Aetna aims for LGBT community with targeted marketing test
A relative says a man found dead with his seven children in a Maryland home was trying to keep them warm with a generator after power was cut over an outstanding bill.

www.wfmj.com/story/28740566/aetna-aims-for-lgbt-community-with-targeted-marketing-test

I Support Your Right To Share My Rights
This piece first appeared on Momastery. I’ve been asked these questions so frequently that I compiled a few answers here. Love.

Q: You’ve been vocal in your support of marriage equality even though you are a Christian. Can you talk about that?

Yes. I will, but I do so under protest. It makes me squirm that we are still talking about this, that a straight woman is being asked to discuss whether or not her gay sisters and brothers should or should not be granted their basic civil rights. As if we Christians are the morality police, the gatekeepers for God, the legislative branch of the government, the bosses of the world. My gay friends know they’re fine and good and worthy of their rights even without knowing what I think. Even so – I will share my thoughts here with great anticipation for the Supreme Court’s ruling this summer – after which I hope we’ll need to discuss this less often.

One of the brilliant ideas that launched this country is that religions shouldn’t legislate their interpretations of holy texts to citizens. It doesn’t make sense to me to ignore this very American idea and call ourselves patriotic about it. But if we must, then I wish we Christians could come up with an actual tenant of Christianity to legislate, one that would serve the world – like gleaning or caring for widows and orphans or embracing the alien or turning the other cheek or turning all our weapons into plowshares or giving away our first fruits. I think it says a lot that we choose the rights of homosexuals to obsess over. It feels too easy. I’m not big on faith rules but if I had to choose one – it would be that every person must choose a faith issue upon which to hang her hat that requires HER to change – not somebody else.

It makes no sense to me that my gay friends cannot get married to each other because a certain slice of Christianity doesn’t believe in gay marriage. And let’s be clear, deciding that certain folks can get married and others cannot is not just a symbolic gesture. My married friends and I enjoy a host of government privileges and protections by virtue of being part of a government-approved marital unit. So when we do not support marriage equality, we support the government denying from gay families the rights we claim for ourselves, including rights to hospital visitation and emergency medical decisions; public housing access; certain inheritance rights and tax benefits; the right to residency and family unification under immigration law; and certain social security, retirement and health insurance benefits.

So, the first reason I support marriage equality is that I believe in the separation of church and state. I think if people don’t believe in gay marriage, then mostly they should not get gay married. That should be enough of a stand to take. We should live out our particular brand of faith, sure – but we should never force our brand of faith upon anyone else. All violence starts with the desire to change others and then never, ever ends.

Having said that, I’ll admit that I came to my stand on this “issue” through my faith, not in spite of it. I support equal rights for my gay neighbors not even though I’m a Christian, but BECAUSE I’m a Christian. In the Gospel Jesus makes it crystal clear that if we are going to take seriously only one of his suggestions- we should make it this one: love your neighbor as yourself.

I think there is a big difference between simply loving someone and loving someone as yourself.

For example: when a married Christian says that he loves gay people but can’t support marriage equality, it strikes me as an incomplete kind of love. Because loving your neighbor as you love yourself, I think, must mean that you bestow every right you claim for yourself onto your neighbor. If you are free and you love your neighbor as yourself, you want your neighbor to be free, too. If you claim your right to be married, but deny it to your neighbor, then you are loving your neighbor just a little bit less than you love yourself.

This kind of talk upsets people, which makes me sad because I really, really don’t like to upset people. Upsetting people feels wrong to me. But it feels more wrong to be quiet about freedom matters for fear of upsetting people. I have so many Christian friends who privately disagree with what is being preached from their pulpits about marriage equality, but they stay quiet so they don’t rock the boat. What’s ever going to change if we don’t raise our hands kindly? If our kids see us sitting silently, they’ll never know they have the freedom to ask questions. I get it, though. It’s dangerous to disagree with “the church.” You can get yourself crucified. People never get more riled up then when someone starts talking about God and freedom in the same sentence. It’s like we Christians love the idea of grace, but we don’t want it distributed indiscriminately- we want make rules about it and dole it out carefully and strategically. It’s like we’re worried that if everybody knows that she’s loved and accepted by God – it will be Grace Anarchy! I want that. I want Grace Anarchy. I want people to be free to be who they are. It makes sense to me that the free-er people are, the BETTER people are. I believe in people because I believe in God. I think God knew what God was doing when God made each of us.

