Yes, I am on a blogging kick.
GLAAD has now started a campaign to deal with homophobia in virtual spaces.
Groovoi.
Sean Kennedy: Insult to Injury
In the light of all the LGBT violence this past month, the news that Sean Kennedy’s killer was releaed from prison early – for good behavior? – is like insult to injury, salt in the wound.
Why take the death of a young gay man seriously? They’ve treated this crime all along as if the kid broke a fucking window — not that he caused the death of this poor handsome, well-loved and much-missed young man.
Heartbreak. Heartbreak all around.
Pride Month: Honoring Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman has always been one of my heroes, and that’s despite the fact that she never quite said that famous quote attributed to her about dancing & revolution. Or rather, she didn’t say the t-shirt version. What she said was:
“At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.”
Which doesn’t fit on a t-shirt as readily as “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” (If anyone can make a t-shirt out of what she actually said, I want one!)
It’s from her memoir Living My Life, Pt. 1, page 56. Definitely a book worth reading, and you can read it online, for free, at the Anarchist Archives.
She was, as many know, a pro-choice, family planning advocate (for which she was arrested several times) but what a lot of people don’t know is that she disagreed with the majority of leftist contemporaries in her outspoken support for LGBT people way back when. (She was also a free love advocate, which we might call poly these days.)
Colbert Report’s “Stonewalling”
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Stonewalling | ||||
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(I got myself in trouble a long time ago for writing a short story about a lesbian teenager who went to her first support meeting at The Gay Center & who found her voice silenced by the voices of the young men around her. I called it “Stonwalled” and my gay but closeted writing professor was not happy with me about it.)
(h/t to Lena Dahlstrom)
Latin LGBT Bloggers
They certainly don’t get enough credit, in general, but here are MiApogeo.com’s “7 GLBT Bloggers to Watch” – including Charlie Vázquez (who I read with for the Queer + Catholic readings last year).
How can you not read someone who calls herself a Post Pomo Nuyorican Homo?
(via Audacia Ray)
ENDA on the Move
ENDA is being introduced tomorrow in the House! Our next step is to call our Representatives and ask them to cosponsor of ENDA. Below is a script to use. It is essential that we flood their lines to let them know how many of their constituents support ENDA! Once you’ve called, let United ENDA know what the staffer said by emailing laura.hart@unitedenda.org. Then ask all of your friends and family to call their Representative too.
Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them:
I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I would like him/her to become a cosponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. ENDA would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace. Can you tell me whether or not Representative _______ has cosponsored the bill?
Just go ahead & do it. Find your House Rep at www.house.gov. (On the upper left side, put in your zip.)
NYPD Stonewall Documents Now Online
Wow: Jonanthan Ned Katz & David Carter filed an FOI (Freedom of Information Act) to get NYPD documents for the days of the Stonewall uprising, and has put those documents up at OutHistory.org. The New York Times has done a great article about those documents. They’ve also posted photos taken on the last day of the uprising.
This is very cool stuff. Get your queer history geek on, & go see the police documents & the photos.
LGBT World Map
Here’s a world map which shows which governments sponsor homophobia. The yellow/orange/red countries are ones that have anything from the death penalty for homosexual people to some form of imprisonment.
The green/blue countries have some form of legal recognition, either in the form of civil unions or other legal protections.
You can get copies in various languages & in various sizes at the ILGA website.
LGBTs on Campus
In one of the first studies of its kind, economist Christopher Carpenter looked at LGBT students and how they were doing in college relative to their peers.
The good news is that gay men taking their studies very seriously.
The bad news is that bisexual women don’t.
Such information would be “really relevant when considering college and university resource allocations,” he noted. “If (as the increased level of mentorship suggests) we found the positive effects for gay men were driven by access to gay/lesbian/bisexual resource centers, that might mean you should invest more in those centers.”
Or, at the very least, make sure they survive in an era of cutbacks.
“Clearly, gay/lesbian resource centers have become more prominent on campuses over the past couple of decades,” Carpenter noted. “We could be observing that effect. They may increase the connectedness of sexual minority students.”
What is interesting, however, is if the honors students keep coming from the LGBT students, administrators have a way to encourage funding of LGBT center on campus. Theoretically, at least.
Blogging for LGBT Families Day!
Today’s the day! I’m blogging, as I have in years past. for LGBT families — who have, thankfully, seen some gains this year! I know plenty of my queerio friends are tired & frustrated with the whole push for same-sex marriage, and trans activists are frustrated as well, because they want the attention on non-discrimination legislation, but as a married person, who is now same-sex, it makes me kind of ill to realize that the state I’m currently living in is actually struggling only to recognize domestic partnerships (for f***k’s sake). My home state can’t work it out either, which is downright embarrassing as a NYer. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to divorce marriage from the economic issues that are at stake: even something like health insurance is vitally important, & very expensive if one spouse can’t be covered by the other’s health insurance.
So from my very small family to yours: keep working on same sex marriage. You don’t have to ignore other issues – like the gender identity & expression version of ENDA – but goddamn if I’m going to be a 2nd class citizen, & neither should anyone else.
Here’s some other trans family bloggers:
- a trans daughter on her two moms
- NCTE blogged about trans children
- Diana has a nice piece about being out
Join us next year!