03.17.06
Posted in PrideFest at 6:27 pm by pikapp44
PrideFest South Florida ‘06 is the largest pride festival in Florida.
There were indoor and outdoor events all day long.There were two stages with non-stop entertainment.
Fabulous merchandise and vendors - food - dancing, great DJ’s - GLBT support and education information, carnival games & rides.
We were impressed with the number of people that we saw this year compared to previous PrideFests. We especially enjoyed the Starbucks coffee van and the free pens.
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Posted in D's Thoughts at 5:03 pm by pikapp44
Lesbian Council speaker boycotts
but mayor marches
NEW YORK (AP) | Mar 17, 12:38 PM
The chair of the nation’s biggest St. Patrick’s Day Parade marched Friday while sidestepping questions about remarks comparing gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes.
“Today is St. Patrick’s Day. We celebrate our faith and heritage. Everything else is secondary,” said the chair, John Dunleavy, who wore a sash of the Irish colors.
Dunleavy was blasted by the City Council’s first openly gay leader for the remarks, which appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday.
He told the newspaper, “If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade? If African Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?”
About the Irish Lesbian & Gay Organization, Dunleavy said, “People have rights. If we let the ILGO in, is it the Irish Prostitute Association next?”
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is of Irish descent, said she didn’t think Dunleavy’s remarks were worth a response. She declined to participate in the Fifth Avenue parade after organizers barred an Irish gay and lesbian group for a 16th straight year.
Huge crowds lined the streets at the start of the parade, waving Irish flags, wearing green hats and carnations and painting clovers on their faces. The city’s parade, with 150,000 marchers and up to 2 million spectators, is the nation’s oldest and largest St. Patrick Day parade.
New York “is the kernel of the whole Irish community in the U.S.,” said Joe Sanning, 52, an officer with the Ireland National Police Service in Tipparery, Ireland. “We don’t have parades like this at home.
Spectator Mary Sweeney, who moved to New York from Ireland 15 years ago with her two daughters, said, “I want them to grow up knowing their Irish heritage. Everyone wants to be Irish today.”
Still, Dunleavy’s comments drew protests at Friday’s parade.
“The comments bring to the forefront a longstanding bigotry, and the bigotry often translates into violence in our communities,” said graduate student Emmaia Gelman, 31. She was among a dozen demonstrators organized by a group called Irish Queers, who hoisted a sign that read, “Troops Out, Queers in,” a reference to military groups participating in the parade.
Efforts to let Irish gays march under their own banner date to 1991, when an ILGO application was first rejected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the group that organizes the parade. Instead, 35 ILGO members were sprayed with beer and insults as they marched with a Manhattan division of the Hibernians and then-Mayor David Dinkins. It was the group’s last parade appearance.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who marched in Friday’s parade, declined to comment on the dispute, although he had earlier urged the Hibernians to change their stance.
“I’ve always believed this is a city where all the parades should be open to everybody, and orientation, gender … should not be the deciding thing,” he said.
The mayor marched earlier this month in an inclusive St. Patrick’s parade in Queens.
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03.15.06
Posted in Gay Rights at 5:16 pm by pikapp44
March 15, 2006
Gays can be denied security clearance under new Bush rules
The Bush administration last year quietly rewrote the rules for allowing gays and lesbians to receive national security clearances. Lesbian and gay advocacy groups recently found the changes in an 18-page document distributed by national security adviser Stephen Hadley on December 29, without public notice.
The Administration said security clearances cannot be denied “solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individual.” But it removed language saying sexual orientation “may not be used as a basis for or a disqualifying factor in determining a person’s eligibility for a security clearance.”
“The Bush administration’s stealth effort to allow discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens in receiving national security clearance is a step backward for a nation that holds itself out as a land of equality,” said openly lesbian congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. “A person’s sexual orientation should not be considered in determining eligibility for access to classified information. Sexual orientation has no relevance to a person’s reliability, trustworthiness, or ability to protect classified information.”
The White House sought to play down the changes, approved by President Bush in December, as an effort to ensure the security clearance rules are consistent with a 1995 executive order about access to classified information. “The minor language change did not and was not intended to alter the way sexual orientation is treated,” National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones said Tuesday in Washington. “The U.S. government policy has not changed in any way.” Jones said government lawyers made the changes for clarity.
Gay rights activists expressed concern that the new guidelines could lead to a chipping away of safeguards obtained in the 1990s for gays and lesbians seeking security-related government jobs. Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said Bush’s rules could “open the door for broader interpretation” of rules granting security clearances for national security–related jobs. “It is not surprising to me that this administration is continuing to roll the clock back on the most basic of protections granted by the last administration,” said Solmonese.
Several million civilian and military personnel who work for the United States government and its contractors must go through extensive reviews to determine if they’ve exhibited behavior that could compromise national security or make them susceptible to blackmail. Areas of concern include drug and alcohol use, criminal activity, financial debt, foreign contacts, and sexual behavior.
Officials at several national security agencies were not immediately aware of the new rules or any impact.
Rules approved by President Clinton in 1997 said that sexual behavior may be a security concern if it involves a criminal offense, suggests an emotional disorder, could subject someone to coercion, or shows a lack of judgment. The regulation stated that sexual orientation “may not be used as a basis for or a disqualifying factor in determining a person’s eligibility for a security clearance.”
Bush removed that categorical protection, saying instead that security clearances cannot be denied “solely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the individual.” The new rules say behavior that is “strictly private, consensual, and discreet” could “mitigate security concerns.”
Jones said the new language was meant to ensure the United States security clearance guidelines are consistent with Clinton’s executive order. He said the order makes clear that the U.S. government does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation when granting access to classified information.
Steve Ralls, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.–based Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said his organization is still sorting out what the Administration intended so that attorneys can provide guidance to gay and lesbian personnel on how to answer questions during government background checks.
“It looks as if lesbian and gay service members especially may face some additional roadblocks to obtaining their security clearances,” said Ralls, whose group advocates on behalf of gays and lesbians in the military.
He said his organization has been getting calls from service members who don’t understand the changes. “In the law, subtlety can have even unintended major consequences. We are very concerned and curious,” he said. (AP, with additional reporting by T he Advocate)
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03.11.06
Posted in E's Thoughts at 3:31 pm by pikapp44
BGLAD is a reliable directory for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender internet community. BGLAD is dedicated to making Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender owned web sites or related content much easier to find.
Check it out here - BGLAD: Gay Search Portal
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03.08.06
Posted in Advocate Articles at 2:49 pm by pikapp44
March 08, 2006
Ohio candidate for U.S. Senate wants gays dead
When Iraq war veteran and same-sex marriage supporter Paul Hackett dropped out of Ohio’s Democratic race for the U.S. Senate last month, he was replaced by truck driver Merrill Keiser Jr., who says gays should get the death penalty. In an interview with the Sandusky Register, Keiser, who filed for candidacy within days of Hackett’s withdrawal, said he wouldn’t be against making homosexuality a felony punishable by the death penalty.
He also suggested making “conversion to Christianity” part of the “war on terror” to “teach Muslims the error of their choice in religion.” Keiser added that if a person believes in evolution, he or she “has no rights.”
Reportedly, Keiser is running as a Democrat because “that’s what he was the last time he voted.” He will face the heavily favored Sherrod Brown in the May primary. (Sirius OutQ News)
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03.07.06
Posted in D's Thoughts, E's Thoughts at 3:59 pm by pikapp44
We spent a really pleasant morning with Himcorp (hyperion interactive media) founder Matthew Skallerud and about 40 other people at Embassy Suites Hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Matt led a gay marketing seminar that was really informative, enjoyable and he served breakfast!
Matt’s seminar included several examples of gay marketing successes and challenges. His Gay Market Guide 2006 is an essential resource for those who want to excel in the gay market.
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03.03.06
Posted in E's Thoughts at 7:48 pm by pikapp44
GayMuscle.org it’s great!
The Gay Muscle Gallery is an online adult community site for gay and bisexual body builders, athletes, muscular men, and those who admire them. Gay Muscle Gallery offers a huge collection of photo profiles, message forums, travel, and lots more.
So if you have big muscles or like to look at them. This is the place!
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Posted in D's Thoughts at 5:05 pm by pikapp44
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03.02.06
Posted in D's Thoughts at 11:43 am by pikapp44
By Lornet Turnbull at the Seattle Times
The Rev. Ken Hutcherson grew up in the segregated South, the illegitimate child of a poor Alabama family whose members rode in the back of the bus and drank from blacks-only water fountains.
King County Executive Ron Sims was raised in conservative Eastern Washington, marching alongside his parents for racial equality and enduring the kind of discrimination he has called searing.
Tonight at Town Hall Seattle, the two will confront each other over the issue of gay rights and whether the gay-rights movement parallels the civil-rights era of the 1960s that helped shape their lives.
Sponsored by the weekly alternative newspaper The Stranger, tonight’s debate comes amid an effort to recall gay-rights legislation narrowly passed by the Legislature last month.
The measure added sexual orientation to a list of classifications such as race, sex and religion that are protected from discrimination in areas such as housing and employment.
Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, testified against the bill, gaining national prominence on the issue last year when he threatened to boycott Microsoft if it didn’t withdraw support for the measure.
Sims, a longtime supporter of gay-rights issues, encouraged a lawsuit against him and King County in 2004 that brought the gay-marriage question into the state’s courts.
Tonight’s debate
The debate between the Rev. Ken Hutcherson and Ron Sims on gay rights and civil rights is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall Seattle, 1119 Eighth Ave. Cost is $5 at the door.
“We’ve interviewed both men several times,” said Josh Feit, The Stranger’s news editor. “They are dueling quotes smashed onto a page. We thought we’d bring them together to duke it out.”
Wier Harman, executive director of Town Hall, was more reserved. “We’ve framed this not only in terms of gay rights, but the relationship of the gay-rights movement to the civil-rights movement. That in itself has proven a polarizing dimension to this debate.”
Issues such as gay rights and specifically gay marriage have created division in the black community, especially in black churches.
Hutcherson, who made his mark on the football field before a knee injury ended his career with the Seattle Seahawks, has taken the position that there is no comparison between gay rights and civil rights.
He is fond of saying that he’s never known an ex-black person but has many ex-gays in his multicultural congregation of 3,500.
“The problem we have is this: Gays don’t want tolerance anymore, they want 100 percent acceptance,” he said in a recent interview about the gay-rights legislation. “That’s not going to happen.”
For Sims, a longtime public servant, images of prejudice and discrimination from his childhood in Spokane inform his position on equal treatment.
As a minister ordained by the National Baptist Church, he is prohibited by church policy from conducting gay marriages, but he has been outspoken in his advocacy of gay causes.
“I think when people are in love with each other, they should be able to enjoy the great benefits of marriage,” he has said. If not, “What are you saying — that there is something wrong with them?”
Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com
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