Q: And so I suppose you agree that homosexuality is not a choice, then- but an inborn trait?

Yes, of course. Although I have a hunch that our sexual orientation is much more of a sliding scale with lots of grey than most of us are comfortable admitting. I think if we all got a little more cozy with our own grey areas we’d probably be more accepting of the gray in others. So, yes- I believe that gayness or straightness is inborn- but honestly I never understand why that is what we focus on. It makes me uncomfortable when people say: You’re okay because you were born that way. That feels negative to me. Like, it’s okay that you are this weird thing because God made you weird. I don’t love that approach. For me, I don’t care if you’re a woman who wants to marry a woman because you were “born that way” or because you met this one person and everything you previously thought about your sexuality changed in an instant. I don’t care. You are my neighbor and I trust you to choose your life and your love. I’m married and it’s one of the best things to ever happen to me and if you want this wonderful thing too, then I want it for you.

Q: How do you respond when people accuse you of picking and choosing what you believe in the Bible?

Well, that theory suggests that there are two kind of Christians: Those who pick and choose what they follow in the Bible, and those who follow it all. I just tend to think that the two kinds of Christians are: those who admit that they pick and choose what to follow, and those who don’t admit that. For example: most folks reference 1 Corinthians to prove that homosexuality is a sin, while ignoring the fact that the same book of the Bible says that women should wear head coverings and be silent in church. The strange thing is that when I bring that up, people say: well, that was written in a different time. You have to understand the context. It is so strange. Context is allowed to be considered when discussing women (progress! great!) but not when it comes to homosexuality. It doesn’t seem right to pick and choose which scriptures we are permitted to consider the context of and which we are not. As a woman, it is important for me to say: Let’s please not take hold of our freedom, but leave our gay brothers and sisters in prison. This is like the Bible underground railroad; as the church moves forward and frees oppressed groups one at a time, let each newly freed group go back for those still imprisoned. What good is our freedom if we don’t spend it on those not yet free? Tweet: What good is our freedom if we don’t spend it on those not yet free? @momastery ctt.ec/6jde1+

Q: How do you interpret the scriptures about homosexuality?

When these scriptures were written, there was no precedent for monogamous, consensual homosexual relationships. Many theologians agree that the original Hebrew word used here (the one that has been translated again and again by imperfect people) originally referred to the common ancient practice of taking child sex slaves. Many theologians agree that the original scripture writers were referring to child sex slavery as abomination. The abomination here is about abuse of power. It’s about the abomination of people in in power abusing the vulnerable. (Read more about this here.) If you want to fight against the abomination referred to in these scriptures, don’t picket a wedding of two grown people who love each other and want to start a family, join the work of courageous organizations who are fighting the very real abomination of the child sex trade across the world today.

I think that if someone translates scripture to me in a way that seems to rub up against what I know about the God of love, it’s my responsibility to start asking questions. We must work out our own faith with fear and trembling. We need to take scripture seriously enough to look hard and research and ask questions. Every time someone tells me that homosexuals need to repent and leave their life of sin I want to say: but repent means to RETHINK .Why do you read God’s direction to repent and assume God is talking to someone else? What if God is talking to you? What if you are to rethink your ideas of who is in and who is out? I know when I read the direction to repent, I know it’s meant for me. I feel constantly, just constantly, called to rethink. If we live in a constant state of repentance, that means we are always letting go of old ways of thinking to make way for the new. Behold, God says. I am doing a new thing! Repentance is the way of God, which means that if I want to follow God, I can’t cling too tightly to my ideas about God. Ideas and beliefs about God are not God. Opinions and beliefs can become the idols that are hardest to let go. And so faith has to be more of a dance than a checklist.

I’ve had a lot of repentance to do lately. I used to be really angry at Christians who think differently than I do. God is working with me. I am softening. I have many conservative Christian friends who look at all of this differently and I have come to understand that they are good people. They are not hateful, they are just like me: doing the best they can with what they’ve been taught. It’s good to be kind and humble about what we think we know. It’s good to choose mercy over judgement in all cases. I’m working on it. My son said to me recently: “Mom, you’re judgmental too, you just tend to judge judgy people.” Dangit, I thought. Repent, repent. repent, Glennon. Walk humbly.

