LGBTQ: Gay Pride Weekend

No, we didn't go to the parade. Actually, we stopped going years ago, after meeting the current partner. And also because the fucking crowds got unmanageable, although that's not a slur on the fine Pride Marshals who did a great job of keeping Teh Gay folks happy yet disciplined. It was the gawkers from outa town wit' their cameras and their annoying brats, videotaping anything that moved and oohing and ahhing over teh gheyness of it all. Not getting up four hours earlier than usual to ride the train over, get one's toes stepped on, swelter in the heat and get one's naughty bits crushed, not even for Dykes on Bykes or Teh Menstrual Cycle or teh Gay Games folks doing their trix on Parade, not with those leering Xtians watching and all but prodding the leather daddies.

Fuck that shit.

Hope y'all had a wonderful Gay Day, children, and tomorrow we go back to working on DOMA and DADT and the hate crimes bill, and those nasty Mormons pouring millions into the fight against our rights!

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LGBTQ: Teh Effect of Teh H8

Good God Almighty! This is so revolting, it has me, an atheist, calling on a deity in which I do not believe.

What, you ask, has my knickers in a wad? Me, wot tolerates anything short of someone actually crapping on my living room floor and has friends with a wide variety of, um, interesting paraphilias or interest in paraphilias, including the very sexy Sirenita Lake who gladdens my heart with her detailed descriptions of adventurous sex?

Hate, that's what. I don't have a problem with people doing anything to each other, as long as I don't have to watch the parts I don't like and, more importantly, as long as it's consensual between adults. (Animals cannot consent, and neither can children under an age as defined by law in their community; nor can the mentally disabled, the mentally ill, and the unconscious, regardless of whether their unconscious state is self-inflicted.)

But here we have what we used to quaintly call "shock-jocks" broadcasting from a Sacramento radio station. And they're using their bully — and I mean bully — pulpit to hate on children, and recommend violence against them. The station is KRXQ 98.5 FM in Sacramento. The show is called Rob, Arnie, & Dawn in the Morning. Here's a little of what they had to say on the issue of transgender, or gender-dysphoric, behaviour in children:

"Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with the animals," they said.

For his part, [Arnie] States bragged that if his own son were to ever dare put on a pair of high heels, States would beat his son with one of his own shoes. He urged parents whose own little boys expressed a desire to wear a dress to verbally abuse and degrade them as a viable response. "Because you know what? Boys don't wear high heel shoes. And in my house, they definitely don't wear high heels.

"I'm going to go, 'You know what? You're a little idiot! You little dumbass!'" States sneered, adding later, "I look forward to when [the transgender children] go out into society and society beats them down. And they wind up in therapy."

What kind of bullshit is that? You want to beat a child with a shoe? Pick on someone your own size, you walking shit-receptacle. If, by all I hold dear, you ever hit a kid with a shoe in front of me, I'll break both your legs off and stick them down your throat. You puke-sucking anus on legs.

What the fuck is this? We allow people like this to say these things on air? Some idiot hears this and decides his kid is not "masculine" enough and hits the kid, and then what?

Mind you, these two assholes have long spread this kind of vitriolic hate on the air. Their attitude towards women is just as reprehensible and disgusting. You can read about it here in a decision from the FCC to penalize the motherfuckers for their creative ideas on sexual intercourse with women. No, fuck it, it's not sexual intercourse because there's nothing consensual about it. This is their diatribe on how to rape women in the most humiliating and degrading way.

As nasty and misogynistic as they are, I suppose it's no surprise that they should turn from attacking women to attacking children. Do they have any idea how much harrassment children already face from their peers? Especially gender and gender-identity related harrassment? Have they ever heard of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover? Carl, a sweet-faced eleven-year-old, hanged himself recently because of homophobic harrassment by his classmates. The saddest thing is, Carl wasn't gay. He was just a child, a child who happened to be less than macho enough for his classmates. Or maybe his classmates had daddies who listened to the kind of shit that Arnie and Rob spout. Thus, for instance, Jaheem Herrera, who hanged himself because he couldn't take the antigay taunting and slurs. An eleven-year-old boy. And the murder of Lawrence King.

Jill, over at Feministe, has posted a list of Arnie and Rob's advertisers. She thinks you should contact these people and tell them to pull their advertising.

