As someone who was adopted by two lesbian moms, I was certainly disappointed to find out that John McCain, a candidate for President of the United States, doesn't "believe in gay adoption."
What's not to believe in? Many gays and lesbians adopt children and create wonderful, loving families. My moms adopted me out of foster care when I was eleven years old. I'm seventeen now. I love my family. My moms provide for me in all the ways that other parents provide for their children. We have our problems just like everybody else, but in the end we take care of each other. We believe in each other.
What we don't believe in is John McCain and any other politician who is out of touch with the reality of American families. Not all families are married moms and dads with their biological children. Many children are raised by single parents, unmarried parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and more. What makes these families real is the love and care they have for each other, their commitment to seeing each other through good times and bad.
Saturday June 9th 1984 was an arrestingly beautiful day in Ireland. Scudding clouds, lots of sun and azure skies – called bleu celeste, someone told me. We were in Donegal, in the north of the island, in a landscape so magnificent it could make you catch your breath.
Just after 2pm on that afternoon my father turned the key in his Mercedes. The car was new, the engine purred quietly, you could hardly feel a vibration. My older brother had left a tape in the deck, which started instantly: Heaven 17, singing Come Live With Me. Not bad, but not exactly my favorite either.
I remember it was a Saturday, I remember everything about that day, I’ll never have to look it up; but of course I googled it anyway - in Florida, a world away, Donald Duck celebrated his 50th birthday at Disneyland. OK, then. I guess there wasn’t much going on anywhere.
The thing I remember clearly is that my father was in a fierce mood for some reason. His face was a mask of irritation. I had no idea why. Well actually, that’s not true – I did have some idea, but it was quite unpleasant to think about, so I repressed it, or I tried.
After the California ruling there's been a lot of buzz about marriage equality and queer rights. But we all know for every step forward there seems to be two steps back. June is Pride month so before we get to complacent let's Get Busy & Get Equal .
It's great to celebrate the progress made but we shouldn't rest on our laurels. We need to remember that many states in the US have passed constitutional amendments barring marriage equality thereby legalizing bigotry, that binational couples are only given equal rights in 16 nations, and bullying of queers in schools is still the rule not the exception in far to many communities, and in too many places around the world queers have no rights at all.
Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay: a fearsome place of torture and murder beyond the reach of law…
“The ongoing detention without trial of over 400 individuals in the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay has rightly been decried as an ongoing human rights scandal by everyone from Amnesty International to the Vatican,” British human and medical rights activist Dr. David Nicholl has written.
Other than the Iraq war, there is nothing more effective as a recruiting tool for terrorists than the policy of indefinite detention at Guantanámo without trial and the allegations of torture and extra-judicial killings there, which have provided Al Qaeda with a propaganda coup.
But for all the crimes against humanity that George W. Bush and his administration are guilty of, the legal precedent for the extra-judicial regime of indefinite detention without trial was established not by the current administration but by the previous administration led by Bill Clinton.
Hillary Clinton likes to take credit for every success of her husband’s administration — including, rather incredibly, helping bring about peace in Northern Ireland. The question I would pose to the junior senator from New York is this: whatever foreign policy successes that Hillary likes to claim credit for, is she also willing to accept responsibility for the establishment of the illegal regime at Guantánamo?
It's gotten a bit lost in the New York City news cycle because of this Spitzer mess, so it may be worth taking a moment to mention Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern. You know, the one who said homosexuality is a bigger threat to our nation than "terrorism or Islam." Here she is in a video put together by the HRC:
What I think Ms. Sally is missing, though, is the fact that she's not saying gays are a worse threat, she's saying we're a better threat.
On Wednesday February 13th Lawrence King, a 15 year old gay boy, was shot in the head, twice, at point blank range by his 14 year old classmate. That his bullying classmate felt emboldened enough – culturally sanctioned enough – to act like this should remind us where we are in terms of gay acceptance and tolerance.
The shooting happened in a well to do district of southern California; it happened in full view of 20 other students. Some of those other students actually told King he better “watch out” hours before he was shot dead by 14 year old Brandon McInerney, who had previously bullied him for his gender-nonconformity and appearance.
"He would come to school in high-heeled boots, makeup, jewelry and painted nails -- the whole thing," said Michael Sweeney, 13, an eighth-grader. "That was freaking the guys out."
As First Lady, Hillary Clinton was apparently directly responsible for all of the innovations and successes of the Clinton administration but none of its or ethical lapses or mistakes; at least, that’s what one is supposed to conclude from Hillary’s interviews with the media. This is especially the case with the the Rwanda genocide, the former First Lady's role in which is almost never subject to media scrutiny or public scrutiny of any kind.
The genocide was dramatized in the film “Hotel Rwanda,” with Don Cheadle playing the role of Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of the hotel who displayed extraordinary courage in his efforts to save hundreds of Tutsis from certain death at the hands of machete-wielding death squads. Rusesabagina established the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation to provide “support, care, and assistance to children orphaned by, and women abused during, the genocide in Rwanda.”
Francisco Nava, 23, a politics major at Princeton University, made the news recently after admitting that he had fabricated a series of email death threats. Nava, campus police discovered, had hoped to highlight the intolerable oppression of wealthy heterosexual conservative students at the prestigious Ivy League school by staging a series of increasingly elaborate hoaxes and then blaming his political opponents.
Conservative commentators were very quick to suggest that the mainstream media had initially ignored Nava’s heartrending plight because they are simply prejudiced against the patrician aristocrats who will eventually lead the nation.
But back to Nava’s fascinating follies: the menacing emails he sent to himself and other conservative students and faculty were just a curtain raiser. The story gets much, much weirder.
Op-Ed: Matt Foreman, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
At this critical moment in our efforts to pass an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that includes transgender people under its protections, it is important to recall just why so many of us believe that no one can be left behind.
The last five days have been a grueling and defining moment in our movement’s history. When we learned that protections for transgender people would be stripped from ENDA, an unprecedented groundswell of anger, energy and determination rose up to reverse that decision.
The other day, a letter signed by more than 300 national and state advocacy organizations that work on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people was delivered to Congress, asking for more time to garner support for ENDA as it was originally introduced. Some 2,500 congregations were asked to activate their memberships to call Congress. Students are also calling and e-mailing Congress and launching Facebook accounts to build support, working from 120 LGBT campus resource centers. Action alerts, blog postings and opinion pieces supporting a trans-inclusive ENDA have been flying over the Internet.
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