Archive for the 'Sex' Category

NUS LGBT Conference Manifesto

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Patrick
7 months, 2 weeks ago
in Equality, Gay, Leeds and Politics
. 1 Comment

I am a fourth year Politics student, and I’ve just returned from the NUS Annual Conference. I’ve been involved behind the scenes in LUU LGBT events since my first year, helping plan events and considering strategy. This past term I ran for election to the Union Exec because I want to promote OUR issues and highlight that we are still not truly liberated.

We have too many friends who are silent about the discrimination we face daily, and we have too many friends for whom ‘gay’ is a term for ‘weird’. We must campaign for our rights and ensure that our visibility on campuses across the country is a force for improvement. We must continually compel Student Union Officers to represent STUDENT ISSUES BEFORE ALL ELSE, not political concerns thousands of miles away.

It is easy to be distracted by irrelevant agendas. We weaken our cause by directionless rants about issues not within our mandate. The NUS system takes some work to understand but can be made to work in our favour. I will aid our delegates in casting INFORMED votes and help them understand how to make the system support our positions.

* I strongly oppose and am continually offended by the ban on gay male blood donors.
* I prefer ‘marriage’ to ‘civil partnership’. How can it be acceptable that LGBT citizens are denied the same institutional unions as everybody else?
* FIGHT to encourage the acknowledgement of LGBT issues by the student body. We can and must be more ambitious than we are. When LGBT allies and non-activist friends show their support we CAN BE A FORCE OF STRENGTH AND PROGRESS.

VOTE Patrick for LGBT Conference!

Margaret Cho on Logo

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Patrick
10 months, 1 week ago
in Asides, Gay and Video
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I think Margaret Cho’s piece during her hosting of Outfest (a show) on Wisecrack (a standup comedy series) on LOGO (a tv network) was hilarious. She manages to describe and define the issues about which she’s joking in a way that no other contemporary comedians around seem capable. The video is definitely worth watching, unless you are a huge fan of the Pope’s dresses. In that case you might find this a little bit on the offensive side. I don’t think Cho’s a huge fan of the Pope’s input on social matters. In case you’re in that offended camp, you may want some boules Quiès.

Margaret Cho on LOGO

Miss Teen Pregnancy USA

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Patrick
1 year ago
in Asides, Sex and US
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Right now the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed nation. Although this teen pregnancy rate has decreased dramatically since the 1970s, recent years have seen that rate become stagnant.

Indeed, as of 2004, 13 states experienced either an increase in teen birth rates or stagnant teen birth rates, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data also showed that one in seven girls who are 14 and younger will experience an unintended pregnancy, and one in three women will have an unintended pregnancy by age 20.

Dr Laura Berman in the Chicago Sun-Times.

HRC Poll shows gays/lesbians don’t think lack of trans protection should halt ENDA support.

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Patrick
1 year ago
in Asides, Equality and Sex
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Of those surveyed, 67.7% agreed with the statement about the recent Employment Non-Discrimination Act:

National gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organizations should support this proposal because it helps gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers and is a step toward transgender employment rights.

(as opposed to, for example, opposing it because it doesn’t specifically protect transgender rights.)

On Towleroad these results produced much debate because the issue of trans rights is often, by some, viewed in partnership with that of gay rights. I say gay rights because I think gay rights should be and can be used as an umbrella term for gay male, lesbian and bisexuals. It’s a term for ‘alternative’ sexual orientations. Trans is an issue that is similar, but not the same:

I support individual freedoms short of cause pain, suffering, and damage to others. I support whole heartedly bisexuals and transgendered people - but I’m sick and tired of gay and lesbian issues being diluted, blurred, and marginalized because they’re intertwined with issues of gender identity and… whatever.

Youth Obsessed?

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Patrick
1 year, 1 month ago
in Equality, Gay and Video
. 0 Comments

It’s funny how you read, so often, about the gay culture of youth. We’re, apparently, consumed with the concept of staying young forever with cremes and pills and gyms and every single type of tonic you could ever hope for. The image, I presume, comes from all those pumped up bodies you see in gay magazines. I bought one today, they’re there. There is a culture of youth. Some people clearly believe it. But it’s ironic for me to point to that link because it’s a gay guy saying how gays are youth obsessed.

I come to this topic through a rather roundabout route. Gayclic, a wonderful french gay-themed ‘news’ video blog linked to GLAAD’s media campaign titled ‘Be an Ally & a Friend‘. It was promoting the idea of being an ally to people coming out on National Coming Out Day (October 11th). Be supportive by being respectful. That’s all. On their website there are a couple other video links which I decided to check out, one of which led to David Mixner, an LGBT activist, speaking at the Empire State Pride Agenda 2007 annual dinner. It’s a New York gay-rights charity.