CARLS”S JR. (CKE RESTAURANTS):
pr@ckr.com Press Room

HOME DEPOT
public_relations@homedepot.com

TOBACCO REPUBLIC:
trcigar@aol.com

ALBERTSON”S:
Alicia Rockwell
arockwell@savemart.com

FLEX YOUR POWER
enewswire@fypower.org Editor
info@fypower.org

NISSAN:
Darryl Harrison - Media
Darryll.harrison@nissan-usa.com

BANK OF AMERICA:
joseph.l.goode@bankofamerica.com
AT&T
John Britton
E-Mail: john.britton@att.com

VERIZON:
Debra Lewis
908-559-7512
Debra.Lewis@VerizonWireless.com

McDONALDS:
Walt Riker
Vice President, Corporate Media Relations
walt.riker@us.mcd.com
Heidi Barker
Sr. Director, Corporate Media Relations
heidi.barker@us.mcd.com

WELLS FARGO:
Media Relations: corpcsf@wellsfargo.com

GRIFFIN & REED EYECARE:
info@LASIKworld.com

PRO CITY MORTGAGE:
procity@procitymortgage.com

Thanks to William for the link.

I couldn't agree more. What kind of sick fucks are we letting on our public airwaves? For the love of Mike, get these fuckers off the air. Nobody should deny them their freedom of speech, but that does not include this kind of hate speech. Moreover, they're free to set up soapboxes at the local park and spout whatever they like. What they're not free to do is use public resources, such as the airwaves, to make themselves tons of money by advocating beating one's children with shoes.

Please do your part by writing the sponsors of these lowlife scum. Booting them off the air should be the least to be done to them.

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LGBTQ: National Coming-Out Day

Hey, everybody, it's National Coming-Out Day! Time to celebrate your queerness. We'd like to link to celebrating queer and straight bloggers out there whether you're on our blogroll or not, so join us as we sashay down the street, y'all.

• Benny, over at Benny's World, has a cool post on the origin and meaning of the Rainbow Flag, go check it out!
  
  
• Over at Penguin Central, BadTux reminds us that the face of hate is not always easily recognizable, that a huge effort is underway in California to repeal the right to marriage for the LGBTQ community, and that you can, and should, grow a pair and tell the bigots to fuck themselves.
  
  
• Alan, over at Blogging Out Loud, makes us pee our pants laughing, as usual, with his commemorative post. Warning: Keep fresh, dry pantalones handy.
  
  
• VJack, over at Atheist Revolution, wishes our whole community a happy National Coming-Out Day, thanks, VJack!
  
  
• Steven, over at Heterosexually Challenged, acknowledges the day, reminds us it's the tenth anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death (gads, it feels like it only happened yesterday), and celebrates with football;
  
  
• The Bilerico Project is celebrating Queer History Month with lots of posts from lots of posters. Checkidout;
  
  
• Over at Pam's House Blend (note new URL), a couple of posters talk about coming out and coming out. Please to read;
  
  
• Kathy, over at If I Ran the Zoo, has a nice reminder for all the straight allies — equality for LGBTQ people will only happen if you join us in the struggle;
  
  
• A funny story about figuring out your sexuality, from Mockingbird's Medley;
  
  
• caliberal has a post about marriage equality up on My Left Wing;
  
  
• Nelson has his usual biting posts on the homophobes among us, over at NGblog;
  
  
• QueersUnited has a slew of celebratory posts, check 'em out!
  
  
• quenchzine has plenty to say too!

Did we miss anybody? Give us a shriek and we'll fix the error post-haste.

From ICHC, your source of LOLcattitude

Happy Coming-Out Day! If you're not out yet, consider doing it now. Yeah, it'll hurt and people might say shitty things, but you might find support where you least expect it.

Update: Missing link to Badtux' post fixed.

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LGBTQ: Congratulations!

To all our gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and queer friends!

Today, y'awl can get married in California. Let the weddings begin!

Here, some good advice from your friendly neighbourhood Lesbian blogger on how to buy wedding rings for you and your best gal.

And Wilkes Bashford has what you guys need to take your vows with Boyfriend stunningly attired.

This is a happy day for y'awl, so get out there and get married, dammit.

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LGBTQ: An Activist Addition To The Blogroll

La Casa de Los Gatos welcomes Queers United to the blogroll and thanks them for this very interesting post on the formation of the LGBTQ Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. The post links to all the LGBTQ Caucus members so you can thank them yourself, and includes such progressive stalwarts as Fortney (Pete) Stark, Lynn Woolsey, Robert Wexler, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Niki Tsongas, Henry Waxman, and our very own dearly beloved Barbara Lee!

You rock, Reps! Fifty-two members, count them.

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LGBTQ: YouTube and Homophobia

Casa de Los Gatos is an inclusive casa. We welcome and love our gay friends, our lesbian friends, our TS/TG, bi, queer friends of every stripe. And we love them all, because each of them is &mdash along with the other 6+ BILLION FUCKING PEOPLE on this planet &mdash a unique individual who brings their very own and very special combination of qualities for the delectation of this planet and its inhabitants.

And then there's the people who bash our LGBTQ community for being what we are. The gay bashers, the gay haters, the homophobes, the ones so deep in the fucking closet, they're pooping hangers. Those people we don't love. Those people we would like to part the hair of with the Golden Bat o'Clue, a Casa de Los Gatos tool for dealing with brains stuck on hate.


