I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, Yule, Festivus and Hanukkah. To help you get through this, two awesome version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” First up, in minor:
Ugh, Bill Donohue, crazed right-wing nut-job, credits his time in Pittsburgh, specifically his time with then Bishop Wuerl, as his reason for being involved with the hate group “Catholic League”
It’s a good theory, and it may be too much to hope for, but now that Disney owns LucasFilm, maybe there is a gay character in the Star Wars movies after all (spoilers).
Alright, November is coming to a close we’re into December, so I’ll have much more time to write here on the blog.
My old (sometimes current) stomping grounds of Farmington made it on the list of the most beautiful rural Pennsylvania towns. Maybe because of the work I did there, or maybe because of a heavy emphasis on Nemacolin, but I just don’t see it. It does have it’s charm, but just saying that it’s close to Ohiopyle and Fallingwater, maybe those should have been listed instead.
Surviving the World hits it out of the park with two lessons: Here, and here.
TransParent season 2 is coming back. It’s the only show I’ve ever binge watched, and I couldn’t recommend it any more highly:
Anti-gay bigots screamed that allow gays to marry would mean that (for some reason) the institution of marriage would collapse. Well, turns out they are (surprise!) dead wrong. Marriage rates (in 2014, the latest year with data) are up for the first time in years, and divorce rates are down.
By the way, a lot of this craziness stems from this: white Christians are no longer a majority (population that is, still a majority of power), and a lot of this is the freak out to having to share.
Alright, quick update before I head back into more writing for NaNoWriMo. First up, NYC will be hosting World Pride to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall:
Rand Paul recently said that gay people should stay in the closet if we want to work, that we don’t deserve employment protections. We don’t have nationwide or even statewide protection (in Pa.), but he still goes against the vast, vast majority of people in this country, but it’s a dangerous position that he holds.
The Mormon Church has decided that they will not baptize children who have gay parents….until they turn 18 and disown their parents. Because, honestly, I’m so exasperated that I can’t even come up with anything snarky. Fuck the Mormon church.
Speaking of, Fuck the city of Houston. They recently repealed their anti-discrimination ordinance (which also put protections in place for other groups such as veterans), because of a long series of lies. Dan Savage takes us through it, and how to fight and win in the future.
If you can believe it, this past month has been so crazy, I’m looking forward to NaNoWriMo so I get some extra time. Either way, here’s a quick update before I get started on my tenth (!) year of NaNoWriMo.
First up, in case you missed it, the poster for Episode VII:
And here’s a supercut of all the trailers put together:
I want to try this out next year for my jack-o-lantern (although this year I did Shy Guy from Nintendo, so it wouldn’t have really fit). Looks intense!
Remember, kids. The far right isn’t really “pro-life” (I mean, they’re really just anti-choice), they don’t want you to have sex. Except to make babies, but that’s it!
The Stonewall Riots in June of 1969 are what kicked off the modern equality movement. There were organizations, riots and work done beforehand, but the riots were what most people point to as the catalyst for where we are today, and the reason most Pride celebrations are in June, as the first march was in June of 1970 to commemorate the riots one year later.
Here is the poster, which kind of looks like a poster for a dance movie or some sort, but I think the style fits for the time:
The Stonewall Inn had a dirt floor, no running water, and was run by the mob. But it allowed dancing, which was a major draw, when the police raided that night and decided to round everyone up, the riots started.
The riots lasted for days, eventually bringing in sheer numbers of people from the surrounding neighborhood. But that night it began with drag queens, trans* people, people of color, lesbians and homeless youth. I’m sure there were some white gay men there, but as far as we (and history) knows, they weren’t throwing the first punches, bricks, overturning police cars or ripping parking meters out of the cement (but those did all happen).
The problem is, the movie (at least based on the trailer), doesn’t focus on those we owe everything to, but instead turns it into a story of some young, white, gay guys.
It’s absolutely absurd — you know, young people today aren’t stupid. They can read the history, they know that this is not the way it happened. These people can’t let it go! Everybody can’t be white! This is a country of different colors and people and thoughts and attitudes and feelings, and they try to make all of those the same for some reason.
Here’s the parody trailer, which sums it up very nicely:
The star, Jeremy Irvine defends the movie, saying it does justice to the historical event:
I saw the movie for the first time last week and can assure you all that it represents almost every race and section of society that was so fundamental to one of the most important civil rights movements in living history. Marsha P Johnson is a major part of the movie, and although first hand accounts of who threw the first brick in the riots vary wildly, it is a fictional black transvestite character played by the very talented @vlad_alexis who pulls out the first brick in the riot scenes. My character is adopted by a group of street kids whilst sleeping rough in New York. In my opinion, the story is driven by the leader of this gang played by @jonnybeauchamp who gives an extraordinary performance as a Puerto Rican transvestite struggling to survive on the streets. Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ character represents the Mattachine Society, who were at the time a mostly white and middle class gay rights group who stood against violence and radicalism.
And the director responds to the response to the trailer:
I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film – which is truly a labor of love for me – finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day.