Q: How do you talk to your kids about homosexuality?

Early and often and badly.

Recently my 11-year old and I were talking about this and my five year old walked in and overheard us. She said: “what’s gay?” And Chase said: “Well, it’s like when a girl loves girls more than she loves boys.” And Amma said,” Oh, I’m definitely gay then.” And I thought. Wait, Crap, Well – based on that definition, I might be gay, too. We need to tweak that, maybe.

So we don’t talk about it perfectly. It’s awkward and I’m always certain I’m saying all the wrong things. There’s no script. After one family discussion about sexuality- I called a gay friend and said: “UGH. How do I talk about this? What do I say? I feel so awkward.” And she said, “Well don’t go blaming that on us. You’re awkward about a lot of things.” YES. That’s true, I thought.

But we do talk about sexuality openly and often and we keep two things in mind:

First, we don’t ever assume to know our kids’ orientation. Recently, we were playing the Life board game and when each child landed on the “Get Married” space I was careful to say: “Congratulations! Should I give you a wife peg or a husband peg?” No assumptions until and unless they talk to us about it.

Secondly, our kids know that homosexuality (or heterosexuality for that matter) is not something to tolerate, but to celebrate. We tolerate traffic jams, we celebrate love and sexuality. They need to know that NOW. I often see loving, wonderful, courageous parents changing their “views” on homosexuality after their child comes out to them. That is some brave progress, and I applaud it, but it’s not ideal. Many of my gay friends tell me they knew they were gay as children, long before they told their parents. How much better for a little one to know he’s ALWAYS been accepted for whoever he turns out to be?

Most importantly, our minister, Dawson (that’s him in the picture up top, officiating a wedding!) is our good friend and he’s gay- so my kids aren’t growing up with the idea that homosexuality and church are at odds at all. They just see their gay friend wrapped up in a vestment Sunday morning, being his brilliant, divine, human, hilarious self. They just watch Dawson preaching truth and love and freedom and then they feel him placing his hand on their little foreheads and blessing them: in the name of the Father/Mother, Son and Holy Spirit. They feel God through Dawson. So that’s how we “talk” about it. We just love Pastor Dawson and he loves us. And as my kid see our church family not just “accept” pastor Dawson but be led by him — they learn that church is a place for humans to be human, and then love each other in superhuman ways.

We just want to dance in the streets with God and Pastor Dawson.

It will be Grace Anarchy and we will all be free and it will be on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Love,
G

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

www.huffingtonpost.com/glennon-melton/i-support-your-right-to-s_b_7017644.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Jim Obergefell: Remember That Name

In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Americans will see a face and name they will be seeing a lot more of in the days to come: the named plaintiff in the marriage equality case before the Supreme Court, Jim Obergefell.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/jim-obergefell-remember-that-name?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

“RuPaul’s Drag Race” Recap Realness: Bring Back My Merle

Though Kasha’s recent departure caused quite a stir with the audience, it seems to have minimal effect on our remaining nine contestants. Kandy’s cleaned that mirror so many times that Logo is required to report her as one of their janitorial staff, but she remains confident that her purpose on the show is to send the other girls home one lip sync at a time. I’d laugh, but given how many lifelines she’s been thrown, it wouldn’t shock me if she was straight-up hosting next season. That ever-thickening smear of black liner under her eye will be down to her tits by then.

Oh also the editors would really like for us to believe that Fame has serious beef with Pearl because of negativity or whatever, but absolutely no drama results from this assertion.

The next day begins with Max opening up a tiny umbrella to shield herself from the vulgar sex talk with which the other ladies debase themselves. Like, can’t we all just cover our ankles and talk about daffodils? Sadly, her prudishness distracts from the top/bottom discussion. Can we get a rundown on that one? Inquiring dick pigs want to know.

Ru (fisting top/watersports bottom, for the record) jumps in with a video message about wigs and a mini-challenge about a really fantastic dream I had last night. The girls face a row of men wearing nothing but caps and underpants and ask one by one what they’re packing. Most offer a numerical score, but one has a game-ending monster in his pants. It turns out that drag queens are like truffle pigs when it comes to sniffing out panty snausages, because only Ginger manages to close out the round with points on the board.

