GLBTQ Issues and Discussion Options

[Mandler]

Homosexuality – We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.

"Tears at the fabric of society" - what a bunch of hogwash. What does "fabric of society" even mean, and goodness, that could be defined a million different ways. And yes, two people of the same sex committing to support and love each other and create a cohesive family unit is tearing apart society, but a man screwing around on his wife with fourteen different women, fathering several children (who he does not support), and leaving pain and heartache in his wake as he rips his "traditional family" apart is fine and dandy.

I came across this article the other day about the blood ban. It's an interesting read:

Slate.com

Inferior Blood
If it's OK to reject blood from gay men, what about blacks?
By William Saletan
Monday, June 21, 2010, at 7:48 AM ET

From 1977 to the present, have you had sexual contact with another male, even once? You'll have to answer that question, word for word, on a donor form if you want to give blood in this country. The form, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration and reaffirmed 10 days ago by an FDA advisory panel, offers three possible answers: "yes," "no," or "I am female." If you check "yes," you're done. You're forbidden to donate blood.

Why? Because, as the FDA explains, men who have had sex with men—known in the blood world as MSM—"are, as a group, at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and certain other infections." To protect blood recipients from this risk, your blood must be excluded.

Maybe you fooled around with a guy 30 years ago and have spent the rest of your life as a celibate priest. Maybe you've been in a faithful same-sex marriage for 40 years. Maybe you've passed an HIV test. It doesn't matter. You can't give blood, because you're in the wrong "group." On the other hand, if you're in the right group—heterosexuals—you can give blood despite dangerous behavior. If you had sex with a prostitute, an IV drug user, and an HIV-positive opposite-sex partner 13 months ago, you're good to go.

This kind of group-based screening is a long-standing practice in blood regulation. Over the years, we've prohibited donors on the basis of nationality as well as sexuality. There's nothing wrong with such categorical exclusions, according to the FDA, as long as they make the blood supply safer. But if that's true, why not screen donors by race?

The FDA bases its MSM policy on simple math. "Men who have had sex with men since 1977 have an HIV prevalence … 60 times higher than the general population," the agency observes. "Even taking into account that 75% of HIV infected men who have sex with men already know they are HIV positive and would be unlikely to donate blood," that leaves a population of MSM blood-donor applicants whose HIV prevalence is "over 15 fold higher than the general population."

So a 15-fold difference is good enough to warrant group exclusion. How about a nine-fold difference? According to the Centers for Disease Control, HIV prevalence is eight to nine times higher among blacks than among whites, and HIV incidence (the rate of new infections in a given year) is seven times higher. For black women, HIV prevalence is 18 times higher than for white women.

And these numbers understate the likely difference in risk to the blood supply. A recent CDC analysis of MSM in five cities found that while only 18 percent of the HIV-infected white men were unaware of their infections, 67 percent of the infected black men were unaware. If the awareness gap between blacks and whites overall is even half as great as it was among the men in this study—i.e., if blacks are twice as likely as whites to be unaware that they're infected, and therefore more likely to try to donate infected blood—then theoretically, black donors are just as risky as MSM donors.

Under FDA doctrine, even slight differences in average risk are sufficient to warrant group exclusions. The agency says its job is to "maximally protect" blood recipients. "Several scientific models show there would be a small but definite increased risk to people who receive blood transfusions if FDA's MSM policy were changed," it notes. Accordingly, "to err on the side of safety," MSM are excluded. A similar calculation, applied to blacks, would yield a similar result.

Is race a less legitimate basis for exclusion than sexual orientation is? Race is immutable, but plenty of evidence suggests that homosexuality is immutable, too. Technically, the MSM exclusion isn't a gay exclusion: You can be gay as long as you don't have sex with other men. A parallel policy, applied to race, would be that you can be black as long as you don't have sex with other blacks. After all, the No. 1 reason you're more likely to get infected by a gay man than by a straight one is the already high prevalence of HIV among gay men. The same is true of the higher infection risk among blacks.

Sounds crazy, right? But we already exclude blood on the basis of African origin. In 1983, the FDA ruled out donations from anyone who had lived in Haiti after 1977. Then it extended this prohibition to sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the Red Cross informs prospective donors that under FDA rules, "Persons who were born in or lived in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger and Nigeria since 1977 cannot be blood donors."

This isn't racial animus. It's just blunt math, based on the increased risk of a particular HIV type in these populations. The FDA has a similarly coarse rule against blood from anyone who has spent half a year in the United Kingdom, based on the threat of mad-cow disease. The problem isn't racism; it's the crudity of treating individuals according to group membership. Where does it end? When the FDA barred Haitian blood, Haitian groups asked why black Americans, whose HIV rate was higher than that of Haitians, weren't similarly excluded. It was a good question, and it was never answered.

