Third Transgender Woman of Color Murdered in January
HRC extends our sincere condolences to the families and friends of these women.
HRC.org
Daily Archives: January 28, 2015
Blogger Andrew Sullivan Announces Plan To Call It Quits
Blogger Andrew Sullivan Announces Plan To Call It Quits
I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me. I want to write a book.”
— Influential and often controversial blogger Andrew Sullivan announcing plans to pursue other interests in a lengthy post on The Dish
Jeremy Kinser
Madonna Forces Reporter to Drink Tequila for Asking a Dumb Question: VIDEO
Madonna Forces Reporter to Drink Tequila for Asking a Dumb Question: VIDEO
Madonna’s 13th studio album Rebel Heart is not due until March 10 but an undoubtedly well-coordinated media blitz got underway this week in Australia, with an interview with Richard Wilkins on the Today show.
At the beginning of the interview, Madonna instructed Wilkins that it was not an interview, but a drinking game.
“If you ask me a stupid question, and I’m going to be the judge of that, you’re going to drink a shot of tequila. If you ask me an amazing question that sets my world on fire, I’m going to drink a shot of tequila.”
Guess who walked out of the interview sober?
Wilkins’ questions about Taylor Swift, Lourdes, and the hacker who was arrested for leaking Rebel Heart pass the shot test, but things take a turn when he asks her about reinventing herself.
Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…
Andy Towle
MS Record – Veto de prefeito gera polêmica entre classe LGBT
MS Record – Veto de prefeito gera polêmica entre classe LGBT
Nesta semana, o prefeito de Campo Grande Gilmar Olarte vetou o projeto de lei 7.797 de 2014, da vereadora Luiza Ribeiro, que garantia aos travestis e transexuais o direito a identificação…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8vRowMaBk&feature=youtube_gdata
Catholic Missionaries Buy 'Bar of Sodom'
Catholic Missionaries Buy 'Bar of Sodom'
After a neighboring gay bar went bankrupt, a conservative Catholic group in France jumped at the chance to snap up the ‘bar of Sodom,’ which the organization plans to convert to a mission.
Stevie St. John
www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2015/01/28/catholic-missionaries-buy-bar-sodom
Michigan's Right-Wing Crusader
Michigan's Right-Wing Crusader
In a column that ran in the Detroit Free Press on Monday morning, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette laid out a weak and hypocritical argument regarding his opposition to marriage equality in Michigan.
He also — most likely inadvertently — gave us a great hypothetical that only serves to riddle his own political narrative full of holes.
Schuette begins by asking people to “Imagine what would happen if the attorney general of a state ignored a federal court ruling, failed to uphold the state constitution and paid no attention to the results of an election supported by 59 percent of the people statewide.”
No need to “imagine” anything. Schuette has already done all three of those things since taking office.
In June of 2012, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) was constitutional, and yet, Schuette continues to use his political capital and elected office to fight against the law. No need to imagine our AG ignoring a federal court ruling — he’s actively doing it.
When voters rejected Gov. Rick Snyder’s anti-democratic emergency manager law in November of 2012, it was viewed as a win for preserving the constitutional right of Michiganders to decide the fate of their state. Enter Bill Schuette, who used “pretzel logic” to skirt the state constitution and push the EM law on Michigan communities regardless.
In 2008, Michiganders overwhelmingly voted to approve medical marijuana use in Michigan (63 percent supported it), but that hasn’t stopped Schuette, who campaigned against the proposal and has been trying to gut it at every turn since it became law. Ignoring the will of the people? Check.
It’s no secret that Schuette has gubernatorial aspirations for 2018 and he’s spent his entire political career towing along the right-wing agenda that he thinks will lead him to the highest office in Michigan.
When defending his ill-fated fight against marriage equality in the opinion piece, Schuette begins to blur the lines between justification and juxtaposition: he compares marriage equality to the death penalty.
“Michigan law does not allow for the death penalty. Yet nationally, a majority of citizens support the death penalty for convicted murderers,” Schuette writes. “Under the theory advanced by some gay marriage defenders, the attorney general and other elected officials should ignore Michigan’s prohibition and apply the death penalty.”
Comparing state-sponsored execution to marriage between two loving people may seem like a bit of hyperbole, but for far-right conservatives like Schuette, they’ll grasp at any straws they can to maintain the status quo even if it means embarrassing Michigan, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, and keeping loving families from experiencing justice and security.
Attorneys General are supposed to be defenders of the people and democracy, not backwards ideology. Schuette is not a defender of democracy or the people — he’s nothing but a right-wing crusader.
State Equality Index Spotlight: New Jersey
State Equality Index Spotlight: New Jersey
New Jersey is one of 18 states in the country that has explicit state-level workplace protections for all LGBT employees. It is also one of 36 states with marriage equality.
HRC.org
www.hrc.org/blog/entry/state-equality-index-spotlight-new-jersey?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
Domino’s Considered Running This Bondage-Inspired Ad To Sell You Pizza
Domino’s Considered Running This Bondage-Inspired Ad To Sell You Pizza
We’re going to be honest here — even before this ad surfaced, Domino’s pizza already left a bad taste in our mouths.
But we’ll never be able to get this image of a tongue dressed up in bondage gear out of our heads. It was never actually run, but was a pitched idea to promote their sriracha pizza.
“It’s real,” Domino’s spokesman Tim McIntyre told People. “The ad was created and pitched by an agency to the independent franchise in Israel. It never ‘officially’ appeared anywhere, because it was ill-advised, unfunny and not brand-appropriate,” McIntyre explained. “In a word, it was stupid.”
The ad reads, “You’re going to suffer and enjoy every moment,” but if they were going for accuracy they would have ended the sentence after “suffer.”
Back to the drawing boards.
Dan Tracer
National Institutes of Health Finance $400,000 Study of Grindr Behavior
National Institutes of Health Finance $400,000 Study of Grindr Behavior
The National Institutes of Health have put forth nearly half a million dollars for a study being conducted by Columbia University analyzing gay mens’ use of geolocation-based networking apps like Grindr, Scruff, and Jack’d.
“Smartphone technologies have provided a new venue for sexual partnering among men who have sex with men (MSM),” the study’s grant proposal reads. “Indeed, there are a rapidly growing number of smartphone applications designed to facilitate sexual partnering among MSM.”
The study, led by professor of sociomedical sciences Karolynn Siegel, interviewed 60 self-identified gay men who have sex with other men about the ways in which mobile networking apps influenced their sexual and social behavior. In particular the study focused on the “sexual and emotional states” (like arousal and impulsivity) of its participants in an attempt to better understand the effect that smartphone apps have on the potential for risky sexual behavior:
“Given the expediency with which men are able to arrange sexual encounters using these applications, there is cause to question if, when, and how sexual negotiation and serostatus disclosure occurs.
The overall study goal is to understand how sexual risk behaviors among MSM may be facilitated by the nature of GPS-enabled smartphone applications, the way they are used, and the process by which sexual partnering occurs via smartphone applications.”
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2015/01/national-institute-of-health-finances-400000-study-of-grindr-behavior.html
LGBT rights endangered in Texas legislature
LGBT rights endangered in Texas legislature
Most major cities in Texas protect LGBT against discrimination. Now the state legislature is about to abolish those protections.