I could probably talk about this over at the King of Spades, but as it turns out, schools with anti-homophobia policies are safer…for all their students. Amazing.
But then again, according to Justice Scalia, we’re an “invented” minority, and thus don’t deserve equal rights.. I wonder when I first came into being?
And here’s the three articles that make me furious. An Iraq vet was booed at a city council meeting…because he’s gay.
A church in Tennessee kicks out a family…for supporting their daughter, who just happens to be a lesbian.
And lastly, an interracial couple gets assaulted, and has homophobic slurs thrown at them (they had been out with a gay friend), in New York City, which has this rash of homophobic attacks lately.
Well, this has been a depressing post. In happier news, I’m heading to a reading of “The Birdcage” tomorrow as a fundraiser for the Zoo (the flamingo enclosure, specifically), and this Saturday is the City of Play Festival. Come downtown to play some new games and run around downtown, it will be fun! And if the games aren’t fun, we’ll make it fun!
Alright, let’s see what I have going on today. First up, before the Windsor and Perry rulings by SCOTUS, the Voting Rights Act was gutted. Justice Ginsberg summed it up well:
Also in the news, was Wendy Davis, who, with the help of other Democrats and the citizens of Texas, filibustered an anti-choice bill in Texas. And while I think that so many of the “three strikes” used to stop her filibuster were Republicans stretching the rules, they still (generally) played by the rules, except for not voting on the third and then trying to change the congressional record to show they voted before midnight. But my favorite moment of the night was the fifteen minutes of the citizens screaming nonstop to stop the bill. Check out Slog’s coverage here.
A great ad via Norway (it’s okay if you only speak English):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBiW5WGtcTI
The ad campaign from Italy for their alzheimer’s foundation, brilliant and moving.
And what is being called the best coupon in history. If I wasn’t lactose-intolerant, I would agree.
A few more follow-ups from the DOMA and Prop 8 cases. YouTube put together their #ProudToLove campaign:
Dan Savage hits it out of the park with a few articles. First up, “I Can Die Now,” which gets to the heart of why the Windsor case was so important, and what people take for granted.
And while they didn’t lose a single thing, we can celebrate what we’ve won, including a man, thirty minutes after the rulings came out that was saved from being deported:
At 10:30 a.m. EDT this morning in a New York Immigration Court, attorneys from our law firm (Masliah Soloway) requested and were granted a continuance in removal (deportation) proceedings for a Colombian gay man married to an American citizen for whom we had filed a marriage-based green card petition last year. A copy of the 77-page Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor was delivered to the court by our summer intern, Gabe, who ran five blocks and made it in time for the decision to be submitted to the Immigration Judge and to serve a copy on the Immigration & Customs Enforcement Assistant Chief Counsel. DOMA is DEAD and it had its first impact on a binational couple within 30 minutes of the Supreme Court ruling.
And of course, if you haven’t heard yet, Brian Sims, who was trying to speak on the Pa. House floor about the rulings, was silenced by the representative from Cranberry. He’s garnered national attention for “speaking against God’s will” as the bigot from Cranberry said. He keeps pushing for a non-discrimination ordinance and marriage equality, we’ll see how far he can get.
Garfunkle and Oates are back with “The Loophole.” Sadly, this is a real thing, and they are of course, pointing out the absurdity of it. Not at all safe for work, or for easily offended eyes. But wroth it if you get to the end to see the list of other rules they ignore:
That’s it for today, but I’ll be back soon with more. Have a great one!
