Rutgers Approves New Policy To Better Accommodate LGBT Students
Last week, Rutgers University approved a policy that will allow students to use their preferred names instead of legal names on school documents.
HRC.org
Daily Archives: September 9, 2014
How Long Until Fire Island Is Completely Underwater?
How Long Until Fire Island Is Completely Underwater?
Meet Joseph.
He’s concerned about climate change, and wants the upcoming UN Climate Summit in NYC to be successful. So he decided to visit “climate change ground zero.” You know, Fire Island.
Because besides being the stuff that gay dreams are made of (which can quickly turn into gay regret), it’s also a “low-lying sandbar on the Atlantic Ocean.” Which doesn’t sound good when he puts it so bluntly.
He tries to engage the locals about the impending threat of climate change, but they seem a bit preoccupied.
Like these two guys above, who have a pressing game of volleyball to get to.
Tough crowd.
Joseph does finally find a few takers, and gets the perfect response after telling them that, “This place will be underwater. Sea level rise will wipe this place out.”
“So like, we won’t be able to come here anymore?”
The video is meant to be funny, and it is. But it’s also, you know, not. And it’ll be even less funny once shit starts getting real and our coasts are underwater.
Dan Tracer
New Out US Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith Talks Debugging Bias Against Women And Minorities: VIDEO
New Out US Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith Talks Debugging Bias Against Women And Minorities: VIDEO
Megan Smith, the former Google executive and former CEO of the online LGBT community site PlanetOut who was recently selected by President Obama as the new Chief Technology Officer of the U.S., is profiled in a new video put out by Makers, a site that aggregates and shares videos of women’s stories. In the video, Smith talks about her experience growing up as a girl in the at times misogynistic world of math, science and engineering. She also speaks about her experience as a lesbian working in the tech world:
“The world is not accepting. But eventually you get to a point where you realize it’s you, this is who you are. And you have to become willing to really let go of all your most important relationships in order to be yourself. When you’re gay you come out every day because everyone assumes you’re straight. But you have to be your whole self. You just do. ‘Cuz it will kill you not to…Right now as an industry we’re working hard on understanding bias against women and minorities that has just been with us through all of history and trying to in our tech way debug that.”
In her new role, Smith will “lead Administration-wide efforts to unleash the power of technology, data, and innovation to help meet our nation’s goals and the needs of our citizens.”
Watch the video, AFTER THE JUMP…
Sean Mandell
"I am not gay, altho
Speaking Professionally
Speaking Professionally
When you talk to your doctor, can you be sure that she’s giving you her best professional advice, and nothing but? What about your lawyer? Therapist? Pharmacist? When clients seek professional advice, they want to access a specialized body of knowledge that is often obscure to the outsider and highly technical, but extremely useful. We rely on professionals’ accurate advice and best judgment for important life decisions. And we trust that by virtue of being a professional, licensed by the state and subject to malpractice liability for bad advice, they will give us good information.
But speaking professionally has become something of a battleground of late as state legislatures are attempting to tell professionals what they may and may not say.
Does the First Amendment protect professional speech? Should it? And what about regulating the professions; surely, we don’t want to do away with licensing requirements or professional malpractice liability? We wouldn’t want to protect quackery as a matter of free speech, would we? Recently, these questions came to the forefront of legal and political debate in two sets of court decisions, involving legislation on two hot-button topics: gays and guns.
A California law prohibits mental health providers from engaging in “sexual orientation change efforts,” or, less euphemistically, conversion therapy, for minors. The Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that law against a constitutional challenge, and in July the Supreme Court refused to take up the case. So the California law can now go into effect. Similar legislation in New Jersey is being challenged in federal court there. Last year, a federal district court upheld the law, and the appeal is now before the Third Circuit. Other states are likely to follow California’s lead: The NCLR #BornPerfect campaign lists seven states and the District of Columbia as actively considering conversion therapy legislation.
The other case that made the national news and invited impassioned commentary involves a Florida law that prohibits doctors from inquiring about firearm ownership as a matter of course. The Federal Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld that law as “a legitimate regulation of professional conduct.” Doctors may want to give parents advice about childproofing a home, for example. But doctors may not ask about guns in some instances, even if they might think it’s relevant, if the state says it’s not. (Though the court notes that “if good medical care clearly requires inquiry — for example, in case of a suicidal patient — the physician will know that inquiry is relevant and thus not barred.”) As the dissent points out, doctors and the state have “different definitions of ‘relevant.'”
So how should we think about these instances in which the state tries to determine what professionals may say to their clients, or where state legislatures determine what is relevant or irrelevant information? Surprisingly, there is no generally accepted theory of professional speech, and leading scholars are hotly debating the issue.
They raise a number of very important points. Robert Post, the dean of the Yale Law School, argues that doctors are subject to medical malpractice liability for bad advice, and the First Amendment provides no defense. So doctors’ rights are limited in that regard. Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School notes that the First Amendment should apply when the state tries to silence politically unpopular views. And Professor Vikram Amar of UC Davis reminds us that the professions have always been subject to licensing.
