equality blooms with spring

[diamond]

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

for many, yes. i was being fresh, to a degree, but many gays have a strong libertarian impulse that's usually tempered by the fact that the Republicans actually are out to get them. but this doesn't apply to everyone.

you see, it's difficult to make broad, sweeping statements about a group of people who are found at a very consistent percentage (5%, give or take) across every society, every country, every socioeconomic status, across history.

Yes, agreed. Would you agree that most mainstream gay lobby groups largely do not represent conservative or libertarian gays?

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by BVS

So is this going to be the defense from now on?

If there is a story about racism, you'll find a black writer that has written some disparaging article about black people using rumors and speculations?

If there is a story about anti-semitism, you'll find some a Jewish author...

If there is a story about misogyny you'll turn to Ann Coulter?

Is. Johann. Hari. A. Homophobe. Yes. Or. No.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by financeguy

Is. Johann. Hari. A. Homophobe. Yes. Or. No.

I don't know, maybe being gay does scare him. The article was shit. But one has to ask themselves what his agenda was, was it just to shock people? But if a straight man wrote it in order to make others fear gay men then I would say yes he's a homophobe.

[deep]

Obama will make an announcement extending 'marriage like' rights to same gender federal employees tomorrow.

[deep]

here it is

Obama Intends to Extend Federal Benefits to Unmarried Partners

Updated 9:23 p.m.
By Scott Butterworth
President Obama will announce tomorrow that he is extending federal benefits to include unmarried domestic partners of federal workers, including same-sex partners, White House officials said tonight.

Obama will sign an executive order implementing the change in the Oval Office, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging the president's announcement.

The action will come as welcome news to gay-rights activists, who have voiced loud disappointment with Obama's handling of several issues important to their community.

[melon]

Originally Posted by financeguy

Is. Johann. Hari. A. Homophobe. Yes. Or. No.

Hari, who is openly gay, supports gay rights, advocating full legal equality, including same-sex marriage. He has criticized radical gay theorists, and ideas of gay difference, superiority or separatism.

Sounds like Johann Hari isn't, and it appears that his debate is a matter of nuance and discerning between specific fanatical elements, rather than painting an entire class of people with a stereotypical brush like Raimondo is prone to do. The "gay rights movement," as a political entity, is not above criticism. It appears, however, that Raimondo cannot separate the politics from the people, and that's what makes him a bigot.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by financeguy

Yes, agreed. Would you agree that most mainstream gay lobby groups largely do not represent conservative or libertarian gays?

i would say that traditional political definitions of "conservative" and even "libertarian" don't serve the self-definitions of gays who would consider themselves conservative or libertarian.

[MrsSpringsteen]

just thought this was interesting..

NY Times

June 28, 2009
I Love You, Man (as a Friend)
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

Welcome to the flip side of homophobia.

“I’m flattered, and I think it’s hilarious,” Kris Allen told People.com recently, responding to the news that his former roommate and runner-up on “American Idol,” Adam Lambert, had a crush on him.

Mr. Lambert, who favors black eyeliner and leather pants, had told Rolling Stone that Mr. Allen, an aw-shucks Christian from Arkansas, was “the one guy that I found attractive in the whole group on the show — nice, nonchalant, pretty and totally my type — except that he has a wife.”

This all went down in the same interview in which Mr. Lambert finally confirmed the long-simmering rumor that, yep, he’s gay.

Mr. Allen’s cool, self-assured response to being the object of his gay roommate’s affection doesn’t exactly qualify him as a civil rights hero, not at a time when straight men march against Proposition 8 in California and the most anticipated gay-themed film of the year, “Brüno,” is coming from a straight (if highly waxed) comedian.

But do give him credit for overcoming one of the most common deal-killers in friendships between straight and gay men: the awkward crush.

The kinship between gay men and straight women is familiar to the point of cliché (see: “Sex and the City,” “Will and Grace,” Kathy Griffin’s audience, etc.), but friendships between gay and straight men have barely registered on the pop culture radar, perhaps because they resist easy classification. For every sweeping statement one can make about such friendships, there is a real-life counter example to undermine the stereotypes. And as with all friendships, no two are exactly alike.

