Tag: LGBT

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Nashville man pretends to be gay for a year to understand impact of gay label

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Nashville resident Timothy Kurek had long understood homosexuality to be sinful, but when a friend was rejected by her family for coming out, he sought to understand how gay people are treated in society through an unusual experiment.

After a full year in which he posed as gay to everyone in his life, he is now writing a book about how much he learned about anti-gay discrimination and stigma.

Today, Kurek explained to MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts that the book is not about what it’s like to be gay, but about how gay people are treated. He said the experience “altered my faith and challenged my beliefs,” apologizing for his past disapproval of homosexuality.

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Craigslist ad – buying my son “more nice things” if he chooses to be straight

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“I am selling my son’s MacBook Pro 15 inch.  He found out that there is going to be a new MacBook so I will be buying that for him.  I bought it last summer so it isn’t even a year old yet.  It is on pretty decent shape.  I am pretty firm on the price.”

“Just a footnote, I don’t want to get a ton of messages from you guys, saying that I am spoiling my son and turning him into an entitled monster.  There is a backstory that you aren’t even aware of.  My son was committing homosexual acts and got caught in the act.  We made a deal that if he chose to be straight that we  would buy him more nice things.  So don’t message me saying that I am a bad parent for spoiling him.  It’s quite the opposite, I am a good parent and I’m working with him to correct his problem.”

I checked the URL and the ad has been flagged and taken down.  Not sure if it was serious or not…

UPDATE: It now appears this “ad” is the work of a young man who apparently posts things on Craigslist to see what kind of “passionate” response the ads will bring.  More here.

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Nevada elects first gay woman to state legislature

Nevada Stonewall Democrats are reporting that Patricia Spearman made history as the first ever openly Gay woman to be elected to the Nevada State Legislature. Pastor Pat is also the second African American woman elected to serve in the Nevada State Legislature. She is the current Stonewall Democrats of Southern Nevada Vice-Chairwoman.

Her victory in the Democratic primary means that she will serve representing Senate District 1 as there was no Republican entrant in the heavily Democratic district. Pastor Pat scored a landslide victory with votes from Nevadans who were just plain fed up with the Anti-Equality, Anti-Choice, Anti-Environment Senator John Lee.

More info here.

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Colleges with a history of Gay Pride

In honor of Gay Pride Month, the folks over at BestCollegesOnline.com have compiled a list of “10 Colleges with a History of Gay Pride.” 

The list includes colleges that took pioneering steps to be inclusive and respectful to the LGBT community when the concept was still new.

Because the country is still slowly growing to accept sexual and gender identity minorities, this means many college students head off to their higher education careers isolated, lonely, depressed — or worse. Most campuses these days offer some semblance of a support structure to ensure a safe experience for all LGBT students, and queer studies courses, minors, and majors have started popping up in catalogs across the country. And it’s all thanks to some of the following pioneers, who took a chance on equality when such things still stood as highly taboo.

In this day and age where younger LGBT folks may not understand how ground-breaking some of these steps were, it’s interesting to look back and see how the slow march forward to equality began.

Check out the list at BestCollegesOnline.com

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New American Apparel t-shirt is GAY O.K.

From The Advocate: American Apparel’s next T-shirt slogan – “GAY O.K.” – is now on sale for Pride month, following its popular “Legalize Gay” series.

GLAAD worked with the retailer on casting for the new ad campaign.

American Apparel employees will also join GLAAD staff in LGBT Pride marches across the country, including in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Participants will each receive an AA tee, courtesy of American Apparel.

Transgender model Isis King will be part of the ads, a first for the company that GLAAD President Herndon Graddick praised as “bold leadership by being among just a few companies to include transgender people in its national ads.”

“It’s time for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, to accept each other and thrive in harmony,” said Marsha Brady, a creative director for American Apparel. “We hope everyone comes out and joins us.”

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Dallas Pastor: “He is the President of the USA not the Pastor”

Awesome, courageous and inspiring sermon by Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III of the Friendship-West Baptist Church.

The Reverend addressed fellow pastors and members of his congregation for their outrage at President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality while the congregation stood up and shouted their disapproval at him.

From Haynes’ sermon:

“You should have seen preachers just scurrying and hurrying to call a conference call to call out the President for what he had declared as a personal opinion. He said it was a personal opinion. But whatever you like to ostracize other people it’s because there’s a fear that you have yourself, and the fear that you have finds itself rooted in an ignorance of other people. Or in a projection of your issues. Either there’s ignorance or there is a projection of your issues…It really blows my mind how outraged you are. You are so outraged over what the President said. First of all, take a chill pill. Take a deep breath, everything’s gonna be all right.”

“Have you ever read the Gospel and heard Jesus say anything about homosexuality?…Black folk can’t even deal with homosexuality because we got issues with sexuality. And because we got issues with sexuality we can’t have a healthy discussion about homosexuality. Why, why do you get so upset?”

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Denmark passes marriage equality

Denmark’s Parliament today voted that same-sex couples there can have a full marriage ceremony in church, rather than having truncated, “less-than” ceremonies.

From ABC News:
Denmark’s Parliament has approved a law allowing same-sex couples to get married in formal church weddings instead of the short blessing ceremonies that the state’s Lutheran Church currently offers.
Lawmakers voted 85-24 on Thursday to change Denmark’s marriage laws.
The law takes effect June 15 and will put Denmark on par with countries such as Iceland and Sweden that allow full wedding ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples.

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ExxonMobil votes down LGBT employment protections

ExxonMobil shareholders have voted down a proposal to add gay and transgender employees to the Irving-based corporation’s nondiscrimination policy.

Meeting at the Meyerson Symphony Center in the Dallas Arts District, the ExxonMobil shareholders voted 80 percent to 20 percent against a resolution asking the corporation to amend “its written equal employment opportunity policy to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and to substantially implement the policy.”

Mobil was one of the first companies in the world to include sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy and offer benefits to the same-sex partners of gay employees. But ExxonMobil rescinded those policies after the merger.

ExxonMobil maintains the lowest possible rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, with a minus-25.
(source)