Posted on

Breaking: Judge Orders No DADT Enforcement

Wow:

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the U.S. military to stop enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, effectively ending the ban on openly gay troops.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ permanent worldwide injunction — praised by gay rights organizations — orders the military “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have been commenced” under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The judge, a Clinton appointee based in the Central District of California, previously ruled that the policy regarding gays serving in the military violated service members’ Fifth Amendment rights to due process and freedom of speech, but had delayed issuing the injunction.

The military was sued by Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group.

LCRs, I promise never to make fun of you again.

Posted on

Gay Man Tortured in the Bronx

This is sickening:

He was told there was a party at a brick house on Osborne Place, a quiet block set on a steep hill in the Bronx. He showed up last Sunday night as instructed, with plenty of cans of malt liquor. What he walked into was not a party at all, but a night of torture — he was sodomized, burned and whipped.

All punishment, the police said Friday, for being gay.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

Posted on

He Isn’t Superman

Ashley Love of TFM has a post up about Arianna Huffington’s talk about the “demonizing and scapegoating” of the president. She was inspired to comment:


When Arianna started talking about the “demonizing and scapegoating” of the president by “irrational” people, it really struck a chord with me. Like many LGBTTQI Americans, I have become very upset with many queer activists making all these personal attacks on the president, as if he is a dictator that can wave a magic wand and grant us all our wishes at once. Reality check: President Obama has to work with the courts, Congress and the people to create change (and those anti-LGBT equality Republicans are holding up equality, not the president!). To put all the blame on him when things are not moving fast enough is infantile, and suspect. It’s bad enough the racist Tea Party is slandering him, but for LGBT direct action groups to act just as crazy is dangerous. If the Democratic vote gets split, do we really want another 8 years of Bush and Ken Melhman types ruining this country again? The scary thing is there are lot of classist gay folks who only care about marriage equality, they don’t care about ENDA or many other issues that affect the less privileged part of the LGBT community, and they most certainly don’t care about rights for trans and intersex Americans. Many of them would not mind if a classist Republicans got into office, because many gay people believe in a hierarchy in the LGBT community, with rich white gay men at the top, and transsexual, transgender and intersex people at the bottom. These Animal Farm types don’t care about the epidemic of homeless LGBT youth, or hate crimes that happen to trans women of color every week, or trans health care rights, or many queer communities of color, or LGBT people who have low income, etc. We need President Obama to stay in office, or things will get worse for the majority of the LGBT community.

I can’t agree more.

Her reasons are exactly why we all need to be out & voting for Democrats for other public office, too: to say, out loud & clear that we do NOT want these wingnuts who barely consider us human.

And yes, I understand the “I’m tired of voting for people who only like me marginally better” and I agree. I’m tired of it too. We need to keep the pressure on, but that means keeping the pressure on the whole political system, not just on President Obama.

Posted on

Stay Alive

The 5th LGBT student suicide hit the news today, and that’s only the national ones. There was a young man here in WI who took his life a few weeks ago, too, & I’m sure there are others going unreported nationally.

All I can think to say is this: young queerios, stay alive. The people who hate you don’t care, and the people who love you are heart-broken and beside themselves with your loss.

You’re hurting the wrong people. Live to be fabulous. You will be.

Posted on

The End of Suicide Prevention Month

A few days ago, during the last week of September which is Suicide Prevention Month, another LGBTQ teenager killed himself because of bullying. He was 13.

First: Please remember that there is always someone to call.

The Trevor Project
1-866-488-7386
http://www.thetrevorproject.org

A few weeks ago in a town near Appleton, a young gay man did the same. A local man named Paul Wesselman was so touched by this student’s lost life and the pain his friends were in that he wrote a piece for them, young people who were struggling with being who they are. I found what he said smart and true and asked if I could reprint them here.

1. This is awful.
You are going to feel lots of emotions, and it is going to be difficult for some time: you’ve probably already figured out that being a teenager means lots of complicated, conflicted emotions. Add the suicide death of a friend and the mix of grief, anger, confusion, frustration, sadness, and devastation becomes even more cruel. Your family and friends may not always say or do the “right” things, but I suspect they are mostly motivated by a sincere desire to ease your significant pain. The sad truth for us is that we cannot erase your anguish, because this is just awful.