But as America’s openly gay minority becomes more visibly interwoven into society — a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 4 out of 10 respondents had a close friend or family member who was a gay man or a lesbian — the straight world becomes more aware of the gay world. Although male friends of opposite orientations can face formidable obstacles — sexuality, language, peer pressure, inequality — there seems to be more mutual appreciation and common ground.

“The younger generation understands the spectrum and fluidity of sexuality much more than generations of the past,” said Tom Bourdon, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center at Tufts University. “Most liberal-minded straight guys today could say they have gay friends, and people wouldn’t bat an eye.”

Pop culture has also been picking up on this, serving up gay characters who have broken out of old stereotypes. In “I Love You, Man,” Andy Samberg plays a fist-bumping sports nut who is gay but makes the straight man, Paul Rudd, look prissy. On “The Sarah Silverman Program,” the gay couple acts so pathologically straight that they express their feelings with lines like, “I’m totally gay for you, dude,” between bong hits.

Still, as Billy Crystal remarked in “When Harry Met Sally,” it’s difficult for men and women to be friends because “the sex part always gets in the way.” The same can be true between gay and straight men — only it gets way more complicated.

Jason Mills, a gay screenwriter in New York, wrote a short film called “Curious Thing” about the time he lost a straight friend after things briefly turned sexual. “Where it can get confusing for a straight man and a gay man is when they connect on every other level, and then the gay man starts to question, ‘Well if there was just that one other thing, this could be perfect,’ ” Mr. Mills said. (Complicating matters a bit, Mr. Mills’s films are directed by his straight friend and business partner, Alain Hain, who must frequently combat the assumption that the movies are about him and Mr. Mills.)

Adam Carter, 34, a straight fund-raiser from Chicago who frequently travels overseas, recalled losing a friend in Brazil after rejecting his advances.

“We were driving to a party and he put his hand on my thigh,” Mr. Carter said. “I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I just told him it wasn’t my thing. But things were never the same.”

He added: “Now I look back on all the things we did together and wonder, was it all just to get me in the sack? Now I know what girls feel like.”

The notion that gay men can’t or don’t refrain from hitting on straight friends is, to many, the biggest stereotype of all. It’s simply not true, say most of the men in gay-straight friendships interviewed for this article.

A more common source of friction, some gay men say, is the tendency of straight friends to see them only through the lens of sexual orientation. “I do have a lot of straight friends, but it’s harder to make real relationships with straight guys,” said Matthew Streib, 27, a gay journalist in Baltimore. “I feel like it’s always about my gayness for the first two months. First they have questions, then they make fun of it, then they start seeing me as a person.”

Another disconnect can be the tendency of straight men to purposely ignore their gay friends’ emotional lives. Jammie Price, a professor at Appalachian State University, studied 46 pairs of straight and gay male friends for her book, “Navigating Differences: Friendships Between Gay and Straight Men.” She concluded that only 13 of the pairs could truly be called close friends, often because the straight man was willing to delve only so far into the gay friend’s personal life.

In a surprising twist, she found that the straight men with the most evolved sense of masculinity — the ones who forged the tightest friendships with their gay friends — were from military families or had some military training.

These men were used to being “thrown into different environments where it doesn’t matter whether you’re white or black or Hispanic,” Professor Price said. “You’re going to live in this house and you’re all going to be treated the same and you have to get along.”

The insensitivity issue does tend to crop up in the form of poorly chosen words. Justin Miller, 28, a straight mortgage broker, met Joshua Estrin, 39, a gay drama and dance teacher, at a networking party in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., about seven years ago and became close friends with him, but has had to learn to watch his mouth.

According to Mr. Estrin, “He’ll be out with me in a gay neighborhood and he’ll say something stupid like, ‘Stop being such a queer,’ and like 900 heads in the restaurant will turn. I tell him, ‘These boys are going to take you down.’ ”

Unlike some other gay men interviewed, Mr. Estrin said he found it easy to socialize with heterosexuals. “I find straight men so uncomplicated,” he said. “They’re just easier.”

