Daily Archives: July 14, 2015
Dear Liberty Counsel, Gay Does Not Equal Transgender
Dear Liberty Counsel, Gay Does Not Equal Transgender
The anti-LGBT group’s daily email to supporters bemoaned ‘the gayification of the Pentagon’ in response to Monday’s news about the lifting of the trans military ban.
Sunnivie Brydum
www.advocate.com/media/2015/07/14/dear-liberty-counsel-gay-does-not-equal-transgender
NYU Student's #BetterSexTalk Campaign Shares Crucial Advice That's Often Skipped In Sex Ed
NYU Student's #BetterSexTalk Campaign Shares Crucial Advice That's Often Skipped In Sex Ed
“Own your sexuality, nobody has the right to shame you.”
That is the sex advice that Josy Jablons, a New York University student, would like her younger sister to know. As the president of campus group Students for Sexual Respect, Joblins spearheaded a recent sexual education initiative, #BetterSexTalk, to call attention to gender-based violence and sexual respect.
The campaign takes the form of a photo series, where students of every community on campus answer the question: “If you could give one piece of advice to a younger sibling about sex, what would you say?” This approach allows NYU students to fill in the gaps of sexual education by controlling the discourse.
“I believe everyone has a fundamental right to comprehensive sex education, and that’s simply not the case at the moment,” Joblins told The Huffington Post. “I entered college with no understanding of sexual coercion, with no ability to recognize an unsafe relationship. I entered college with no grasp of affirmative consent, and I blame my sex education for that.”
Joblins hopes to eradicate the silence that surrounds sex and sexuality by spreading the activist photos around Facebook and other social media outlets.
More personally, Joblins envisions they ways in which #BetterSexTalk will influence her 16-year-old sister. “I want to tell her everything. I have no ‘one piece of advice,’ I have hundreds.”
Collaborating with a NYU student photographer, Emilio Madrid-Kuser, and president of The Feminist Society, Meghan Racklin, Joblins has now assembled photos of over 100 students.
Check out some of the #BetterSexTalk photos below:
These images were reprinted with permission from Better Sex Talk.
— 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.
Bill introduced to regulate residential programs claiming to help LGBTI youth
Bill introduced to regulate residential programs claiming to help LGBTI youth
An effort to crack down on controversial residential programs that claim to help troubled youth – including those who are LGBTI – reached Capitol Hill on Tuesday (14 July).
US representatives Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, introduced a bill to reform and regulate these programs nationwide which would include no exemptions for religious-based groups.
The members of Congress were joined by the Los Angeles LGBT Center and Survivors of Institutional Abuse (SIA).
‘It isn’t ‘treatment’ to withhold food and water from a youth,’ said LA LGBT Center CEO Lorri L. Jean. ‘It isn’t treatment to beat a teenager. And nothing should ever be considered treatment that involves denial of medical care, solitary confinement, electric shocks, or public humiliation. That’s not therapeutic. That’s child abuse.’
Jean said that is exactly what’s happening throughout the country because residential programs that claim to help troubled teens are operating without necessary and appropriate oversight.
SIA has reported the deaths of more than 300 people who are linked to these programs. Since it is common for these programs to re-open in another state under a different name after they are forced to close, federal legislation is considered essential.
Said Schiff: ‘We cannot ignore reports that young people have died and thousands have suffered abuse at the hands of those who run and work at residential treatment programs under the guise of providing critical therapy and rehabilitation services.’
The congressman said the legislation holds all residential treatment programs accountable for instances of child abuse and increases the transparency of these programs so that parents can make informed and safer choices for their children.
‘Families that turn to these treatment programs for help, often as a last resort, must know that their kids are safe and in the care of professionals,’ Schiff said.
The effort has garnered the support of two-time Oscar winning actress Sally Field who is the mother of a gay son.
‘I can only imagine the horrible grief of the thousands of parents who misplaced trust in programs for ‘troubled’ teens has resulted in the abuse and even death of their kids,’ said Field, honorary campaign chair of the Protect Youth from Institutional Abuse campaign. ‘ … We must pass common sense, bipartisan legislation to regulate this multi-million dollar industry and protect all children.’