As the default winner, Ms. Minj gathers a team for herself and divvies up the remaining gals as they face off for the week’s main task: portraying Ru, Michelle, and Merle in three variations of the story behind the judging panel switcheroo. Ginger makes a grab for Kennedy and Katya, then saddles Max with Violet and Kandy because she’s downright hateful. That leaves Pearl, Fame, and Jaidynn to figure their shit out.

And figure they do! Pearl is full of ideas about the foot-fetish-y things they could all do together, but her team is wildly disinterested in her input. By the time they hit the set with Ross Mathews, no one knows their lines and the vibe is strange to the point of being surrealist. Fame’s full-stop interruption with a directionless monologue about her feelings is so bizarre that I start to worry I accidentally tuned into David Lynch’s Drag Race (which would, incidentally, still have Max as a contestant). The team ends up pulling together a decent video, with Pearl’s addled, cartoonish take on Michelle garnering special notice. It’s not accurate or even especially good, it’s just nice not to have to check her for a pulse every ten minutes.

To portray Michelle’s take on the story, Max opts to embody Merle as a cartoon villain, because that’s how the vixen Visage would view her. Ross Matthews immediately crowns her “the Meryl Streep of drag” because it is revolutionary to him that someone put even thirty seconds of thought into her performance. To be fair, she does seem like an Oscar winner when compared to her sullen teammates. Violet remains beautiful, bland, and slightly bitchy, but Kandy sticks out like the sorest thumb with her stilted delivery, busted look, and overall unwatchable nature. Seriously, the concept of a mid-episode elimination needs to be instated. She shouldn’t be here.

Team Minj has an easier time. Ginger and Michelle are both secretly The Penguin when they take their make-up off, and so the pairing of actress and role is sublime. Similarly, Katya sees through Merle’s veneer of professionalism and plays her as a particularly dotty substitute middle school teacher. As for Kennedy, I don’t think she’s acting: I’m pretty sure the pit crew gave her a large handful of miscellaneous pills before the camera started rolling. Despite Miss Davenport’s near-absence, however, the group is unquestionably a frontrunner.

The next day’s runway theme, perhaps in a continued ode to Merle, is Death Becomes Her. While the queens prep for their mortuary mainstage, Jaidynn reveals that her family may disown her if she doesn’t marry a woman and play it straight. Violet is once again blindsided by the harshness of reality, calling Ms. Fierce’s concern “a real fear.” You got it, Chachki. While you’re vaguely concerned that you might have misspelled your last name, other people have real fear about their relatives kicking them out or getting murdered. Is it wrong to hope that tragedy befalls this child? I just think it would do her so much good.

The parade of painted corpses has a great many highlights, including Max baring her heart and Ginger bearing it all. Katya’s ode to Jaws and strong performance skills earn her a deserved win and propel her team into the safe zone. Which is good for Kennedy, because what even is that costume? Those pills must not have worn off yet.

Since half of the bottom two is perpetually reserved for Kandy (whose vampire couture is decidedly anemic), the only question is who will join her for the lip sync. The honor goes to Jaidynn, who the judges don’t see as level with the other contestants. Lucky for her, she doesn’t have to be better than everyone: she just has to outlast one queen that no one likes anymore anyway. Though the outcome of the battle is a foregone conclusions at this point, it’s at least a good show. I’m not sure how they landed Ariana Grande as a guest judge, but her presence provides us with a hell of a song and ensures that there are riffs, high notes, and sassy arms as we drive a stake through that Ho’s heart. Descanse en paz, ardilla amiga.

Chris J. Kelly performs under the drag name Ariel Italic; in addition to this recap, he hosts weekly Drag Race viewings at the 9^th Avenue Saloon in New York City.

Chris Kelly

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/s-6fBfWMkyg/rupauls-drag-race-recap-realness-bring-back-my-merle-20150407

Bobby Jindal Says He Supports Louisiana's Aggressively Anti-Gay 'Religious Liberty' Bill

Andy Towle

www.towleroad.com/2015/04/bobby-jindal-says-he-supports-louisianas-aggressively-anti-gay-religious-liberty-bill.html

Kentucky’s Rand Paul: ‘I am running for president’
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky entered the campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination Tuesday.

woodtv.com/2015/04/07/kys-rand-paul-joining-2016-presidential-campaign/

Michelangelo Signorile On 'It's Not Over' And The Future Of The LGBT Movement
The queer rights movement has come a long way over the past 50 years and has seen an especially mind-blowing array of triumphs secured in just the last five years. From marriage equality sweeping much of the United States to the transgender community gaining traction, momentum and unprecedented visibility, today the dream of equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is closer to becoming a reality than ever before.