We don't have to keep going down this road. Instead of rejecting people based on group membership, we can assess them as individuals. It's fine to ask them about factors known to affect the risk of infection: travel, promiscuity, condom use, drug abuse, piercings, tattoos, whatever. But the evaluation of these factors has to be more nuanced than a categorical exclusion. And the surest measure of each individual's risk is a blood test. Even the FDA concedes that "today's highly sensitive tests fail to detect less than one in a million HIV-infected donors."

In its latest recommendations, posted Friday, the FDA's advisory committee on blood suggests further research and acknowledges that current screening policy is "suboptimal in permitting some potentially high risk donations while preventing some potentially low risk donations." But since it's unclear which "alternative policy" would be better, the panel recommends that the "indefinite deferral for men who have had sex with another man even one time since 1977 not be changed at the present time."

So the gay blood ban will continue. And that's OK, according to the American Plasma Users Coalition, whose testimony strongly influenced the FDA committee. "By their very nature, blood donor screening and deferral criteria are discriminatory; however, they are justifiable when they provide increased protection to public health," the coalition argues. "Criteria for donor deferrals must put safety of the recipient first and be based on scientific and epidemiological evidence about large groups of people."

That kind of group judgment was popular in the 19th century. It may have been necessary in the worst epidemics of the 20th. But in the 21st, we can do better.

[Mandler]

There are 11 pics, and below is the text that accompanies them:

WashingtonPost

A Lengthy Engagement

Henry Schalizki, left, and Bob Davis first met in 1942 in Rhode Island. They happened to be in the same place at the same time and spent the entire night talking, but oddly enough nothing more happened.

Three years later, the pair crossed paths in Baltimore. A romance that has lasted more than 60 years soon followed.

On June 20, they exchanged vows on the balcony of the presidential suite at the J.W. Marriott in Washington.

Their second encounter is when the sparks began to fly. It was during that run-in at a bar in Baltimore that Schalizki learned Davis had moved to his hometown for work and that he was staying in a seedy boarding house.

Schalizki invited him to stay the night in his guest room, saying, "tomorrow we'll find you something." But that never happened. They fell in love, and Davis "stayed and stayed."

From the beginning, they traveled and socialized and spurred on each other's early passion for the theater.

In the earlier years, the two never shared their affection openly, nor did they completely hide it. Davis was always invited along to dinner parties at the homes of Schalizki 's railroad colleagues. And Schalizki regularly attended Davis's social engagements.

While bigotry never dominated their lives, the relationship they held most sacred was never fully acknowledged. "What they don't know won't hurt them,' " Bob remembers thinking. "Let's not antagonize people."

Even among their families, it was never discussed. At the end of his life, however, Henry's dad wrote a letter instructing the two to take care of each other. Bob's mother always adored them both.

Being gay, even in the 1950s when they moved to Washington, was never their biggest relationship challenge. In the beginning, Schalizki's drinking held that title, until Davis staged an intervention with help from Alcoholics Anonymous in 1957. And Schalizki hasn't touched a drink since.

Through good times and bad, sickness and health, through Stonewall and Vietnam, through the terms of 12 U.S. presidents, starting with Harry Truman. Through the loss of more friends than they care to count, the two have shared their lives together. And now, their union is legally recognized.

Shown here, photos of the pair in their younger years adorned the tables.

The topper on their wedding cake was custom-made to match their suits.

When gay marriage became legal in the District, Henry set his sights on a wedding. Bob wanted no part of it.

"We're accepted as two human beings, always as a couple. I said, 'I don't see any reason for it,'" Davis recalls. "Besides that, Vera Wang will never make a gown for me to wear."

Henry reminded Bob of the reaction to a speech he'd given during the 2008 Helen Hayes Awards, where the couple was honored. Schalizki -- unofficially -- professed his love and support for Davis. The audience gave him a standing ovation.

Their shared life is the contribution they've made to the gay rights movement, Schalizki argued, and marriage solidifies that. "We've been an example," he says. And eventually, Davis came around.

Their 60 guests, including Councilman Jim Graham, far right, and Helen Hayes Awards Chairman Victor Shargai, gathered around a grand piano as local actor Will Gartshore sang show tunes during the cocktail hour reception.

During a toast to the couple, their maid of honor, Linda Levy Grossman, the president and chief executive of the Helen Hayes Awards, said: "They have never, ever, ever needed a label for their love," she said. "They are simply the air that each other breathes."

So sweet.

"They are simply the air that each other breathes" - that's beautiful.

[laughn]

How wonderfully sweet, and if looking at that wedding topper doesn't put a lump in your throat or a smile to your face, nothing will.

