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News: Beirut, Dustin Lance Black, ‘Kill the Gays’, Ryan Gosling, Ab Fab
TERROR: Suicide bomber kills at least 41 in twin explosions in Beirut. ISIS claims responsibility: “A would-be suicide bomber who survived the attack told investigators he was an ISIS recruit, a Lebanese security source said. The man, a Lebanese national from Tripoli, Lebanon, was taken into custody after the blasts. He told authorities that he and three other attackers arrived in Lebanon from Syria two days ago, the source said. Lebanese intelligence believes the bombers could be part of a cell dispatched to Beirut by ISIS leadership, the source said, but investigators are still working to verify the surviving suspect’s claim. The three other bombers were killed in the explosions.”
OLYMPICS: Dustin Lance Black gives up alcohol in solidarity with fiance Tom Daley who is training for the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.
DUGGARS: Jessa Duggar chose a very unique name for her child.
MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE: Why is the media ignoring the fact that Ted Cruz attended “Kill the Gays” pastor’s rally? “It’s 2015 and much of the media seem to accept, still, that LGBT people can be talked about this way at an event attended by presidential candidates and that it’s not news. They view it as par for the course, religious conservatives doing what they do. It’s as if they have blinders on. Indeed, if Ted Cruz — or Huckabee or Jindal — attended an event at which the host hinted at mass murder of Jews, African-Americans or any other group it would be a massive media story. He’d be forced to answer questions about it, at debates (and it didn’t come up at the last debate), in press conferences and in interviews non-stop. He’d be pressured to condemn both the comments and the pastor — as when John McCain had to dump Pastor John Hagee in 2008 because of his ugly comments about Catholics — or he’d face the consequences.”
CELEBRITIES: Happy Birthday to Ryan Gosling who turns 35 today.
EGYPT: Researchers say there may be an undiscovered tomb at the Great Pyramid of Giza. Still no sign of grain storage.
TELEVISION: Zoe Kazan to star in Lena Dunham’s new HBO show Max: “Max is described as raucous comedy set in 1963 about the struggles of second-wave feminism, centered on ambitious magazine writer Maxine Woodruff.”
POP: Justin Bieber says he relates to Amy Winehouse and her struggles: ““People see the glam and the amazing stuff, but they don’t know the other side. This life can rip you apart. I watched the Amy Winehouse documentary on the plane and I had tears in my eyes because I could see what the media was doing to her, how they were treating her.”
ADVERTISING: Bloomingdale’s holiday catalogue got a little rape-y.
POLLS: Hillary Clinton gains ground on Bernie Sanders in new national poll: “The poll was based on a random sample of 1,495 adults nationwide, including 1,259 who identified themselves as registered voters. It was conducted by both landline and cellphone between November 6-10, two weeks after the vice president announced his decision not to run. Among the 418 respondents who identified themselves as Democratic Primary voters, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by 19 points, 52 to 33 percent. The poll has a 6 point margin of error.”
NYC: Study finds 1 in 5 adults has mental health problems.
DAHLING: Ab Fab the Movie has wrapped production.
Time for the Bolly, sweedie! That’s a wrap on .@AbFabMovie for me! A glorious glitter storm of a caper! #abfabmovie pic.twitter.com/gcEVJizISC
— Richard Arnold (@RichardAArnold) November 10, 2015
The post News: Beirut, Dustin Lance Black, ‘Kill the Gays’, Ryan Gosling, Ab Fab appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
News: Beirut, Dustin Lance Black, ‘Kill the Gays’, Ryan Gosling, Ab Fab
antwerpenR posted a photo:
Anti-HERO Activists Set Sights on Dallas Protections
Fresh off their victory repealing nondiscrimination protections for Houston residents, anti-LGBT activists are hoping to use the same transphobic tactics to roll back LGBT-inclusive protections in Dallas.
Although Dallas has had some measure of LGBT-inclusive protections in place for more than a decade, Tuesday the City Council unanimously voted to add “gender identity” to the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance.
Afterward, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings celebrated the vote, stressing that “we want to make sure everyone is protected” in the city. When Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blasted the Dallas protections (more on that below), Mayor Rawlings struck back.
“Yesterday’s unanimous City Council vote did not change the scope of our 13-year-old anti-discrimination ordinance,” Rawlings said in a Wednesday statement. “We took action that is consistent with what our voters approved last year and the protections already afforded to our employees. It is not forthright or honest to minimize this issue to a question about where people relieve themselves.”
