Category: GLBT

Last Tuesday Bloomfield College held its yearly convocation, a salute to the beginning of a new school year…which happens around Midterm Week each year for some indiscernible reason.  Or speaker was Dr. William Librera, Presidential Research Professor of Education at Rutgers University, and the title of his presentation was Inside the Horizon.

As these things go, it was a pretty good lecture, both fairly entertaining and containing some nuggets.  There was the obligatory PowerPoint, of course, which we were told was available online, but I can’t find it.  If I could have, I would know the last part of the woman with the hyphenated last name which began with Roth-.  That would have proved helpful, since one of the major things I can recollect from the event is her thought about people being divided into two kinds:  people who segment knowledge, and people who integrate it.

Do I know what the collective intelligence is thinking right now?

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.

–Robert Benchley

If the discussion is elevated to the level of the Algonquin Round Table, then I’m all for it.

I was minding my own business, cooling my heels in Friday Philosophy, hoping for a little more than the usually suspects to show up.  From the activity at 6pm eastern on a Friday, one might suspect that people had actual lives or something.

Anyhoo, jessical dropped by at 8:20 by the time stamp, which is probably something like 8:45 in real time.  So not only had most of the likely readers left by then, thereby missing what jessica left, but most of the unlikely readers no doubt missed it as well.  It’s not like there has been a big Huzzah about it or anything.

Well, except for maybe jessica and me and a batch of other transfolk.

jessica dropped of a link to the text of a decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of Schroer v. the Library of Congress.

NL dropped by and left a link to an ACLU announcement.

There was the obligatory article in the Washington Post, from their man on the District Court beat, which appears on B10 the day after the ruling of that court.

I’ve spent a couple of days searching for someone to write the story and explain how this is important to transsexual people, mostly because when news like this comes from me or someone like me, it is too easy to downplay the significance.

Whatever.  Doesn’t seem like this news has a chance of surfacing amidst the roiling seas of financial profligacy.

So, as short and sweet as I can make it [turns out, that didn’t happen – ed], from my own biased point of view, here’s the deal.

Though the Olympics aren’t quite over, I thought it’d be good to bring people’s attention to the openly queer athletes who’ve succeeded in Beijing, despite the stigma often attached whenever sports and sexuality cross paths.  

Stories like theirs often slip between the cracks, despite 24/7 coverage of the games.  But as long as stereotypes exist about the ability of gay, lesbian, bi, and trans athletes to perform at the same level as their peers, we need their stories to remind us that they can and do succeed.  

Here’s a quick roundup of athletes who are not only at the top of their game, but also open members of the LGBT community.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

From Monday, July 21 through Thursday, July 24, Pastor John Hagee will be in Washington, D.C. to lead the national gathering of his infamous Christians United For Israel.  The CUFI conference is studded with rightwing zealots and features workshops like “Radical Islam: In Their Own Words,” led by neo-conservative Daniel Pipes and former right-wing Senator Rick Santorum; and “The Basics of The Arab Israeli Conflict,” led by representatives of the pro-occupation David Project and StandWithUS and Gary Bauer, president of anti-choice, homophobic American Values.

Unbelievably, the Anti Defamation League (ADL), the supposed bigotry watchdog, has not condemned Hagee for his anti semitic, anti gay, anti Muslim rhetoric.  To the contrary, ADL has given him a free pass. In fact, in a recent letter to Hagee, John Fox, president of ADL wrote, “We wholeheartedly support your efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism, including its historic antecedents in the Christian community. We especially appreciate your extraordinary efforts to rally so many in the Christian community to stand with Israel.”  This is utter, embarrassing nonsense.

As a result of ADL’s unprincipled behavior, Jewish Voice For Peace and others have condemned the conference and are calling on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to stand up against Hagee’s pervasive bigotry and to condemn his statements.

Join me in DC.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but it seemed like a good time to let people know what’s going on in the world of queer politics and activism.  I’ll try to post these more regularly again, but my schedule’s still a little sporadic to fix a concrete posting time.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy, and if you have other news blurbs that I’ve missed, please feel free to add them below.

On May 15th, the Supreme Court of California struck down all of the laws preventing same-sex marriage. Here’s my thoughts on the creatures attempting to overturn that decision

Cross-posted from GentillyGirl http://gentillygirl.com/2008/0…

Since I came out, I have been especially active in trying to promote National Coming Out Day in the fall, World AIDS Day on December 1, and Out and Proud festivities at colleges and universities wherever I could reach them.  The latter are usually in the Spring, since Gay Pride events usually are scheduled in the summer when activity on campus is light.

What if they gave an Out and Proud Week and nobody was?  Or maybe it’s just that nobody cared.

We arranged some programs and selected some going on around us and tried to encourage members of our campus community to attend.  There was little interest exhibited.  Not from straight folks.  Not from GLBT folks.  Actually, more straight folks showed up than gay folks…and some of the straight folks clearly hadn’t reached a positive place with regard to the issues.

And some do not understand that issues is plural.

Oregon Senate candidate and current House Speaker Jeff Merkley has been endorsed by equal rights advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon. This is yet another endorsement for the House Speaker in his Senate race in Oregon. Just this past Friday, there was a Democratic primary debate. In Jeff Merkley’s opening statement he talked about how he fought for workers’ rights and environmental protections. He cited his huge accomplishments during the past 2007 legislation. Where he seemed to get the most fired up, was when he talked about his work for equal rights for gay and lesbian couples. Here’s what he said:

“I fought so hard for gay and lesbian families that Karen Minnis cut off my mic on the House floor and threatened to have state troopers remove me. But I kept right on fighting and in 2007 won passage of historic legislation for basic rights and domestic partnerships. And, today I’m proud to announce that my campaign has received the endorsement of Basic Rights Oregon”

If you’d like to watch the debate in full go here.

Sixteen years ago, when I was 44, I started transitioning.  Oddly, fourty-four years ago, I was 16.  It was also a transitional year, in many ways.  I have spent the week trying to remember it, perhaps with hindsight that is quite more myopic than 20-20.

It was a time…

It’s hard growing up knowing that there is something so terribly wrong that it must be hidden from everyone.  It would have been best at the time if I could have hid it from myself as well but, as I’ve said before, ideas cannot be unthought.  I was, in my mind, a pervert.  Nothing was going to change that.  The best I could do was to try to hide it.

On Wednesday I posted my poem about my obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I spent an equally absurd amount of time trying to disguise that.