Holidays are for Families

A coalition of LGBT rights groups including PFLAG, COLAGE, the Equality Federation, and the Family Equality Council has joined forces on a campaign to send pro-LGBT holiday cards to the White House. The group will collect the cards and send them in a giant package for maximum impact.

Today national and regional lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) family rights groups from around the country launched the “From Our Family to Yours Campaign,” designed to introduce President Obama to thousands of LGBT families. In addition to spreading holiday cheer, the campaign will increase visibility and awareness for the need for federal protections for the LGBT community. In this season of peace and generosity, let’s introduce the First Family to ours. Because to succeed in getting federal protections for our families, we must put real names and faces to the people in our community.To participate in the campaign, we encourage families to send holiday cards to the First Family, and share their photos and this message:

“Season’s Greetings, from our family to yours. May the next year bring peace and equality for all.”

Please send your holiday cards and photos to:

Family Equality Council
Attn: First Family
P.O. Box 206
Boston, MA 02133

Or send a digital version to tina.walker-morin@familyequality.org by January 1, 2010. We encourage you to send your holiday cards as soon as possible so that we can compile all of the images into a holiday package to be delivered to the First Family.

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via joe.My.God.blogspot.com It seems every day there's a new flare-up of reichwing idiocy. I really should just type, "go to Joe.My.God, Towleroad.com and Queerty. It's what i do. Little time for regurgitating, but this is my pick of the day.

A little off, the top

Another readin', another show!

Well, not really a show, but a reading should be entertaining, right?

When I first heard about the Reading Series at Joe's Barbershop, I thought, "Oh, that's the place with all the cute barbers. I should get a cut there for a change of pace from Louie's."

It turned out they were as much of a bargain, closer to my home, and they had a few racy magazines like old-fashioned barbershops, only with gay mags. Mmm.

The reading series, curated by owner Joe's beau Michael McAllister, turned into an instant hit, and like any self-serving author, I soon afterward pestered Micheal - er, politely volunteered - to read at an upcoming event.

Then I got the best haircut in years from Mike. Then, later, Michael asked me to read for this month's event, which is cool, since I like early December, my birthday being the next day, and well, it being all pre-holidaze-ish.

With the chosen theme "Incredible, Improbable, Impossible," I've polished up one of my many orphaned short stories, trimmed it and styled it (Hey, I'll be reading in a barbershop), and hope you can be there to enjoy my story, along with authors Helen Wecker and Holly Payne. Musician Megan Keely will also sing some songs.

Plus, for a mere $5, you enjoy a beer or soft drink, chips, snacks, and if you get there early, sit in one of those everso comfy barber chairs.

Details HERE.

Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)
Saturday, December 5th, at 8 pm.

Books Inc. (we love them) will be selling a few copies of my first and third novels, PINS and Cyclizen, along with other books.

So, what's my reading about? It's not an excerpt from a novel.

Here's a subtle hint, aka, something visual that's not too abysmal:

Remember Them

As the Puerto Rican legal system comes under new scrutiny with the arrest of a brutal (alleged) murderer of a gay man, I noticed a series of short videos made by gay celebs about remembering antigay murder victims.

Gay American Heroes, although rather cluttered and amateurish in its layout, is nonetheless sincere in its intent. Says founder Scott Hall:

“It’s time to show the world our HEROES… because our family and friends are being stolen from us because of hate and those who teach it.

We should not, and will not, live in fear. We will face the ongoing violence against Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people head on and fight those who want to enslave us in their beliefs.

So, until we are given the same rights, freedoms, and protections as every other American, we will be united in this fight for respect, dignity, and protections under the law. We will win this fight through awareness, education, and perseverance for the good of all humanity.

And with totally gorgeous out gay actor/singer Chris Salvatore as one of their spokespeople, it'll hopefully get some attention.

Enjoy Chris Salvatore's other videos HERE.

Bill Boredom

There is not a fine line between activism and vandalism. It's very clear.
Destroy property and people go nuts. do it cleverly, and the message gets across. Do it stupidly, and you shoot yourself in the foot, ruin the focus of whatever point you were trying to make, and make even more people hate your perspective.