Lt. Gov. Patrick is just one of the most prominent Texas heavyweights ready to ride into Dallas over equal accommodations laws. In Houston, Patrick not only repeated transphobic myths in the campaign to defeat the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance but delivered a gleeful speech on election night surrounded by banners reading “NO MEN in Women’s Bathrooms.”
But the lieutenant governor’s Wednesday statement blasting the Dallas protections was riddled with inaccuracies, notes The Dallas Morning News.
“I was very proud to help lead the recent effort where an overwhelming majority of voters in Houston successfully voted down the misnamed and misguided HERO ordinance,” read Patrick’s statement, underneath a subject line reading “Patrick Statement on Dallas Bathroom Ordinance.” “That’s why yesterday’s decision by the Dallas City Council, in closed session, to fast-track the enactment of a similar ordinance to allow men in women’s restrooms is both mind-boggling and appalling.”
But Tuesday’s vote was not conducted behind closed doors, as the Dallas City Council is not allowed to take secret votes, reports the Morning News‘s City Hall Blog. The 15-0 vote was taken during a session open to the public, on language drafted over the course of a year by the City Council’s LGBT Task Force, and following the overwhelming support of Dallas voters last year in amending the city’s charter to protect city employees from discrimination based on gender identity.
Even last November’s voter-approved trans-inclusive amendments were not the first time Dallas law explicitly protected LGBT residents and workers. Since 2002, Chapter 46 of the Dallas City Code has prohibited bias in housing, employment, and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation, which was interpreted to include gender identity, according to the Morning News.
Another prominent organizer of the anti-HERO campaign, Jared Woodfill, told the Houston Chronicle that he was prepared to employ the same debunked but effective transphobic scare tactics to overturn Dallas’s long-standing LGBT protections.
In addition to blatantly transphobic radio ads, Woodfill’s group, the Campaign for Houston, also blasted local airwaves with a video ad showing a sinister man following a young girl into the restroom, falsely claiming that HERO would legalize such harassment.
“We said from day one wherever these ordinances appear we’re going to be on the ground and ready for the battle,” Woodfill told the Chronicle. “The Dallas City Council clearly didn’t learn of or hear the message voters sent in Houston, Texas.”
But LGBT advocates in Dallas were skeptical that a misleading, fear-driven campaign like that waged in Houston would have the same success in Dallas.
Chuck Smith, the executive director of Equality Texas, told the Chronicle that the long-standing nature of Dallas’s protections — coupled with the fact that there have been zero reports of any bathroom-related harassment as a result of that ordinance (or any of the others currently in force in more than 200 other jurisdictions nationwide) — means the anti-HERO activists would struggle to find traction in Dallas.
But that doesn’t mean Smith is willing to let his guard down, he told the Chronicle.
“If I learned anything from Houston, it would be to be more aggressive in calling out the lies,” he said. “That’s what’s necessary. Because if they’re not aggressively called out, the lies just keep being told and people listen.”
Sunnivie Brydum
www.advocate.com/politics/2015/11/12/anti-hero-activists-set-sights-dallas-protections
Our Child Is a Girl
The ACLU of Illinois represents the family of a female student denied access to the locker room at her high school because she is transgender. Recently the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found that the school was violating the girl’s federally protected rights. The family has not spoken publicly about this case, seeking to protect their family’s privacy. The mother of the student, however, shared this statement with the ACLU of Illinois. We are pleased to share it with you.
My husband and I laughed recently when our daughter said her friends say, “You’re the most famous anonymous person.” Laughter has been rare these days.
That’s because our daughter is “Student A” at the center of the recent controversy over whether a girl who is transgender should be permitted to use the girls’ locker room. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says yes. Our school district — Township District 211 — insists that students “of the opposite sex” should not be permitted in the girls’ locker room.
For the record, we agree with District Superintendent Daniel Cates about not permitting students of the opposite sex in the locker room. But the inconvenient fact for Mr. Cates and his supporters is that our daughter is not “of the opposite sex.”
She is a girl.
The district wrongly assumes what many who are not educated about the issue assume: That what makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy is simple anatomy. We believed this, until our daughter came along. Despite early signs — from as young as 4, when she declared herself a girl, to the fact that she had mostly girlfriends growing up, played with dolls, begged to wear girls’ clothes, insisted on wearing a Hannah Montana wig while she danced around the living room and was heavily distraught over the male characteristics of her body — we were still shocked and ill-prepared when, at the end of 7th grade, our daughter again told us that she was a girl and had to live openly as one.
