Disney Store ends gender divide of kids Halloween outfits with ‘I Am Awesome’ collection

Disney Store has stopped classifying its children’s Halloween costumes by gender.

Instead of presenting ‘boys costumes’ and ‘girls costumes’, it will now simply present its 2015 Halloween costumes ‘for kids’ and ‘for babies’.

Each year, its Halloween outfits are assigned a theme; this year’s theme is titled ‘I Am Awesome’.

The move comes after the store was criticized in the past for stocking a lack of Black Widow merchandise as part of its Marvel Avengers collection (concentrating instead on the male characters from the comic book series). Marvel is owned by Disney.

Although not related to Disney store, in June a fancy dress march took place in New York of parents and children after a young girl was told be her school that she could not dress up as Spider Man. It’s one of several recent news stories that have highlighted the desire of some children to dress up in costumes that do not necessarily conform to their sex.

Last month, Target announced that it was removing gender signage from the toy sections of its stores. The move came about after a mom in Ohio complained about the store selling separate ‘Building sets’ and ‘Girls Building sets’.

Although widely applauded, Target’s announcement was also met with a certain amount of outcry on social media, with some commentators criticizing the move and saying they would boycott the store.

This may have led to Disney to decide to introduce the change in policy without any great fanfare. The new ‘For Kids’ collection was picked up yesterday by pop culture sire The Mary Sue.

Gay Star Business has approached Disney for further comment.

The move to selling Halloween costumes ‘for kids’ was welcomed by Sarah Garrett, a mom of two and the organizer of Out With The Family and the annual Alternative Parenting Show, due to take place in London this Saturday.

‘It’s surprising that there are still gender specific toys and clothes. This move by Disney is long overdue. There’s so much pressure on girls and boys as it is. It would be great if the stigma attached to girls wearing boys clothes, and visa versa was removed, and gender stereotypes were no longer reinforced in this way.’

As a company, Disney has often been vocal in its support of LGBTI rights. It was one 379 companies that signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court at the beginning of the year in support of same-sex marriage.

In July, Walt Disney World Resort in Florida played host to the Out & Equal Workplace Conference, and Disney has performed consistently well in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. It scored 100% (the top ranking) in the most recent index.

H/T: The Mary Sue

The post Disney Store ends gender divide of kids Halloween outfits with ‘I Am Awesome’ collection appeared first on Gay Star News.

David Hudson

www.gaystarnews.com/article/disney-store-ends-gender-divide-of-kids-halloween-outfits-with-i-am-awesome-collection/

Margie & Andrea: Bonded by Faith, Fired for Love

Margie asks Catholic Church to approach her life and the lives of LGBT people “as Jesus would have.” 
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/margie-andrea-bonded-by-faith-fired-for-love?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Antigay Bigots Rally For ‘Religious Awakening’ And End Of ‘Persecution’

Hundreds of people cheered the husband of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis during a rally of Christian conservatives Thursday outside the Tennessee Capitol.

The celebration of Constitution Day was sponsored by the Tennessee Pastors Network and also drew Rafael Cruz, a pastor and the father of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican and presidential candidate.

Speaking of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision effectively legalizing same-sex marriage, Cruz said, “The devil overplayed his hand.”

He said the country needs to elect a constitutional conservative as president, and suggested that Christian conservatives will be roused to action by the ruling.

“We’ve been silent too long,” he said.

“Religious persecution ends in January 2017,” he said.

Cruz acknowledged Joe Davis, husband of the Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who was jailed for five days after defying a federal judge’s order to process same-sex marriage licenses.

“What we saw in Kentucky with Kim Davis is tyranny,” Cruz said, to cheers and applause.

Speaking briefly after Cruz, Joe Davis simply asked the crowd to pray for him and his wife.

About 40 Tennessee legislators appeared at the rally. State Sen. Mae Beavers and state Rep. Mark Pody drew cheers for their legislation calling for Tennessee to defend the state constitution, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. It was unclear how they planned to override the Supreme Court’s decision.

Also speaking at the rally was Richard Land, who led the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm for 25 years before leaving to serve as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary.

Like Cruz, he predicted the Supreme Court’s ruling will lead to a backlash.

Speaking to reporters, Land suggested the next president could appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who would overturn that ruling.