Antigay gay vandals destroy billboard

A billboard showing a tall, proud Marine, saluting smartly and kitted out in full dress uniform, was vandalized in Memphis, Tennessee. The billboard ad, put up by the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, read, "I’m gay and I protected your freedom."

The billboard’s defacement was denounced as an act of homophobia, reported a Nov. 17 article at Advocate.com, but then a "Radical Transfolk, Queers and Allies" group calling itself Bash Back! took credit for the vandalism, denouncing the cost of the billboard ad--reported to be $3,500--and citing the high level of violence targeting trans people in the city: "11 trans women of color, 1 white transwoman and 1 transman of color" have been killed in Memphis, which also suffers from "one of the highest queer youth homeless rates in the nation."

Thanks, kids! F for effort. Talk about off-topic!

That's exactly the case with the inane, twerpy, PR-needy brats with Bash Back. The quartet of 20something doofs -who've gotten overpraiseful undeserving PR in Details and The Advocate- think it's "radical" to deface a billboard supporting the rights of LGBTs in the military. Instead of protesting the actual military itself -these weiners would never have the guts to do that- they attack an ad because, um, queer people in that city are getting beat up, and a $3500 billboard is a waste of money, or something.

So, make it look like even more people hate gays! Yeah, that'll show 'em!
The weaseldinks at Bash Back are the face of the new idiocracy. With no understanding of the decades of activism that made an impact, they poop their own diapers to protest something going on in their crib.

If you're going to deface a billboard, which I highly recommend, do it with some preparation and a response. Defacement should change the message, warp it.



Example: Exodus gets a makeover.

Example 2: McCain's true motives unveiled.

Self-criticism is healthy for a subculture.
But Bash Back is just dumb.

Oughties

Another wing of the gay media world has died, mostly due to the ambitious greed for a mini-empire.

Am I surprised? No.

When an Australian media group did the same thing, I had just bailed from PlanetOut before it had a binge and purge session around 2000-2001. Here's what I said in the San Francisco Chronicle (in an article that no longer exists online, except in cache form):

One backdrop to the PlanetOut debate is the debacle of Australia's Satellite Group, a gay media and real estate company that went public last year, only to end up in receivership with seven gay publications shuttered.
To someone like Jim Provenzano of San Francisco, a freelance writer and former PlanetOut staffer, the lesson of Satellite is that one company should not control so many publications.
"The collapse of Australia's gay media may serve as a harbinger of the media blackout that could happen if financial truths are belatedly faced by the U.S. version," Provenzano said.
To [then-CEO Megan] Smith at PlanetOut, however, Satellite's failure proves just the opposite: "We have no desire to go the way of Satellite media in Australia. We want to make a strong, profitable company."

But ya did, Blanche. Ya did. Not profitable, but profit-losing, and a cheap sale, and now a nearly worthless entity, the shadow of a once-grand media empire.



And now the east wing has also fallen.
This decade has become a minefield of things we ought to have done.
There's a lotta oughttas out there.

The latest is Window Media, which owns, er, owned, pretty much every major LGBT newspaper on the East Coast, except a few independents. And it's now dead.

Among the affected titles are the weekly newspapers Washington Blade, Southern Voice, South Florida Blade and the bar guides David Magazine and 411 Magazine. (Earlier this year, Window Media ceased publishing Genre Magazine.) Window Media's primary investor, the Avalon Equity Fund, has been in receivership over a loan from the Small Business Administration.

And they're out of work.

Once upon a time, the same doofs that just killed half the gay media world made overtures to other publications. Any that avoided being subsumed by Window Media should thank their lucky stars.

Meanwhile, The Advocate, one of the oldest recurring gay magazines on earth, has been compacted into a fold-in for subscribers of Out, and available online only. They got bought up by Regent Media after PlanetOutOfIt tried to own them, and failed.

There's a lotta oughttas out there.
A lotta shouldas.

But not much print media any more. Nope, the sad news is sent via blogs that critiqued this doomed merger from the beginning.

Read an expansive story about the rise and fall of Window Media at EdgeBoston.com

Buh-bye. Epic fail, folks. Epic.

See the staff at the Washington Blade haul their stuff out while vowing to start a new publication, at WashingtonCityPaper's blog.

Whores of Babble-On

Maggie Gallagher, STFU.