This is a difficult concept to grasp. However, just because something is difficult to understand, does not mean we should mock it or deny its existence. When we were struggling to understand, we sought out medical professionals and support groups. Through this education process, we learned that gender extends beyond the sex a person is assigned at birth. We learned that scientific evidence has determined that gender is also determined by the brain’s anatomy, which is why the sexual characteristics assigned to many at birth are incongruent with their true gender identity. We also learned that one’s gender identity is different from one’s sexual orientation.
Most importantly, we learned acceptance.
We then tried to work with our daughter’s educators, our church and family and friends to mitigate the risk that she would be one of the at least 20 transgender individuals who were brutally murdered this year or one of the more than 50 percent of transgender youth who attempt suicide by the age of 20. We were cautiously optimistic when many of our family and friends expressed support. However, we faced roadblocks early on with the school system.
In junior high, our daughter was not permitted to use the girls’ restroom or locker room or to participate in girls’ sports. As a result, she was bullied on a daily basis. The emotional toll this took on her broke our heart, and we vowed to do all we could to ensure she never had to endure this kind of abuse in high school.
We knew that a big factor in whether our daughter would be fully accepted by her peers was whether the high school would treat her as a girl in all respects. If she was segregated, forced to use separate facilities, it would signal to others that it was acceptable to treat her differently. To ensure our daughter would not be discriminated against, we legally changed her name, obtained a passport that correctly identified her gender as female and submitted medical records to the district that demonstrated she had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and was receiving treatment for it, including hormone injections.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that my daughter is a girl, the institution that is charged with educating and enlightening our children was only concerned with her body. The district therefore did not allow her in the girls’ locker room and instead felt compelled to discipline her on several occasions after she did, in fact, dare to use the same facilities as every other girl. The result was devastating to her — there were times she was inconsolable, and all we could do was hold her and tell her that we loved her and would continue to advocate on her behalf.
After 4 months of meeting with the administration, it is the district that left us no other remedy but to file a complaint with the Department of Education with the help of the ACLU of Illinois. Despite the district’s best efforts to frame the OCR’s findings as big government’s attempt to regulate at the local level, it is the district that has trampled on the rights of our daughter. The fact that Superintendent Cates has the nerve to state he’s being “bullied” into complying with the law shows he has absolutely no sensitivity or compassion for what my daughter or any other transgender youth in the district has suffered under his policies. It is simply reprehensible and the lowest form of political posturing.
The fact that neighboring school districts have managed to grant transgender youth access to the locker rooms which correspond with their gender identity without any issues only serves to highlight that District 211’s stated concerns are mere subterfuge for discrimination. The only real fear is that which my daughter faces now and probably will for the rest of her life — fear that she will never be truly accepted by society, fear that she will never get married and have a family and, most concerning, fear that she will be harmed by people who are threatened by her very existence.
Some of the opinions and comments on this case have been hurtful and difficult to read; still, we are pleased that the issue is in the public discourse. We are hopeful that those with open minds and hearts will come to a place of acceptance. And we are thankful for the courageous voices of those who came before us and those who stand beside us in this journey for justice. And while our daughter will continue to remain anonymous for now, she is well-represented by the thousands of transgender youth who are fighting for the right to live as their true authentic selves.
Also on HuffPost:
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Margaret Cho: I’ve been raped ‘probably more than 15 times’ in my life
Margaret Cho is getting ready to unveil her new song and video I Want to Kill My Rapist on Friday (13 November).
The song, she says, is a way for her and other rape survivors to heal.
‘I’ve been raped over the course of my life, probably more than 15 times,’ the comic tells The Wrap. ‘To be able to share that in a way that is really murderous rage but also funny, I think that is a way to heal.’
On her current PsyCHO comedy tour, Cho not only sings about her rapists, she tells jokes.
‘The way that rape works is that survivors of rape are towed into silence by shame,’ Cho says. ‘Shame of rape manifests itself into eating disorders, drug addiction, self destruction, depression… Even as a comedian, when you talk about rape, people get very, very upset. And that infuriates me.
‘I’m trying to find a way to create a space where people who are survivors can find a place to laugh about it. … I meet fans after shows and people are just weeping, because this issue is being discussed so intimately. I’m proud of that. It’s a new territory for comedy.’
