and yet, hits the nail on the head.

Two of the big hypocrites of politics (of the last year) have come together to make clear that they value marriage enough to protect it from teh gay. Jeez louise. Maybe they should just start a Whitewash Party, & run on sheer hypocrisy.

As ridiculous and honestly funny as this is, it has repurcussions. Hate always does.

Has anyone been watching Sex: The Revolution on VH-1? I catch it late at night sometimes, and I’m finding it a pretty decent series. Tonight, on Episode 3: Do Your Thing, the pride movement, San Francisco, Anita Bryant & Harvey Milk, and commenting, Susan Stryker. Next up, Episode 4: Tainted Love.

It’s good documentary, imho - concise, good interviews, capturing some major cultural moments through the music & images.

South Carolina recently voted for a State Constititutional Amendment that bans same sex marriage. That’s 26 states I don’t feel welcome in.

Of the seven that had a similar Amendment on the ballot last November, only Arizona voted it down.

For those of you who are following the firing of Rene Portland, the homophobic former coach of Penn State, you might want to check out a book by Pat Griffin called Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sport.

The American Family Association is running an online poll about “corporations promoting homosexuality,” & since you don’t need to be a member, we have a great opportunity to screw up their numbers.

Do go take the poll now.

Detroit police have decided to stop asking questions about the death of Andrew Anthos, who died after being beaten by a homophobe. Why? They’ve ruled the man’s arthritic neck was what killed him, not the blow that may have aggravated that arthritis.

Anthos’ cousin is continuing to pursue the case because no one has answered how the man ended up in the hospital with a 2″ scar on his neck, and while she is okay with them disputing him having died of the blow, she insists that he was attacked and that the attack was a hate crime. The Triangle Foundation, an LGBT group, have offered $5000 to anyone who can step forward with more information.

But the really pathetic thing is that the American Family Association of Michigan called on the Detroit police to look into the “filing of a false police report” concerning this incident. If any of us have any doubts, these folks not only want to prevent LGBT folks from being protected from discrimination and hate crimes, but they want to prevent our families from finding justice. Hateful.

Bad policy is sometimes based not on science, but on belief:

. . . the Pentagon’s top general, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said that homosexual acts are immoral and should not be condoned by allowing gays to serve in the military. Then . . . Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that if homosexuality were genetic, it would still be evil and should be treated prenatally.

& It’s on geniuses like these that we base the “don’t ask / don’t tell” policy, even if there is no good evidence that homosexuals make bad soldiers, and conversely, there’s plenty of evidence that sometimes male heterosexual soldiers suck: one third of female soldiers report rape or attempted rape. So no matter what Mohler thinks, is morality really the reason we don’t let (out) gays serve? Of course not.

Rene Portland, coach of the Lady Lions basketball team at Penn State, resigned - some say over allegations that she was anti-lesbian. A former player, Jennifer Harris, brought the charges after Portland kicked her off the team for not dressing in more feminine ways.

I have to say I find the whole situation kind of confusing: the idea of a women’s basketball coach being homophobic, I mean. In my experience, lesbians like & play sports at least as much, if not more, than heterosexual girls do. Barring half of your potential players from your team seems counterintuitive, though her record of course proves she is a good coach.

Talent, of course, is no excuse for shitty behavior, though I do find it interesting that this situation came to a head only now - after a couple of bad seasons for the team.

In keeping with Dan Savage’s lovely coinage, bumper stickers for the PA race.

Santorum is for the rights of LGBT Americans, so much so he’ll sign a statement attesting to the fact.

But, um, wait a second. He might need to re-think that one. Someone might not vote for him if he supports the queers. Checks with aides.

Um, right: constituents are not for the queers: Santorum takes it all back.

Apparently our current pope - who I prefer to call Pope Maledict - has called LGBT relationships “weak love.”

Sometimes I wish I could take people and shake them, or - as Jim Johnson of Straight, Not Narrow points out: to tell them to shut up when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I could have never explained to anyone before Betty started presenting as female what it’s like to live in the world as an LGBT couple, and I thought I knew. I really did. Faghag for years, lesbian hangabout for years - but really, I didn’t know. Weak is not the word for it.

There is some good news, though - the religious left is on the rise. (Where have you guys been?)

from Dan Savage:

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: I’ve been running around with my hair on fire trying to convince my straight readers that religious conservatives don’t just hate homos. Their attacks on gay people, relationships, parents, and sex get all the press, but the American Taliban has an anti-straight-rights agenda too. As I wrote on March 23: “The GOP’s message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no lifesaving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You’re going to have those babies, ladies, and you’re going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that’s too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.”