Brandon Drew, 33, a financial adviser in Los Angeles who is straight, once learned a lesson in sensitivity from Louis Vachon, a gay ice skating instructor with whom he has been friends since 1999. “Right after we met, I called him a princess,” Mr. Drew recalled. “We were at this party and I’d had some beers, and he was wearing these big gloves washing dishes, and I was like, ‘Oh, look, the pretty princess doesn’t want to ruin her nails.’ ”

But Mr. Vachon got his revenge. When a girlfriend of Mr. Drew’s arrived, Mr. Vachon quickly let her know that Mr. Drew had previously referred to her as his “booty call.”

“I know right away this girl was never going to let me touch her again,” he laughed.

For every example of the sage gay man tolerating the brutish straight dude, there is a pair that defies classification. Peter Dangerfield, 38, a gay publicist, moved to New York from Chicago in 2001 and became roommates — and then friends — with David Lobenstine, 32, a straight massage therapist. In separate conversations, both men struggled to recall a time that sexuality came between them. It didn’t hurt, they both said, that Mr. Lobenstine’s mother is gay, as are several of his cousins.

When they were roommates, “I would be most likely to walk out of the shower without a towel,” Mr. Lobenstine said. The two shared an apartment even after Mr. Lobenstine got married. “My wife and I had to tone down our sex lives for Peter — he has a much greater sense of propriety than I do,” Mr. Lobenstine said. Mr. Dangerfield only moved out late last year, when Mr. Lobenstine and his wife had a baby.

Ritch C. Savin-Williams, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University, recently completed a survey of 160 men, straight and gay, and found that gay men provided valuable social insights to straight men.

“The idea is that a gay friend will be more in tune to women and more likely to have female friends,” Professor Savin-Williams said. “And it’s a stereotype, but straight men also feel they can talk to gay men about fashion and ask them if they’re looking O.K.”

Bryan Miller, 37, a director at a financial software firm in New York who has had several gay roommates, echoed that view. “A gay man’s advice on women is the only advice you can take to the bank,” he said. “They’re guys, but they’re not in competition with you.”

Adam Smith, 31, a straight restaurant worker in Baltimore and a friend of Mr. Streib, the journalist, had a similar take. “I get a different perspective from him,” he said. “It’s easier for him to see both sides of the equation.”

Mr. Streib said he would never ask a straight man for romantic guidance. “Straight guys give the worst advice,” he said. But he speaks frankly about what such friendships afford him. “Every time I hang out with my gay friends, we have to spend half an hour talking about how they have to get to the gym or how fat they feel,” Mr. Streib said. “My straight friends just sit in a crowded bar and drink. It’s like a mini-vacation from my life.”

One conclusion Professor Savin-Williams drew from his conversations with young men was that there was a direct correlation between how “straight acting” they were and whether they had close straight friends. Sports, he said, were a common area for bonding.

“I find very few straight men really wanting to be friends with really obvious gay men,” he said. “They’re afraid other people will think they’re gay because their friend is so obviously gay, or there’s a feeling of almost slight disgust with feminine behavior in a male body.”

Some gay men tend to avoid relationships with straight men, too. Eric Perry, a gay graphic designer in New York, said he had no close straight friends. “I don’t know what’s going on in their heads, and I don’t think they know what’s going on in mine,” he said. “I’m afraid if I have a conversation with them they’ll think I’m hitting on them, so I just kind of avoid it.”

Mr. Perry admitted the situation wasn’t ideal. “There are a lot of straight guys on this planet,” he said. “I should probably learn how to talk to them.”

[deep]

Pentagon mulls easing 'don't ask, don't tell' law: Gates

The Pentagon is considering how it might ease the "don't ask, don't tell" law requiring gays to keep quiet about their sexual identity or face expulsion from the military, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.

"One of the things we're looking at is, is there flexibility in how we apply this law," Gates told reporters aboard a military plane.

The Pentagon boss said he discussed the issue last week with US President Barack Obama and that there also has been discussion among senior military and legal counsel about possible changes in how they apply the law, which he described as "very restrictive."