As shown in this YouTube video, antigay-marriage whore Maggie Gallagher has been blabbing hate for decades, even back to the over-the-top shoulder-padded 80s.

Here she is in all her passé fashion-don't glory. The main spokesfrau for the Catholic Mormom money-laundering NOM used to just be a woman's rights hater. Now she's a gay-hater. Nice to see she's at least changed her target, if not her hideous fashion sense.

Carrie Prejean, STFU.

The deposed fake-boob whore for "Christian values" not only showed her manufactured mammaries to a photographer. She sent pornographic masturbatory videos of herself to a "boyfriend," whom she actually only knew for a week. Talk about "christian" values, whore. Prejean has relentlessly made the media ho rounds on The View, and the bubbleheaded twit walked off softball grandpappy of interviews, Larry King! The nerve of him, asking her actual questions!

Reichwing nutbags, STFU.

the reichwing has been sniffing around gay blogger JoeMyGod's site for a while, but now they're in rabid faux-victim frenzy, claiming that one sarcastic comment is an all-out war on their Christianosity.

Jeebus freaks, STFU.

Just. Shut. Up.

tragic mutual incomprehension

The Vatican Explores Alien Life

VATICAN CITY – E.T. phone Rome. Four hundred years after it locked up Galileo for challenging the view that the Earth was the center of the universe, the Vatican has called in experts to study the possibility of extraterrestrial alien life and its implication for the Catholic Church.

"The questions of life's origins and of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe are very suitable and deserve serious consideration," said the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, an astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory.

Funes, a Jesuit priest, presented the results Tuesday of a five-day conference that gathered astronomers, physicists, biologists and other experts to discuss the budding field of astrobiology — the study of the origin of life and its existence elsewhere in the cosmos.

Funes said the possibility of alien life raises "many philosophical and theological implications" but added that the gathering was mainly focused on the scientific perspective and how different disciplines can be used to explore the issue.

Chris Impey, an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona, said it was appropriate that the Vatican would host such a meeting.

"Both science and religion posit life as a special outcome of a vast and mostly inhospitable universe," he told a news conference Tuesday. "There is a rich middle ground for dialogue between the practitioners of astrobiology and those who seek to understand the meaning of our existence in a biological universe."

The Church of Rome's views have shifted radically through the centuries since Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 for speculating, among other ideas, that other worlds could be inhabited.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of planets outside our solar system — including 32 new ones announced recently by the European Space Agency. Impey said the discovery of alien life may be only a few years away.

"If biology is not unique to the Earth, or life elsewhere differs bio-chemically from our version, or we ever make contact with an intelligent species in the vastness of space, the implications for our self-image will be profound," he said.

This is not the first time the Vatican has explored the issue of extraterrestrials: In 2005, its observatory brought together top researchers in the field for similar discussions.

In the interview last year, Funes told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that believing the universe may host aliens, even intelligent ones, does not contradict a faith in God.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said in that interview.

"Just as there is a multitude of creatures on Earth, there could be other beings, even intelligent ones, created by God. This does not contradict our faith, because we cannot put limits on God's creative freedom."

Funes maintained that if intelligent beings were discovered, they would also be considered "part of creation."

The Roman Catholic Church's relationship with science has come a long way since Galileo was tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant his finding that the Earth revolves around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

Today top clergy, including Funes, openly endorse scientific ideas like the Big Bang theory as a reasonable explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

There are divisions on the issues within the Catholic Church and within other religions, with some favoring creationism or intelligent design that could make it difficult to accept the concept of alien life.

Working with scientists to explore fundamental questions that are of interest to religion is in line with the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made strengthening the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

Recent popes have been working to overcome the accusation that the church was hostile to science — a reputation grounded in the Galileo affair.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared the ruling against the astronomer was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

The Vatican Museums opened an exhibit last month marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first celestial observations.

What I find a bigger case of "tragic mutual incomprehension" is how the overgrown cult of cannibal-zombie worship with its own country gets to dictate who gets married on another side of the planet. The Catholic Church has infested itself into electoral politics for years, most visibly with antigay marriage initiatives in several states.

Catholic High Drag Queens should stop star-gazing and look into their disgusting sordid past of genocide patriarchal fascism, and their continual denial of LGBT rights, safe sex education, and contraception before they aim to hook up with ET.