Hello and welcome to our current events Daily Fix! If you want to go grab another cup of coffee before we start it’s okay, I’ll wait.
News Fix
Law of the Land
+ Last Thursday, in what is thought to be a “milestone compromise,” Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed into law a bipartisan bill that extends employment and housing discrimination protections to LGBT people. But there’s a huge catch: religious organizations and their business affiliates are exempt. Womp. Womp. HRC digs it and says it’s an “incredible and collaborative victory” while many other LGBT advocates argue the bill sets a precedent for other conservative-leaning states to pass similar legislation that create legal loop-holes for religious institutions to discriminate against LGBT people.
Gizzy Fowler
+Mallory Antoine Porter turned himself into police on Tuesday after being a suspect in the murder of 24-year-old black trans woman Gizzy Fowler, who was fatally shot by her car in Nashville.
+ Remember the whole Chick-fil-A debacle in 2012 when CEO Dan Cathy said that redefining marriage was “inviting God’s judgment on our nation” and everyone realized that Chick-fil-A had been donating millions of dollars to conservative organizations fighting same-sex marriage? Well apparently, ever since then, it’s House Republicans’ go-to office food.
“Evidently so: Since Cathy made his controversial comments, House Republicans have spent nearly $13,000 in taxpayer money ordering Chick-fil-A, according to expenditure reports filed through July 2014 (the latest available). That’s the equivalent of 3,900 original chicken sandwiches, and it represents a 37-fold increase over the paltry $345 the House GOP had spent on Chick-fil-A the previous three years.”
+ Here’s a quick little video about the ridiculous (in a I-can’t-believe-you’re-in-charge kinda way) anti-gay marriage laws conservative lawmakers are trying to pass in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama.
+ An Alabama judge granted two lesbians a divorce, even though the state doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage anymore.
Hate Speech
+ Facebook released new community guidelines this week that cracks down on hate speech.
“Facebook removes hate speech, which includes content that directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, or gender identity, or serious disabilities or diseases…Organizations and people dedicated to promoting hatred against these protected groups are not allowed a presence on Facebook. As with all of our standards, we rely on our community to report this content to us.”
+ Elton John and LGBT activists are boycotting Dolce & Gabbana after the two designers expressed their opposition to gay couples having children in a magazine interview. The two men were in a relationship for 23 years before splitting up and said in the past they would never get married because it was against their traditional, Catholic upbringing and beliefs.
+ A lesbian couple’s farewell kiss at Paris’s Gare du Nord was interrupted when a train guard, a Thalys International’s employee, yelled at them to stop and told them their kissing couldn’t be tolerated. Thalys International has featured same-sex couples in their advertising in the past so the women called for LGBT activists to hold the company accountable.
Religion
+ Denise L. Eger is the “first openly gay president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the rabbinical arm of Reform Judaism.” She’s worked in synagogues since she was 12, about the same age she realized she was a lesbian.
+ Members of this prominent evangelical church in San Francisco don’t have to be celibate anymore as a precondition to joining. Amen.
I hope they drop their Chik-fil-a all over their D&G shirts and stain them
Yikes, Dolce and Gabbana’s comments are mostly just sad if they were a couple for 23 years.
Did they have the support Chik-fil-a days all over the place back in 2012, or was that just here in the South? Ugh.
I’m glad that FB has released new guidelines– but I’ll be interested to see how enforcement works out.
They had them in the midwest, too. I know because a good friend of mine went to one in Indianapolis, and took a bunch of photos that she sent to me as “proof” that it was just to stand up for free speech. “Not one person there that day said anything anti-gay!” she said. See? Proof!
We’re not close anymore.
Well unfortunately I am in a business where I have to sell D&G(I own a perfume shop), as it’s a big seller for us. It really boggles the mind that in this day in age we still have gay people hating on others. Sure, my personal belief is we should abolish marriage, but that doesn’t mean I am not pro family and I am not going to support my fellow queers who chose to get married. These clowns are just ridiculous.
Maybe it’s just that I live in a red state, largely surrounded by other red states, but does anyone else feel like there’s a backlash going on? Like marriage equality seems like it’s just about a done deal (fingers crossed re: Supreme Court this summer), but Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, etc. seem indicative of a general temper tantrum in response. Maybe I’m just a pessimist though.
HOW WILL I SURVIVE AND FEED MY FAMILY IF I HAVE TO BOYCOTT DOLCE & GABBANA WHAT WILL I WEAR I WILL BE NAKED EVERYTHING IS OVER
About those comments from Dolce & Gabanna, maybe we need to understand where are they coming from.
Italy is a country where some judges said, in 1999, that a woman can’t be raped because she was wearing tight jeans.
Maybe it takes a long time to become a rational human being there.
Maybe some lines about this #PlettPutMeHere? Florida is trying to go there, being the socially advanced state which is.
Oh, Chick-fil-A. Why does hate chicken taste so good?
At least at school, all profits from our Chick-fil-A go into our Pride Empowerment Fund. Thank you, Dining Services and Sodexo!
We in Utah have been trying to get anti-discrimination laws passed for years. Then all of a sudden after gay marriage is legalized, the LDS Church comes out and supports/ proposes its anti-discrimination bill. So then everyone is like yeah for the Church, and all the republican in the state are like yes we have permission to vote for this in to law. Only to find out that the Church is using something that will eventually happen anyway as a way to protect its self, and ensure that it doesn’t have to follow that law. So then we are like no! This is just a lump of coal placed into a Christmas stocking, and the politics that has stopped such laws in the pass is now the force that voted it through. The most terrible thing about is that my almost all Mormon family and neighbors sees this as proof that LDS church is non-discriminatory, and loving towards the LGBT community. It’s sick. It’s also so sad to see such blatant influence from a religious body over the government in our state and a large population of the state either is in denial about how strong the influence is, or even worse that see it as a good thing that should happen more often. The people call it religious freedom, or state’s rights, or the rights of the people, but they are so blind to see that the only true religious freedom, or any freedom of rights must come from a government that is separated from church. Anything other than the separation of church and state is a violation of the very thing they use to justify their position and actions.