"We're talking about how do we move forward on this, achieve this objective which is changing the policy."

Gates added: "What I discovered when I got into it was it's a very restrictive law. It doesn't leave much to the imagination, or a lot of flexibility."

The defense secretary said one possible modification might be consider the circumstances under which a service member is "outed" in determining whether or not he or she must leave the military.

Gates offered as an example "when we're given information from someone with vengeance in mind or blackmail, somebody who has been jilted.

"If somebody is outed by a third party, does that force us to take action?" he said.

"That's the kind of thing we're looking at -- seeing if there's a more humane way to apply the law until it gets changed."

That may be the best solution.

It is disappointing that a one step proclamation would cause some people's heads to explode.

This is one more example that leads me to conclude that a "religious mind set" enables bad thinking.

[yolland]

For some, but paranoia about homosexuality as an innate threat to the social order isn't contained to some "religious mindset." Support for DADT is one of the last refuges of good old bluntly unadorned "Gross, I don't want some ____ in the shower room with me" thinking. Male bonding, masculine honor and all that...well, you know; you went to middle school once.

[VintagePunk]

I found this portion of the article that Mrs S posted a page ago heartening:

In a surprising twist, she found that the straight men with the most evolved sense of masculinity — the ones who forged the tightest friendships with their gay friends — were from military families or had some military training.

These men were used to being “thrown into different environments where it doesn’t matter whether you’re white or black or Hispanic,” Professor Price said. “You’re going to live in this house and you’re all going to be treated the same and you have to get along.”

[Irvine511]

most of my friends are straight men. well, probably even split between straight men and straight women. if it's been an issue with the straight men in my life, i haven't noticed. if anything, it pleases their wives/girlfriends that their husband/boyfriend doesn't have whatever hangups or insecurities.

what's becoming a bigger issue is that marriage and careers and owning a home and starting families is a much bigger roadblock to the friendships we used to have than any issues regarding sexuality.

[Irvine511]

and amidst all this social progress -- gay sex is now legal in India! time to schedule a visit! -- it's important to remember that there's still an enormous amount of work to do:

Gay bar patrons not targeted by officers, chief says
BY MIKE LEE and ALEX BRANCH


FORT WORTH — Police officers did not target gays during a bar inspection early Sunday in which one man was injured and seven people were arrested, Police Chief Jeff Halstead said Monday.

Police internal-affairs investigators will look into officers’ actions at the Rainbow Lounge, a gay nightclub on South Jennings Avenue, Halstead said.

He asked people who are angry with police "to take a deep breath."

The incident occurred on the 40th anniversary of a police raid on a club in New York City that helped trigger the gay rights movement, timing that Halstead called inadvertent.

"There was never, ever anyone employed with the Fort Worth Police Department who would want to specifically target a location because of the date," Halstead said. "That simply did not occur."

City officials have received hundreds of e-mails and dozens of phone calls about the incident, a spokesman said. Two Unitarian Universalist churches and the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas issued statements calling for full investigations, as did the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group.

"Brutality at the hands of law enforcement is never acceptable, and these allegations demonstrate the need for a thorough and impartial investigation," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.

The injured man, Chad Gibson, 26, remained hospitalized Monday.

He and six other people were arrested during what Halstead said was a routine bar inspection.

Gibson may require surgery for his head injury if his condition doesn’t improve, said his sister, Kristy Morgan.

"He remembers going to the bar. He remembers having a drink. He doesn’t remember anything else," she said.

Kyle Trentham of Fort Worth said local activists are working with national groups to find ways to help those arrested and assist with medical expenses for Gibson.

City Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks, whose district includes the bar, said she was "very concerned."

"I don’t want to rush to judgment," she said, but added that she does not want the city to have a "reputation as a place that’s not inclusive."

New management

The Rainbow, at 651 S. Jennings Ave., has been a gay bar for years under different owners. But it had been open under its current management for only about a week.

