05/13/2008
AZ House wants GAYZ' Houses divided
And now in "we've been putting this off all day because we've heard bulls prefer to crap in the late afternoon" news: By a vote of 33-25, the Arizona House yesterday chose to approve a propose constitutional amendment banning gay marriage:
Same-sex-marriage ban advances [AZ Daily Star]
The proposed historical misstep now heads to the heavily Republican Senate, and if it passes there it will ugly up the state's ballot come November. Producers of the 2024 documentary, "An Accepted Bias: How So Many States Made Such A Cruel Choice" are said to already be on standby waiting to see if they'll have their 27th subject.
It seems some Americans are not for Pete's 'truth'
In response to Peter LaBarbera's one-sided assessments about an alleged hate crime in Illinois, one of our regular readers followed Pete's advice and wrote to Champaign County State's Attorney Julia Rietz about the matter. In a comment that reader has left on our post on the subject, he now gives us some insight into the vacuum into which Pete is screaming:
I went to AFTAH's website and followed their links to [Julia Rietz] and here's what she wrote:
Mr. OZed,
Thank you for your e-mail. Although they continue to send e-mails and make calls, I am not at all interested in the opinions of Mr. LaBarbera and his followers. They do not know the facts, do not understand the law, and are not my constituents.
Sincerely,
Julia Rietz
So fret not, kids. It seems that when it comes to the anti-gay community's organized spin, we gay activists are far from the only ones who recognize what's going on.
*The comment was left here: Gays are anti-religion, says he who keeps religion anti-gay [G-A-Y]
Pride parades, the White Party, and the Southern Baptist Convention
Q. You know who's WAY too gay-friendly for their own good? A. The Southern Baptist Convention, natch.
Or so says Westboro Baptist in their latest press release:
Video: 'Trevor' forever
Back in 1998, when gay rights seemed to be on an unstoppable upswing and another Bush presidency seemed less likely than than an entire TV show built around a karaoke competition, HBO and Ellen Degeneres teamed up to air a charming short film called Trevor (a television event that formed the basis of the fantastic gay rights organization The Trevor Project). And now via the magic of Youtube, we can all relive the film again:
#1 #2
#3
**NOTE: Even though the HBO airing brought the film to major light, it was actually produced in 1994. In fact, it won the 1994 Academy Award® for Best Live Action Short Film
Corina74Copa's YouTube Channel [YouTube]
Poll: For businesses, queer sensibility makes cents
Gay folks like companies that include them as part of their acknowledged customer base. Bravo, Apple, Showtime, HBO, Absolut, and Levi's are companies that fit that bill, while WalMart, Dunkin Donuts, Cracker Barrel, Exxon Mobil, and Samsung are ones that trend toward the less gay-friendly side of things. These and more findings have just been released in the 2008 Prime Access/PlanetOut Gay and Lesbian Consumer Study.
After the jump is the hard polling fact sheet, for those who like their data raw:
Swishing around the Joel
Think you're so gay that you make pink sequined ascots look butch in comparison? Well you've got some competition in the form of Joel Derfner. Check out this Radar feature to learn more about the author of the new book Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever:
Homosexual Agenda [Radar]
As for a book documenting one's quest to be the lesbian-est person ever? Well get on it, ladies, for Fish has not yet been written.
Gays are anti-religion, says he who keeps religion anti-gay
Peter LaBarbera and Box Turtle Bulletin's Timothy Kincaid (a frequent and much loved commenter here at G-A-Y) have been having a back-and-forth regarding the way Pete is presenting the "facts" in an alleged hate crime case that realistically put a young gay man in the hospital. But since the debate is their own, we aren't going to address Pete and Tim's spat. And since the actual events of the case are up for debate and are currently being sorted out in court, we're also not going to delve further into the minutiae of the case or speak in the certain terms that those on Pete's side are currently doing. Instead, we want to address a comment that Pete has written on his website regarding the gay activist community's reaction to his own handling of this case.
In a post addressing the matter, Pete makes the following sweeping statement about gay activists:
"Scratch a homosexual activist, find an anti-religious bigot."
A comment that really says so much about the way folks like Pete view this so-called "culture war." For they are so drawn into the idea that one cannot be gay and religious that they simply cannot separate one's resistance to their anti-gay rhetoric from "anti-religious" bias. They are so overconfident about the infallibility of their own personal "Biblical truth" that anyone who challenges their views or lashes out against the unnecessary hostility they hold for the LGBT community is said to be attacking faith in general. This is a mindset that is not only offensive to the gay activist community, but also to the millions of people of faith believe both in God and in the idea that LGBT people are a normal part of Earth's petting zoo.
As with all communities, the gay activist community is not a monolith. There are surely some in the pro-gay world who, due to their own religious study, are hostile to religion. But the point is that one's personal relationship with God is not the same thing as their personal bodily desires, attractions, and capacities for love. Folks like Pete desperately want this to be a battle between Godliness and unrighteousness, which is precisely why they present "Gay" and "Religion" as being in separate corners waiting for the fight bell to sound. The truth, however, is that if you scratch the vast majority of gay activists, what you will find is someone asking society to employ reason in their Biblical outlooks towards a rich, vibrant population sect, rather than to write them all a one-way, non-cancellable, non-refundable ticket aboard Lake of Fire Airways (sitting in coach, no less). We're asking ALL people of faith, gay and straight, to look not only to a scant number of passages whose one-sided interpretations have been ripped out of their historical context and elevated to an exaggerated place of prominence, but also to the reality of the world. And we're asking everyone to employ the gift of analytical thought that was graciously installed into all of our brains, as we think that any God who was capable of creating all this would want us to do.
If Pete is comfortable reducing his opposition to a bunch of unruly Bible haters, then he's free to do so. We, however, will continue to challenge those who affront our lives and loves on the basis of their gay-centric arguments and rhetoric, rather than cast sweeping generalizations vis-à-vis their personal liasions with the big guy.
Hateful Homosexual Spin Machine Ramps up Against Brett VanAsdlen [AFT]
Mike Epps has on mic 'Oops!'
TMZ has caught Mike Epps in a moment of unbridled anti-gayness, with the website's cameras capturing the actor telling a photographer, "You're a fag -- homosexual!" Unfortunately the proprietary TMZ doesn't allow for embedding, so you have to go watch the video at link:
Day-Day Don't Like Gay Gay [TMZ]
::sigh:: We'll never be able to not watch Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins in the same way again.
