Chimamanda Adichie and Spencer Hastings Are Going to Hooters with Fortune Feimster this Sunday Funday

Wrodsssss

PLL’s Troian Bellisario Is Playing Gay

Spencer’s batting for our team now.

***Flawless

Chimamanda Adichie is speaking up for Nigeria’s LGBT population.

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The new law that criminalizes homosexuality is popular among Nigerians. But it shows a failure of our democracy, because the mark of a true democracy is not in the rule of its majority but in the protection of its minority – otherwise mob justice would be considered democratic. The law is also unconstitutional, ambiguous, and a strange priority in a country with so many real problems. Above all else, however, it is unjust. Even if this was not a country of abysmal electricity supply where university graduates are barely literate and people die of easily-treatable causes and Boko Haram commits casual mass murders, this law would still be unjust.  We cannot be a just society unless we are able to accommodate benign difference, accept benign difference, live and let live. We may not understand homosexuality, we may find it personally abhorrent but our response cannot be to criminalize it.

Queer Queries

When it comes to lady laws, things are looking up (if you look at them in the right direction).

+ In North Carolina, an 1891 law that prohibited trans women from legally changing their names has finally been outdone. Two trans women this week were finally recognized by the state for who they really are.

+ The marriage equality movement continues to seemingly outpace every other social need for queers, with Oregon backing off its ban on same-sex marriage and 9 Colorado’s couples fighting back against theirs. In Illinois, Cook County’s queers are finally able to get married.

Paperwork in hand, Lisa Martin and Vicki Kenyon waited in line at the court office, casual in jeans and sweaters. After 13 years together, the couple were relieved to “upgrade the relationship status,” Kenyon said, from a civil union to marriage.

“It’s just kind of neat to be part of the first people doing it,” said Kenyon, 46, adding that because she travels often for work, “having that legal protection is really important to us.”

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+ Uganda’s president can’t make up his mind about the nation’s anti-gay legislation, but right now the odds are slightly in our favor.

+ F*ck Arizona: last week, four states rejected outright discrimination when bills justifying anti-LGBT behavior were introduced to various legislatures.

WATCH: Fortune Feimster Goes to Hooters

Or at least she talked about it on Conan.

Rub Douglas’ Belly Plz

Just give him a good rub. YOU KNOW YOU WANNA.

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Carmen

Carmen spent six years at Autostraddle, ultimately serving as Straddleverse Director, Feminism Editor and Social Media Co-Director. She is now the Consulting Digital Editor at Ms. and writes regularly for DAME, the Women’s Media Center, the National Women’s History Museum and other prominent feminist platforms; her work has also been published in print and online by outlets like BuzzFeed, Bitch, Bust, CityLab, ElixHER, Feministing, Feminist Formations, GirlBoss, GrokNation, MEL, Mic and SIGNS, and she is a co-founder of Argot Magazine. You can find Carmen on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr or in the drive-thru line at the nearest In-N-Out.

Carmen has written 919 articles for us.

11 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing the The Head and the Heart video – I think – because, you know, I hadn’t cried about anything yet today…

    • Ha! The article linked above the vid is a good antidote, though – as it reads like a Perd Hapley newscast. :)

  2. “We may not understand homosexuality, we may find it personally abhorrent but our response cannot be to criminalize it.”

    I love this. It’s such a simple concept but one that gets lost in the fog of all the arguing. You don’t have to personally like, advocate for, understand, or accept something to defend it. Adichie is awesome.

    • I don’t love the fact that she says it’s totally okay to find queer people abhorrent as long as you don’t try to throw them in jail for it. Since, you know, it’s not okay. We’re not abhorrent.

    • I think that’s a statement that only someone who gets the attitudes about LGBT people in Nigeria’s culture can make. As in, let’s start with basics: given that this country has a history of homophobia, and the majority believes that Westerners are trying to recruit in Nigeria, the BARE MINIMUM they should do is not treat it like a criminal offense.

  3. The Head and the Heart’s video is really well done, and the music is beautiful, and well, Spencer. *sigh.*
    I actually feel weird about commenting on that video while all that crap is going down in Uganda and Nigeria.
    That’s just really messed up and I am glad that Ms. Adichie found such well written and true words to say.

  4. “…and a strange priority in a country with so many real problems.” So relevant it hurts.

    (But in a different way than that The Head and the Heart video hurt.)

  5. Can Troian Bellisario move on to major film roles now? Please. I want more of her in my life and I can’t get through an episode of Pretty Little Liars anymore.

  6. Oh, hell, did Arizona actually sign it into law? The governor, i mean, did they sign it? Because i know it got that far & the bill just needed the governor’s signature.

    Also, the tagline for this article, & how it says “belly rubs later”– can’t we have, you know, belly rubs now? To help with the struggling? Consensual tummy rubs to get through the struggles. (Ishouldhavebeenbornawombat;pleasedon’tmindme)

Comments are closed.