We've been harrassed and hated on for appearing a certain way, and we know damned well that you don't have to be different, you just have to hit the radar of some fucking creep who thinks you're different.

So we thought we ought to highlight NGblog's little clip of Chris Crocker (yeah, the "crazy BritneySpears fan," so what?) talking about homophobia on YouTube.

And we join with Chris to say, a hearty FUCK YOU to all you haters out there. Just go Cheney yourselves, you miserable myrmidons of Mephitica.

YouTube is gonna be hearing from us. And all los gatos at mi casa sincerely hope they'll be hearing from you too. Because homophobia is not just about freedom of speech. It often degenerates into verbal assault, threats of personal harm, and ultimately, bashing. And the number of hate crimes is rising since the advent of teh Antichrist Chimperor.

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LGBTQ: Yay Denise Simmons!

PageOneQ, source of all news about the Queer Community, reports that the progressive city of Cambridge in Massachusetts has elected its first black and openly lesbian Mayor. Denise Simmons, a city Councilwoman since 2001, is the first black lesbian Mayor in the U.S.

We regard this with a mixture of pride and shame. We're proud that an American city regards competence as more important than a person's private business. If we had behaved that way during the last Presidential elections, we'd have something other than an anthropophagous troglodytish buffoon who can't talk in a straight line in charge of the country.

We're ashamed that it took so long for us to come this far, and that although we can apparently elect a black lesbian Mayor, we still quibble about electing a black President or Vice-President; and we still refuse to grant full equality to folk who happen to be queer, female, or black (or brown, for that matter).

And, to our disgrace, we have yet to elect a transgendered person as Mayor. Unlike the city of Cambridge in England. Ms. Simmons replaces former Mayor Ken Reeves, an openly gay black man.

However, this is a new and healthy trend. If we elect enough Councilmembers, Mayors, Governors, legislators, judges, school board members, and other administrative officials who are openly gay, perhaps we will eventually move towards granting queer (and female and black and brown) people full human rights.

Throwing the current administration of crooks, liars, and bigots out of office and replacing them with progressives like, oh, Dennis Kucinich, or John Edwards, or Barack Obama, or even Hillary Clinton (caveat: we don't consider her a progressive, but she's still an arm, a leg, and a beating heart better than any of the louts on the Republican side of the fence) as our next President would be a good start.

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Gay Rights: Nepal

Auntie Beeb tells us that the Supreme Court of Nepal has ordered the Nepali government to strike down laws that discriminate against LGBTQ individuals, and that sexual minorities should have the same rights as other citizens.

"Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex are natural persons irrespective of their masculine and feminine gender and they have the right to exercise their rights and live an independent life in society."

Great news! I'll drink to that.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is apparently willing to ally itself with fundamentalist Muslims in Iran to deny rights to LGBTQ people. Thanks a lot, Condi. I wish somebody would pick up on the fact that Condi is a dyke who is invested in making life difficult for other sexual minorities, just like a lot of other Republicans. Let's not even talk about how this purported woman turned over Jamie Leigh Jones' rape kit to the same company that threatened Ms. Jones.

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Human Rights: Transgender Issues

We haven't been covering queer folk and their issues as much as we could, but between the hypocritical godbags and family-values closet cases and the illegal occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, we've been stretched mighty thin.

However, today we stumbled on the story of Rose, above. Lovely Rose (isn't she gorgeous?) was born male but identifies as female, and her wishes will soon come true when she has her gender reassignment completed in Thailand.

Rose lives in India, and, according to the Times,

will anchor a Saturday evening talk show addressing sexual and other traditionally taboo issues on Star Vijay, a popular Tamil television channel.

As Rose points out, there is a transsexual community in India, however, it has traditionally been marginalized though (fortunately) not mistreated.

Best of luck, Rose. Hopefully, you'll be as successful with your television show as the lovely and talented Begum Nawazish Ali.

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Religion: It Makes You

Dress up like a hooker for Halloween, ABC tells us.

C'mon, do I look like a perv to you?

Or something. This story might belong in Republican whack-a-mole, except we don't know the guy's politics. We will not be surprised in the least if he turns out to be a card-carrying member of the Republic party.

The charming lad pictured above is one Paul A. Schum, principal of Bethlehem (a Catholic high school), recently arrested for loitering in Louisville. Mr. Schum might not have come to the attention of the authorities in Louisville if not for an unfortunate incident which resulted in the following description of his attire:

"He was wearing an all-black, leather, woman's outfit, fishnet stockings and women's black plastic breasts," Russell said, describing the part of town where Schum was found as "a problem area" for prostitution and drugs.

