Baucus Unbowed. Sen. Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, continues to dish out more "Not in Our State" slime, at least in the view of one anti-Baucus website .
Why Gays Hate (some) Republicans. Pennsylvania's GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Fisher boasted he would veto any bill attempting to give state employees domestic partners insurance or other benefits, saying "I think it's even more important to protect Pennsylvania's traditional family values.'' Democratic front-runner Edward G. Rendell signed such a measure as mayor of Philadelphia, but it was struck down by the courts. As the AP story reports, Libertarian Ken Krawchuk "provided the biggest of several laughs of the evening" when he observed, "I think what's good for the goose and the gander is good for the goose and the goose, and the gander and the gander."
Down the Drain. Transgendered and gay students
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, calling themselves
Restroom Revolution, have launched a petition drive and "mass
mobilization" to create coed dorm bathrooms,
the Boston Globe reports:
"Transgendered students have nowhere to go to the bathroom on campus," said Mitch Boucher, 33, a PhD candidate organizing the campaign". About 30 Restroom Revolution activists, including leaders of gay and transgendered advocacy groups, met earlier this month and announced their new focus". But at UMass-Amherst the prospects remain uncertain. Efforts to raise awareness of transgendered concerns led to sensitivity training sessions for adult dorm staff and student residential assistants this past summer that will now be conducted annually". But Stephen Pereira, assistant director of the Stonewall Center, a campus resource facility for gay, bisexual, and transgendered students, believes that until the campus community learns more about transgendered students, mobilizing broad-based support may be difficult.
This actually may be a real issue for politicized transgendered students, but it seems to me it's the one issue most likely to arouse primal opposition among those who prefer their public, multi-stall restrooms to be sex-segregated.
Certainly the transgendered, outside of the halls of ivy, face greater issues -- like not being murdered, as highlighted by the recent, awful killing of Eddie/Gwn Araujo, a 17-year-old beaten and strangled recently in California. As the AP reports, stories of attacks are familiar to cross-dressers, and rather transcend trendy on-campus restroom "mobilizations." Making straights use coed johns isn't going to improve matters in this regard.
Unexpected Source. The conservative, and
typically very gay-negative, CNSNews.com ran a odd piece titled
"Pink
Pistols Say Media's Sniper Reporting Off-Target," about the gay
and lesbian group that defends the right to bear arms. The story
focused on firearms, not sexuality, and never used the words gay or
lesbian. Still, it noted:
In addition to defending the Second Amendment, the Pink Pistols also advocates the "rights of consenting adults to love each other how they wish, however they wish."
"We are dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community," says a statement on the group's website, which carries the motto, "Pick on someone your own caliber."
Being treated as a legitimate source by the right-wing media is some evidence of progress, I think. It certainly goes against the usual stereotype!
Gay Media Myopia. A
report in the Boston Globe quotes attempted shoebomber Richard
Reid explaining his motivation as follows:
"This is a war between Islam and democracy," he e-mailed his mother. A society that permits homosexuality and sex outside marriage (and that is marred by alcoholism and drug addiction) also violates God's will, he believed.
It's now undeniable that Islamic extremists would seek to exterminate us, given the chance. Yet there's still a politically correct queasiness about saying so. The current issue of the Washington Blade, one of the nation's largest circulation gay papers, ran (several weeks after the fact) a short article on the stabbing of the openly gay mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, and simply neglected to report that the attacker was at least to some extent motivated by Islamic homo-hatred. The story simple states: "Azedine Berkane, 39, has told investigators that he committed the crime out of dislike of gays and politicians" But as I noted in an earlier posting, the AP reported that he also explained to police that he was a devout Muslin, which is the context for his beliefs. I repeat, yet again: can you imagine how completely different the story would have been reported in the gay press if the perpetrator had been a Christian fundamentalist? Demented multiculturalism, holding that only Western Civilization and Judeo-Christianity are worthy of criticism, is Orwellian indeed.