Also. Also. Also: Anti-Gay GOP Debate Rhetoric & Retro Homophobia to Tickle Your Funnybone

+ Fox News’s Dr. Keith Ablow says that “As a psychiatrist who has helped adolescents and adults make sense of their sexuality, I am convinced that, for many people, environment and social influences do indeed impact sexual desires and sexual behavior.” He does this to liken the condition of homosexuality to that of pedophiles, who apparently become pedophiles because Vogue uses very young sexualized models, just like all the people who become transgender after seeing Chaz Bono on the teevee. Really honestly, that’s what his thing is about. Read it.

+ While we’re dealing with Retro ideas about Homosexuality, Brain Pickings has an hour-long documentary called “The Homosexuals” which aired on CBS in 1967. So you will see how far we have come.

+ Wanna see all the anti-gay shit from that GOP debate in two easy minutes? DUH!
++

+ Could GOPROUD hate itself any more than they already do? Yes! In addition to their campaign against “the gay left” they have added Ann Coulter as an Honorary Chair.

Gloria Steinem says reality stars don’t empower women, is probably right.

+ On what’s going down with Butch Voices and Butch Nation, by Sugarbutch.

+ New Balance got into some trouble when it was revealed that their Chairman Jim Davis made a private donation of $500,000 to Mitt Romney. It’s now released a letter on its facebook page to re-state its position on gay rights and distance themselves from Davis’s donation.

+ All New York City public middle and high schools will now have sex ed.

The Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBT youth has been given a $620,000 grant and an additional 20 beds, bringing their total number of beds to 77. Their waiting list is still about 180 people.

+ A collection of poems from Phillip Lavine because he is the poet laureate.

+Liberal Swedish politicians are fighting a law that requires “sterilization for individuals who undergo sex reassignment surgeries.”

+ Staceyann Chin on A Single Lesbian’s Quest for Motherhood.

Married gay couples in Australia are officially being recognized in the national census like real people.

Lesbian swimmer Diana Nyad attempted to swim 103 miles from Havana to Key West without the use of a shark cage. The 61-year-old was unsuccessful, citing bad winds and currents as her reason for stopping after 29 hours. Nyad Tweeted, “It felt like this was my moment. I don’t feel like a failure at all. But we needed a little more luck.”

+ “When a number of gay API men and women started showering with a fire hydrant in front of the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office in New York last Sunday, they weren’t looking for a way to beat the heat. The group was getting wet to protest Hong Kong’s recent decision to hold an “ex-gay” conversion workshop for its social workers. ”

+ Rick Santorum is Being Crazy as his fight with Dan Savage gets more ridiculous, he makes a napkin analogy and also a water analogy and also was really special during the debates.

+ A West Virginia LGBT advocacy group is launching a state-wide campaign in hopes of establishing effective anti-bullying polices. West Virginia currently has no discrimination protection at all for sexual orientation or gender identity, so this is a pretty big deal.

+ As a part of the ongoing “Our Family” series, Elixher interviewed a lesbian couple that is raising a daughter together about blended families and co-parenting with a child’s biological father. It’s cute.

Behind the scenes of Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale Tour. This is all I ever wanted in life.

A Very Brady Blog. Magical.

+ Gay rights group kicks off tour in Utah!

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22 Comments

  1. $500K?! wtf?! New Balance is one of the few companies who was actually designing and manufacturing their shoes in an ethical and “pro-American (and UK) worker” way.

    This makes me feel like Baby in Dirty Dancing:
    “You were right, Johnny, you can’t win no matter what you do!”

  2. Things Ann Coulter has said:

    When asked about New York’s passage of marriage equality, Coulter said that if she were to say something good about it, it would be that “[m]aybe they will shut up about it,” adding, “I want ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ for all of society.” … “I not only don’t want open gays in the military, I don’t want open girls in the military. That’s the issue I told the conservative gays to take up.” Asked who she wants in the military, Coulter said, “Heterosexual men. The same sort of men who can be firemen.”

    That’s great Ann. Now get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!

  3. It’s just really sad, in 2011, to watch the republican candidates go off like that about gay relationships and equate them to polygamy and whatnot. (I think the saddest part of that video was when the room of audience immediately applauded when Romney? stated that a marriage must be defined again on a federal level to be between a man and a woman.)

    That video was also played on Democracy Now! today during an interview with a gay couple – one of them is a U.S. citizen, another an Australian who is about to be deported. The U.S. citizen has AIDS and his primary care-taker is his husband, but as of now they only have until August 28th or something until he could be sent back to Australia. Here’s the link to the interview: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/12/aids_afflicted_us_citizen_urges_obama

  4. I just love this feature, I have about 10 tabs open on my browser.
    That Staceyann Chin essay is so relevant to my interests right now!

      • E, thanks for the laid back, very soothing reply. I didn’t expect to read something like that about ‘Swedish-type’ (haha) people given their good rep about such things. Ok, I feel better now.

        • No worries. A motion is being brought forward in the Riksdag. 6 out of 8 parties oppose the law and they hold 310 out of 349 seats or roughly a 90% majority. The two wacko parties, the Christian Democrats and the Swedish Democrats (who are against abortion and immigrants respectively) have little to no say in social matters of this kind.

  5. Also: all NYC public middle and high schools didn’t ALREADY have sex ed? Am I the only one who finds that highly surprising?

    And ALSO: it is so absurd that parents get to opt their children out of lessons on birth control. There is zero wrong with teaching a kids about birth control methods; there is so much wrong with willfully withholding that information.

    • where I live, the only sex ed that our students get is if we bring in Planned Parenthood to teach a Safer Choices class through our after-school program.

    • Someone I know works in schools, and was telling me about a kid who didn’t know how to put a condom on, and was actually trying to fit his testicles into the condom. And people can’t figure out why kids are getting pregnant. I wish people would wake up.

    • I’m surprised as well; I’m from NZ and Sex Ed classes are a rite of passage for year 11 (or 5th form) students. I guess I thought NY was more progressive in that sense. However, thank god they do now, at least, because shit, what ignorance we’re breeding by witholding that kind of information.

  6. Re: GOP video.

    This is the kind of the thing that makes me worry about the future of this country. Not only because they are so vehemently opposed to same-sex marriages, but because these comments are indicative of a level of hatred and discrimination that I truly cannot understand. Instead of wanting people to have loving relationships regardless of their gender and number of partners, these candidates want to control the lives and experiences of all those that differ from their ideal of a monogamous, heterosexual couple.

  7. My first thoughts while viewing that video… “Isn’t that RuPaul? Wait, no. No that’s totally not his name. RON Paul.” What a brain fart.

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