If we are to believe the star and the director, which I like to think we can (considering the movie isn’t out yet), it appears as though the trailer was crafted in a way to make this movie more appealing to a mass audience: which sadly means white. If those two are telling the truth, and the movie does in fact show the true heroes of the first night of the riots, then I will have to side with Larry Kramer, especially since we can hardly expect there to be many movies about this subject to be produced, let alone get a wide release such as this film will enjoy.
I started writing this entry thinking I would be much more upset and ready to boycott the movie. But reading the quotes, and maybe I’m just being gullible, I hope that this will be a fair representation of the riots and the birth of this civil rights movement.
Matt Baume gives a great perspective:
However this movie turns out, it will be what the general public remembers for years to come as the true version of the riots, and that’s why there is such an importance to make sure it’s done right.
Check out a great column about the actual affects of the Ashley Madison hack. Not even discussed: the people put in jeopardy of being put to death: in some countries, “cheating” or being gay (AM ran a gay hook up site as well), is punishable by death, and now those people’s information are out as well.
Right after the Ashley Madison hack, the feds raided the offices of Rentboy. But should they have? Matt Baume explains:
Pennsylvania has introduced sweeping anti-LGBT discrimination legislation. You know, because even though I can get married, I can be denied being served at any business (job protections are covered under recent federal rulings, but they’re not permanent yet). Hopefully it can finally pass, Pa. is the only state in the northeast without these kinds of basic protections.
Somewhat related: a new survey finds that a third of young Americans don’t identify as completely straight. Which makes sense, for years, the conventional thinking was that women’s sexuality was more fluid, but recent studies have found that the same is true for men, but society pressured men to identify as straight.
Ignorant, hateful bakers in Oregon, who lost a lawsuit for refusing service to a gay couple and then smearing them (leading to death threats and harassment), have been raking in the money via crowdfudning (it’s the normal cycle: do something illegal against the queer community, get fined, cry about it online and rake in the money from other bigots across the country). Now, they’re sending cakes to LGBT organizations….with copies of a DVD about how horrible LGBT people and protections are. Fuckers.
For more information, let’s once again hand it over to Jon Oliver, because he nails it, this is required viewing:
Here is the latest list of the most homphobic colleges in the country, no surprise, Grove City tops the list, but I was surprised to see LeHigh and IUP on the list as well.
We joked while in Arizona about “the last cactus.” I think I found it:
All right, let’s see what we have today. First up, get the tissues. This makes a great point, we’ll never know what Matthew Sheperd would look like as an adult:
It’s not that Christians will have to perform gay weddings or have to get gay married. It’s not that their churches will be burned down or that they will be imprisoned. They won’t lose their jobs and they won’t be followed down the street or be harassed for what they believed. They simply will not be able to impose their beliefs on others nor restrict the secular rights that are conferred onto marriages by our government. It takes a powerfully twisted mind to translate that into the feelings of persecution so intense that it brings them to tears.
And for those who thought that Ohio Governor’s Kasich quote from the Republican debate was so wonderful, not so fast. We’re not begging for scraps. Basic dignity and acceptance should go without saying, any decent human can do that. We deserve the same rights as everyone else:
But let’s not confuse progress with praise until a candidate steps up to that podium and states, “Every citizen is created equal and, as President, I would make sure that everyone is treated equally.” We should not and must not cheer for anything less.
First up, pay attention because this is really important. Remember the anti-gay bakers that refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple? They got sued because of they harassed the couple, drug their name through the mud and released their contact information, leading to even more harassment and death threats. They’ve been claiming that they’re the real victims and have raised over $450,000 dollars (the fine was $135,000). Likewise, a county clerk is Kentucky is refusing to do his job (by not issuing marriage certificates to same-sex couples). The governor has personally talked to him to tell him to either resign or do his job. But he’s claiming religious freedom. Now we just wait to see how much money he’ll raise for himself once he gets fired. The cycle just keeps repeating.
I’ve been on my soapbox for years about the role institutionalized discrimination plays in the epidemic of youth LGBT suicides, and a Methodist pastor, fired for being gay, says the same thing.
The real price of being gay and belonging to an evangelical church. Long, but worth a read.
Now it turns out that evangelicals had a third condition for their pet gay celibates: They had to reject gay sex, gay relationships, and gay marriage not just for themselves but for all gays and lesbians.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that existing civil rights law bars sexual orientation-based employment discrimination—a groundbreaking decision to advance legal protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers…. The independent commission addressed the question of whether the ban on sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars anti-LGB discrimination in a complaint brought by a Florida-based air traffic control specialist against Transportation Sec. Anthony Foxx. The ruling—approved by a 3-2 vote of the five-person commission—applies to federal employees’ claims directly, but it also applies to the entire EEOC, which includes its offices across the nation that take and investigate claims of discrimination in private employment.
Make no mistake, this will end up before the courts, but this is a huge deal, one that we’ve been fighting for for even longer than marriage and has failed in every single session of Congress. This is huge.