In March, the LA LGBT Center and California State Senator Ricardo Lara announced the introduction of the Protecting Youth from Institutional Abuse Act which passed the California State Senate by a vote of 35-1 and will now go to the State Assembly for a vote.
The post Bill introduced to regulate residential programs claiming to help LGBTI youth appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
Former Ford Employee Sues For Religious Right To Harass Gay Coworkers
Former Ford Employee Sues For Religious Right To Harass Gay Coworkers
A Michigan man is suing his former employers, Ford Motor Co. and Rapid Global Business Solutions, alleging the companies violated his religious freedom when they fired him last year.
Thomas Banks, the suit would have us believe, is a victim. As a good upstanding Christian, he was only following God’s will when he essentially told the entire company that gay sex leads directly to death and the destruction of society.
The Huffington Post reports Banks left his comments on a Ford intranet article celebrating the 20th anniversary of GLOBE, a group working within the company to promote and foster an inclusive workplace for LGBT employees. That article is still online, though all comments have been removed.
Here’s what you’d have seen on July 24th of last year:
Two weeks later, reps from both companies told Banks he’d violated Ford’s anti-harassment policy and fired him.
The complaint describes Banks’ post as “a short, candid comment…based upon his concern as a Christian in the workplace,” claiming Ford “acted intentionally out of malice or reckless disregard of Banks’ federally protected rights.”
“Banks respects others, even those who disagree with him, as he has throughout his career, and merely hopes for the same respect in turn,” the complaint also says.
The article on GLOBE applauds the group for staying “engaged in the effort of maintaining an inclusive workplace” — a long way off from “endorsing and promoting sodomy.”
Ironically, Michigan’s anti-discrimination law does not protect sexual orientation, despite numerous attempts to amend it. Employees fired solely for being gay have no option for legal recourse, unlike Banks. But let’s all feel sorry for the poor, oppressed Christian hater.
Ford Worker Fired After Homosexual Behavior Leads To Death Comment Files Suit
Dan Tracer
Rachel Maddow Explains Why the Ban on Transgender Military Service May Soon Be Over: WATCH
Rachel Maddow Explains Why the Ban on Transgender Military Service May Soon Be Over: WATCH
Rachel Maddow last night looked at news from the Pentagon that could suggest the DOD might soon lift its ban on transgender military service.
Back in February, Defense Secretary Ash Carter came out in favor of open service for transgender men and women. Speaking at an event in Afghanistan, Carter remarked,
“And I’m very open-minded about…what their personal lives and proclivities are, provided they can do what we need them to do for us. That’s the important criteria. Are they going to be excellent service members? And I don’t think anything but their suitability for service should preclude them.”
Now Carter has ordered a 6 month study on the effects of allowing open service for transgender people. And it is that study which leads Maddow to believe we can soon expect the ban to be lifted:
“If you are having a little deja vu here it is because this is a parallel process to how they got rid of DADT,” Maddow said.
Is the administration following the same game plan it used to eliminate DADT?
Watch Rachel’s take below:
The post Rachel Maddow Explains Why the Ban on Transgender Military Service May Soon Be Over: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Rachel Maddow Explains Why the Ban on Transgender Military Service May Soon Be Over: WATCH
EXCLUSIVE: The Young Professionals Debut Sexy Cover of Abba's 'S.O.S.'
EXCLUSIVE: The Young Professionals Debut Sexy Cover of Abba's 'S.O.S.'
TYP, featuring out frontman Ivri Lider, premieres a slinky new version of the beloved pop anthem.
Gina Vivinetto
Educators Say Marriage Ruling May Boost School Climate For LGBT Students
Educators Say Marriage Ruling May Boost School Climate For LGBT Students
This piece comes to us courtesy of EdSource, where it was originally published.
ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA — When the U.S. Supreme Court issued a major civil rights decision on marriage in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, striking down a state law banning interracial marriage, Alameda Unified teacher Gene Kahane was a 3rd-grader in Richmond, California, and didn’t hear about it. News of social change travels faster and farther now –- and almost immediately into the classroom.
Across California and the nation, educators say the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage stands to improve, over time, the way gay and lesbian people are talked about at schools, both in the hallways and in the curriculum.