“The good news for America is that Supreme Court decisions are never final,” he said.

H/t: LGBTQ Nation

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/74tFNysQ2b0/antigay-bigots-rally-for-religious-awakening-and-end-of-persecution-20150918

Alabama Judge Follows Kim Davis’ Lead, Won’t Issue ‘License to Engage in Sodomy’

Washington County, Alabama Probate Judge Nick Williams asked the Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday to issue an order protecting those who won’t marry gay couples or issue marriage licenses to gay couples based on their religious beliefs, AL.com reports:

Williams filed the petition for declaratory judgment or protective order in light of the recent jailing of a Kentucky clerk for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

“The jailing of Kentucky clerk Kimberly B. Davis put at immediate risk the liberty interest of all faithful and religiously sincere public officials in Alabama whose office has responsibility for making decisions as to whether to give sanction and honor to homosexual relationships to include the issuance of a license to engage in sodomy,” according to the petition filed on Williams’ behalf by Montgomery attorney Jack B. Hinton.

The ACLU says there’s no reason Williams needs protection:

Randall Marshall, legal director for the ACLU of Alabama, said that Williams’ filing mis-characterizes the current threat to Alabama probate judges. No Alabama probate judge currently faces a lawsuit for failing to issue a license, so the judges aren’t in any immediate risk of violating a court order, he said.

“Needless to say from our perspective this (Williams’ filing) is the dying gasp of a probate judge.  … If public officials don’t want to do their jobs then they don’t need to be public officials,” he said.

A small group of Alabama probate judges have been fighting same-sex marriage since January when a federal judge struck down the state’s gay marriage ban.

Since then, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Williams attacks SCOTUS in his filing.

“Clerk Davis would not have been placed in that position had a bar majority of five justices on the United States Supreme Court not chose to substitute their own will as superior to the written United States Constitution, the will of the people as expressed in more than 36 state constitutions, and the common wisdom of our forebears in more than 220 years of American history, and millennia of our Anglo-Western heritage.”

Williams at an Alabama for Marriage Rally in June:

The post Alabama Judge Follows Kim Davis’ Lead, Won’t Issue ‘License to Engage in Sodomy’ appeared first on Towleroad.

Andy Towle

Alabama Judge Follows Kim Davis’ Lead, Won’t Issue ‘License to Engage in Sodomy’

Trans Man Who Met Pope Saw 'Kindness Personified'

Pope Francis hasn’t always had encouraging words about transgender people, but the Spanish trans man who met with Francis in January says he received nothing but kindness and affirmation from the pontiff.

“He is ‘la bondad personificada,’” Diego Neria Lejárraga (pictured above) said of the pope in a new interview with People, using a Spanish term meaning “kindness personified.”

Neria, a lifelong Catholic, had written to the pope last year, saying that he had become estranged from the church ever since his gender transition in 2007. “I explained how I felt pushed out to the margins of society by the faithful in my local parish of Plasencia after I underwent a sex change,” he told People of the letter. “I was even called the ‘hija del diablo’ [daughter of the devil] by a priest in broad daylight.”

He received a surprise phone call from the pope in December, in which Francis said he’d been moved by Neria’s story. They then arranged a meeting, with Neria and his fiancée, Macarena, going to Rome in January. “He welcomed us with an enormous smile and kind, kind eyes,” Neria said, and the visit lasted over an hour.

The Spaniard said he wished to keep some details of the meeting private, but noted, “In the presence of Pope Francis you feel loved, respected, embraced. I admired him before visiting, but that was nothing compared to the devotion I have for him now.”

The People article doesn’t address the pope’s criticism of the concept of gender mutability or a recent Vatican ruling that transgender people cannot be godparents. Instead, it focuses on how the visit with Pope Francis helped Neria overcome the pain of rejection.

“I think that God had a moment of forgetfulness with me, but Francis … he fixed it,” Neria told the magazine. “He has become a father to me in the broadest sense of the word. He gave me a safe place where I was able to cry and leave my doubts, pain, and suffering behind. I left them all there with the pope.”

Pope Francis has invited Neria to visit again, and he hopes to do so soon. Neria is also writing a book about his experiences and advising others on how to overcome negative feelings.