60 years together. Everyone should be so lucky or so in love.

[laughn]

CrazyAboutClay is a member at CV who has participated in different GLTB events in the past. Here's a few of her pics from today. They are all thumbnails. I sort of thought it was neat to see a little of what it looked like out there in the crowds today.

Hi all!

Today, the Gay Pride Parade was held in NYC and I volunteered, along with my mother, to march in it with Marriage Equality NY. I've been doing a lot of work with them and they are a wonderful organization. We dressed up as brides and grooms, decked out in the rainbow flag colors. I was the orange bride. And each bride had a 30 foot train attached to them, which was carried by a number of MENY members (my mother included). Even though it was a VERY HOT day....it was so much fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat. What a wonderful parade!!! Check out some photos!!



Me!



The brides and grooms!



Thank goodness for those decorative umbrellas because it was HOT....I think I might have mentioned that. :

The trains....

[laughn]

CNN

The last person out of the closet? The bisexual male

(CNN) -- Robert Winn met his wife, Christine, in college. He was a fraternity boy. She was a sorority girl. Early in their relationship, he made a confession, a thorny secret he camouflaged from his closest family and friends.

The truth sputtered out awkwardly.

Sensing his nervousness, she speculated he would announce he was sick -- or perhaps dying?

He told her he was bisexual.

On the surface, Robert Winn, now 40, and Christine Winn, 41, appear to be like any other blissfully married heterosexual couple. They boast nearly 18 years of monogamous marriage. He's a well-respected physician, who works with the LGBT community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She's a successful hospital administrator.

The couple says they've grown closer over time, but like any marriage, two people can have differences -- including sexual orientation. Christine Winn is straight, and she has been supportive of her husband, who is openly bisexual.

"I don't think about it [his bisexuality] as a part I have to accept," she said. "It's just a part of him like any other husband who loses their socks on the floor or doesn't take the trash out."

Her husband feels a sexual and emotional attraction toward men and women. While he fantasizes about Angelina Jolie just as his straight male friends might do, he is also attracted to Brad Pitt.

This may sound like the best of both worlds, but being openly bisexual can be complicated. He frequently battles the stereotypes of bisexuality: That bisexual men are promiscuous. That his relationships with men were just an adolescent phase. That his bisexuality is imaginary. That he's really a gay man trying to camouflage his orientation.

"There is a whole list of assumptions of what my life might be like, that somehow she is some sort of front for me because I'm not willing to accept I'm gay," he said. "People are confused by bisexuality. There's just not a lot of support for people who fall in the middle like me."

More than 50 percent of Americans accept the idea of a gay or lesbian relationship, signaling growing support for same-sex couples, according to a Gallup poll in May. The poll, however, doesn't address the issue of bisexuality, often defined as having a romantic attraction to both men and women. It's a sexual orientation some advocacy groups and researchers say remains challenging because neither the gay community nor the straight population advocates for men and women who are attracted to both sexes.

"It's either you're in the closet or out of the closet, and it's not that simple," David Malebranche, a physician and professor of psychology at Emory University, says about the common perception of bisexuals.

About 1.8 percent of men and women between the ages of 15 and 44 identified themselves as bisexual, according to a 2005 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers caution the government's figures are murky because many bisexuals will not identify themselves.
Video: Life with my lesbian mom
Video: Gary and Tony have a baby shower

Ben Pierce, a 22-year-old recent college graduate living in Massachusetts who identifies as bisexual, can understand why bisexuals are hesitant to come forward. He likens being bisexual today to being biracial in the 1960s, a period when racism and discrimination were widespread. A person who was mixed race often couldn't feel comfortable among either racial group, Pierce explained.

"You're caught in between these two very different groups of straight people and gay people, and neither one really accepts you," he said.

Over the last century, scholars began to examine the dual attraction to females and males through scientific research. In the 1920s, psychologist Sigmund Freud theorized that bisexuality was an innate trait found in humans. Several decades later, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey became infamous for his six-point scale to determine whether a person was heterosexual, homosexual or in between. The spectrum showed there are varying degrees of homosexuality and heterosexuality.

Some sociologists say bisexuality has become more tolerable among the mainstream world, particularly younger generations. The word "fluid" is often tossed casually across college campuses to describe the mixed feelings for both genders. Sociologist Eric Anderson is examining college student perceptions of bisexuality in the U.S. and England. So far, his results among college athletes showed that 90 percent of the students surveyed believe bisexuality exists.

"There is more exploration of sexuality -- even visible dating and exploring -- versus before, when it was more closeted," said Shane Windmeyer, director of Campus Pride, the leading national organization for LGBT college students.