He recounts, tragically, how as a result of the AIDS epidemic sweeping through his community, killing all his friends, he gave 90 eulogies

“We thought that freedom was very close at hand… and then came AIDS… But you gotta remember what it was like. I lost 296 friends. I gave 90 eulogies in two years. And I lost the man that I loved most in my life, for 12 years. We were not treated by dentists, nurses wouldn’t touch us, homecare workers wouldn’t come to our homes, doctors wouldn’t treat us, insurance companies told us we had brought this upon ourselves.”

It makes me stop and think. Perhaps, yes, gay culture is youth-obsessed. But perhaps that’s really only because almost all of the older generation were killed off by AIDS. Those who are still alive, those who lived through 1982 and onwards as out gay men and women are the lucky ones. The fact that they survived is enormously lucky, and in the same breath perhaps terrifying in how many of their nearest friends and loved ones died around them. So we are like a culture culled of all its patrimoine. How can you ever have an awareness of heritage without any elders. What other society has ever so publicly lost so much of a generation? Wars kill men but often leave their wives and lovers back home. This destruction, the destruction of an gay AIDS pandemic took homes and ruined neighbourhoods just like a war. It’s a certain way to create a ghost town, to tell people that by behaving as they had been behaving will lead to almost certain death. Nobody’s going to go to that bar. It takes homes because, as David Mixner says, sufferers had to sell them for their health care treatments, because it was fundamentally their own fault. But then also, there are no lovers or wives left behind because those lovers were the victims buried in the last funeral you attended or the last hospital visit you went on.

But today, this is interesting because Mixner spoke at a dinner that made me think that perhaps as a culture we’re not so gratuitous in our obsession with youth. We know nothing better. It’s those in their early 40s now who might be the first not to know the AIDS epidemic. They are the bearer of a culture’s heritage because there is nobody else to do it.

Part one of his speech is above. Youtube has the rest.

Indiana teacher suspended, transferred for gay-tolerant school publication

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Patrick
1 year, 6 months ago
in Asides, Equality, Gay and Politics
. 1 Comment

[Indiana teacher] Amy Sorrell was put on paid leave in March following the publication of a pro-gay tolerance essay by sophomore Megan Chase in the Woodlan Junior-Senior High School Tomahawk (which Sorrell supervises). Following a warning for “insubordination” by the school’s principal Edwin Yoder, Sorrell was suspended from teaching and put under “investigation” Yoder also said all future issues of the school newspaper would require his approval before going to press.

The results of the school’s “investigation,” according to the Indianapolis Star? Sorrell will be “transferred to another school and barred from teaching journalism for three years.”
Towleroad.com: Indiana Teacher Transferred, Barred from Teaching Journalism for Allowing Pro-Gay Tolerance Essay

Chris Dodd’s Veil of Ignorance: What if YOUR Child were Gay?

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Patrick
1 year, 7 months ago
in Family, Gay, Politics and US
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The Democratic Presidential candidate from Connecticut was asked about his position on gay ‘marriage’ during a talk with New Hampshire High School students. His response refers obliquely to John Rawls‘ Veil of Ignorance:

With ones own children: “They may grow up as a different sexual orientation than their parents. How would I want my child to be treated if they were of a different sexual orientation?”

Rawls’ book ‘A Theory of Justice’, one of my favorite works of political philosophy, refers to the decision making process through which a society ought to go about defining its own rules:

“no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”

What makes Dodd’s pronouncement interesting is the fact that he is a father of two girls and, though (perhaps oddly) an opponent of gay marriage, a supporter of civil unions and their recognition on a federal level.

via Rod 2.0: Democratic Prez Hopeful Dodd: “What if Your Child Were Gay?”
and AP News: Dodd asks: What if your child were gay?

Boob ads. Really, they’re just hilarious

Published
by
Patrick
1 year, 7 months ago
in Sex and Web
. 3 Comments

Some breast-filled ads on mainstream sites have really been cracking me up recently. I know the ads that you see on any ‘gay-interest’ sites aren’t going to be subtle either, all airbrushed abs and prominent bulges in all the right places, but the boobs are going to the extreme. I’m thinking specifically about sites that host Bittorrent files, the place you’d go if you’re looking to download the latest version of Linux, or a movie, or a tv show or some music (all those last three illegally of course). The websites can’t get mainstream advertisers because they’d likely be accused of supporting piracy so the websites resort to donations (from people who are specifically avoiding paying for their entertainment - probably not many donations there) or rather less reputable advertisers; the gambling websites, the ‘busty babes’ websites, and the ‘FREE SONY PSP FREE FREE’ type companies. What caught my eye was this knockout photo, so obviously a joke, or digital manipulation as to be laughable. Perhaps that was their intention.

429 Life’s Gay Little Secret

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Patrick
1 year, 7 months ago
in Fashion and Gay
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About a year ago I posted about a little clothing brand called ‘429 Life’ whose name comes from the use of a phone’s keypad to spell out the word ‘gay’. You can read it at: 4-2-9 spells G-A-Y. I was pretty keen on them at the time, I think the idea’s pretty cool. It’s one of those ‘in the know’ kind of ideas. You either get it or you don’t. Perhaps the ‘in joke’ was just a little to ‘in’ for some people, including the company itself. In my post last year I wrote:

The t-shirts tastefully, in tiny writing, have slogans like ‘Are You 429′, ‘429 You Wish’, ‘429 Boy’, and ‘Absolutely 429′. If you’re unsure whether you’re 429 or not, you can buy the ‘premium soft cotton’ t-shirts without any label.

They don’t talk about the gay thing anymore. Now, under the ‘We Are 429′ section of their website they state, in ‘understated’ lowercase:

we like to challenge the idea of ‘labels’. so, when asked what 429 means, we can only give one answer: 429 is being confident in your own skin…
work in them, play in them, date in them … do whatever you want in them (we don’t judge).

I hate this lack of any attitude. It makes me want to despise their clothes, which isn’t as tough as it was before because they now look pretty ordinary. There’s nothing special about them. Of course they’re nice ‘premium’ shirts and such, but while last year their clothes were something remarkable, now they’re nothing more than what you could pick up at Zara with half of the price and none of the gay-shame. But they haven’t developed enough shame to stop putting homoerotic photos of muscly boys, as below, in their catalogue. Cute boys are apparently still allowed: it’s honesty and frankness that aren’t permitted. Theirs new style is like Abercrombie and Fitch but while A&F doesn’t really pretend to be anything but pretty and butch, 429 actively tries to deny its gay roots. Gross.

429 Life pretending to be straight

429 Life

Wayne Besen: Eradicate gays, eradicate christians

Published
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Patrick
1 year, 8 months ago
in Equality, Gay, Politics, Religion and US
. 3 Comments


‘Phelps’, taken by Ron’s Log.

Wayne Besen, on his blog, discusses the the idea of a Southern Baptist leader Rev Albert Mohler Jr that one day, were a genetic propensity to homosexuality ever discovered, he would condone the use of anti-gay treatments to correct these traits. The idea is interesting because it comes from a man who is clearly in a position of power in his community. He’s riding high and there are few natural predators. There’s no need to watch your back, right? But what if he did have to? What if he were to consider his stated view but from the position of a Christian who is unpopular. You go to Turkey, go to China, go to Indonesia and perhaps the idea that eradicating gays might not be quite as powerful. Why? Not that these men and women who criticise everyone else’s lifestyles would have had a change of had, not that their hatred would have diminished, but in the light of threats to their own eradication and extermination perhaps they would have less haste in persecuting others. Besen says:

Before you dismiss this question as hypothetical or academic, consider that research into the origins of spirituality is a robust field of inquiry. There are currently about a dozen studies that show shared personality traits among religious people, suggesting a genetic or biological basis. …In Mohler’s world, conservative Christians are a majority and considered a paragon of virtue. However, the late singer John Lennon is not the only person who has “imagined” a world without religion and its Inquisitions and suicide bombers. Indeed, there are prominent scholars and writers who consider religion to be little more than a psychological defect - much like the Southern Baptists now consider homosexuality.

While the right in America is strong they think of their worldview as omnipotent and supreme. But their lack of humility and their absolute faith, which often equals a disregard of and lack of respect for the views of others could be a threat to themselves. Who is to say that in some future time, our increasingly laïque and secular societies will not view religion as a greater threat to humanity than ‘alternative’ sexualities? Gays don’t start wars because other people aren’t gay, we just want to be left alone. But those crazy christians are just bringing fire onto themselves. By pushing to continually persecute gays, legislating against us, protesting against us, hating against us, praying against us, shooting, stabbing and killing us, they will eventually undermine their own position of what is for now strength. Love thy neighbor flys out the window when those neighbors are both guys. Maybe they should rethink that?

Wayne Besen: Mohler’s Slippery Slope

formerly.. Just how gay is the right?