Mr. Schum was, apparently, sitting in his car in full regalia. Now, as far as I know, cross-dressing isn't a crime, even in Louisville. But the cops busted him for "loitering" because he offered "inconsistent explanations" for his presence and appearance.

Most cops don't have a problem with arresting your average poor person, like, oh, crackheads, street hookers, and Persons Of Hue. But, as a rule, they stay away from the rich and powerful. The principal of the local Catholic high school is likely to get a warning instead of an arrest unless he's actually caught in the act of buggering a sheep. So I figure the only reason they didn't let him off is, he was dressed in a manner, or acted in a manner, that indicated something more serious going on.

To all the apologists who say, Hey, it was Halloween, he should be able to dress as he likes. Yes, he should. In our book and yours. But he's a member of a Church that frowns mightily on Teh Gay (even as it covers up for pedophiles to the tune of millions of dollars in collection-plate offerings from the faithful). It is not we who will pillory him for his questionable activities. It is his own church and community. And given how the church has treated LGBTQ folks, we insist on treating this as high entertainment.

Praise Be to Sister Nancy Beth Eczema for her acuity and acumen in turning us on to this amusing spectacle.

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LGBT Issues - Say WHAAT??

A bouncer gets to boot someone from the women's bog because "she looks too manly"? What the fuck is this about? Khadijah Farmer of New York City is suing the club Caliente Cab Company in Greenwich Village for booting her from the women's restroom when a female patron complained.

"Now what happened to me inside of Caliente Cab should not happen to anyone anywhere," Farmer said in an Associated Press video. "New York City has always been and will continue to be an extremely diverse place to live in, and men and women come in all shapes and sizes."

"I told him I was a woman, and I tried to show him my I.D.," Farmer told AP about the bouncer who confronted her in the bathroom. "He refused to look at it. I was extremely uncomfortable and quite humiliated."

He? A MAN goes into the women's restroom to evict a woman? I find that at least as infuriating as the possibility that a man might be using the women's restroom in the first place.

I'd like to know who complained and why. If you think someone is in the wrong restroom, you can tell them so, and if they offer to show you ID, you should look at it, not leap to conclusions. Sheesh! What, only lipsticked wimmin are allowed in the women's bog these days?

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Transgender Rights: United We Stand!

There is a bill that was introduced in Congress in April saying that it would be illegal to fire, refuse to hire or refuse to promote an employee based on the person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Apparently there are some members of Congress that need to be schooled on the concept of unalienable rights: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." They want to exclude ... in a sneaky manner ... the part about gender identity. They are quietly trying to remove the rights of transgender people from this bill (Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA).

Nine national LGBT organizations announced Thursday they would fight any attempt to strip protections from the transgendered from the Federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. The groups include:

• Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
  
• National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
  
• National Center for Lesbian Rights
  
• National Stonewall Democrats
  
• National Coalition for LGBT Health
  
• Pride At Work (AFL-CIO)
  
• National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects
  
• Mautner Project
  
• National Center for Transgender Equality
  

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is threatening that if Congress passes a bill stripping rights from transgendered folks he will put forth an amendment adding rights for the transgendered. However, the nine organizations oppose this strategy and say they will oppose any bill that excludes transgender people:

"While we don’t doubt the sincerity of congressional leadership’s intent to take action and be helpful to the LGBT community, we cannot disagree more with this strategy. We will continue to work with LGBT-supportive members of Congress to urge their colleagues to immediately drop this strategy."

If you'd like to read more about this issue, please click here.

I wholeheartedly agree with the nine organizations. We in the LGBT community need to stick together on this one. Don't let them start dividing us. We have a whole lot in common ... you know ... fighting all those bigots that have rigid ideas of how you express yourself around masculinity and femininity ... and who you should sleep with.

Reminds me of this postcard I used to have up on my wall. In a bar, a woman is sidling up to a man that is dressed as a woman and she says to him/her: "You're a transvestite aren't you? I love that in a man."

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Human Rights - Transgender Issues

Picture of Begum Nawazish Ali from this site

Now, I've read that the mullahs in Iran take a fairly tolerant view towards transgender identity (as opposed to homosexuality, which they do, oppose, that is, quite vigorously). However, this story seems to indicate that that may only be the case for male-to-female transgender identity.

At any rate, a court in Pakistan has ordered the arrest of a female-to-male transgender person and his wife. According to the arrestees, he married his wife to save her from being sold to pay her uncle's gambling debts. What kind of fucked-up world is this where a woman may be sold like chattel, but is arrested if she finds a way out of such bondage? This is ridiculous. Pakistan is quite backwards, compared to other Muslim nations, even. Please consider dropping a line to the Pakistani embassy here. I hate to think of the degradation to which they've subjected this young couple. It's fairly obvious that the transgender person has been subjected to a bodily examination, doubtless unwillingly.

An interesting site which discusses gender identity issues in the Islamic world.

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