Some say that coming out as bisexual has been easier for women than men. In recent years, several Hollywood female stars have proudly declared their bisexuality. Female celebrities like Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan and HBO "True Blood" actress Anna Paquin have said they are bisexual.

"It's [female bisexuality] something that's tolerated because sometimes men see it as entertaining and exciting for them," said Denise Penn, director of the American Institute of Bisexuality.

That hasn't been the case for bisexual men like Robert Winn, the Philadelphia physician now married to a woman.

Coming out bisexual in the 1980s was an agonizing experience for Winn, who was raised Methodist in a military family. His childhood was filled with feelings for girls and boys. He dated his first girlfriend at the age of 15, a teenage romance that eventually ended.

Months later, strong feelings erupted for someone else: a boy at his high school. The two boys shamefully kept their relationship underground.

"Afterwards, we would be embarrassed, confused and not talk about it and then go on with our lives in a normal context," Winn said.

When Winn was a teenager in the 1980s, public support toward gays and bisexuals plummeted as the HIV panic stigmatized the gay community. Bisexuals were blamed for spreading the virus to the straight population, experts said.

Winn realized then there was an unexpected upshot of bisexuality.
It's [female bisexuality] something that's tolerated because sometimes men see it as entertaining and exciting for them.
--Denise Penn, American Institute of Bisexuality

"I always had this heterosexual relationship to fall back on," he said. "I could choose to ignore the rest and put it on the back shelf."

Joshua Verbeke, a 29-year-old business student at Indiana University, knows about masking his bisexuality. Verbeke recalls working for a gay advocacy organization that was trying to eliminate sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. There were instances, Verbeke admitted, when he played along with being gay to avoid criticism and questions about being bisexual. He's heard the phrase "Bi now, gay later" many times.

"I think a lot of bi people are afraid to come out because there is pressure on both sides," said Verbeke, who is dating a 33-year-old man who identifies as gay.

Tensions exist between the bisexual and gay communities, say advocacy experts. Take, for example, the recent legal debacle over a softball tournament. Earlier this spring, three bisexual softball players sued a softball league for stripping their team of a second-place finish at the Gay Softball World Series in 2008.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, alleges that the softball league had discriminated against the three bisexual men by removing the second-place title from the team for being "non-gay."

The academic world has also questioned the idea of bisexuality. In 2005, a controversial study from professors in Toronto, Canada, and Illinois reported males identifying as bisexual were typically not aroused by both sexes. Most of the bisexual men surveyed were physically aroused by images of men instead of women, the study said.

The bisexual -- and gay -- community lashed out against the study, but the study did spur more research on bisexuality. Most of the research on men who have sex with men over the last decade has been driven by the startlingly increasing rates of HIV among the black population. Now, some of the research is changing.

Brian Dodge, a research scientist of public health at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, is researching sexual health among bisexual men. The American Institute of Bisexuality is considering studying the cognitive behavior of bisexual men through brain scans.

Despite the skepticism from others, some bisexuals acknowledge there are upsides to their sexual orientation, even though they remain in limbo between two worlds. John, 41, a bisexual from California, said his sexual orientation makes him open-minded. For privacy reasons, he declined to give his last name.

"The world is not black or white to me, but a rich diversity of colors, and it is not either/or, but both/and," he wrote in an e-mail.
I think a lot of bi people are afraid to come out because there is pressure on both sides.
--Joshua Verbeke, 29-year-old bisexual

What other people think is mattering less to Robert and Christine Winn as they get older and their bonds grow deeper. In the earlier years of their marriage, he said his wife felt ostracized by the gay community when she attended his medical fundraisers and conferences. The gay patients and colleagues were often surprised he was married to a woman. Nevertheless, she supported him.

Could married life have been easier if Robert stayed quiet about his bisexuality? Probably so, he says. He ponders that sometimes.

But then Robert would be lying to himself about his identity. And that's something he never wanted to do to himself -- or his wife.

"I didn't want to turn 40, and then come out to my wife about it," he said. "I wanted to be open with her about who I am and what I think. Thankfully, she was willing to accept me."

[Mandler]

This does my heart (and soul and faith) good.

TimSchraeder: Thoughts from a Church Communications Guy

A Different Kind of Christian Demonstration at Gay Pride

A couple of months ago I interviewed Nathan Albert from the Marin Foundation about Mercy, Justice, and the GLBT Community. It generated some interesting dialogue around a tough issue… how does the Church communicate God’s love to the gay community?

This past weekend Chicago, along with many other US cities, celebrated Gay Pride with a parade. As a part of the weekend, Nathan and a group of over 30 Christians from various Chicago churches went to demonstrate at the Gay Pride Parade with the Marin Foundation.

Their demonstration was much different, though.

While the most vocal “Christian” presence at the parade was in the form of protesters with “God Hates Fags” signs, Nathan and a team from the Marin Foundation took a different approach… they chose to apologize.

The volunteers wore black t-shirts with the phrase “I’m Sorry” on the front and held signs with messages of apology, on behalf of all Christians, for the way the church has treated the gay community.

While the ultimate message Jesus came to preach was one of love, grace and compassion, we’ve sadly misrepresented Him and alienated sons and daughters from their Father’s embrace… and I’m so excited to see how Nathan and his team took a different, humble approach and in the end, did something far more powerful than preaching or shouting… they showed love.

Nathan posted a story from the Pride Parade outreach on his blog that absolutely needs to be heard…Here’s some excerpts…

What I loved most about the day is when people “got it.” I loved watching people’s faces as they saw our shirts, read the signs, and looked back at us. Responses were incredible. Some people blew us kisses, some hugged us, some screamed thank you. A couple ladies walked up and said we were the best thing they had seen all day.

Watching people recognize our apology brought me to tears many times. It was reconciliation personified.

My favorite though was a gentleman who was dancing on a float. He was dressed solely in white underwear and had a pack of abs like no one else. As he was dancing on the float, he noticed us and jokingly yelled, “What are you sorry for? It’s pride!” I pointed to our signs and watched him read them.

Then it clicked.

Then he got it.

He stopped dancing. He looked at all of us standing there. A look of utter seriousness came across his face. And as the float passed us he jumped off of it and ran towards us. He hugged me and whispered, “thank you.”

I think a lot of people would stop at the whole “man in his underwear dancing” part. That seems to be the most controversial. It’s what makes the evening news. It’s the stereotype most people have in their minds about Pride.

Sadly, most Christians want to run from such a sight rather than engage it. Most Christian won’t even learn if that person dancing in his underwear has a name. Well, he does. His name is Tristan.

However, I think Jesus would have hugged him too. It’s exactly what I read throughout scripture: Jesus hanging out with people that religious people would flee from. Correlation between then and now? I think so.

Acceptance is one thing. Reconciliation is another. Sure at Pride, everyone is accepted (except perhaps the protestors). There are churches that say they accept all. There are business that say the accept everyone. But acceptance isn’t enough. Reconciliation is.

Reconciliation forces one to remember the wrongs committed and relive constant pain. Yet it’s more powerful and transformational because two parties that should not be together and have every right to hate one another come together for the good of one another, for forgiveness, reconciliation, unity.

What I saw and experienced at Pride 2010 was the beginning of reconciliation. It was in the shocked faces of gay men and women who did not ever think Christians would apologize to them.

I hugged a man in his underwear. I hugged him tightly. And I am proud.

What’s so cool about this story is that when Nathan posted the picture it lit up on Facebook and someone recognized Tristan and Tristan got in touch with Nathan yesterday afternoon. He said that all he could talk about from his experience at the Pride Parade was meeting Nathan and all of the Christians who were there to say they were sorry.

He was moved and he and Nathan are going to meet up later this week for coffee.

That’s what it’s all about. Who knows what will happen or what will come of this, but one life was impacted and countless seeds were planted in the hearts of many.

Pray for Tristan and Nathan’s conversation and pray that this will be the beginning of a movement of reconciliation between the Church and the gay community.

Huge props to Nathan, Kevin, Andrew, everyone at the Marin Foundation, and those who courageously joined them this weekend in taking Christ’s love to a place most Christians would run away from. Thanks for being an example and setting a high bar for the rest of us to follow.

How is your church communicating to the gay community? Maybe we need to start with a humble apology.

[YSRN]

http://mashable.com/2010/07/01/google-lgbt-health/

Google Will Cover LGBT Partner Health Benefits

In something of a groundbreaking move, Google is giving its queer employees extra cash to cover same-sex partner health benefits.

Currently, when receiving partner health care coverage, same-sex domestic partners are subject to an extra tax that straight, married couples don’t have to pay. Google is taking the burden of paying this tax on itself by compensating partnered LGBT employees for the amount of the tax, which comes to a bit more than $1,000 each year.

This benefit will also cover any dependents of the partner in the same-sex couple.

This is a smart move for Google, and here’s why.

This company has to share the local pool of talent with a huge number of technology companies in Silicon Valley, from well-established tech giants like Microsoft to startups who’d like nothing better than to nab a Google engineer as their CTO. By offering this benefit, Google is making a direct bid for LGBT talent. In the Bay Area, this is undoubtedly wise.

Google is well known for its employee benefits. The company is famous for its free gourmet lunches, dinners and snacks for employees. And there are on-campus doctors, masseuses and fitness instructors, too.

When it comes to starting a family, Google is also good to its staff. The company gives Googlers a 5-month parental leave option for new moms and seven weeks of paid leave for non-primary caregivers. These leave parameters also apply to parents who adopt — and Google will help out with adoption fees to the tune of $5,000. You can expense up to $500 of take-out or delivery food while you’re at home with your new little one, and when you’re back at work, Google can help out with emergency childcare up to five days a year. These benefits apply to all parents, regardless of gender or marital status.

Laszlo Bock is Google’s vice president for people operations, known in other circles as “human resources.” He told The New York Times today that the company had considered the tax on same-sex couples along with other issues, such as including domestic partners in its family leave policy.

“We said, ‘You’re right, that doesn’t seem fair,’ so we looked into it,” he said. “From that initial suggestion, we said, let’s take a look at all the benefits we offer and see if we are being truly fair across the board…

“It will cost some money, but it was more about doing the right thing.”

[laughn]

The Star

Brian Burke marches with Pride for son


Neon and spandex, glitter and sequins, miscellaneous naked body parts and the deafening roar of a ready-and-waiting Pride crowd fill the air.

In the middle of it all stands a grey-haired man in a polo shirt and running shoes, thick hands folded across his broad chest, piercing brown eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

He turns his head, looks around, shifts from left to right.

As cheers and whistles signal the parade is about to begin, the man pulls off his blue polo shirt and slides a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey over his head. The number 88 is emblazoned on the back. The name above it: Brendan.

The jersey is noticed. A buzz zips through the crowd.

“Is that Brian?”

“Yup, that’s him.”

Last year Brian Burke watched the Pride parade with his son Brendan. This year he’s marching for him.

“I promised my son I’d march with him, and he’s not here,” Burke says. “He would have wanted us to do this.”

Brendan Burke died in a winter storm car crash in February. He was 21.

Three years ago, Brendan told his family he was gay. His father, Leafs general manager and longtime NHL tough guy, accepted his son’s sexuality immediately and unconditionally.

When news that Brendan was gay hit the media last November, the Burke family became pioneers for acceptance in a sport that has never had an openly gay athlete.

And on Sunday Burke took the ultimate step — marching with parents and friends of other gays and lesbians past more than a million cheering onlookers at Toronto’s annual Pride parade.

Before the march, Burke anticipated the event would be “personal and difficult despite its public nature.”

During the march, the usually bombastic Burke stumbled when he tried to explain what being there was like for him.

“It’s a sad day,” he said. “It’s great to see the typical city of Toronto response,” he added, referring to excited chaos and atmosphere of acceptance all around him. “But, uh, sad day.”

Burke marched with PFLAG Toronto, a support group for the families and friends of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth. His wife, sister and brother-in-law were by his side.

Irene Miller, president of PFLAG Toronto, said Burke’s presence will have an impact on the young people who attend the parade.

“[He’s] someone in the sports world, someone who is perceived as a macho dad,” she says. “That is going to break down barriers, that’s going to open the door for kids all across North America to sit down and say to their dads, ‘Dad I’m gay or lesbian or bi or trans.’”

As the parade moved forward Burke walked slowly and kept close to his family. He waved to the crowd with one hand and placed his other hand on the small of his wife’s back, reaching out for her shoulder when they wandered more than a few steps apart.

A cop perched on a bicycle, rainbow flag tucked into his helmet, pointed Burke out to another officer. They waved and Burke returned the greeting.

“It’s got his son’s name on the back,” the second cop said as Burke marched on.

The parade turned a corner and Burke spotted a woman with her hair tucked into a Leafs hat. He pointed at the hat, smiled and waved to her. The woman grinned.

“You are a hero!” one young man in a bright yellow shirt declared, leaning across the crowd barrier and pointing at Burke. “You are a hero!”

Burke accepted the comment with a smile, but said later he doesn’t see it that way. For him, Brendan is the hero.

“To come out in a world dominated by macho guys, a lot of homophobia. What he did took tremendous courage,” Burke says. “There’s nothing heroic about loving your child . . . whatever path they take in life.”

“I didn’t do anything that a parent who loved their child wouldn’t do.”

[laughn]

Sue Sylvester -Sue Sees It - Glee - Sneaky Gays

[itsadonut]

Sue Sylvester -Sue Sees It - Glee - Sneaky Gays

Swish it up a bit!

[ldyjocelyn]

Super Heroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church

I :::::: geeks/nerds.

[Mandler]

This breaks my heart and enrages me at the same time...

HuffPo

What it Says About Us When a 17-Month-Old Boy Is Beaten to Death for "Acting Like a Girl"

At approximately 8:25 p.m. last Sunday night, the New York State Police on Long Island logged a 911 call about a toddler in cardiac arrest. The boy, 17-month-old Roy Jones, was rushed from the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, N.Y. to Southampton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m.

According to authorities, the toddler had endured a savage beating. His tiny body had been repeatedly punched with closed fists and grabbed by the neck. By the time 911 had been called at dusk, he was already in cardiac arrest from the sheer brutality of the assault and it was too late to save his life.

Charged with manslaughter in the first degree and held without bail is the toddler's mother's live-in boyfriend, 20-year-old Pedro Jones, who was babysitting. The pair lived together on Shinnecock Nation tribal land, though Jones himself was not a member of the tribe. They were reportedly to marry, and Jones called the toddler "my baby," though Roy was not, in fact his baby.

"I was trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl," Jones explained. "I never struck that kid that hard before. A one-time mistake, and I am going to do 20 years."

He told troopers that the little boy had been too feminine and that he'd been trying to toughen Roy up by literally beating the life out of him.

"I'm sorry," he said "That's my baby. I loved him to death."

A nominally civilized society such as ours can only recoil in horror at any news of a child's death at the abusive hands of an adult. Infanticide is the ultimate forfeiture of our humanity, rightly seen as a perversion of the very essence of the natural order and the circle of life. The act is a declaration of such abject monstrosity that is very nearly beyond forgiveness. But it happens every day, and we guiltily avert our eyes to these stories when we read them because, on some level, we realize that the children could easily be our own and the pain is too much to bear. In 2008, in the U.S. alone, the Department of Health and Human Services reported 772,000 cases of child abuse, resulting 1,740 fatalities--a sharp rise from 1,330 in 2000.

But there is an added and significant dimension to the tragedy. The reason given for the beating is that, even at 17 months, the toddler was perceived by his killer to be effeminate. Madhouse logic indeed, but to Pedro Jones there was a way that little boys should act and a way little girls should act.

While Jones is a tragic example of the paradigm taken to deadly lengths, society's discomfort with gender variance permeates nearly every part of the national dialogue and runs through every part of the culture.

It's present in the heightened male objectification of women inherent in certain types of music videos that present them as "bitches" and "hoes" who crave an answering violent thuggishness from their men. It's present in advertising that teaches young women that they're essentially a life support system for their physical assets, that the ideal woman is a weak-willed, mindless consumer of frivolity, whereas a "real man"--stronger, but stupider--is waiting for nothing more than the arrival of the Swedish Women's Nude Basketball Team with cold beer.

There are coded echoes of it in the leading and prejudicial questionnaire put to servicemen and women this spring by the Pentagon regarding the viability of openly gay soldiers serving side-by-side with heterosexual ones. The document is mined with phrases that seem crafted with unease on the part of straight male soldiers as a goal, fears that their gay counterparts might not be "real" men but something inferior, less masculine, less reliable in a firefight.

It was there in June of this year when the Family Research Council hailed Republican Governor of Rhode Island Don Carcieri for vetoing hate crimes legislation that would have included transgender-identified persons as a protected class. Gloated Tony Perkins, the president of the organization, "[Governor Carcieri] deserves praise for his strong stance for the Families of Rhode Island, and other Governors can learn from his example." Perkins neglected to explain how excluding transgender people from hate crime legislation had anything to do with protecting families.

It was there in the Hieronymus Bosch-level grotesquery of the lies, distortions, and misrepresentations of the lives of gay and lesbian couples used by the Proposition 8 supporters in their now-failed battle to make their horror of sexual and gender variance the law of the land in California by codifying their bigotry at the ballot box and in the courts.

It's endemic in fundamentalist Christianity, which claims Biblical authority for rigid gender roles and, more importantly, the appearance of rigid gender roles. Psychologist and Southern Baptist minister George Alan Rekers, co-founder of the Family Research Council and formerly of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) who, until he was caught this year flying a gay rent-boy to Europe to "lift his luggage" and give him nude sexual massages, was best known for sharing his wisdom on how to "cure" homosexuality.

A May 2010 article in the Miami News by Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp reported on Rekers' 1974 "Feminine Boy Project" at UCLA. The article highlighted the story of a 4-year-old-year old "effeminate boy" named Kraig was subjected by his parents to Rekers' aversion therapy.

Part of the therapy involved putting Kraig in "play-observation room" with his mother, who had instructions to avert her eyes from her child when he played with "girly" toys. An essay by Stephanie Wilkinson published in Brain, Child magazine in 2001 recounts that, during one of the sessions, Kraig became so distraught and hysterical at what must have seemed to the 4-year-old like the withdrawal of his mother's love, that he had to be carried out of the room by the staff. At home, the "treatment" continued, with Kraig being rewarded for "masculine" behavior and spanked by his father for "feminine" behavior.

After two years of treatment, apparently "cured" of his effeminacy, Kraig was held up by the psychologist as proof that his treatment worked until, at 18, shamed and scarred by his diagnosis and treatment, Kraig attempted suicide.

Last summer, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover who committed suicide in his mother's house after months of taunts about how he acted "like a girl" and therefore had to be gay. His mother had to cut down his dead body from the support beam from which he hung himself. The previous year, a 14-year-old classmate killed 15-year-old old Lawrence King, of Oxnard, CA because King came to school in lipstick and nail polish.

As a society, we equate masculinity with force, with violence, with aggression, with being "tough" and invulnerable. We celebrate it those things as virtues. To a widely-varying degree, we look with disdain, or pity, or condescension, or amusement at too much deviation from the prescribed norm. And we occasionally exact a terrible penalty for stepping outside those rigid parameters.

The beating death of 17-month-old Roy Jones was no less a hate crime because the victim was a baby. Whether would have grown up to be gay, or transgender, or just a gentle, sweet-natured straight boy, was still many years away. More, it was irrelevant.

The attack, and the apparent impulse behind it--that a violent man was made uncomfortable by a even a perceived variation on gender-normative behavior--is exactly what makes transgender and gender-variant Americans among the most vulnerable segment of the population, and children who even appear gender-variant are the most vulnerable of all.

It's still early in the investigation and there are naturally more questions than answers at this point. Doubtless, facts and details will emerge about Pedro Jones along with the very real possibility that he endured horrors of his own that helped craft what he later became. It's too early to paint him as a monster, or at least as a one-dimensional monster. With few exceptions, monsters are made, not born. They are still monsters, but they are carved with the hurtful blows of many sharp chisels, over many years.

At the very least, his own violent psychopathology notwithstanding, someone, somewhere, taught Pedro Jones that the worst thing a little boy can do is act like a girl. In the end, it matters precious little when or where he learned it, because a 17-month-old toddler ultimately paid a terrible price for that lesson.

On Sunday night, his little body wracked by agony, blackened with bruises, beaten within an inch of his life, gasping for breath in a world suddenly full of more pain than he could bear, his little light flickered and vanished into the darkness.

Maybe this time, when we read about the death of Roy Jones, before we look away and try not to think of our own children and how truly defenseless they are, not only against violence, but against an adult's determinant view of who and what they might be, we might examine the way in which we see our society and the complex mosaic that makes up our fellow citizens.

We might say a prayer of comfort for his family, then ask ourselves what his death might say about us. We might ask what our role should be in shaping that world and, by definition, in shaping how our children will come to see themselves as citizens of it.

[laughn]

awww, Mandler, that entire article both breaks my heart and pisses me off in equal measure. What the hell is wrong with us??? The aversion therapy story was as disturbing as the beatings. One child is killed outright, the other is left to a lingering emotional death until the physical isn't far behind. Damn.

Here's a piece on Judge Walker's ruling on the legality of Prop 8 today.

Richard Adams's blog

California gay marriage ban to remain until 18 August, judge rules

Gay and lesbian couples in California put marriage plans on hold as Proposition 8 judge keeps ban in place until 18 August

Same-Sex Marriage Supporters In California Celebrate After Judge's Ruling Gay couples in California who want to marry must wait another week after latest ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples in California put their wedding plans on hold, after the judge who threw out the state's Proposition 8 ban announced that his temporary bar on same-sex marriage would remain until 18 August.

US district judge Vaughn Walker – who last week ruled that the Proposition 8 amendment was unconstitutional – announced today that he had denied a request for a permanent injunction to halt gay marriages while the issue works its way through the legal system.

But initial cheers turned to groans among gay marriage supporters gathered outside the courthouse in San Francisco, when they learned the bar would not be lifted until next week – a delay which allows opponents to ask a higher court to issue a further ban while their appeal is heard.

Backers of the Proposition 8 amendment to the California state constitution, which was passed by voters in 2008, are expected to petition the US 9th Circuit Court to issue a stay on further gay marriages while the court considers Walker's ruling – but that is likely to take several days.

The news came as a bitter disappointment to the hundreds of gay and lesbian couples who were awaiting the decision, and had hoped to take advantage of any window of opportunity that Judge Walker allowed.

In West Hollywood, California, city officials had set up a special marriage tent to hold civil ceremonies for the throng of couples. Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaragosa had offered to immediately start performing marriages on the steps of City Hall.

Rob Huntley, who said he had intended to marry his partner Scotti Maldonado as quickly as possible, told MSNBC before the judge's decision: "We want to do it this afternoon, when we can ensure we have the right to do this."

If a further injunction is not issued, the earliest gay couples will be able to marry is 19 August when local authority offices open at 9am.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution)