Russians Fail to Deliver Shocker

Don't act like I don't know what you were expecting when you saw the word "shocker." You naughty readers.

Truly, though, the news from Russia is no shocker. What else were Irina Fyet and Irina Shepitko expecting from a city that has only ever had one gay pride parade (which ended in anti-gay violence, at that)?

In fact I think this couple knew precisely what to expect from the Russian government. That did not, however, stop them from trying. Considering that their attempt to get a marriage license precedes a planned gay pride parade by just a few days, I'm sure their story will be getting a lot of political attention from the international community, which is exactly what should happen.

These women seem, to me, to be like twin reincarnations of Rosa Parks. Just replace "American" and "black" with "Russian" and "lesbians" and you have about the same result. Sure, I feel their pain for not being equally recognized under the law. My home state, at present, wouldn't allow me to marry a suitable woman, either. But I also recognize the political value of their move, just like Rosa Parks recognized the political value of something as simple as a refusal to give up a bus seat:

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

I really hope I'm not the first person to draw the Rosa Parks comparison, because I have a feeling it will catch on like wildfire in that "Iraq-is-the-new-Vietnam" way, but I stand by it. What seems like a simple gesture will have great political consequences, and I applaud these women for doing it. Especially in a country where a gay pride parade is called "spiritual terrorism."

"We're scared of the extremists, but I hope that they won't be too harsh on us as we're two sweet girls. But being gay is dangerous in Russia," Fyet told Reuters.

Dangerous indeed. The fact that these two were committed and loving enough to put themselves at risk to make this statement is truly moving--unless you're some sort of soulless, homophobic monster, of course. While they have to do with a Canadian wedding for the time being, I hope that the small step they took today will eventually bring Russia to the point where they can enjoy equal rights on their home soil.

"We have love, we have happiness. We want to be together forever and get married, in Russia."

"If society will know about us, see that we are normal, there would be a better relationship for (gays) at work, things would be simpler for us."

Here's to you, Irina and Irina. I hope other gay Russians take your lead and do their part to push the country closer to equality. Keep fighting the good fight.

Judith Reisman Wiki-fied

I'm a little too angry and outraged to coherently argue against all the points in Judith Reisman's recent article comparing GLSEN and people who participate in the Day of Silence to the Hitler Youth, so I'm presenting the article as it might look had she been crackpot enough to put her claims under the GLSEN entry on Wikipedia or something, to calm my nerves.

So, without further ado, here's Judith Reisman... Wiki-fied. (Well, the juiciest bits, anyway.)

The neutrality of this article is disputed.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

"The mobilization of the youth to put them into community work environments that are specified in the bill raises questions about who will be teaching the youth and what is deemed appropriate community service," he said.

Old-timers naturally recall Communist, Fascist and Nazi youth brigades as severing children from their parent's religious traditions and beliefs.^{[citation needed]}

Such American classroom indoctrination is now found in "hate" and sexual diversity training and in 3,500 nationwide Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) school clubs.^{[citation needed]} Under color of a "Safe Schools Movement" battling alleged "bullying" of so-called "gay" children (K-12), some^[who?] see GLSEN as a modern version of the Hitler Youth and as preparing the ground for a larger, sweeping, schoolroom Youth Brigade.^{[citation needed]}

The similarities between Hitler's National Socialist Teachers Association (NSTA) and the Rockefeller and Playboy funded National Education Association (NEA) and American Library Association (ALA) troubles some^[who?] World War II elders.^{[citation needed]} Like Hitler's NSTA, our NEA also largely guides the "ideological indoctrination of teachers." (Ronald J. Berger "Fathoming the Holocaust," Aldine Transaction, 2002, p. 50) Moreover, NSTA, the NEA, GLSEN and the Hitler Youth all seek to sever schoolchildren from their parent's religious and sexual training.^{[citation needed]}

Both the GLSEN youth and the Hitler Youth were trained to be revolutionary leaders of the brave new world order.^{[citation needed]} GLSEN school clubs and their teacher sponsor/trainers are now funded by major corporations and by some state funds.^{[citation needed]} GLESN's Day of Silence and "GAY ALLY!" pledge cards for kindergartners and other children are direct assaults on traditional parental, American values.^{[citation needed]}
German children's literature historians document Hitler's pioneering ban of both the Ten Commandments and biblical stories from Nazi school texts in favor of coarse and violent tales that ridiculed religious believers and their values.^{[citation needed]} Without his NSTA teachers, Hitler could not have created a goose-stepping, unthinking army.^{[citation needed]}

Maria Augusta Trapp, in "The Story of the Trapp Family Singers," described how the Nazis de-Christianized their schools and trained students to scorn their parents values.
Christa Kamenetsky (1984) wrote in "Children's Literature in Hitler's Germany: The Cultural Policy of National Socialism," of Hitler's teacher-led purge of books. In reading the following, consider the current purge of books in schools and libraries that celebrate American history, values and sexual restraint,^{[citation needed]} and the increasing availability instead of gender "neutral," pornographic, GLESN party-line materials^{[citation needed]}:
"In order to achieve a total control over the minds of children, the Nazis ... engaged thousands of censors, drafted mainly from the members of the National Socialist Teachers Association and the Reich Youth Leadership Organization, who would systematically screen every book that was published, sold, loaned, purchased, circulated, or discussed."

Any statist Youth Brigade carries within it a dangerous threat, like that of National Socialism when teachers were recruiters.^{[citation needed]} Again, it could be argued^{[by who?]} that if not for the National Socialist Teachers Association's seduction of German youth, World War II would have been impossible.^{[citation needed]}

The claim it was preventing AIDS and the alleged "bullying" of children labeled "gay," "trans," etc., allowed GLESN's nose under the tent.^{[citation needed]} That pornographers, pedophiles and homosexually radical school superintendents, principals, teachers and librarians have been training schoolchildren to be "politically correct" followers is well-documented.^[citation needed]

I'll be back to destroy this woman later. I have a meeting to go to so I can plan a Day of Silence event. Witch.

Bless our bigoted, ineffective court system

I am becoming dangerously close to being horribly disillusioned with the American legal system as it applies to LGBT people and cases involving them. First there was that nonsense with the Arkansas Family Council being allowed to present what I'm sure will be horrible, bigoted arguments in the lawsuit challenging Act 1, the law banning unwed couples from adopting or fostering children in the state.

And now there's this bullshit.

Yes, that's right. A Colorado judge has thrown out the confession of a man accused of killing a transwoman as evidence. You might think that surely this was a forced confession then, or that it had been tampered with as evidence in some way, and therefore should be thrown out. Sadly, that's not what happened. This was the judge's reasoning:

"Judge Marcelo Kopcow said that Andrade’s rights had been violated because he had told police he was finished answering questions, but investigators persisted with questions leading up to the confession.
“This court finds the defendant’s statement, ‘I’m done. Yeah, I’m not talking right now’ … is a clear statement of the defendant’s request to remain silent and cut off further questioning,” Kopcow said in a written ruling."

Yes, ladies, gentlemen, and those who do not wish to confine yourselves to such limiting terminology, the judge threw out a confession because the perpetrator in custody just didn't feel like answering questions, and the investigators had the nerve to keep asking! Clearly this is a violation of his right to be stubborn and uncooperative! After all, it's not like he could have just had the spine to not answer any more questions when they kept asking!

Of course, the real gem comes from the fact that, while he threw out the confession, the judge has admitted tape recordings of phone calls made to his girlfriend while he was in jail. What's his logic behind that, you ask?

"In ruling that the tapes could be played for the jury Kopcow said that prisoners “have little, if any, reasonable expectation of privacy while incarcerated.”"

So let me get this unstraight. The judge feels that this despicable murderer has the right to not be asked questions about the brutal killing he did, but he doesn't have the right to privacy? All together, now, children: WHAT THE FUCK?

These are the simple facts, people:
Angie Zapata was a transwoman. She was a person just like you or I. She was twenty years old, with her whole life ahead of her. And she was murdered because of bigotry and phobia.
Allen Ray Andrade is her killer. He is, for starters, a horrible boyfriend to this girlfriend he was making calls to from prison for trolling the internet for girls ten years younger than him and getting them to give him oral sex. He is, however, first and foremost a vicious murderer. What did he do when he asked Angie what her gender was, a question that he had no right to ask in the first place, and she told him she was a woman? He decided to grab her crotch, just to be sure, and didn't like what he felt. So he beat her, brutally, with his fists and knocked her down. When he saw her start to sit up, he grabbed a fire extinguisher and beat her over the head with that.

"In a statement to police, he said, "I thought I killed it.""

I could not make this shit up even if I wanted to, people.

When will this hate stop? When are we--not just the homophobes of the world, but even those of us that make up the L, B, and G of the LGBT community--going to learn that the transgendered have the same rights that we do? When will we learn that they are not "its," and they deserve our respect and support for just having the courage to be who they are in a world where they can be beaten and killed just for being who they are?

And, more importantly, what the fuck are you going to do to help MAKE it stop?

Remember: An attack on one of us...



...is an attack on all of us.

The Great Flood (of Missed Updates)

Holy god-that-may-or-may-not-exist, I have not posted here in forever. I'm going to blame that on my life momentarily falling apart (and by momentarily, I mean that I'm still attempting to move on) when my now-ex-girlfriend broke up with me at the beginning of May last year.

And goodness deary me, a lot has been happening in the world while I've been spending my time crying over a pint of Ben & Jerry's and watching Lifetime movies (which did not actually happen, although I did see Prayers For Bobby...on YouTube).

We've had things like gay marriage being (temporarily) allowed in California, Connecticut's decision to let gay couples wed in the state, Proposition 8, Proposition 102, Amendment 2, that pesky Arkansas law banning adoption by unwed couples, MILK, Dustin Lance Black's acceptance speech at the Oscars, Sean Penn's acceptance speech at the Oscars...holy Moses. And MILK came out on DVD today!

The last...ten?..months have been full of both good and bad for us gays. Mostly the bad, though.

And those pesky homophobes just keep on keepin' on. Everybody's awaiting the outcome of the legal challenge to Prop. 8, but just recently a lawsuit challenging that Arkansas law has been filed. This is a good thing, of course, but what really cooks my chicken (I did not just say that) is that the conservative group behind the measure to get that law on the ballot is being allowed to present arguments in the court case.

I understand that our American legal system is supposed to be this wonderful, beautiful thing because we're all about participation in the legal system and fair trials, but... agh. I can only hope the sheer amount of idiocy and bigotry, not to mention lack of logic, in their legal arguments will sway the judge to overturn the law, but I shouldn't get my hopes up too high. It IS Arkansas.

Dictionary powers a-go-go!

This is one of those things that really comes at you out of nowhere. The island of Lesbos (no, sadly, that's not as fabulous as it sounds) is suing a gay rights group over the use of the word "lesbian" in its name.

The three plaintiffs are trying to bar the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece from using the word "lesbian" in its name.

Of course, we're all familiar with the term lesbian. But how many of us knew that it is not only a term for women who prefer the company of other women, but also a term for a native of the island of Lesbos (again, not as fabulous as it sounds)? Not many, I'll bet.

That seems to be the issue in the case at hand.

"'My sister can't say she is a Lesbian,' said Dimitris Lambrou. 'Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatosever with Lesbos,' he said."

He goes on to say that the word lesbian has only been linked with gay women "in the past few decades," but the 1870 Oxford English dictionary would seem to contradict him on this point. The word as it appears in that book is used to refer to sexual orientation. So, let's see... it's 2008, and that dictionary was published in 1870, so that makes... 138 years? I suppose thirteen decades qualifies as "a few."

He goes on to say that Sappho wasn't gay. Right. Of course. Because those poems that talk about praying to Aphrodite to sway the affections of a (definitely female) beauty and such are totally the work of a heterosexual woman.
Just look below, how could this have been written by anyone other than a straight poet?

Shimmering-throned immortal Aphrodite,
Daughter of Zeus, Enchantress, I implore thee,
Spare me, O queen, this agony and anguish,
Crush not my spirit.

Whenever before thou has hearkened to me—
To my voice calling to thee in the distance,
And heeding, thou hast come, leaving thy father's
Golden dominions,

With chariot yoked to thy fleet-winged coursers,
Fluttering swift pinions over earth's darkness,
And bringing thee through the infinite, gliding
Downwards from heaven,

Then, soon they arrived and thou, blessed goddess,
With divine contenance smiling, didst ask me
What new woe had befallen me now and why,
Thus I had called thee.

What in my mad heart was my greatest desire,
Who was it now that must feel my allurements,
Who was the fair one that must be persuaded,
Who wronged thee Sappho?

For if now she flees, quickly she shall follow
And if she spurns gifts, soon shall she offer them
Yea, if she knows not love, soon shall she feel it
Even reluctant.

Come then, I pray, grant me surcease from sorrow,
Drive away care, I beseech thee, O goddess
Fulfil for me what I yearn to accomplish,
Be thou my ally.

(Just a hint. Those "she"s aren't referring to Sappho or Aphrodite.)

"No, YOU shut up! Nyeh!"

There must be a dangerously low amount of oxygen west of the Mississippi River. It's the only explanation for this bullshit.

"My advice to the gay community is SHUT UP, just don't talk about it. If you walk around talking about what you do in the bedroom, you should be on the pervert channel."

Not only does the use of the phrase "pervert channel" make Senator Gary George sound like a squealing brat just learning to use insults, but the whole idea of it is just bad. I think that if George's experience with gay people extended beyond watching gay porn alone in his room at night while sobbing quietly, he would realize that you seldom see gay people "walk[ing] around" talking about their various sexcapades.

Besides that, do straight people get this same criticism? When a straight person talks about the date he or she had over the weekend, does anyone complain? When a straight person talks about his or her upcoming wedding, does anyone offer him or her anything but congratulations? When a straight person shows you a picture of his or her kids, do you promptly scream "SHUT UP! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU DO IN THE BEDROOM!"? I didn't think so.

As if George implying that gay people belong out of the public eye and that they're all perverts wasn't bad enough, he also made some thinly-veiled threats of violence against homosexuals:

"Just Out: What is your reaction to the recent murders of out gay youth in Florida and California?
George: Obviously murder is murder, there's no excuse for that. Here's what I'm saying, I think we're seeing a backlash, in other words if you push me too hard don't be surprised if I react. Gays will tend to react violently if people are oppressive toward them. If gays are oppressive toward straights, then you'll see a violent backlash. You're going to have a point where these groups develop and say I'm tired of these special privileges.
Just Out: Are you suggesting that gays, by virtue of being out and open, are inciting these types of violent reactions?
George: You have to recognize for every action there's a reaction..."

That's right, folks, GAYS are OPPRESSIVE towards STRAIGHTS! Oh no! Forces forbid that GAYS demand EQUAL RIGHTS SPECIAL PRIVILEGES for themselves! Whatever shall the straight people do?

Love the subtle victim blame you've got going on there, Gary. Really.

Honestly, I just can't understand why this dear, sweet man is being named Hypocrite of the Week and stupid by SOME.

That was sarcasm, by the way.

Gary George, Sally Kern, Joseph Devine... who's for bumping them out of their positions of power, hm?

Where's the Christian charity I always hear so much about?

Wow, that teapot looks demonic.

Anyway; I try to keep the news I put on this blog related to the United States, as we've got people like Montreal Simon and Mark over at Slap to report on the news in other countries (specifically, Canada). However, I feel that this news item has relevance.

You may remember that I mentioned that crazy bitch from Oklahoma Sally Kern in my post from last week, and, for those of you living under a rock, the good Republican woman is already infamous for her anti-gay tirade.

"The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation; it's just a fact."

Yes, that Sally Kern.

Well, it seems a male, Scottish, Catholic version of Miss Sally has taken a leaf out of her book. Reverend Joseph Devine is outraged at the use of the Holocaust by the gay "lobby" as a political tool to further our huge, well-orchestrated conspiracy to kill children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and other such nonsense.

"It is ever present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial - as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution."

Indeed, Reverend Devine, how dare we homosexuals remember the pain and suffering of our brothers and sisters when fine, upstanding people such as yourself have obviously forgotten all about it already? Should we not follow suit in your excellent example of Christian compassion and mercy? In addition to throwing us Oscar Wilde-types in jail, perhaps you would like us all to wear pink and black triangles as well. Oh, wait, that's right, I forgot; there'd be no point in doing so, because gays were never persecuted in the Holocaust.

Why is it that only Jewish victims of the Holocaust are remembered? Not to be anti-Semitic, but why have the Jews made the Holocaust theirs? Why does "never forget" apply only to Jews, and not to the communists, the Roma, the Slavs, the blacks, the mentally retarded, the Catholics (oh, the ironing), and, of course, the gays? Why do the Jews get their own country in the wake of the Holocaust? Where is our glorious nation of Gaybonia?

It's only until we can force even these bigoted idiots to give us the recognition, respect, and remembrance we deserve as victims of a historical atrocity (sadly, one out of several targeting us) that comments like these are going to be fought against so aggressively. They are hurtful. They are inappropriate. They are completely out of line.

And yet the bishop says he has nothing to apologize for. Isn't that rich?


And now for the obligatory personal note that creeps into all blogs eventually:
Before anyone says anything, no, I'm not copying Slap. I actually found this news item last Thursday and meant to write a post on it. But, of course, I, being a student, ended up being busy with schoolwork and not being able to get around to it. Then, of course, I had Beth over on Friday, so updating my lil' ol' blog was the furthest thing from my mind. But now, finally, I have gotten around to writing a post about Reverend Chuckles the Assclown. I mean, Reverend Devine. Love the name, by the way, don't you?