“That decision was heard everywhere,” said Kahane, an Alameda Unified School District high school English teacher and district-identified ally for gay youth.
“I think we’ve crossed a threshold toward acceptance and welcome,” said Todd Savage, president of the National Association of School Psychologists.
Savage and other educators said the ruling will give new momentum to efforts to make schools safer and more inclusive for gay, lesbian and transgender students, as well as the more than 200,000 schoolchildren nationwide -– including at least 30,000 in California -– who have same-sex parents.
Sara Train, coordinator of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center’s Project Spin, which works with the Los Angeles Unified School District to end bullying, said the ruling is “a path to equality” for gay and lesbian people and “a validation” that will affect school culture.
She referenced the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy in the June 26 Obergefell v. Hodges decision in favor of the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” he wrote. “The Constitution grants them that right.”
And she praised the words of President Barack Obama, who called the ruling “a victory for the children whose families will now be recognized as equal to any other.” Obama referred to the struggles of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals who were able to “endure bullying and taunts” and “slowly made an entire country realize that love is love.”
Train said, “The idea of any LGBT person being a second-class citizen, and not having rights, respect and equal treatment, is now debunked.” At schools, she said, hostility will be tolerated less.
“The ruling is going to make it that much easier for adults in schools to feel OK in talking about LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) topics and families,” said Johanna Eager, director of the Welcoming Schools project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which provides diversity training to school staff, including those in Oakland and Berkeley. “It gives a legitimacy to having these conversations.”
California has been in the forefront of efforts to update school curriculum to include the gay and lesbian political movement as well as gay individuals and families. The Fair Education Act, or Senate Bill 48, effective in 2012, called for inclusion of topics related to gay and lesbian people as well as disabled individuals. The law also reiterated the state ban on classroom instruction that promotes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
But the promise of the Fair Education Act has yet to be realized, Kahane and others said. Widespread inclusion of gay subject matter has stalled while the state revises its social studies and history curriculum framework, the extensive grade-by-grade curriculum guide for teaching the state standards. Revision of the framework began in 2009, paused for six years during the economic downturn and is again underway. The state no longer officially adopts history textbooks but instead approves of textbooks that school districts select.
As the timeline for the revision unfolds, Laura Kanter, director of youth programs at the LGBT Center OC in Santa Ana, said the marriage decision should ensure the gay civil rights movement a place in classes about the workings of the Supreme Court, the Constitution and social change.
“This decision is being lifted up as one of the most important civil rights decisions in our history,” said Kanter, who is a member of the school climate committee for the Santa Ana Unified School District. “I don’t think people can get away with teaching history or government without talking about this.”
Books and materials that reflect the updated framework are likely to be on the shelves by fall 2017, said Bill Honig, vice chairman of the state Instructional Quality Commission. In the meantime, individual teachers are integrating gay and lesbian experiences into history, social studies and English classes, as well as elementary school readings and conversations about families. Students who see themselves reflected in the curriculum are more engaged in learning, research has found.
Hours after the Supreme Court decision, Welcoming Schools and the National Education Association issued “Who Can Marry Whom?” -– a two-page guide to help educators talk about marriage equality.
At the One Archives Foundation in Los Angeles, a repository of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender materials, staff members and volunteers scurried to collect copies of newspapers and magazines that announced the ruling –- artifacts that will become primary source materials for students of the gay and lesbian equality movement, said Jamie Scot, project manager for One Archives. Scot immediately updated a visual timeline of gay and lesbian history, used in some high schools, to include a new entry for June 26, 2015, headlined “Love Wins.”
And Kahane, a member of Alameda Unified’s LGBTQ Round Table, an advisory group, received an email from a student celebrating the court decision and thanking him for creating a safe setting for classroom discussions of gay-themed literature. Such works included “The Hours,” by Michael Cunningham, a fictional account of the life of author Virginia Woolf that includes a gay male narrator. The student was glad that the literature had not generated “an ugly response,” Kahane said.
California has been a national leader in protecting gay, lesbian and transgender students from harm through legislation known as Seth’s Law or Assembly Bill 9, effective in 2012, which strengthened anti-bullying laws. But attitudes in schools haven’t always kept pace, according to a 2013 survey of 888 California lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender high school students by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an Oakland-based national advocacy group.