According to police, six Fort Worth officers, two officers from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and a supervisor went to the Rainbow about 1 a.m. after checking two other bars in the area — Rosedale Saloon and Cowboy Palace — where a total of nine people were arrested.

More than 20 people were taken out of the Rainbow and questioned, and seven were arrested on suspicion of public intoxication, police said.

Some customers made "sexually explicit motions," according to a police statement, and one grabbed an officer’s crotch. A police spokesman later identified that person as Gibson.

"My brother would not do that," Morgan said. Gibson, a high-tech worker who is about 5-feet-8 and weighs about 150 pounds, was at the club with friends, including a designated driver, she said.

"He’s not a big drinker, a big partyer," she said.

The police statement said one patron was so drunk he was vomiting. Morgan said her brother threw up because of his head injury.

She also questioned police efforts to summon medical help. The time on Gibson’s ticket for public intoxication is 2:10 a.m. An ambulance wasn’t called until 2:25 a.m.

Club Manager Randy Norman said Gibson didn’t seem drunk and was walking from the men’s room, holding a bottle of water, when an officer pushed him against a wall and then pushed him to the ground. Some patrons said they heard Gibson ask the officer a question, but that he didn’t fight back. At least three officers were involved in handcuffing him.

"The first question I heard was, 'How much have you had to drink?’ " said Shane Wells, a dancer at the club. Gibson "said, 'I don’t have to answer that question’ and they grabbed him and ran him against that little wall.’ "

Asked about Gibson’s injury, Halstead said he could speak only about what is documented in the police report.

"In the police report, it was stated that he was handcuffed and he exhibited signs of over-intoxication, possible alcohol poisoning, and he fell face first," Halstead said.

"If there’s an eyewitness to the contrary, then that is exactly the person we want to come forward to the Police Department."

Witnesses should contact the internal affairs division at 817-392-4270, he said.

Late Monday, a news release from Fort Worth police identified the officers involved as K. Gober, J. Ricks, M. Marquez, J. Jenson, J. Back, J. Moss and Sgt. Morris.

'Liquor checks’ normal

Norman, who said he has been in the bar business for six years, said "liquor checks" are normal. But this time, he said, officers didn’t ask to see the club’s liquor license or its alcohol supply, and immediately began arresting people, he said.

"I believe the officers were riled up from wherever they were before," Norman said.

Staff writers Deanna Boyd and Eva-Marie Ayala contributed to this report.

Fort Worth council members call for probe in raid of gay bar

01:49 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 30, 2009

By CHRIS HAWES / WFAA-TV

RAINBOW LOUNGE RAID
June 30th, 2009
Chris Hawes reports

FORT WORTH - Fort Worth has received national attention after a controversial inspection at a gay bar.

The nation's largest gay and lesbian civil rights organization has called for an investigation, and they're not alone. Council member Kathleen Hicks said she wants the community to know that there is a recourse for complaints such as the ones that arose after officers were accused of violence without just cause.

Seven were arrested and one hospitalized after violence broke out during a raid at the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth.

Hicks called witness reports and Chad Gibson's brain injury disturbing; Gibson's mother, Kelly Carter, called it heartbreaking.

"He's got bruises here on his head," Carter said. "He's got [them] all down his shoulder. He's got a ring around his wrist where they had tied him."

Carter came to the Rainbow Lounge to see for herself where her son suffered the brain injury.

"They spun [Gibson] around this way, and laid him out on the ground and that's when he hit his head on the step and got the head injury," said one witness of what occurred during the early Sunday-morning raid.

Monday, police chief Jeff Halstead said the officers' actions are being investigated. However, he also said that officers that entered the bar during the scheduled inspection were touched inappropriately.

"You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive," he said. "I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."

Witnesses denied the chief's account.

News 8 talked with council member Joel Burns shortly after he visited Gibson in the hospital Monday afternoon.

"It's my hope that the fact that this is a gay bar and the violence that happened there are not in any way tied - obviously as someone who loves Fort Worth [and] as someone who is gay - I don't want those two things to be connected," he said.

