YoungVoteTheYoungVoteTheYoungVoteTheYou

The News and Observer reports that: "The House approved by a one-vote margin a bill that would ban bullying against school children for actual or perceived differences including sexual orientation."

I actually find this to be repulsive that the bill wasn't approved by a much wider margin. Apparently the reason is that...

 "Opponents, particularly Republicans, have said the bill should not name special categories of victims and have said the bill should simply ban all bullying. Supporters, mostly Democrats, have said the bill focuses attention on children who are the most likely targets in schools across the state."

In reality, GLBTQ and gender-nonconforming young people need special protections because they receive special abuses. Of course it is imperative that all young people feel safe in schools, and that the onus is on EVERYONE to ensure that school spaces are safe spaces, but it is a fact of reality, uncovered in oh so many studies, that GLBTQ and gender-nonconforming young people are particularly trageted and abused physically and emotionally in schools and are thus more likely to have a lower self-esteem, abuse themselves, and committ suicide.
The dismal state of this bill proves that our homophobic and/or ignorant representatives need to be educated.

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover: Killed because of homophobia and an inescapable, unsafe school system

Via Electronic Village:

There are some stories that turn my stomach. This is one of them.

An 11-year-old Massachusetts boy, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hung himself earlier this week after enduring bullying at school, including daily taunts of being gay, despite his mother’s weekly pleas to the school to address the problem. She said she found her son, a sixth-grader at the school, hanging by an extension cord upstairs at their home.

This is at least the fourth suicide of a middle-school aged child linked to bullying this year. The other three known cases of suicide among middle-school students took place in Chatham, Evanston and Chicago, Ill., in the month of February.

Carl, a junior at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield who did not identify as gay, would have turned 12 on April 17, the same day hundreds of thousands of students will participate in the 13th annual National Day of Silence by taking some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) bullying and harassment at school.

Villagers, does this story bother you as much as me? According to the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of suicide among 10-14 year olds has more than doubled in the past twenty years. "Although suicide among young children is a rare event, the dramatic increase in the rate among persons aged 10-14 years underscores the urgent need for intensifying efforts to prevent suicide among persons in this age group."

Homosexuality: a Choice or Biological Destiny?

            Many of you are familiar with the debate over the legitimacy of homosexuality. The debate almost always revolves around the "choice/biology" dualism, wherein, if sexual preference is a choice, then any queer sexual orientation ought to reorient itself to heteronormativity; meanwhile, if sexual preference is biological, then one is excused from heteronormativity. The conversation is carried out with different understandings of sexual choice. To some, sexual choice denotes an emotional pull that manifests itself as a sexual identity, to others sexual choice denotes the decision to live out a sexual identity. The former is (usually) assumed by those who do not see queer sexuality as nefarious, the latter is (usually) assumed by those who do. While there is no data that can logically argue that queer sexuality is morally wrong, there is theology that can. Last I checked, congress cannot establish a religion, a set of moral values, over another one. However, the implication of this dualism is that it is acceptable to berate people for deciding to take part in consensual adult sexual relations. Many queer sympathizers argue for queer rights because "it isn't a choice, its biology." However, in deploying the logic of the choice/biology dualism, we reinstate the notion that sexual choice = social aberration. Can we please stop?
               Now that I've deconstructed the choice aspect of this dualism, it is imperative that I deconstruct the biology side, though this may take a bit of theory and history. The choice/biology dualism is a consequence of two social systems: heteronormative capitalism and American anti-eugenics. The ideology that sustains capitalism is as follows: Capitalism enables all abled-bodied and minded people to succeed economically. Meanwhile, eugenics states that the genes of a people may be improved by discouraging the reproduction of the mentally and physically disabled and encouraging the mentally and physically superior. With these two in mind, it may be logically concluded that those who do not fit the criteria for excelling in capitalism ought to be killed or sterilized. Before WWII, the USA openly took part in this logic, and sterilized undesirables wholesale. Due to the atrocity known as the Holocaust, proclaiming eugenics became a bit less vogue. Thus, the ideology sustaining capitalism in America had to be altered in order to appear anti-Eugenics. In the US, We thus see a conflation of capitalism and anti-eugenics wherein if one is mentally or physically disabled then s/he is excused from the capitalist system.
           The system of American anti-eugenics capitalism has been applied to the heteronormative family structure. This is because capitalism has been associated with the heteronormative family structure. As one feministing community member has stated, "My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression. Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labor, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered...and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent money [sic] the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism." Because being queer has long been considered a disability in US history, the notion that biologically inherent queerness excludes one from the heteronormative family structure is based in the logic of American anti-eugenics capitalism. Underlying the "biologically inherent queerness" argument is the notion that if one is queer then they are excused from a system of family "as economic units [that] selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism."
Can we please stop with that one too?