After raising the alarm for months back here in the sex ads section, I was intensely gratified to read Russell Shorto’s brilliant cover story, “The War on Contraception,” in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. To readers who think I’m being hysterical: So you don’t think the religious right would seriously go after birth control? Fine, don’t believe me. But maybe you’ll believe Shorto when he lays out the American Taliban’s plan to deny access to birth control—any and all types, folks, not just emergency contraception.

“In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex,” Shorto writes. “Contraception, by [their] logic,” Shorto continues, “encourages sexual promiscuity, sexual deviance (like homosexuality), and a preoccupation with sex that is unhealthful even within marriage.” Shorto quotes Judie Brown, president of the American Life League: “We see a direct connection between the practice of contraception and the practice of abortion. The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an antichild mind-set. So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception.” And there’s this from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “I cannot imagine any development in human history, after the Fall, that has had a greater impact on human beings than the pill… Prior to it, every time a couple had sex, there was a good chance of pregnancy. Once that is removed, the entire horizon of the sexual act changes. I think there could be no question that the pill gave incredible license to everything from adultery and affairs to premarital sex and within marriage to a separation of the sex act and procreation.”

I’ll say it again, breeders: The American Taliban is not just opposed to straight premarital sex, with their abstinence education and hilariously ineffective virginity pledges, or gay sex, with their “ex-gay” campaigns and their anti-gay-marriage amendments. The American Taliban doesn’t think married heterosexual couples should be able to use birth control. If you care about your own freedom—not just your right to have premarital sex, but your right to decide whether, when, and how many children you’re going to have—you need to read “The War on Contraception.” And don’t comfort yourself with the notion that these are just some antisex religious wackos: The Bush administration not only listens to these wackos, it appoints them to important positions all over the federal government—and let’s not even think about the members of the American Taliban that Bush has already appointed to lifetime positions in the federal judiciary.

This is some serious shit, breeders. You’re being attacked. It’s time to fight back.

Copyright Dan Savage. Thanks to JoanieC for calling it to my attention.

The Traditional Values Coalition (ie, the Haters) are complaining about all the gay-themed movies coming out this winter.

They say the movies are an “assault” and that they “affirm” homosexuality.

Assault is obviously just their usual hyperbole, but “affirm”? Do they mean “visible”? Because affirming homosexuality is really very different than saying “homosexuals exist, & here’s a story about one.” If you don’t make the homosexual-in-question suffer & die or a criminal or victim in the movie, is that somehow “affirming homosexuality”?

Is simply portraying an actual lived life “affirming”?

If it’s that easy to vote God out of a city, why can’t we vote Pat Robertson off the air?

The other night I was watching something during primetime - I don’t know which show, I was flipping channels - and suddenly a KY commercial came on. KY! Apparently they’ve got a new product they’re marketing for women, something that could have been the next product in the old SNL dessert topping/floor wax spoofs: it’s part massage oil, part personal lubricant, and all of it is self-warming. It’s called Touch Massage. The commercial features an attractive couple, suggests sexual arousal tastefully, and shows the man rubbing her shoulders with the oil. Certainly tame enough.

Another day, I saw a commercial for Cialis, which is the new, improved version of Viagra.

Personal lubricant and erectile dysfunction during not-late-night viewing hours.

And yet there’s still no ads for condoms, are there? And you know why? The American Family Association and other groups of their ilk have protested the possibility with the usual arguments (key words: promote promiscuity) even though a quarter of the million+ people in the US who are infected don’t even know it.

I’m sure keeping those condom ads’ll off TV will help out with preventing teen pregnancy, right? Uh, no. Right now the US has a higher percentage of pregnant teens than countries with condom ads on TV.

Ah, the American Family Association: keeping your family pregnant and infected. Thanks guys.

The leader of the New York Christian Coalition has announced that gays should wear warning labels.

Why?

Because being gay is bad for your health, and by his logic, others’ health as well.

I wish I were kidding.

The story as reported by www.365gay.com.

The comments about the story by the MHB Boards.

we got hacked, and we got hacked bad.

the database of all the posts is gone, empty, zero.

betty has a backup at work from a few months ago, which we’ll eventually put back up as a searchable database, and in the meantime, we’re going to use the opportunity to change the software for the forum to vBulletin, which updates its software more often (which makes it more impermeable to hackers).

betty has been struggling to fix what she could, find out what they did, & all with a migraine. she rocks. we had hoped there was more left. the user list remains, and ironically, the private messages. but everything else is gone.

i will put up a skeleton of the former boards so that people can post, and gather, while we get the new version ready - hopefully by tonight.

helen & betty

This just in, from the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition:

Critics Rail Against Senate Promotion of Gen. Robert Clark

WASHINGTON DC - On Tuesday, November 18th, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm the promotion of Major General Robert T. Clark to the rank of Lieutenant General, the Army’s second highest rank. The senate confirmation drew rancor from the nation’s major Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) Organizations, including the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC).

In 1999, Gen. Clark was the commander of Fort Campbell, Kentucky at the time PFC Barry Winchell was murdered when his fellow soldiers came to believe to him be gay. Winchell, whose death was subject of a Showtime Movie, “A Soldier’s Story,” had a romantic relationship with Calpernia Addams, a pre-operative transsexual woman.

Clark failed to take steps to deal with the homophobic climate of Fort Campbell, and obey and implement “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” regulations. Gen. Clark’s inaction in response to the anti-gay harassment suffered by Barry Winchell in the weeks leading up his death has been the subject of much controversy, and has been cited as a possible contributing factor to his murder.

“Instead of being considered for a “promotion,” General Clark should have been court-martialed, and sent to prison for dereliction of duty!” fumed Cliff Arnesen, Vice President of the New England GLBT Veterans. “George W. Bush, and all those in the U.S. Senate who voted to confirm Clark’s promotion, ought tobe ashamed of themselves”

“With the many other more deserving three-star generals who were encouraged to retire after being told there was no promotion for them on the horizon,” said Vanessa Edwards Foster, chair of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC), “it’s incomprehensible that this would be the candidate that the Bush administration deemed worthy of promoting.

“To the GLBT community of America, this sends a distinct message: Homophobic? Good job, soldier!” Foster commented, “the Bush Administration rewards apathy towards homophobia.”

Despite Gen. Clark’s claims that he was not aware of any homophobic incidents at Fort Campbell prior to the murder, there had been numerous reports of anti-gay harassment, graffiti, and assault at the post. A Department of Army Inspector General report also found Fort Campbell to be suffering from low morale, inadequate delivery of health care to soldiers and their families, andleader-condoned underage drinking.

Despite repeated requests, Gen. Clark refused to meet with Winchell’s parents, Patricia and Wally Kutteles, but finally relented this spring on the eve of his appearance before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. During the meeting, Clark expressed regret over Winchell’s death, but refused to accept any responsibility for the homophobic harassment that took place under his commandat Fort Campbell.

“There is compelling evidence that the anti-gay harassment at Fort Campbell was pervasive,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) on the Senate floor Tuesday, “General Clark says he agrees with these findings, but that he was, nonetheless, not aware of a single instance of anti-gay harassment prior to the murder.” “A brutal, bias-motivated crime is an extraordinary event in anycommunity,” Senator Kennedy continued, “the available evidence indicates that General Clark’s response was not adequate.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) expressed “utter disgust with the tragic and brutal beating that took the life of Pfc. Winchell at only 21 years old,”adding, “my deepest sympathies are with his family.”

NTAC was joined in opposition to Gen. Clark’s nomination by Service Members Legal Defense Network, the Democratic National Committee, People for the American Way, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force, the National Organization for Women, American Veterans for Equal Rights, the Transgender American Veterans Association and a coalition of state-wide civilrights organizations, including Michigan’s Triangle Institute.

Arnesen of the New England GLBT Vets noted, “the message conveyed to our Country’s GLBT service members is that they will have to continue to serve insilence, as we have a Commander-in-Chief, who was quoted in the New York Times as saying: “I’m a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Man.”"

“We at NTAC are quite anguished with the Senate and especially with the Administration,” commented NTAC chair, Foster. “The antipathy this decision communicates to all non-heterosexual servicemen and women, especially in time of war - in time of America’s greatest need - is profoundly disappointing.

“This unwise decision speaks volumes.”

You can find more info about Barry Winchell, hate crimes, and this story at a site dedicated to the memory of Barry Winchell.

You can find out more about the work that the NTAC does at their site .