The Next LGBT Battle: Sex Ed

Recognizing the dearth of sexual health information for LGBT students, two prominent organizations are pushing for schools to evolve with the times.

Planned Parenthood Federation of American and the Human Rights Campaign are lobbying schools to include more sex ed for young LGBT or questioning students, reports The Boston Globe. Most curriculums have scant sex education to begin with, and even less for those students who fall outside of heterosexual or cisgender descriptions.

Not surprisingly, liberal Massachusetts has the best record when it comes to LGBT-inclusive sex ed, with 44 percent of secondary schools offering pertinent information on safe sex, sexually transmitted infections, and pregnancy. Massachusetts contrasts greatly with numerous Southern and Western states, where any discussion of homosexuality is banned in schools; Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah all fall into that category.

The need for information for LGBT students is great. HIV rates are rising among gay and bi male youth, while lesbian and bisexual girls have unintended pregnancy rates twice that of their straight peers (that can partially be explained by lesbian and bi youth being pressured to conform to societal norms by having straight sex). Transgender students also need accommodation; forcing a child who identifies as one sex to hear lessons intended for the other can be psychologically damaging.

Religious organizations are gearing up to fight the HRC and Planned Parenthood’s initiative, though. The conservative Massachusetts Family Institute does not want to “normalize homosexuality” and instead advocates the teaching of abstinence-only education. Institute president Andrew Beckwith says any discussion other than that is too explicit.

“If you’re teaching about the birds and the bees, there’s no need to talk about anal and oral sex,” Beckwith told the Globe. “It has nothing to do with reproduction.”

Neal Broverman

www.advocate.com/youth/2015/9/09/next-lgbt-battle-sex-ed

Kim Davis' Lawyer Says Forcing Clerk To Do Job Is Like Making Her 'Grant A License To Sodomize Children'

The lawyer for Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who briefly went to jail last week after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, said Tuesday that requiring her to issue those documents would be like making her “grant a license to sodomize children.”

Mathew Staver, the Liberty Counsel lawyer representing Davis, made the comments during an interview on the conservative talk radio program “WallBuilders Live.” Right Wing Watch posted audio of the segment.

“A clerk provides licenses to do something,” Staver said. “In this case, they’re licensing… something that is directly contrary to the core of their religious convictions, to engage in sinful activity among same-sex relations, and sanction something that is contrary to the Scriptures, and that is marriage of two people of the same sex.” 

Rick Green, who co-hosts the program, prompted Staver to give an example of another “activity… that would be un-biblical and violate [Davis’] beliefs” if people asked for a license to do it.

Staver replied that it would it would be similar to requiring a clerk “to grant a license to engage in pornography, to grant a license to sodomize children or something of that nature… that would be harmful to the people involved in the activity.”

He also said that requiring Davis to issue same-sex marriage licenses would be like forcing a Jewish deli owner to serve pork, or forcing someone to endorse a Ku Klux Klan rally.

Staver said that same-sex couples who want to get a marriage license can easily get one elsewhere.

“It’s not that these people can’t get a license. There’s 130 offices in Kentucky,” he said. “They could go to a different county if they wanted to. Or, alternatively, they could go to a judge within the same county.”  

Davis was released from jail Tuesday and appeared briefly at a rally flanked by Staver and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), who is also an opponent of same-sex marriage. Huckabee is one of more than a dozen Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination.

“She loves God, she loves people, she loves her work and she will not betray any of those three,” Staver told reporters outside Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky, on Tuesday. 

When Davis was jailed Thursday for refusing to issue marriage licenses, Staver compared her to the persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany.

“They were evicted from public employment, then boycotted in their private employment, then stigmatized, and that led to the gas chambers,” Staver told Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, during a radio show.

U.S. District Judge David Bunning released Davis from jail after five of her six deputies began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Although Bunning warned that Davis may not interfere with the duties of her deputy clerks, Staver told reporters that his client “cannot and will not violate her conscience.” 

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Caitlyn Jenner remembers ‘very little’ about fatal accident in Malibu

Caitlyn Jenner says it’s a ‘worst case scenario’ that she have to serve jail time for her role in a car crash earlier this year in Malibu that left one woman dead.

‘The media wants that picture, don’t they?’ Jenner said on NBC’s The Today Show in an interview that aired Wednesday (9 September). ‘That is the worst case scenario. I don’t know. We’ll see. The men’s county jail. It is an enormous problem that they would put trans-women in a men’s county jail.’

Jenner also opened up about a fatal car accident earlier this year in which her Cadillac SUV rear-ended another vehicle, causing a chain-reaction that resulted in the death of a 69-year-old woman.

If investigators for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department have their way, Jenner will face manslaughter charges in the multi-car crash on Pacific Coast Highway that left Kim Howe dead.

Sheriff’s investigators found that Jenner was driving ‘unsafe for the prevailing road conditions’ because her SUV rear-ended the Lexus being driven by Howe and pushed it into oncoming traffic.

Jenner said she remembers “very little” about the collision but told interviewer Matt Lauer that she was driving under the speed limit.

‘I remember it happening. That’s about it,’ she said. ‘A tragedy like this, you’ll never get over it. You just learn to live with it the best you possibly can.’

It is the Los Angeles district attorney who will what charges, if any, Jenner will face.

The post Caitlyn Jenner remembers ‘very little’ about fatal accident in Malibu appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/caitlyn-jenner-remembers-very-little-about-fatal-accident-in-malibu/

HRC Hosts United States Conference on AIDS 2015 Pre-Conference

Today, many gathered at HRC’s offices in Washington, D.C., for a pre-conference ahead of the United States Conference (USCA) on AIDS 2015.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-hosts-united-states-conference-on-aids-2015-pre-conference?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

It’s Raining Hot Trans Men On Sherry Vine And Peppermint

God bless Mother Nature because we never tire of new covers of the Weather Girls’ classic “It’s Raining Men.” This time it’s drag superstars Sherry Vine and Peppermint sharing vocal duties on the sexual freedom anthem and their video offers a nod to the sexually uninhibited era from the late 1970s – early ’80s when hyper-masculine music clips such as “Let’s Get Physical,” “So Many Men” and “Macho Man” ruled the airwaves and television screens.

“We wanted to do something that was fun and a little bit different from the parodies that Sherry has been doing,” producer Josh Rosenzweig says. “So we thought, what better way to celebrate all the amazing strides we have made this year than by taking an iconic gay anthem and cover it but with a new fun and very modern twist.”

You can watch without your raincoats below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/M9owzvmZdeg/its-raining-hot-trans-men-on-sherry-vine-and-peppermint-20150909

ASAPScience Reveals the 9 Best Study Tips For Students: VIDEO

The reputable guys behind ASAPScience are heading back to school in their new video with the 9 best study tips to help students dive into their studies this fall.

College staples such as the all-nighter and listening to music while studying actually prove detrimental to retaining memory, whereas ASAPScience’s 30-minute study suggestions are surprisingly effective, for both the studious and lackadaisical college student.

Check out the 9 most essential study tips, below:

The post ASAPScience Reveals the 9 Best Study Tips For Students: VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.

Anthony Costello

ASAPScience Reveals the 9 Best Study Tips For Students: VIDEO

Antigay Judge Revealed to Have Hitler Portrait in His Courthouse

Vance Day, a circuit court judge in Oregon, is already facing multiple ethics complaints for refusing to perform marriages for same-sex couples. And now he’s having to defend a picture of Adolph Hitler he had hung in the courthouse. 

Day, the former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, instructed his staff to refer same-sex couples seeking a marriage to other judges who were willing to perform those ceremonies. Spokesman Patrick Korten said Day’s decision was based on his “deeply-held religious beliefs.”