Police Brutality: Not over and still overtly racist and homophobic.

Via NowPublic:

In Feburary of this year police offers at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center in Memphis,TN were caught on camera beating a transgender woman by the name of Duanna Johnson. Johnson was hancuffed at the time and was severely beaten and called names while being detained by police. Duanna Johnson spoke to news stations inMemphis several times stating that the beating was a hate crime and that she had plans to sue the Memphis Police Department. It has been reported that just recently Ms. Johnson had gone forth with her plans to sue the city, but before her case could be heard she met her fate. Duanna Johnson was found dead November 9, 2008 a few blocks from her home. She was shot in the head execution style. Rumors of police affiliation with Ms. Johnson's murder are ripping through Memphis. Some believe that Ms. Johnson was sought out and killed due to her reporting of the beating and the fact that those reports cost two Memphis police officers their jobs. Ms. Johnson's lawyer, Murray Wells says that those accusations are just heresay, but the federal lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department will move forward.

This is so incredibly sickening. It is a culminated representation of the last eight years of the failure of the Bush administration to ensure GLBTQ and just anyone who doesn't conform to a gender to...well...live. I do hope their some sort of protest outside this hellhole of a jailhouse.

Thou Shalt Not Chick-ify

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle was recently featured in the New York Times Magazine.
He has a bunch of youtube videos out. One video, titled ““macho man” (with headnoddic background music that is sure to please everyone) explores the complex issues of the ever present chick-ification of the Christian faith. From fuscia walls to sea-foam green interior, present day churches drip with femininity (I hear there are even tampons in most bathrooms, sick)! Sweet bros like John the Baptist and Elijah were total “dudes” and should serve as models for how Christian men should be—they would NOT appreciate the chickification and they are likely shaking there heads at us in heaven. The opposite of dudes are total faggy-fags with sweater vests who sing romantic love ballads to Jesus Christ (you know, like, those songs about wanting to make out withJesus). What can we do about the fact that 60% of Christian church-goers are “chicks” and the 40% of men who attend church are still essentially LIKE chicks (and could be homos)? Where are all the real men??? Don’t worry, Driscoll has an answer—he explains they are at home watching football and being innovative—climbing mountains, making money and working on their trucks (so THAT’S why my father never went to church! He was rejecting the feminized church environment, subverting chick-church culture and climbing the mountains in our backyard!)

Driscoll suggests we find these men and bring them to church. Why are young men so important? Why does “the church need dudes?” Because they know what is up--“they are going to get married, make money, make babies…buy real estate, build companies…they are going to make the culture…if you don’t get the young men, you get nothing.” Bring these innovative mountain climbers to church and the war is won. Other youtube videos to explore: biblical oral sex and is homosexuality a sin?

Note: You must be 17 or over to view most videos.  Its for MATURE and hip audiences only.

Because HBO wouldn't air it...

The speaker is Gene Robinson, first openly gay priest ordained as a bishop in a major Christian denomination, the Episcopalians. The ostentation of his identity was one of the causes for sectarianism within the Anglican Church, the other ones being homophobia, the fear of homosexuals, and ethnocentrism, the belief that one's cultural perspective is the end all be all and tha they define the word "progress" and thus the correct direction in which the world ought to be heading. In other words, they're damn haters.
Gene Robinson was asked by Obama to give the invocation for the kickoff to the inaugural event. HBO claimed they they would air an "exclusive live-broadcast" of the entire inauguration but happened to leave this wonderful bit out.
Enjoy.

For the deaf:

"O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN."