dramatically fail in attempts to stomp out Jesus Christ. He is not going away. When all is gone, He alone will remain.
From the Buffalo News
Found on Care 2 Make a Difference