The post Margaret Cho: I’ve been raped ‘probably more than 15 times’ in my life appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
After Years of Opposition, Florida Reverend Announces Support for Non-Discrimination Ordinance
After opposing a non-discrimination ordinance in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2012, Rev. R.L. Gundy announced his support for non-discrimination protections for Jacksonville’s LGBT community in housing, public accommodations and employment.
HRC.org
Woman Gets Eight Years In Prison For Impersonating A Man To Have Sex With Another Girl
Gayle Newland, a 25-year-old woman from Willaston, Cheshire, has been sentenced to eight years in jail for tricking her friend into having sex by posing as a man.
For two years, she disguised both her voice and appearance, convincing her friend to wear a blindfold every time they met.
They had about 10 sexual encounters in all — until the time the complainant removed the mask and found that it was her friend Newland, wearing a prosthetic penis.
Judge Roger Dutton called Newland “an intelligent, obsessional, highly manipulative, deceitful, scheming and thoroughly determined young woman.”
Newland tried to argue that they were role playing; that her accuser knew she was in disguise and pretending to be male.
During the trial, she insisted that no blindfold was ever part of the performance, and denied strapping bandages to her chest to conceal her breasts.
The jury didn’t believe the story, and convicted her of three counts of sexual assault.
According to testimony, Newland cooked up a phony Facebook profile with the name “Kye Fortune,” taking on this persona by mimicking a man’s voice when speaking on the phone to her victim.
The reason “Kye Fortune” preferred she wear the blindfold? “He” was highly self-conscious about his looks because he was undergoing brain surgery.
Apparently, the two women spent over 100 hours together.
The complainant would even wear the blindfold while they watched television. Or sunbathed.
Judge Dutton said:
“To successfully pass off a deception of this complexity was a major undertaking, involving dedicated mobile phone lines as well as regular texts from you purporting to be Kye’s relatives. You pursued this course of conduct over a lengthy period, during which you played with her affections, acting entirely for your own sexual satisfaction and choosing to ignore the devastating impact that the eventual discovery of the truth would have on her.”
Newland cried out upon hearing the sentence, and had to be physically restrained by two police officers.
As she was escorted from the classroom, she cried out “Oh my God,” and could be heard screaming.
In the public gallery, friends and family stood in tears, and her father was visibly furious.
Dutton said the defendant had sent a series of emails to the complainant after the mask was removed, apologizing for her indiscretions.
“Your defense,” he said, “was that [the complainant] knew who you were from the outset and that this was just role play. Those apologies were because you knew the game was up and that your cruel deception had been discovered.”
The judge was convinced the psychological component of the case would have a grave and long-lasting effect on the complainant, calling Newland’s actions “a callous breach of the trust that your friend had in you.”
Newland’s disorders were identified in a psychiatric report: social anxiety disorder, a personality disorder, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Her council, Nigel Power QC, argued that all of these were closely linked with issues she had regarding her sexuality.
Her low self-esteem and “blurred gender lines” added to a “very troubling picture”, according to Dutton.
But, in the end, he concluded:
“These offenses are so serious that only an immediate custodial sentence would in any way properly reflect the serious nature of your conduct. As an aspect of mercy, I do not increase the starting point beyond eight years.”
H/t: LGBTQ Nation
Jeremy Kinser
Utah Governor: Judge Who Removed Child from Gay Foster Parents Should ‘Follow the Law’ – VIDEO
At a news conference on Thursday, Utah Governor Gary Herbert weighed in on the case of a judge who ordered a child removed from the care of gay foster parents because of supposed “research” (which he did not provide) that allegedly proves the child would be better off with heterosexual parents.
Addressing the controversy, Herbert said the judge should “follow the law.”
“I’m a little puzzled by the action down there personally,” Herbert told reporters at his monthly news conference on KUED. […]
“I expect the court and the judge to follow the law. He may not like the law, but he should follow the law. We don’t want to have activism on the bench in any way, shape or form. Laws, sometimes people don’t like, but the judge should not interject his own personal beliefs and feelings and supersede the law,” Herbert said.
A spokesperson for Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said, “Our office currently is reviewing the court’s order and consulting our client.”
Previously, both Herbert and Reyes tried to stop same-sex marriage from becoming enacted in Utah, though ultimately gave in after SCOTUS’ ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Watch video of Herbert’s news conference below from KUED:
The post Utah Governor: Judge Who Removed Child from Gay Foster Parents Should ‘Follow the Law’ – VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Utah Governor: Judge Who Removed Child from Gay Foster Parents Should ‘Follow the Law’ – VIDEO
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