“It’s an exercise of his religious freedom rights under the First Amendment,” Korten said to Portland NBC affiliate KGW News.

Korten dismissed the complaints about the picture of Hitler as baseless. He says the photo was displayed as part of an exhibit to honor World War II veterans.

“We went to war against Hitler,” Korten told Reuters. “His picture was there. It was not admiringly. It was him as the epitome of the enemy that we went to fight against.” In addition to orchestrating the murder of six million Jews, Hitler led the mass slaughter of thousands of gay men in Nazi Germany.

Day hasn’t performed any marriages for same-sex couples and stopped performing all marriage ceremonies earlier this year. Judges in Marion County are not required to perform marriage ceremonies, but Day’s original decision to only exclude gay and lesbian couples led to the ethics complaint.

Bil Browning

www.advocate.com/marriage-equality/2015/9/09/antigay-judge-revealed-have-hitler-portrait-his-courthouse

Most Americans Support Sending Kim Davis To Jail, Poll Shows

Most Americans think that Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis should have been sent to jail for contempt of court, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

In the survey, which was conducted prior to Davis’ release from jail on Tuesday, a 56 percent majority of respondents said they supported the judge’s decision to jail her for contempt of court, although fewer wanted her to actually remain behind bars. 

Most respondents also thought Davis should be required to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and an even greater majority said she should resign if she’s unwilling to do so. Fifty-two percent of respondents said that elected officials should be required to perform work required by their position even if it would violate their religious beliefs, while only 30 percent disagreed. By the same 22-point margin, respondents said specifically that Davis should be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Meanwhile, 65 percent of those polled thought Davis should resign.

Democrats believed that Davis should be required to issue licenses and said she should have been jailed, while independents agreed by a narrower margin. Republicans were close to evenly divided. 

Davis’ resistance has become a cause célèbre for the evangelical contingent of 2016 GOP candidates.  Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee praised Davis for showing “more courage than any politician I know” at a rally after her release from jail Tuesday, offering that he’d be willing to go to jail in her place.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who called the case “judicial lawlessness turned into judicial tyranny” made a less splashy appearance at the event.

A significant portion of the country shares Davis’ views on gay marriage, according to a number of national polls about gay marriage. And more than half of Americans in the HuffPost/YouGov poll, including 81 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of evangelical Christians, said that religious liberty is currently being threatened. 

But even the reverent base voters Huckabee and Cruz are seeking aren’t convinced that it was necessary for Davis to defy the courts. While 43 percent of Republican born-again Christians thought she should remain in office but continue refusing to issue licenses to same-sex couples, 51 percent of Republicans said she should simply quit. Among all Republicans, 60 percent wanted her to resign.

While Davis’ status as a public official and her refusal to obey a court order make the circumstances somewhat different, public opinion about her case largely echoes the public’s response this spring to Indiana’s controversial religious freedom law, which would have allowed businesses to turn away LGBT customers before the law was revised. Even many Americans who personally disagreed with gay marriage opposed the law, HuffPost/YouGov found.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted Sept. 4-7 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.

— 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.

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Strictly row: BBC refuses to say sorry after suggesting gay dancing shouldn’t be seen on ‘family show’

The BBC will not investigate or apologize after saying they won’t allow same-sex couples on Strictly Come Dancing because it is a ‘family show’.

And same-sex dancing will still be banned.

Strictly is one of the UK’s most popular TV shows and the BBC has licensed the format to 42 countries, including the US where it is called Dancing With the Stars.

But in 13 series it has never had its celebrities paired with a same gender dance partner.

Last week CJ de Mooi – an openly gay star of the BBC’s own quiz show Eggheads – said Strictly wanted him as a contestant but then rejected him because he asked to dance with another man.

At the time, the broadcaster issued this statement:

‘Strictly Come Dancing is a family show and we’ve chosen the traditional format of mixed-sex couples. At the moment we’ve no plans to introduce same-sex couples.’

The suggestion that gay and lesbian couples shouldn’t be allowed on a ‘family show’ attracted immediate criticism in media and social media.

Gay Star News asked six questions of the BBC. Here are our questions and their response in full.

GSN: Does the BBC recognize LGBTI people are also part of families and have families?

BBC: ‘To avoid any misinterpretation the reference to ‘family show’ – meaning all kinds of families – was only ever intended to describe the kind of show “Strictly” is.’

GSN: Does the BBC accept there is no reason same-sex families, same-sex dancing and same-sex affection should not be featured on an equal basis at all times and on all shows?

BBC: Declined to reply.

GSN: Will the BBC investigate how this statement was made on its behalf and take disciplinary action and/or provide retraining in diversity as appropriate?

BBC: Declined to reply.

GSN: Will the BBC now retract and apologize for this statement?

BBC: Declined to reply.

GSN: Does the BBC now accept this ban on same-sex dancing on Strictly is both discriminatory and untenable?

BBC: Declined to reply.

GSN: Will the ban now be lifted and same-sex pairings featured in future?

BBC: ‘Strictly Come Dancing has chosen the traditional format of mixed-sex couples. At the moment we have no plans to introduce same-sex couples in the competition.’

GSN offered the broadcaster a second chance to respond to the four questions it had not answered. The BBC declined to comment further.

That’s not likely to satisfy leading LGBT campaign organization Stonewall.

In response to GSN raising the issue, a Stonewall spokesperson said: ‘We hope that action is taken and that the statement will be retracted.

‘A family is when people love and care for each other, and therefore families come in all shapes and sizes, including same-sex couples. Alternative Parenting Week, which takes place this month, is a fantastic celebration of different families. Perhaps whoever looks after the BBC’s social accounts should come along and meet some.’

CJ de Mooi is just the latest person to suggest the BBC should lift the ban on same-sex pairings in the show.

He claimed one of Strictly’s pro dancing stars Robin Windsor was axed from the show because he wanted same-sex couples. Windsor told GSN earlier this year that a same-sex pairing would be a ‘great thing to happen’.

Sarah Garrett, founder of Alternative Family Week, said: ‘All that same-sex couples and LGBTs want is to be treated equally and fairly, the BBC’s ban is just another example of discrimination.

‘As LGBTs we battle every day to change society’s perception, that LGBTs deserve the same rights as everyone else. Sections of the public still have backward views but I’m surprised a public funded organization such as the BBC would enforce such antiquated rules.

‘In any event, a same-sex pairing on Strictly would no doubt boost ratings.’

The post Strictly row: BBC refuses to say sorry after suggesting gay dancing shouldn’t be seen on ‘family show’ appeared first on Gay Star News.

Tris Reid-Smith

www.gaystarnews.com/article/strictly-row-bbc-refuses-to-say-sorry-after-suggesting-gay-dancing-shouldnt-be-seen-on-family-show/

Here’s Proof That Trans Activist Marsha P. Johnson Is Included In New Stonewall Film

Marsha P. Johnson is so in the new Stonewall movie, you guys. Unless you’ve been living in a cave behind Kim Davis’ house in rural Kentucky, you’re already aware that much of the advance controversy swirling around the upcoming film that chronicles — albeit somewhat fictitiously — events that led up to the legendary riots outside New York City’s Stonewall Inn have focused on the perceived notion that the pioneering trans activist is absent from the movie or her efforts have been considerably downplayed. Everyone will find out when the Roland Emmerich-helmed film is released to theaters September 25, but the studio has released this brief clip of actor Otoja Abit as Johnson to calm down the tension.

Related: Does It Make Sense To Get Upset Over A Movie Like “Stonewall” That Hasn’t Even Been Released Yet?

Watch Johnson chat with the queer Greenwich Village street urchins below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/TQH6Kw3knuE/heres-proof-that-trans-activist-marsha-p-johnson-is-included-in-new-stonewall-film-20150909