At times fascinating and irritating.
Ann: “I wish everyone could have just been in our pockets.”
Video: Slapped awake
YouTube description: “I told my wife to wake me up every morning with a sharp slap about the face. These are the results.”
Ok.
Hmm…
Michael, my husband, wakes with shock no matter how gently you awaken him. I’d be shot for this, I think.
(via Towleroad)
I love me some TRAIN
Pop/rock band Train (big hit “Hey, Soul Sister” among many others) has decided to ‘wait and see’ if they will still participate in the Boy Scouts Jamboree this summer due to the ongoing discrimination against gays in scouting. From the Train website:
“When we booked this show for the Boy Scouts of America we were not aware of any policy barring openly gay people from participation within the organization. Train strongly opposes any kind of policy that questions the equality of any American citizen. We have always seen the BSA as a great and noble organization. We look forward to participating in the Jamboree this summer, as long as they make the right decision before then.”
Let’s hear it for TRAIN! Let’s hear it for the good guys!
And while we’re ‘hearing,’ let’s take a listen to their recent hit “Bruises.”
Michelangelo Signorile on Cardinal Keith O’Brien
Michelangelo nails the hypocrisy best:
“Powerful closeted gay men, driven by an almost pathological fear of being exposed, many times engage in two often destructive activities: 1) speaking out against gays and homosexuality, or courting those who are anti-gay, in a desperate attempt to show they are not gay themselves, and 2) seeking sex through risky channels, feeling they have no choice because they’re unable to freely have sexual encounters via public, every day social situations, like dating or going to bar or public places.
“We’ve seen this over and over again: the homophobic hypocrite caught trying to have sex in public restroom stalls or posting nude photos online. Another way the powerful and closeted seek sex, however, is by engaging in workplace sexual harassment and abuse against men who are compromised (sometimes, but not always, closeted and conflicted themselves) and fearful of being fired from their jobs if they rebuff sexual advances.” – Michelangelo Signorile, writing for the Huffington Post.
Marriage News Watch – March 4, 2013
The ultimate anti-gay marriage ad
Wow.
The only thing scarier than this ad is the fact that THIS is what the icky folks really believe…
Sad.
Rhode Island: 60% support marriage equality
A new poll conducted by the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, found that 60.4 percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to legally wed, a number that is nearly identical to the findings of a May 2009 poll by Brown.
The poll found 26.1 percent of respondents were opposed to same-sex marriage.
The poll surveyed 593 Rhode Island voters from Feb. 21 to 23, and has a 4 point margin of error.
Cardinal Keith O’Brien admits to inappropriate sexual conduct
“Ye who protesteth the loudest, do it the mosteth!”
From the Advocate: Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who resigned last week as the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, has admitted to inappropriate sexual behavior earlier in his career, a week after vigorously denying allegations involving three young priests and a seminarian.
“I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal,” O’Brien, who is noted for his virulently antigay remarks, said in a statement posted online today, The New York Times reports.
Last weekend The Observer, a U.K. newspaper, reported on allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with the four men, with the earliest instance occurring in 1980. “The first was a seminarian when Cardinal O’Brien, then a priest, served as a powerful supervisory figure in two Scottish seminaries, the Times reports. “The others were young priests; it is not clear exactly when in the 1980s they say they were subject to his unwanted advances.”
Read more at the Advocate.
US House: Violence Against Women Act passes 286-138
From the Human Rights Campaign: The US House has passed the Senate-approved version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that includes important protections for LGBT individuals.
The bill was passed 78 to 22 in a bipartisan Senate vote and today’s 286 to 138 vote included 87 Republicans.
Today’s victory marks a rare occasion when Republicans and Democrats came together to ensure explicit protections in the federal code for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” It is also the first time that any federal non-discrimination provisions include the LGBT community.
President Obama has pledged to sign the bill which prohibits any program or activity funded by the bill from discriminating against a victim based on their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. It also explicitly includes LGBT victims in two key VAWA grant programs.
Former President of Poland says gays should “adjust to smaller things”
Former President of Poland (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Lech Walesa raised created a bit of a firestorm this week when he said that gays have no right to a prominent role in politics and that as a minority they need to “adjust to smaller things.”
“They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority,” he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. “I don’t agree to this and I will never agree to it.”
“A minority should not impose itself on the majority,” Walesa said.
Disappointing that Walesa would see things this way considering he was Poland’s first democratic-era president.
(via ABC News)