Of the students surveyed, 90 percent reported hearing “gay” used in a negative way and 80 percent reported regularly hearing homophobic remarks from other students. Twenty-four percent said they regularly heard school staff making negative remarks about how masculine, feminine or gender-conforming a person was.
Nationwide, students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender report higher incidents of mental health issues, including feeling sad and wanting to harm themselves, than heterosexual students, according to a 2014 study of more than 72,000 adolescents published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study found that 23 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender youth had attempted suicide in the year prior to being surveyed, compared with 6.6 percent of heterosexual youth.
But that disparity nearly disappears in schools that create positive environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, according to a separate 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Supportive school climates were identified by factors that included the presence of Gay-Straight Alliance groups, anti-harassment policies, relevant trainings for staff, and curriculum on gay-related topics.
The process can take time.
“I’ve become more patient about some of the problems,” Kahane said. Some teachers, particularly at the elementary school level, are “fearful of pushback from parents,” he said. But for him, he said, “This work has been a privilege.”
— 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.
Educators Say Marriage Ruling May Boost School Climate For LGBT Students
Educators Say Marriage Ruling May Boost School Climate For LGBT Students
This piece comes to us courtesy of EdSource, where it was originally published.
ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA — When the U.S. Supreme Court issued a major civil rights decision on marriage in Loving v. Virginia in 1967, striking down a state law banning interracial marriage, Alameda Unified teacher Gene Kahane was a 3rd-grader in Richmond, California, and didn’t hear about it. News of social change travels faster and farther now –- and almost immediately into the classroom.
Across California and the nation, educators say the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage stands to improve, over time, the way gay and lesbian people are talked about at schools, both in the hallways and in the curriculum.
“That decision was heard everywhere,” said Kahane, an Alameda Unified School District high school English teacher and district-identified ally for gay youth.
“I think we’ve crossed a threshold toward acceptance and welcome,” said Todd Savage, president of the National Association of School Psychologists.
Savage and other educators said the ruling will give new momentum to efforts to make schools safer and more inclusive for gay, lesbian and transgender students, as well as the more than 200,000 schoolchildren nationwide -– including at least 30,000 in California -– who have same-sex parents.
Sara Train, coordinator of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center’s Project Spin, which works with the Los Angeles Unified School District to end bullying, said the ruling is “a path to equality” for gay and lesbian people and “a validation” that will affect school culture.
She referenced the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy in the June 26 Obergefell v. Hodges decision in favor of the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” he wrote. “The Constitution grants them that right.”
And she praised the words of President Barack Obama, who called the ruling “a victory for the children whose families will now be recognized as equal to any other.” Obama referred to the struggles of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals who were able to “endure bullying and taunts” and “slowly made an entire country realize that love is love.”
Train said, “The idea of any LGBT person being a second-class citizen, and not having rights, respect and equal treatment, is now debunked.” At schools, she said, hostility will be tolerated less.
“The ruling is going to make it that much easier for adults in schools to feel OK in talking about LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) topics and families,” said Johanna Eager, director of the Welcoming Schools project of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which provides diversity training to school staff, including those in Oakland and Berkeley. “It gives a legitimacy to having these conversations.”
California has been in the forefront of efforts to update school curriculum to include the gay and lesbian political movement as well as gay individuals and families. The Fair Education Act, or Senate Bill 48, effective in 2012, called for inclusion of topics related to gay and lesbian people as well as disabled individuals. The law also reiterated the state ban on classroom instruction that promotes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
But the promise of the Fair Education Act has yet to be realized, Kahane and others said. Widespread inclusion of gay subject matter has stalled while the state revises its social studies and history curriculum framework, the extensive grade-by-grade curriculum guide for teaching the state standards. Revision of the framework began in 2009, paused for six years during the economic downturn and is again underway. The state no longer officially adopts history textbooks but instead approves of textbooks that school districts select.
As the timeline for the revision unfolds, Laura Kanter, director of youth programs at the LGBT Center OC in Santa Ana, said the marriage decision should ensure the gay civil rights movement a place in classes about the workings of the Supreme Court, the Constitution and social change.