“I just pass on the kindness that Pope Francis showed me,” he told People. “He has changed my life, first in a spiritual sense and subsequently in all other aspects. … Today, my soul is in peace, thanks to Pope Francis.”

Trudy Ring

www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/9/18/trans-man-who-met-pope-saw-kindness-personified

Kim Davis inspires mayoral candidate in North Carolina to jail gay people

A mayoral candidate wants to throw LGBTI people in jail, saying he was ‘inspired’ by Kim Davis.

Eugene Holmes, who is running to become mayor of Kings Mountain, a suburb in Charlotte, North Carolina, says if he is elected he will be aim to ‘eradicate homosexuality’.

‘In my administration I would do just like Mrs. Davis did in Kentucky,’ Holmes said, according to the Kings Mountain Herald.

‘If you elect me, I’ll uphold the law of the state of North Carolina. I would get the D.A. to swear out a warrant on any man who says he’s gay. Sodomy is a crime, a felony in the state of North Carolina.’

He added: ‘What’s wrong with eradicating homosexuals? We should jail them, throw them all in jail!’

Holmes has had his own experience of jail, after being arrested in March for going to a Family Worship Center church to shout homophobic and transphobic slurs. According to the Herald, he was also jailed for felony, theft and larceny convictions, as well as spending time in a psychiatric ward for treatment after suffering from ‘religious hallucinations’.

When the Herald asked him what his plans were, other than targeting the LGBTI community, he said he wanted to ban alcohol, divorce and all immigration to the US.

The post Kim Davis inspires mayoral candidate in North Carolina to jail gay people appeared first on Gay Star News.

Joe Morgan

www.gaystarnews.com/article/kim-davis-inspires-mayoral-candidate-in-north-carolina-to-jail-gay-people/

Is “Showgirls” The Greatest Bad Movie Of All Time?

Each week online comedian, voice actor and chest hair model Sam Kalidi creates a new meme for Queerty readers. This week he looks back at what is perhaps the greatest of all bad movies, Showgirls, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary on September 22. Sam looks forward to all your hate mail. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and at your local glory hole.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/CwQQ63vOI2I/is-showgirls-the-greatest-bad-movie-of-all-time-20150918

PHOTOS: It's Always Wedding Season

Christopher Harrity

www.advocate.com/photography/2015/9/18/photos-its-always-wedding-season

Posters promoting unprotected gay sex appear in Melbourne

Posters promoting unprotected gay sex appeared all over Melbourne on Thursday (18 September).

‘You can fuck raw,’ proclaim the posters, which were put up overnight.

The posters also feature a blue Truvada pill with the words underneath: ‘PrEP works. No more HIV.’

SEEITCLEARLY2020, a new activist group ‘with the aim of promoting PrEP as the most powerful tool we have to end HIV,’ has claimed responsibly for the posters.

‘Our current poster campaign is designed to shock, it is designed to start a conversation and it has been implemented across Melbourne because of the lack of education and the lack of awareness by existing public health authorities,’ they said in a statement.

‘So we are taking it into our own hands, and we are talking about bareback sex when no other group will.’

Studies have shown that PrEP is effective at preventing transmission of the HIV virus, but the drug is currently unavailable in Australia.

‘We cannot be blind to reality and the reality is that HIV will continue to be transmitted by raw sex if we do not make PrEP fully accessible to Australians,’ SEEITCLEARLY2020 said.

‘We are unforgiving in our messages, and we will continue to shock, we don’t mind if you don’t agree with our message, but gay men all need to believe in PrEP and understand the power they have to create positive change.’

The group has succeeded in getting a reaction from established AIDS groups, even if they did not agree with their methods.

The Victorian AIDS Council (VAC) and Living Positive Victoria (LPV) issued a joint statement on the posters.

‘This is a passionate issue for our community, and the vocal response to the posters strong language demonstrates that,’ said VAC’s acting CEO Kent Burgess.

‘PrEP is an effective HIV-prevention tool, and we still have a lot of work to do to inform the community about how it works. We have some concerns about how the posters might stigmatize gay sex and people living with HIV through simplistic, inflammatory language, but one message is clear: our community wants and needs PrEP.’

While Brent Allan, CEO of LPV,  said:

‘PrEP isn’t about giving gay men a license to “fuck raw,” it’s about putting them in control of their sexual health by ensuring that they have the tools they need to stay HIV negative. It’s also about breaking down the barriers between positive and negative men, reducing anxiety about HIV, and challenging stigma,’ said

‘While we have concerns about the appropriateness of the messages conveyed by this campaign, we think it shows the level of interest in and demand for more effective HIV prevention in our community.

‘And though I am not sure that having a discussion about PrEP on the streets of Melbourne is the best place, it’s pretty clear that we cannot ignore this call to action, and we have no desire to silence those who rightly demand access to lifesaving forms of proven HIV prevention. Both state and federal governments should consider their own capacity to act and make PrEP available.’

The post Posters promoting unprotected gay sex appear in Melbourne appeared first on Gay Star News.

Darren Wee

www.gaystarnews.com/article/posters-promoting-unprotected-gay-sex-appear-in-melbourne/

Here's How to Break the Pink Ceiling

I vividly remember a moment during my orientation at New York University’s Stern School of Business when I mentioned my boyfriend and I watched a classmate’s eyes light up. “I’m so glad I’m not the only one,” he exclaimed.

It turned out that there were seven others in our class of over 400, about 2.5 percent of the class, who would identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (we had no out trans students) with several others coming out at or after graduation. The percentage seemed a little low, but we saw it as a win since the prior class had only three out LGBT students.

Five years later, I became executive director of Reaching Out, the only national organization dedicated to educating, inspiring, and connecting LGBT MBA students and professionals. One of my first new initiatives was an annual survey on LGBT populations at business schools around the world. Despite increased social acceptance, this survey has consistently shown that the percentage of LGBTs in business schools has stayed stagnant at under 3 percent on average, regardless of class size or geography. 

With recent studies suggesting that 7 percent of millennials self-identify as LGBT, this stagnant number is a demonstration that LGBT Americans are opting out of business school, or often simply staying closeted, as I’ve personally witnessed several of our student leaders do upon starting corporate interviews.

The reality is, the perception that MBA programs and corporate business in general are not particularly welcoming to LGBT students is common. I can tell you nothing is further from the truth. If the 80 Fortune 500 companies that come to our annual conference are any indication, corporate America is embracing the LGBT community.

Refreshingly, the country’s top business schools shared our concerns about creating an inclusive campus and demonstrating it to those LGBT people actively thinking about going to business school or just pondering the possibility. Together, we created the Reaching Out LGBT MBA Fellowship, a scholarship and leadership program to encourage out LGBT people to enter business school and stay out as their authentic selves.

Each participating school in the program commits to offering admission to an LGBT (or active ally) applicant who is both academically strong and shows potential to be a leader for the LGBT community. Each fellow receives a minimum $10,000-a-year scholarship from the school in addition to leadership and mentorship opportunities through my organization, Reaching Out.

This year 16 schools participated, including MIT Sloan, Columbia Business School, and Rice University. We also saw immediate increases in engagement and applications from self-identified LGBT candidates. This month 22 ROMBA fellows from the class of 2017 will start their MBA programs. Next year that number will climb when 10 additional business schools are join the fellowship.

Yet the LGBT MBA Fellowship is more than another diversity inclusion program. I’m a big believer that inclusion is a lot like having a seat at the table — just because you have a seat doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear you talk. If policy, inclusion, and legal protections worked fully, we would have moved beyond gender and race struggles decades ago. Equality is about power and influence.

The list of out LGBT executives in Fortune 500 companies is remarkably thin and hardly representative. Business schools are designed to mold the next generation of leaders so that they will swiftly rise into positions of power. From these positions of power, leaders speak up for the underrepresented and effect change that echoes throughout society.

With this fellowship we are raising leaders with potential. Our goal is that the fellows launch their post-MBA careers as out LGBT professionals who will ultimately be more impactful as they climb the corporate ladder, because they influencing their peers from the start.

I can’t wait for the day when that queer kid starting her business career or MBA doesn’t debate coming out, but rather which LGBT leader she wants to emulate. 

MATT KIDD is the executive director of Reaching Out Inc., the nation’s leading not for profit organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender graduate business students.

Matt Kidd

www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/9/18/heres-how-break-pink-ceiling