But before you break out the champagne and start drafting an invite list for a celebratory party, there’s some bad news: we’ve still got a long way to go before queer people attain all of the rights that non-queer people have. And, what’s more, we have a lot more work left to do in terms of changing the way that non-queer people think about the lives and experiences of queer people on the most fundamental of levels.

From increases in hate-motivated crimes to the anti-LGBT “religious freedom” laws that are cropping up across the country, the war for equality continues to rage.

HuffPost Gay Voices Editor-at-Large Michelangelo Signorile is on the front line of that war — and has been for over two decades. His latest book, It’s Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality, available in stores and online today, is an in-depth look at where the queer rights movement has been, where it’s going and serves as a reminder and warning that no one should be declaring “mission accomplished” just yet.

I recently chatted with my colleague Mike about his new book including everything from how “the closet” has changed over the years to his vision for our future and how we can — hopefully — one day achieve victory.

Noah Michelson: Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when you got the idea for the book? Is there a specific moment you can point to when you thought “OK, it’s time to look into this more closely”?
Michelangelo Signorile: The book came together over a period of several years. It actually crystalized as an idea as far back as 2009, when facts on the ground, in terms of how people experienced homophobia and transphobia, were never quite matching the celebrations in the media of the victories, which then were still baby steps compared to now. It’s crazy but the victories kept changing, growing, sometimes dramatically, as did the facts on the ground. But what remained constant was that there was always a disconnect between the two, in terms of what I would see or hear from my radio listeners and people online out across the country, and how the wins were celebrated in the media or among activists. And I felt it was something very troubling that needed to be fleshed out and discussed.

The first chapter is entitled “Victory Blindness.” What exactly does that mean and how is it affecting the movement?
Victory blindness is something we all succumb to at times. It’s a term I use to describe the phenomenon in which we focus on the wins, so starved for validation, that we allow them to blind us to the continued bigotry we face. We become enthralled, intoxicated — spellbound by even a little bit. The effect is that it obscures our reality — literally our vision — and it makes us lose our gumption, not wanting to rock the boat, fearful that we’ll lose what we’ve gained and not get what little bit we think we need, when in fact we need a lot and we should be strong and confident knowing our allies will stay with us. In that chapter I use a vivid example, in a section titled “A Story of Victory Blindness,” in which too many activists, claiming that we’d gotten a lot and had a banner couple of years, asked us to accept a situation that validated bigotry and urged us to be “magnanimous,” fearful that the right would portray us as going too far — but in fact this only allowed the backlash to grow because we seemed disjointed and that made us seem weak. We were and are still hated and despised by many — despite having so many allies now — and we have no rights in most states nor federal protections. So this is victory blindness, and it can have the terrible effect of actually allowing the backlash to grow because it telegraphs that we will back down.

The part of the second chapter, entitled “We Don’t Serve Fags Here,” that intrigued me the most is your discussion of the closet and how, even in 2015, it is such an enduring and dangerous phenomenon. How has the closet changed since you began writing about it and what do you think needs to happen for it to vanish altogether — or is that even possible?
So many people clearly have come out in the past 25 years, since I wrote my first book, Queer in America, and people are coming out at much younger ages. And certainly many transgender people are coming to terms with their gender identity at younger ages. Whether transgender, gay, bisexual or lesbian, people are seeing so many people in public life who are out and it’s influencing them and that’s great. Rosie O’Donnell and I talked about that in our Town Hall at SiriusXM about the book. She said she was influenced by Ellen DeGeneres, and then she obviously further influenced so many to come out. So that’s all good.

But we still see the closet strictly enforced among public figures. We still see the media not going there in discussing public figures — even those in the glass closet — sending the message that it’s still shameful. We still see Hollywood enforcing the closet. And, in my research for It’s Not Over, I found that even as things had changed, many many more average LGB people than we think are still deeply closeted, living tormented lives, married to people of the opposite gender when they’re not bi, just to pass as straight, particularly in conservative parts of country. For example, upwards of 80 percent of gay men in Mississippi, according to some of this interesting research, using fascinating data sets, are closeted, not publicly acknowledging they are gay. Again, victory blindness obscures these people’s hardships. I think it is possible to vanquish the closet but it’s going to take enormous work. We have to get to a place where people do not go in the closet — where they’re raised as queer, and that will only happen when we revolutionize education and teach about sexual orientation and gender identity in school, k-12. It’s just starting in California. We need to take it to all 50 states — and I discuss this a lot in the book. And because it will take a while that’s another reason why it’s far from over.