2. Things will get better.
Don’t hate me for saying this, and I’m not saying it to diminish the extraordinary pain you currently feel. This probably occupies every second of your life right now. Next week you will likely still think about it every few minutes, and for weeks after that you may still find yourself reminded of Cody or of the loss every hour of every day. Eventually, your heart and your mind find a good place to store the positive memories while the grief (which never disappears entirely) will fade into the larger quilt of life.

3. Positive things can evolve from horrible situations.
There is nothing we can do to bring Cody (or my friend Steve) back, and we cannot go back in time and change the circumstances that led up to these awful deaths. We cannot change these tragedies. AND: we do get to choose how we respond to them. I’ve noticed how frequently you post such kind, loving, AMAZING words on each other’s walls. Those heartfelt expressions are profound to all who see them and are tiny examples of the light that may come out of this extreme darkness. (Please note I’m NOT saying “God did this for a reason,” or “This tragedy happened so that good things could happen.” I personally don’t agree with either of those statements. I do believe that when blechy things happen which are beyond our control, we can, if we want, CHOOSE to make sure positive things come out of these awful circumstances.)

4. What you do next is up to you.
After my friend Steve died, his mother Judy transformed the grief and frustration into energy and passion to prevent future suicides by creating LifeSavers. http://TheLiveSavers.net/ has helped thousands of students to become caring listeners and observers. I found these words posted on their website:

USE YOUR POWER OF CHOICE WISELY
Choose to love . . . rather than hate.
Choose to laugh . . . rather than cry.
Choose to create . . . rather than destroy.
Choose to persevere . . . rather than quit.
Choose to praise . . . rather than gossip.
Choose to heal . . . rather than wound.
Choose to give . . . rather than steal.
Choose to act . . . rather than procrastinate.
Choose to grow . . . rather than rot.
Choose to pray . . . rather than curse.
Choose to live . . . rather than die.
-from The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino

Not only do I hold you in my heart, I also have deep compassion for the tremendous pain that he must have been experiencing. My high school and college years were significantly challenging and I thought about ending my life frequently. I tried more than once. The excruciating pain I felt seemed insurmountable and never-ending. I’m so glad I lived to find out that neither of those were accurate. With time, healing, counseling, and considerable help from a remarkable tribe of friends, I found the strength to face and conquer the darkness and I believe that I eventually found success and sustainable joy not in spite of those hurdles but in part BECAUSE of them.

I share these words not to take away the pain you are feeling, nor to fix what cannot be fixed. I just wanted you to know that you are not alone, and that by relying on your friends and family, your inner strengths, and other resources (school, church, community, etc.), you will remember something that Christopher Robin once reminded Winnie the Pooh:

You are braver than you believe,
stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think.

What I want to emphasize is that plenty of us left high school and were surprised by how much more power we had in the world than we thought. Not record-breaking power, but the power to find friends we liked, who would support us; power to live where we wanted, where we felt safe or interesting or amazing; the power to make decisions about who we would be and how.

& Finally, to close out Suicide Prevention Month in the hope that we won’t have to have one next year, and with the knowledge that many, many, many trans people struggle daily with grim, hopeless thoughts, here is a resource guide specifically for trans people & their allies put together by NCTE.

It gets better.

Posted on

“It Gets Better.”

Dan Savage & his husband Terry talk about growing up gay, the assholes in high school, families you grow up in & families you create. Really beautiful stuff, and please, LGBT teens, watch it.

Posted on

DADT Repeal Efforts Fail Because Republicans Suck

Amazing that in a country that loves its military, and especially by the party that is notorious for doing all the flag-waving, today failed to pass a bill that would make the military stronger.

And they didn’t pass it because of some old-school bullshit prejudice.

Pathetic. When do we start up the rhetoric about these Senators being traitors to our country? Because making sure our military isn’t as strong as it could be seems like exactly that.

(They never want to fund Veterans’ stuff either, btw.)

Posted on

Homophobes

For the record, if you are a straight person, and have never been in a same sex relationship, identified as queer, or been visibly queer, you do not know for sure that your friends, family or colleagues are not homophobic. Nor do you know if local businesses are, or are not, gay friendly.

I would like to apologize right here & now if I ever thought I knew those things before being half of a same sex couple.