neverbeuseless

Just outside Caguas, Puerto Rico, the body of a gay teenager, 19-year-old George Steven Lopez Mercado, was found decapitated, dismembered, and burned. The police officer in charge of the case said on television that "people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen[.]"

A full story and links to more coverage, in English and Spanish, is here. Puerto Rico is part of the United States; a police officer treating any murder with such a cavalier attitude is unacceptable.

Awhile back, I posted this

Please go read it and return.

So. That bike got stolen, which sucks.

But also, I have a girlfriend.

This post was about her, two days before the official start to it all.

Sorry I didn't update you sooner.

Here I am again.

I'm not promising that I'll be posting as regularly as I used to, but some things need to be here and not posted on my Tumblr (which is where I've been unloading lately). The thing is, with Tumblr, I am a little more apprehensive about posting a long rant since there isn't a way to put the entry behind a cut (just yet, it's being developed). So, here I am.

I've gotten pretty good at avoiding people. It's basically my new hobby. Not everyone is being ignored and I do have good reason to exclude some of these people from my life, but mostly I just start feeling guilty and then I don't even know what to say to people when I do get back in touch with them. Yes, I could start with: I've been sick for two weeks. Legit. I have been feeling like shitty shit shit for much longer than I should, but that isn't the real reason why I'm not calling people back.

There are things I need to sort-out, things that I need to take care of and the people I've shut-out are the people who prod, who just need to know everything that's going on and I don't want to have those conversations.

I hate this because this is what my father does.

Ugh.

Is it true there was almost no police brutality against people who voted protested it?

I've ran into multiple links of cases of police brutality against protesters, but I have almost no evidence of the opposite. A tiny bit of background: I am anti-marriage (anti heterosexual marriage also) but not anti-gay at all. So naturally I was confused HOW to feel about proposition 8. Anyways I just want to know if there was almost no police brutality against the prop 8 voters, as compared to the police brutality against people who protested it. I assume this would be the best place to ask.

Sorry if this is about something that happened a year ago but I'm really curious. I originally couldn't make my mind up HOW I felt about prop 8, but if this is true I'm going to be deeply disturbed by it.

Edited due to confusion.

This has been the case for almost two weeks.
Yesterday I woke-up with a yeast infection.
And then today's new development: a sore throat.

The Parliament of Uganda is considering a law which would impose the death penalty for homosexuality. The capital punishment part probably won't make it into the final bill, but it'll be likely that even the discussion of homosexuality in Uganada will be an imprisonable offense, as will the failure to report acts of anal sex.

Read the whole sad story in this article from The Economist.

Worse yet, this may set off a trend in sub-Saharan Africa.

Thoughts on this?

http://www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000011452.cfm

Maine Churches Threatened Over Marriage Support

by Nima Reza, reporter

Opponents of Question 1 call on activists to turn churches in to the IRS in an attempt to revoke tax-exempt status.

Gay activists are encouraging people to report churches to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for supporting the effort to restore one man, one woman marriage in the recent election. According to the Maine Marriage Equality Web site, churches should be singled out for IRS investigation and possible revocation of the tax-exempt status.

The site provides information on how to file a complaint with the IRS, complaint forms, and address and fax information for the government entity.

Ken Graves, senior pastor at Calvary Chapel in Bangor, said they welcome the challenge.

"We know what the law is, what we're allowed to do," he said. "We've acted within the context of the law. We've directly consulted the ethics commission here in the state of Maine with regard to our political involvement."

Graves said they must stand up for biblical values.

"We just refuse to be held hostage, and held silent with the threat of the removal of our tax-exempt status," he said. "It's not the most important thing."

Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), said his group is offering free legal assistance to any church that becomes a target of the IRS.

"Churches and pastors have a right to support or oppose legislative efforts directly," he said, "as long it constitutes an insubstantial part of what they do overall."

He said the threat by homosexual activists is baseless.

"The IRS has established very clear guidelines and procedures on this issue," he said. "Supporting traditional marriage through a ballot initiative never even comes close to the threshold under the IRS rules."

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

( Rest of the article )

Essentially: The Catholic Church threatens to withdraw all its services in D.C. if the marriage equality legislation passes into law, protesting against the possibility that it would no longer be allowed to discriminate against the LGBTQ (as it receives public funds).

Interesting story. He says it's because "I've always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer. I really don't feel that there's currently liberty and justice for all." Apparently he asked his parents if it was against the law to not do the pledge.

Now, I give the kid credit for taking a principled stand, and not backing down when an adult got on him for it. But I wonder what our reaction would be if it was a child who wasn't reciting the pledge because gays could marry in some parts of the country. I doubt we'd think it's cute or awesome or brave, and I imagine we'd come to the conclusion that their parents were behind it.

So, what do you think?

I'd like to say there are no hard feelings...but it doesn't really matter.
I wonder if i should have said something, but staying silent seemed like the right thing to do.
I wish i didn't think so much about these things.
I guess I'm just always afraid of offending...but not so much in this case.
maybe it's just a reflex.
we all had a good time after all.

In somewhat surprising news, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has endorsed anti-discrimination measures in housing and employment on the basis of sexual orientation, in Salt Lake City. The law passed unanimously.

It certainly doesn't absolve them of their previous (and continued) stands that are harmful to the LGBT community. Part of the statement also seemed passive-aggressive (equating gay marriage to "violence" against the institution of marriage). Still, this is a step in the right direction, and will hopefully benefit the SLC LGBT community, and lead to broader acceptance in Utah.

The NYS Senate apparently has agreed to hold a vote on NY's Marriage Equality Bill sometime before the end of the year. Depending on who you talk to, the votes are either there or not there to pass it, no one is really 100% sure about it.