“This decision is being lifted up as one of the most important civil rights decisions in our history,” said Kanter, who is a member of the school climate committee for the Santa Ana Unified School District. “I don’t think people can get away with teaching history or government without talking about this.”
Books and materials that reflect the updated framework are likely to be on the shelves by fall 2017, said Bill Honig, vice chairman of the state Instructional Quality Commission. In the meantime, individual teachers are integrating gay and lesbian experiences into history, social studies and English classes, as well as elementary school readings and conversations about families. Students who see themselves reflected in the curriculum are more engaged in learning, research has found.
Hours after the Supreme Court decision, Welcoming Schools and the National Education Association issued “Who Can Marry Whom?” -– a two-page guide to help educators talk about marriage equality.
At the One Archives Foundation in Los Angeles, a repository of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender materials, staff members and volunteers scurried to collect copies of newspapers and magazines that announced the ruling –- artifacts that will become primary source materials for students of the gay and lesbian equality movement, said Jamie Scot, project manager for One Archives. Scot immediately updated a visual timeline of gay and lesbian history, used in some high schools, to include a new entry for June 26, 2015, headlined “Love Wins.”
And Kahane, a member of Alameda Unified’s LGBTQ Round Table, an advisory group, received an email from a student celebrating the court decision and thanking him for creating a safe setting for classroom discussions of gay-themed literature. Such works included “The Hours,” by Michael Cunningham, a fictional account of the life of author Virginia Woolf that includes a gay male narrator. The student was glad that the literature had not generated “an ugly response,” Kahane said.
California has been a national leader in protecting gay, lesbian and transgender students from harm through legislation known as Seth’s Law or Assembly Bill 9, effective in 2012, which strengthened anti-bullying laws. But attitudes in schools haven’t always kept pace, according to a 2013 survey of 888 California lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender high school students by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an Oakland-based national advocacy group.
Of the students surveyed, 90 percent reported hearing “gay” used in a negative way and 80 percent reported regularly hearing homophobic remarks from other students. Twenty-four percent said they regularly heard school staff making negative remarks about how masculine, feminine or gender-conforming a person was.
Nationwide, students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender report higher incidents of mental health issues, including feeling sad and wanting to harm themselves, than heterosexual students, according to a 2014 study of more than 72,000 adolescents published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study found that 23 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender youth had attempted suicide in the year prior to being surveyed, compared with 6.6 percent of heterosexual youth.
But that disparity nearly disappears in schools that create positive environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, according to a separate 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. Supportive school climates were identified by factors that included the presence of Gay-Straight Alliance groups, anti-harassment policies, relevant trainings for staff, and curriculum on gay-related topics.
The process can take time.
“I’ve become more patient about some of the problems,” Kahane said. Some teachers, particularly at the elementary school level, are “fearful of pushback from parents,” he said. But for him, he said, “This work has been a privilege.”
— 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.
Run on property sees London firm sell flats worth £140 million in 4 hours
Run on property sees London firm sell flats worth £140 million in 4 hours
London’s property market is hotly contested, but people queuing around the block for 36 hours to snag a new home is unusual.
Galliard Homes’ Maine Tower – part of the Harbour Central development transforming a former industrial site in London’s Canary Wharf into a vertical village – has sold out in record time, despite construction having not yet started.
Prices ranged from £370,000 (€, $) for a studio flat up to £1.25 million (€, $) for a three bedroom apartment; with Crossrail due to open in 2018, prices are expected to surge.
Buyers who managed to get one of the 230 available studio, one, two or three bedroom flats can expect to move into their new homes in a few years, with the project set to be completed in early 2019.
The Maine Tower is part of Canary Wharf’s new ‘vertical village’.
Designed by international architects Rolfe Judd, the 41-story tower will provide a total of 297 apartments – for the launch, Galliard Homes held back premier and penthouse residences.
Half the buyers, from first time buyers to investors, were UK-based with the remaining 50% including buyers from Greece, Italy, India and the Middle East.
The most eager person started queuing 36 hours before the launch, held in a luxurious marketing suite adjacent to the development site; when the launch event officially started, more than 100 people were standing in line.
The post Run on property sees London firm sell flats worth £140 million in 4 hours appeared first on Gay Star News.
Stefanie Gerdes