We’ve seen many incredible victories for the movement in recent years — some of them unfathomable even five years ago — and yet, the more ground we gain, the more pushback we’re seeing — from the number of reported hate-based attacks in the United States increasing to this frightening new crop of “religious freedom” bills aimed at allowing discrimination against queer people. Some have written off this ramping up of anti-queer sentiment as the last gasp of a soon defeated right-wing coalition. How do you feel about that assertion and what’s the danger in framing these events in this way?
You know, everything is the last gasp of something — until people get their breath again. We thought we saw the last gasp of racism 50 years ago. Then we thought we saw it over and over again, including when President Obama was elected, right? We were “post-racial” and all this. Obviously it wasn’t true. The enemies of LGBT equality, similarly, as they have done with women, will keep working at finding ways to try to thwart us. They will send up trial balloons that dismally fail, or only work for a time. Some of us, succumbing to victory blindness, will think, “Aha! We’ve finally stumped them!” And then they’ll be back. This is ingrained in our culture, this homophobia, this transphobia. It’s passed down. Everyone has it — and I have a lot of research in the book on implicit bias, and it defies all the breathless polls we see — including those of us who are queer. Our opponents exploit that. We can never underestimate that. And we have only to look at the other movements — the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, whose shoulders we stand upon, to see that.

Tell me about “covering.” What is it and why can it be harmful?
I’m indebted — we all are — to Kenji Yoshino, the esteemed law professor at New York University who wrote the book Covering, in 2006, so ahead of its time. i’ve tried in It’s Not Over to do what he asked us all to do in that book: to popularize the word “covering” and make it as commonplace as the word “closet.” Covering is when members of marginalized groups attain certain rights and then think that the best strategy is to try to fit in — not to focus on difference. He writes about it from the perspective of race, as an Asian American, as well as from the perspective of being gay. For queer people, covering is when we tone down or assimilate in, or try to show cultural tastes that are more in line with the mainstream, and downplay our own culture. And certainly, refraining from showing same-sex affection or sexuality is covering. And covering actually isn’t all bad. Yoshino talks about how it can help win some rights. But we’ve now reached its limit. To break through the deeply ingrained homophobia, that implicit bias which I spoke to a lot of researchers about we have to show who we are, fully desensitize people and focus on that difference and that diversity. Covering is happening not just in our own lives, with each of us individually, but throughout popular culture, when culture makers cover us — sanitize us — in depictions on TV and film, and in the media. We need to break through it all.

Bullying has gone from being a buzz word to almost being a cliche — even the Real Housewives trot out that term to talk about how they treat each other. In some ways it feels like we’re not taking it seriously because it’s been talked about so much in the past several years. The problem is, even though there’s been a sharp increase in visiblity around the idea of bullying, the problem is far from being solved. What are your thoughts on how bullying is framed today and what do you think the solution is?
It’s true that bullying has become a kind of catch-all for so many things. I think in terms of definition we need to go back to basics. I interviewed Danah Boyd, a researcher who has done a lot work with teens, surveying and interviewing them, and looking at all the data on bullying. And what she first was surprised about is that, for all the stories of cyberbullying — and it is a very real problem — kids still say that most bullying happens to them at school. And they also say that the Internet, rather than being, as their parents believe, an extension of that bullying, is often a refuge from it, or a self-empowerment tool, where they can connect with people like themselves from far and wide. So in my chapter on bullying I talk about going back to basics of self-empowerment and turning back to the women’s movement of the ’80s, too, and the lesbian feminists who used self-defense to empower themselves, not just to beat off attackers physically but to empower themselves emotionally and build enormous confidence within a brutal world. It’s something we can really do now for a lot of young people, with so many more parents who are accepting and supporting their kids as gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender. I think self-defense, self-empowerment, building that confidence for the future, has been missing in our tool-kit. We need to pressure schools, we need to change administrations, we need to pass laws and we need to let kids know their lives will be better in the future when they are adults. But we also need to empower kids, in the here and now, to defend themselves in every way when we can and to build that confidence.

