02.26.10
Posted in D's Thoughts at 4:13 pm by pikapp44
Daniel Radcliffe is explaining why he has just filmed a public service announcement for The Trevor Project, the leading organization focusing on suicide prevention efforts among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth.
Because his parents were both actors, ”I grew up knowing a lot of gay men and it was never something that I even thought twice about — that some men were gay and some weren’t,” the ”Harry Potter” megastar said Friday. ”And then I went to school and (for) the first time … I came across homophobia. … I had never encountered it before. It shocked me.
”I have always hated anybody who is not tolerant of gay men or lesbians or bisexuals,” he added. ”Now I am in the very fortunate position where I can actually help or do something about it.”
The result is a PSA that was filmed Friday at the organization’s Wall Street offices. The announcement is scheduled to air sometime this spring.
Radcliffe first became aware of The Trevor Project, founded in 1998 by three filmmakers, while he was appearing on Broadway in the 2008 revival of ”Equus.” Their movie, ”Trevor,” which won an Academy Award for best short film, concerned a gay teen who attempts suicide. The Trevor Project allows young people to call in for counseling or just to talk.
”I have described myself as being ‘gently eccentric’ and slightly different as a person just because I’ve had a very different set of influences growing up than anybody else in my peer group did,” the 20-year-old Radcliffe said. ”I’ve always felt very lucky to have the life that I’ve had. I never had to cope with anything serious about my religion or sexual orientation or anything like that.
”I think it’s important for somebody from a big, commercial movie series like ‘Harry Potter’ and particularly because I am not gay or bisexual or transgendered. … The fact that I am straight makes not a difference, but it shows that straight people are incredibly interested and care a lot about this as well
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02.14.10
Posted in D's Thoughts at 8:50 pm by pikapp44
Kitty’s Toy Box is a lesbian owned online boutique for women.
Kitty’s Toy Box offers a private and comfortable atmosphere where women can shop and purchase e a wide selection of sex toys including dildos, vibrators, fetish gear, and other sexy adult toys and gifts in the comfort of your own home.
You can also find sex tips and how to guides.
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02.10.10
Posted in D's Thoughts at 10:58 am by pikapp44
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is recommending that President Obama nominate an openly gay man to serve as a federal judge for the first time. Daniel Alter has been designated by the senator for the U.S. district court for the southern district of New York, subject to Senate confirmation.
Schumer noted the historic nature of the recommendation in a statement, according to DC Agenda.
“His outstanding leadership skills, his commitment to justice, and his extensive experience make him an exceptional choice for a position on the federal bench,” said Schumer. “I’m proud to nominate Daniel Alter. Period. But I am equally proud to nominate him because he is a history-maker who will be the first openly gay male judge in American history.”
Schumer is the senior senator from New York. Presidents traditionally follow the judicial nomination recommendations of the senior senator from the state where this is a vacancy.
According to DC Agenda, Alter is a graduate of Columbia College and Yale Law School. His experience includes six years as an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York and service as national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed Deborah Batts, an out lesbian, to serve as federal judge for the U.S. district court of the southern district of New York.
The Alter recommendation arrives as the San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. district court for the northern district of California, who is presiding over the Proposition 8 trial, is gay. Walker has not commented on the report.
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02.07.10
Posted in D's Thoughts at 12:19 pm by pikapp44
Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right.
John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington’s attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.
A large majority of voters — between 61 percent and 75 percent depending on the poll — now share his point of view. Most Americans recognize that being gay is not a “lifestyle” but an immutable identity, and that outlawing discrimination against gay people who want to serve their country is, as the admiral said, “the right thing to do.”
Mullen’s heartfelt, plain-spoken testimony gave perfect expression to the nation’s own slow but inexorable progress on the issue. He said he had “served with homosexuals since 1968” and that his views had evolved “cumulatively” and “personally” ever since. So it has gone for many other Americans in all walks of life. As more gay people have come out — a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 — so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.
As recently as 2004 — when Karl Rove and George W. Bush ran a national campaign exploiting fear of gay people — there is now little political advantage to spewing homophobia. Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen’s testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: “I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind.”
Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of “don’t ask” would lead to gay demands for “special rights.” Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath.
The arguments for preserving “don’t ask” have long been blatantly groundless. McCain — who said in 2006 that he would favor repealing the law if military leaders ever did — didn’t even bother to offer a logical explanation for his mortifying flip-flop last week. He instead huffed that the 1993 “don’t ask” law should remain unchanged as long as any war is going on (which would be in perpetuity, given Afghanistan). Colin Powell strafed him just hours later, when he announced that changed “attitudes and circumstances” over the past 17 years have led him to agree with Mullen. McCain is even out of step with his own family’s values. Both his wife, Cindy, and his daughter Meghan have posed for the current California ad campaign explicitly labeling opposition to same-sex marriage as hate.
McCain aside, the most common last-ditch argument for preserving “don’t ask” heard last week, largely from Southern senators, is to protect “troop morale and cohesion.” Every known study says this argument is a canard, as do the real-life examples of the many armies with openly gay troops, including those of Canada, Britain and Israel. But the argument does carry a telling historical pedigree. When Harry Truman ordered the racial integration of the American military in 1948, Congressional opponents (then mainly Southern Democrats) embraced an antediluvian Army prediction from 1940 stating that such a change would threaten national defense by producing “situations destructive to morale.” History will sweep this bogus argument away now as it did then.
Those opposing same-sex marriage are just as eager to mask their bigotry. The big arena on that issue is now in California, where the legal showdown over Proposition 8 is becoming a Scopes trial of sorts, with the unlikely bipartisan legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson in the Clarence Darrow role. The opposing lawyer, Charles Cooper, insisted to the court that he bore neither “ill will nor animosity for gays and lesbians.” Given the history of the anti-same-sex marriage camp, it’s hard to make that case with a straight face. In trying to do so, Cooper moved that graphic evidence of his side’s ill will and animosity be disallowed — including that notorious, fear-mongering television ad, “The Gathering Storm.”
The judge admitted such exhibits anyway. Boies also triumphed in dismantling an expert witness called to provide the supposedly empirical, non-homophobic evidence of how same-sex marriage threatens “procreative marriage.” In cross-examination, Boies forced the witness, David Blankenhorn of the so-called Institute for American Values, to concede he had no academic expertise in any field related to marriage or family. The only peer-reviewed paper he’s written, for a degree in Comparative Labor History, was “a study of two cabinetmakers’ unions in 19th-century Britain.”
Polls consistently show that independents, however fiscally conservative, are closer to Democrats than Republicans on social issues. (In May’s Gallup survey, 67 percent of independents favored repealing “don’t ask.”) This is why Scott Brown, enjoying what may be a short-lived honeymoon in his own party, calls himself a “Scott Brown Republican.” A Scott Brown Republican isn’t a Boehner or Hatch Republican. In his interview with Barbara Walters last weekend, he distanced himself from Sarah Palin, said he was undecided on “don’t ask” and declared same-sex marriage a “settled” issue in his state, Massachusetts, where it is legal.
The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans.
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