Neither the TABC nor Fort Worth police revealed why the bar was selected for what police called a bar check. But, Halstead said the checks always result from either citizen or law enforcement concerns. The bar's owner questioned that and pointed out the Rainbow Lounge has been open for less than two weeks.

YouTube - Mom Speaks Out - Victim of Violent Police Raid in Hospital With Brain Injury

[Diemen]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

Wow is that a stupid story headline they've got up on the screen.

[yolland]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

and amidst all this social progress -- gay sex is now legal in India! --

Wasn't that exciting! In practice, no one had actually been prosecuted under that law in decades (the just-announced ruling was 'public interest litigation,' unrelated to any convictions), and I've never personally heard of visitors being given trouble under it, but, it certainly has been used by private individuals and organizations to blackmail LGBT Indians, as well as by police to justify what would otherwise be illegal harassment. So I think this will likely have a pretty significant impact on the safety of 'out-ness'--for individuals, for communities, and for organizations--in the longterm, even though the results will doubtless look quite different from here (e.g., even heterosexual PDA between husband and wife is still taboo in much of India). Cultural conservatism aside, that law criminalizing gay sex--technically, 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature'--was, ironically, of British origin; India's penal code is still the old 1860 British code.

(BTW, since there seems to be some confusion in the American press about this: the fact that this ruling came from the Delhi High Court does not mean it applies only to Delhi; India's High Courts have original jurisdiction on Constitutional matters and there's only one Constitution, so only the Supreme Court could overrule...and since it was the Supreme Court who forced the Delhi High Court to hear this case in the first place after they'd initially dismissed it several years back, that seems highly unlikely.)

[deep]

Time to review policy on gays in U.S. military: Powell
Sun Jul 5, 2009 11:52am EDT


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American attitudes have changed and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays serving in the U.S. military should be reviewed, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell said on Sunday.

President Barack Obama favors overturning the policy, which bars gay troops from serving openly in the military. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked military lawyers to look at ways to make the law more flexible, hailed by gay rights groups as a "seismic political shift".

"The policy and the law that came about in 1993, I think, was correct for the time," Powell said on CNN's State of the Union.

"Sixteen years have now gone by, and I think a lot has changed with respect to attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy and a law that should be reviewed." he added.

Current Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, the United States' highest ranking officer, said the military will continue to carry out the policy until it is changed.

"It is very clear what President Obama's intent here is, he intends to see this law changed and my advice ... is that I think we need to move in a measured way," Mullen said.

"At a time when we're fighting two conflicts there is a great deal of pressure on our forces and their families," he added.

I know Powell is only calling for a review.

I believe that is very positive.

Any review in 2009 would come to an over-turning of the policy. Worse case, it would be in phases. But that would at least get us to the right place.

[deep]

more of the same

Mullen advises 'measured' approach to gay policy
Sun Jul 5, 2:45 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The nation's top military officer said Sunday he has advised President Barack Obama to move "in a measured way" in changing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bans gays from serving openly in the military.

Obama as a candidate pledged to end the ban. As president, he has not said when or how he will take steps to do so, drawing criticism from gay rights activists and others. The president has pointed out that Congress in 1993 made into law a policy begun by President Bill Clinton.

"It's very clear what President Obama's intent here is. He intends to see this law change," Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"I've had conversations with him about that. What I've discussed in terms of the future is I think we need to move in a measured way," Mullen said.

Mullen said he has discussed with his staff what steps might be taken to implement a change in the policy.

"I haven't done any kind of extensive review. And what I feel most obligated about is to make sure I tell the president, you know, my — give the president my best advice, should this law change, on the impact on our people and their families at these very challenging times," he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that he has lawyers studying ways the law might be selectively enforced as part of an effort to find "a more humane way" to apply the law until it is changed.

So let's go with a multi-year phase out.

If they behave themselves on the back of the bus, they will get to their destination.

[melon]

The reality, of course, is that there is no "humane way" to enforce this law, short of full repeal.

[deep]

humane, by tolerating some ignorance , supported by religious believes, of the majority and phasing it out over a short period of time


so that sooner or later all Negroes get to play in major league baseball,
not just Jackie Robinson.