|
|
 'Original Plumbing' editors Amos Mac (L) and Rocco Kayiatos aka Katastrophe are nominated in several categories Transguys.com a in internet magazine dedicated to FTM news and culture is in the process of deciding their 2010 Community Award winners and they want your input. You can register a vote in each category, once per day in the following categories:
- Best Blog
- Best YouTube Channel
- Best Resource Website
- Best Action Campaign
- Best Business
- Musician or Music Group of the Year
- Sex Performer of the Year
- Phoenix Award for Outstanding Achievement
Continue reading »
  The National Center for Transgender Equality just issued a helpful guide to the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) policies that everyone is so upset about. It’s a good read. (And if you want a disturbing take on what folks are worrying about Brit joke rag The Squib has a story about a masturbating body scanner operator…)
NCTE opposes the routine use of full-body scanners and the new invasive patdown procedures. We have and will continue to work with the TSA to minimize privacy intrusions and ensure respectful treatment of transgender travelers.
We want all of our members and friends to have safe and uneventful travel this season; here are some ideas and information to help you do that.
Continue reading »
  Cindy McCain poses for NoH8 This Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell two-step is starting to really get on my nerves.
Only one high ranking military officer seems opposed to the repeal, Marine Corps Gen. James Amos. Even Republican Arizona Senator John McCain formerly stated that he would leave the decision to top military officials. However, as more and more officers came out in support of the repeal he has asserted his own opinion that we needed to wait for the findings of a study currently in progress. Now, as the study draws to a close, showing that most service members are indifferent, he moves even further from the side of rationality by telling reporters that it “isn’t the right study.”
Perhaps less politically important but even more frustrating, is his wife’s betrayal. And I mean to her own beliefs, not to her husband.
Continue reading »
  Lt Dan Choi In an ironic bit of news today MTV reports that A Pentagon memo leaked today, appropriately Veterans Day supports the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Washington Post, quoting two people familiar with a draft of the report, said that it will say that the military’s lifting of the ban would result in “minimal and isolated incidents of risk to the current war efforts.”
According to the Post, more than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops this summer said the effects of a repeal would be “positive, mixed or nonexistent.” Those results reportedly led the survey’s authors to conclude that objections to gay troops would drop once they were able to live and serve openly with their peers.
In some other gay and vet’s day news, a service was held for gay vets:
Continue reading »
  Charles Kane now with his fiance I may be part of the sensationalizing media for even mentioning the story of the man who had sex reassignment surgery once to become a woman and then again to regain his manhood, but I can’t help but comment on his assertion that they should be banned because those who want a sex change are “completely deluded.” Unfortunately, I think it is Mr. Kane (formerly Ms. Kane and Mr. Hashimi) who is misguided.
In the 1980s a one Sam Hashimi, a powerful investment fund type, had a sex-change procedure to become “glamorous interior designer Samantha Kane,” a woman so convincing he says he had no problem attracting men.
Continue reading »
  Joanne Pedersen, left, and Ann Meitzen are planning to sue because federal law does not recognize their Connecticut marriage. Photo by Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times State and Federal laws often come into conflict, and gay marriage is a prime example of how confusing that confluence can be. Couples that are married in states where it is/was legal (5 states plus DC) may get all the state benefits to which they are entitled, but many benefits are given at the Federal level…which is where things get sticky…but not in a good way.
One big example of this is health insurance, which is a tough subject to tackle in itself. The New York Times reports on two cases where plaintiffs are suing the government in an effort to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing marriages of same-sex couples.
Continue reading »
  Former Providence mayor and RI Congressman-elect David Cicilline. Why are gay polticians always hotter than straight ones? Although Nationally the Senate managed to keep Democratic control and locally Kitzhaber narrowly beat out Dudley, it was a pretty bleak election for queers and liberal allies. Three Iowa Judges were voted off the bench when opponents of same-sex marriage targeted them in an intense campaign to boot them off the state Supreme Court because of a unanimous ruling last year that legalized same-sex unions. But there were a few meager bright spots for queers.
Only recently have gay mayors of major cities started to become common….well at least not unheard of since the election of our own Mayor Sam Adams and Houston Mayor Annise Parker. Now, one has emerged in the South as Lexington, Kentucky elected its first openly gay mayor. Vice-Mayor Jim Gray was victorious Tuesday night in his second campaign for the city’s top job, beating incumbent Mayor Jim Newberry.
Continue reading »
  Rev. Mark Kiyimba at the 2009 UUA General Assembly Uganda has been in the LGBT news a lot lately for its upcoming bill that proposes executions for gays. Introduced in Uganda’s parliament last year, the bill would give the death penalty to any homosexual person who tests positive for HIV, and up to three years in jail for anyone who knows a gay person and does not report them. The proposal emerged after ex-Oregon Citizens Alliance communications director Scott Lively spoke to Uganda’s parliament.
It it likely to pass but there are still Ugandans working for justice in their country. One of them, Rev. Mark Kiyimba, will be in Portland this weekend.
Kiyimba, one of a small number of straight supporters of gay rights in Uganda, has risked his life by holding an LGBT conference last February in Kampala, attended by 200 people. His church runs a school for 150 orphans who lost their parents to HIV and AIDS, as well as an orphanage for 22 children infected with the virus.
Continue reading »
  Stambaugh speaking at the Q Center. KATU photo Folks were shocked to hear that earlier this month a Lewis and Clark student teacher, Seth Stambaugh was let go from the Beaverton school district for revealing that he would marry a man if it were legal. There has been much discussion and outrage in the last few weeks and last Thursday the Beaverton School District voted unanimously to reinstate Stambaugh, while also issuing an apology. From Superintendent Jerry Colonna:
Continue reading »
 Law Professor John Culhane Professor of Law, Widener University 365gay.com contributor John Culhane updates us on where, exactly, things stand in the DADT mess. It is, of course, subject to change at any moment…
How long must I continue writing about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?
Don’t ask.
It’s hard to see this drama ending any time soon, and much of what one can write about it, from the legal perspective, is speculative and ever-changing. But this isn’t a subject I can ignore for this week’s column – there have been too many important policy and legal developments.
So let’s try to walk through what’s going on, and what might be expected. Much of what follows is necessarily speculative.
Continue reading »
|
|