I love the chapter entitled “Not Up For Debate,” which is about abandoning the idea that the media needs to cover both sides of these issues. When The Huffington Post came out in support of marriage equality during the Supreme Court hearings in 2013, the number one question I was asked by other news outlets was “Do you think you can stay objective if you’re saying that you support marriage equality?” Why do you think it’s important for the media to stop trying to stay neutral on these issues? What do you say to those who claim that abandoning that neutrality means stories can’t be accurate or fair?
This really is a two-pronged question — one about journalism and one about bigotry. Let’s start with journalism. I’ve long maintained that “objectivity” and “neutrality” are a bit silly to strive for because it’s really impossible, particularly when you as the journalist are a member of a marginalized group and other people have made up the rules of “objectivity.” From the moment you decide something is a story you’re making a value judgement. I’d rather see honesty, particularly about what is settled. And I am happy to see more of our media going in that direction, being more honest about what its values are — while at the same time maintaining, or striving to maintain, fairness to opposing views.To me, objectivity is less important than being fair and striving to be fair. I always make sure to show the opposing view, and present it fairly, even if it’s clear what my view is. But — getting to the second part of the question, the homophobia, and transphobia, issue, the bigotry — the opposing view is now completely debunked when it comes to a scientific point of view. There are no reputable scientists, medical associations, sexologists, etc., who see homosexuality, bisexuality or transgender identity as harmful — and so all the media is left with to show an opposing view is bigotry, most often from religious conservatives. And they just do not have a place anymore — and perhaps never should have — in public policy debate. The media no longer bring white supremacists on to debate racial issues. It’s time they stop bringing on anti-gay hate groups too. It’s not about censorship — and I’m not saying there shouldn’t be debates about our issues — but with these particular people, simply promoting bias, the debate must be over.

What kind of an effect do you think challenging the way that we, as a culture, think about masculinity will have on men — both gay and straight — as well as women and genderqueer people?
I get to all of that in the last chapter of It’s Not Over, in discussing taking on professional male team sports and the masculinity it promotes. It is a masculinity that, by definition, is homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic. The chapter talks about the short term and what must be done in taking on the NFL and other leagues, but then, yes, it gets utopian in discussing the long term — redefining masculinity, beginning in our schools. But I feel like, look at how far we’ve come and what we’ve accomplished — there’s so much more we can do. Let’s think big. I think straight men, who often feel they have to measure up and compete — which I think is often what leads to the bullying and homophobia — will be just as liberated from confining gender norms as gay men, women and genderqueer people. And in that sense I think it takes us back to the roots of the queer movement, about not just “rights” but liberation of the entire society around these issues.

I was heartened to see that you aren’t just raising issues or problems, you’re also offering solutions. There’s a powerful manifesto at the end of the book and this is not the first time you’ve written one. What goes into writing a manifesto and why is it crucial that our movement has one to guide us?
Writing a book is a weird thing. On the one hand, it’s just a bunch of ideas, a bunch of writing, strung together — or at least that’s what you tell yourself, particularly at the beginning, to make it seem less daunting! But really, in the end, it’s almost like an organic, living and breathing thing. It takes a reader on a journey, and as you’re writing it, you’re charting that journey — and I had a talented editor, Ben Hyman, at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who helped create that, really worked with me on structure in a great way. So, as with Queer in America, that epilogue — the manifesto — didn’t come together or know its shape until I was done writing the book. There was talk of including it, or what it would be, or maybe not even having it. But it’s not until you get there, at the end of the book, that it comes together, or not. All the ideas that you laid out, in terms what you want people to see, and solutions and empowering things people can do, get boiled down, and now you can say it all with a certain authority because you’ve thought it through, and you know the readers will get the shorthand and immediately connect because they’ve read the book. And so, it literally just comes pouring out of you. My hope is that it gives people a guidepost, something to turn to, adding in their own personal adaptations of it. That, to me, is a successful manifesto. It makes people think, then apply it in a very personal way — not just blindly following a command — and take action on their own, with their own thoughts fused with it.

For more information and to purchase It’s Not Over, head here. For more from Michelangelo Signorile, follow him on Twitter.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/07/michelangelo-signorile-its-not-over_n_7011832.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices