I’ve not been feeling up to regular posts lately and I’m even less up to one today. So instead here are some interesting links I’ve had bookmarked for a while:
Pioneering gay, AIDS activist Rodger McFarlane mourned after taking his own life in New Mexico
New York, Monday, May 18, 2009 – It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our friend, colleague, and hero, Rodger McFarlane. A pioneer and legend in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights and HIV/AIDS movements, Rodger took his own life in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico last Friday. In a letter found with his remains, Rodger explained that he was unwilling to allow compounding heart and back problems to become even worse and result in total debilitation. We know that Rodger was in a great deal of pain. Already disabled in his own mind, he could no longer work out or do all the outdoor activities he so loved. He was also now faced with the realization that he could literally not travel, making employment increasingly difficult. As his friends and family, we thought it was important that we communicate to the world that it has lost an amazingly wonderful individual who contributed so mightily to our humanity.
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Maine panel backs transgender woman in restroom case
The Maine Human Rights Commission decided Monday that a transgender woman was discriminated against at a Denny’s restaurant in Auburn when management would not let her use the ladies room until she had sex reassignment surgery.
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Heiden said that many people make the faulty assumption that being transgender is mostly about genitals.
“That’s a part of it, but the essence of who they are is not what their genitals look like,” he said.
The incident in question happened on Oct. 25, 2007, when Brianna Freeman of Lewiston — formerly known as Bruce — used a locked stall in the ladies room while “dressed clearly” as a woman, according to the investigator’s report. Efforts to reach Freeman were unsuccessful.
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“The customer was very upset, was irate, had threatened to call police,” he said. “A few days later, management decided that it would be in the best interest of Denny’s to ask the customer to use the men’s room until sex reassignment surgery.”
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So Ms. Noseypants peeks into Brianna Freeman’s locked bathroom stall, watches Brianna in a state of undress, and Brianna is the problem? I take it Ms. Noseypants is a RRRWer. They’re always sticking their noses where they don’t belong then whining about things that aren’t their business in the first place.
Vallejo schools to pay $25,000 to lesbian teen, modify policies
A lesbian student’s complaint that teachers harassed her over her sexual orientation has led to a Vallejo school district agreement to pay her $25,000 and revamp anti-discrimination policies, it was announced Monday.
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The student, Rochelle Hamilton, now 16, was a sophomore at Jesse Bethel High School in the fall of 2007, when teachers allegedly verbally harassed her and forced her to attend a counseling session for gay students. Gill said the counselor tried to discourage Hamilton and other students in the session from being gay.
The alleged harassment included a staff member telling Hamilton she was “ungodly” and “going to hell” as she embraced her then-girlfriend. The alleged comments transformed the “social butterfly” into a teenager on the verge of suicide, Hamilton’s mother Cheri said Monday.
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According to a letter dated Jan. 17, 2008 from the ACLU to Bull, staff members made comments to the girl such as, “Remember, you’re a girl, not a boy,” and, “You can get HIV/AIDS from being gay and messing with females.”
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Nice “Christian” folk they have at that school. 
I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl!
You have to see this one to believe it. Emily posts screen caps of a classic childrens’ book on gender roles that’s just astoundingly horrible. Of course the RRRW would probably love it, which goes to show how bad it is.
Jesus in Chief
“When Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office in January, he inherited a military not just drained by a two-front war overseas but fighting a third battle on the home front, a subtle civil war over its own soul.” So writes Harper’s contributing editor, Jeff Sharlet, in a deeply-reported, equally troubling essay (not yet available online) chronicling the rise of the evangelical right in the U.S. Military since the Vietnam War.
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According to Sharlet, there is a “small but powerful movement of Christian soldiers concentrated in the officers corps” who see themselves not as subversives or radicals, but as “spiritual warriors” and “government paid missionaries.” Within this “fundamentalist front,” the best organized group is the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, which has 15,000 active members at 80 percent of military bases and an annual growth rate of 3 percent. The group equates military duty with Godly duty and routinely casts the world in stark terms of good and evil. The men and women in American uniform are the Lord’s to do with what he pleases. Everyone else is, literally, on the side of Satan.
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Yet, as the Harper’s story makes clear, preaching the word—which sometimes morphs into harassment and abuse of nonbelievers—is becoming both more common among the rank-and-file and too often ignored by commanders all the way up to Obama himself. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that lifelong republican Mikey Weinstein, a former graduate of the Air Force Academy, a ten year veteran of JAG, and former assistant general counsel in the Reagan White House, is serving as president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a small, scrappy organization whose primary mission is to protect soldiers who don’t walk the evangelical line from harassment. He tells Sharlet that his enemy is “weaponized Christianity.” And he believes this “country is facing a pervasive and pernicious pattern and practice of unconstitutional rape of religious rights of our armed forces members.”
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Proposition 8: Open Season on Minorities?
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The purpose of the Equal Protection clause is to limit the ability of popular majorities to take away the basic rights of the less powerful or popular. Before the election, the right of gays and lesbians to marry was a fundamental right protected by the state’s Equal Protection guarantee.
So Proposition 8 did far more than “simply” redefine marriage. Through Proposition 8, a simple majority vote took away fundamental rights from a minority. If the underlying purpose of the Equal Protection clause can so easily be ignored, then the constitutional guarantee of Equal Protection has been de facto eliminated.
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The implications of the Right’s arguments are terrifying.