But something crucial is missing from the debate: a deeper appreciation of the historically self-regulating nature of the professions on questions of substance, and the role of individual professionals in relation to these professional communities. To get a better conceptual handle on professional speech, I suggest that we should think about the professions as knowledge communities, that is, communities whose primary reason for existence is the generation and dissemination of knowledge. The individual professional is the conduit to pass on this knowledge to the client.
What the California conversion therapy law and the Florida gun law have in common is that the state tells professionals what they can say. But there is a fundamental difference: In the California case, the legislature codified the professional standard by relying on findings of professional groups, such as the American Psychological Association and others. In the Florida case, by contrast, the state legislature did exactly the opposite. While the American Medical Association and other professional groups have determined that asking about guns is relevant as a professional matter, the state legislature substituted its own judgment. But when we think about the professions as knowledge communities, we ought to be highly skeptical of state interference with professional insights.
Licensing schemes and the imposition of certain educational requirements remain as important as ever. Determining what it takes to be a professional does not involve the state in deciding what the professional is allowed to say. Protecting professional speech also doesn’t mean we have to do away with professional malpractice liability: the benchmark for sanctioning “unprofessional” speech is exactly the same body of knowledge that the First Amendment should protect. And the First Amendment, accordingly, does not protect “unprofessional” speech. As long as the professional gives the client good advice, as a matter of what is defensible professional knowledge, the client gets exactly what she needs. And it’s not for the state to decide what is relevant or irrelevant, accurate or inaccurate. The First Amendment should protect the professional’s and the client’s interests in relevant and accurate communication of the knowledge community’s insights when a professional speaks.
The GOP Platform Committee Should Watch This Republican’s New Marriage Equality Campaign Ad
Man Attacks Sleeping Gay Roommate With Hammer Because He “Can’t Live With” Gays
Man Attacks Sleeping Gay Roommate With Hammer Because He “Can’t Live With” Gays
18-year-old Connor Huntley
A 21-year-old man who tried to murder his gay roommate with a claw hammer has been sentenced to 14 years in prison, the BBC reports.
According to a police report, 18-year-old Connor Huntley was found alive in his Margate, England apartment last May after his roommate, 21-year-old Joseph Williams, called police to report that his roommate had died.
Fortunately, his roommate was not dead.
When police arrived, they discovered that Williams had delivered one severe blow to Huntley’s head with a hammer while he slept, simply because Huntley was gay and Williams “did not know if he could live with him.”
Charged with attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent, Williams has been detained under the Mental Health Act since.
Though Huntley survived the attack, he was left with a severe brain injury and a depressed skull fracture. The extent of his injuries are not detailed, but Huntley’s family insists that he has been handed “his own life sentence” through the ordeal.
The BBC also reports that the men were “not the obvious flatmates,” because they had been paired together by their landlord. A neighbor told reporters that a week before the attack, Williams had informed him that he intended to harm Huntley.
Speaking after the verdict was delivered this week, Huntley’s family released the following statement:
Whilst Connor is making slow but steady progress from this horrific ordeal, we feel he has been handed his own life sentence by this hideous act. No one deserves to be so viciously attacked in such an evil manner, regardless of race, age, gender or sexuality.
Connor’s head injuries are detailed in the x-ray scan below:
Photos: Kent Police
Matthew Tharrett
Ugandan Parliament Poised To Reintroduce Anti-Homosexuality Act
Ugandan Parliament Poised To Reintroduce Anti-Homosexuality Act
Members of the Ugandan Parliament are reportedly working on a revised version of its law criminalizing homosexuality. An earlier version of the law was rendered null and void earlier this year after a Parliamentary review board concluded that the quorum necessary to pass the law had not, in fact, been present.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, decried by a number of Western nations that provide aid funding to Uganda, would penalize gay individuals and those thought to be “promoting” homosexuality with lifetime jail sentences. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni has insisted that the newest iteration of the law would be focused primarily on the protection of children from the threat of homosexuals. The law, however, draws no distinction between gays and pedophiles.
Should the bill be reintroduced to the floor, it will be referred to a committee for review and potential further alterations before it is released into the House for discussion and debate. Members of the parliamentary body advocating for the bill’s dismissal are vastly outnumbered. According to the Daily Monitor 254 out of 376 parliament members, more than the necessary ⅔ quorum, have expressed their support for reintroducing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill for consideration.
“As soon as the movers of this bill are ready, we will proceed,” Said Deputy Parliament Speaker Jacob Oulanyah. “When it is introduced, we will handle it appropriately.”
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2014/09/ugandan-parliament-poised-to-reintroduce-anti-homosexuality-act-1.html
Solange Calmon 65433 na 17ª Marcha do Orgulho LGBT's
Solange Calmon 65433 na 17ª Marcha do Orgulho LGBT's
A candidata à distrital, Solange Calmon, prestigiou a marcha e fez corpo a corpo com os participantes do evento.
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