I am really not too sure this will come to a vote, despite said agreement (words in Albany mean nothing at all). What it basically comes down to is that these children are too scared to go on record supporting or not supporting gay marriage. On the republican side, those that would side with us have been scared off by the vote in Maine and by a pro-gay marriage republican who got more or less got booted out of the party in the 23rd district for not being conservative enough. On the democratic side (the controlling side at the moment) of the aisle, well, all they really want is LGBT money, not to actually get us rights or anything. They will probably hold up voting on this bill, then ask us for more campaign donations 'cause it will happen for sure next session, honestly, we promise.

Meanwhile, the one man in NY who I think truly gives a shit about us, that being Gov. Patterson, is not being vocally supported for reelection by LGBT groups because his poll numbers are so low that it'd be considered a waste of time to support him as he won't make it past the party primary next year (the reasons behind that are another story entirely).

I apologize for the rant. Long and short is that sometime in the next 1.5 months, NYS Senate will vote to allow gay marriage. It's looking like right now anyway that it will fail, but in this state, for the senate to merely function as a voting government body would be a step up.

The New York Times asks the question "Can a boy wear a skirt to school?" in this article from Friday's paper.

And from The New York Times Magazine, there's a long article on coming out in middle school.

I suggest reading these before they vanish behind the paid subscriber firewall. Or before the Times's creditors repo the servers...

Apparently so, at least so say some.

I learn something new every day.

Recently, "Campus For Christ" (a conservative evangelical club on our university campus) announced that they would be holding a prayer vigil for "the homosexuality community." The announcement on their website and e-mail list-server read: "Let us pray in love for those who seek freedom from this bondage that they may find Jesus and turn away from temptation. Let us earnestly, get on our knees and fight a battle in prayer for their victory." (Bondage? Getting on our knees? Uh...no comment.) Somehow, this e-mail was forwarded to other groups, and the response from the campus queer community (and queer-positive organizations) was immediate and angry.

I am involved in one of those queer-positive campus left groups (which, incidentally, is a Christian club, but very different from Campus for Christ). The leader of our club saw the announcement as "hate speech," and felt that such a prayer service should not be tolerated. He decided to launch a formal complaint to the campus's Centre for Human Rights. I agreed with him that our club should respond to this event in some public way, but when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, I'm a libertarian. This includes the freedom to offend, and the freedom to perceive queers or non-Christians as sinners in need of salvation. Obviously, I felt that Campus for Christ was in error, but I didn't see it as "hate speech" (I mean, these folks are not Fred Phelps groupies), nor did I see it remotely as a human rights issue. (If anything, I think that the freedom to assemble and pray as one sees fit is a human right that trumps my freedom from having my feelings hurt.) Nonetheless, I helped the group leader to draft a formal complaint, which was sent to the Centre for Human Rights. In retrospect, I felt very conflicted about this. As I said, I wanted to make a public statement, but had no desire to censure another group. At least I was able to be a moderating influence, and keep some of the more loaded, intolerant rhetoric out of the letter. Still, I have regrets about signing the letter.

The following day, Campus for Christ issued an apology, which seemed pretty genuine to me. I see this as a golden opportunity to open up dialogue with more conservative Christian groups, and expose them to a "queer and Christian" position. I hope that we're able to open up channels of communication. Logic tells me that there are queer people in Campus for Christ who haven't come to terms with it. They need to hear that it IS possible to be queer and Christian without contradiction. They need somebody to provide a way out of the maze of guilt and self-condemnation. I know this because I was there once, and the "hope" that the evangelicals offer (i.e., reparative therapy ex-gay conversion) would just add to their guilt, self-doubt and self-condemnation.

I ended up talking with a handful of campus left folks about this issue, and I was very uncomfortable with their intolerance. I.e., "Sure we acknowledge the right of conservative evangelical clubs to believe whatever they want, but they shouldn't state it so publicly." (Is posting something on your campus club's website really considered to be 'public'?) This bugs me for several reasons. First of all, it's counter-productive. If you try and censure an evangelical, you'll only validate his/her sense of righteousness, because conservative Christians thrive on persecution (or on the perception of themselves as a persecuted minority). And if you force them to retract, you'll only make them more subtle about their homophobia, or their misogyny, or whatever. They'll learn to talk in code. Sorry, but I'd rather deal with open, direct ignorance than cloaked, evasive ignorance. The only way to dialogue with these people is to allow for freedom of speech. And there is a deeper issue here too: protecting your right to say that "two plus two is five" will protect my right to say that "two plus two is four."

There ARE reasonable limits to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly in a university. For example, if there is genuine hate speech -- inciting violence towards a particular minority -- then it should not be tolerated. But the limits on free speech should only be those that are necessary and reasonable within a democratic society. And those boundaries, in my libertarian views, are VERY broad. As Voltaire said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Bruce

Hi everyone,

Today I found out that the movie will be released on December 18th on amazon.de. Woohoo!

here's the link

a sobering reminder of what we are up against in terms of fund raising when gay marriage is put on the ballot:

Financial transaction listing for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine for spending on the election this past Tuesday (thank goodness for campaign finance laws making organizations disclose this stuff!)

Note all the money coming in from various other Dioceses around the country that is then spent on multiple contributions to StandForMarriageMaine.com

According to Wikipedia, Maine has around 1,300,000 people, and is ranked 40th in the US in terms of population, so we are talking about a lot of money that was spent in a very small state.

Iconoclastic animated series South Park is dedicating an episode to the use of the word "fag" in common vernacular.

GLAAD is not happy. What else is new?

Legitimate complaint, or freaking the hell out over nothing?