If the fundamental right to marry can be taken away from gay people by simple majority vote, what right can’t be taken away from gay people that way? Can voters prohibit gays from getting driver’s licenses? From opening restaurants? From owning property?
And why limit this to lesbians and gays? Under California law, voters would be able to “redefine” marriage to be the union of people of the same race. Or they could prohibit women from driving. And they could do it with nothing more than a simple majority vote. Surely the California Constitution prohibits these outrages.
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Sixth-Grader’s Milk Project Blocked
A Ramona, Calif., sixth-grader was forbidden to give a presentation on Harvey Milk to her class after administrators required her classmates to get signed parental permission to listen to it.
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Days later, Jones was told she could only give the presentation during recess, and students would be required to get parental permission before they could attend.
The school’s policy stresses that parents will be notified if their children are being exposed to lessons about “human reproductive organs and their functions, processes, or sexually transmitted diseases” as well as “family life, human sexuality, AIDS, or sexually transmitted diseases.”
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Why do some people insist that being gay is all about sex, and that the mere mention of a gay person means you’re discussing sex/sexuality? Really it is they who have the perverted, dirty minds–not others. Yet everyone else has to suffer.
Faithist Memes, Religious Privilege, Victimization, and Bad Arguments
…These are all “points” that are used to defend and protect religious beliefs. ..
“It’s true because I believe it.” – The “Truth” Meme.
This might sound like a simple everyday understanding, but it’s definitely a faithist meme. It’s a suspension of reality. It’s saying, “It doesn’t matter what else is true, this will always be true because I choose to call it truth.” Yeah, I said choose. Belief is a choice. You choose what you believe, and by the power of this meme, you get to choose your truth. You see it used as a defense over every social issue. Fundamentalists say they know what traditional marriage is (even though marriage has changed many times over its history), they know when life begins (even though there is no actual way of objectively determining such a thing), etc. But they don’t know, there is no truth or fact, they just believe.
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“These are my beliefs, so you need to respect them.” The “Respect” Meme.
No, I don’t. I respect your right to have them, but just because you say they’re your beliefs does not mean I am going to kowtow to them. This is, of course, what Dawkins referred to as “undeserved respect.” I call it religious privilege. The true nature of this meme is the immunity that beliefs have from debate. Beliefs don’t stand up to debate, because they aren’t substantiated. If you start to unpack this meme, you unpack the “Truth” meme simultaneously. Why are they your beliefs? Why do you choose to hold those beliefs? What are your REASONS to hold those beliefs?
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“If my beliefs are not being respected, I’m the victim.” – The “Victim” Meme.
This is just a blatant abuse of privilege. It’s crying foul and resisting any sort of intellectual debate. It’s pitiful and pathetic.
Our good friends over at the National Organization for Marriage are infamous for this. Maggie Gallagher is on some talk show every week spewing this garbage. Carrie Prejean, that joke of a “role model,” is the latest public face of this privileged position:
I am not perfect, and I will never claim to be. But these attacks on me and others who speak in defense of traditional marriage are intolerant and offensive. While we may not agree on every issue, we should show respect for others’ opinions and not try to silence them through vicious and mean-spirited attacks.
That’s right. According to the followers of this meme, by challenging their points, it’s offending their beliefs. Thus, they’re the victims. So, obviously, they should just have their way and that way no one will be offended! That’s convenient.
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“Well, since we can never know, it’s better to just believe, just in case.” – The “Just Because” Meme
Ah, Pascal’s Wager. I really could debate this, but the Wikipedia article explains it pretty well, with a Dawkins quote and all.
I’ll just call this meme what it is: desperation. When faced with the choice of cognitive dissonance and blissful ignorance, this is the meme that allows blissful ignorance to continue. It’s committing oneself to never see outside of the Matrix, and thus humoring the idea that there could be no such thing as the Matrix (if you’ll humor my metaphor).
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There’s much more in the post so treat yourself to the full read.
With The ‘Gay Tax,’ Love Doesn’t Come Cheap
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The media’s primary focus on the morality debate around same-sex marriage means that most of the public, gay or straight, knows little about the very real economic costs of inequality. It doesn’t matter that Joan and I married in Massachusetts five years ago this week, or that our home state recognizes our marriage. It makes no difference that she works for a progressive company with an active LGBT employees group. Companies pay for their employees’ health insurance with pretax money through a federal program, and same-sex marriage isn’t federally recognized.
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Consider the cost to Randy Lewis-Kendall, who lost his husband, Rob, to colon cancer in 2007, their 30th year together. He is about to be denied the $1,161 per month he would have collected in Social Security survivor benefits had his marriage been federally recognized. He could use it, too. The two men owned a small gift shop in Harwich on Cape Cod together, and Randy has been struggling to pay the bills since Rob’s death and the economic downturn.
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DOMA doesn’t just hurt our pride: It undermines our ability to take care of one another. Neither Joan nor I have the right to take family medical leave from our jobs in the event that one of us becomes seriously ill. In couples where one spouse is a U.S. citizen and the other is not, the citizen cannot obtain a visa for the noncitizen or sponsor him or her for citizenship. And forget about inheritance. If you’re in a same-sex marriage and your spouse leaves her estate to you — for example, the house you shared — you’ll be forced to pony up as much as 50 percent of her estate’s value in taxes. Price tag for federally recognized married couples? Zero.
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