It Gets Better: Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles

I love this.

Over-Thinking is Classic Lisa

So, I've volunteered twice at Identity, the LGBTQ youth drop-in center which is affiliated with the Southern Tier Aids Program (STAP). Identity is where I'll do my 120-hour internship during my Spring 2011 semester.

If you've been paying any attention to me at all, you know LGBTQ rights and equality and activism and related topics are pretty G-damn important to me. I do a lot of research and writing on LGBTQ youth, I really have a heart for this population. I'm also really into LGBTQ kids not killing themselves after they've been marginalized and overexposed to homophobic, heteronormative, hateful, and oppressive surroundings. By extension, I'm really into the It Gets Better Project. Further, I'm pro the obliteration of DOMA and DADT (speaking of which, WTF, Barack? What are you doing? I am totally your friend, but I just don't understand). So, considering all that, I'm volunteering at Identity!

Brief deviation: I think I may ultimately be more cut out for LGBTQ advocacy, but since I don't know anything for sure, this is a totally reasonable and fitting segue, right? Right.

Back to Identity: like I said, I've only been twice. I don't have a great feel for what I'm supposed to do now or what I might be doing during my internship. I just keep getting told that I'm going to "work with the youth." Really? Ok.... Besides general uneasiness about newness, the main thing I've been concerned with is this: do I mention/refer to my husband. After my second afternoon at Identity, I'd decided that maybe I should refer to J as my partner and let folks assume what they may. In a world where these kids are often "the other," at Identity, they're not; I am (or maybe I'm not; I kind of feel like I am). So, allies are great! I think these kids think allies are great, right? I just don't know what to say. I don't want to seem too "straight" and estrange myself and then maybe they don't trust me? Or they don't accept me like they would if I fit better into their initialism? ::furrow:: So, J is my partner...?

Skip ahead eighteen hours. I was watching my favorite YouTube webcast everyone is gay, and I was making J watch a couple episodes, too. (I have to watch so much boring or annoying shit that he likes; I made him watch a couple episodes of something I like.) Anyway, it just so happens that one of the questions to my favorite lesbian advice-givers (from their bio: "Kristin and Dannielle are girls who like girls, and who give advice to those who are confused about sexuality, gender identity, dating, falling in love, or even dressing up like Super Woman") had an answer just for me. I'm not going to tell you about the question and answer; you have to watch it yourself and you should. "My" question is the second one and starts after the brief lip-sync to Rocky Horror Picture Show. Don't let me down. Watch this; it's not long at all. Maybe you'll understand more of what my goal is and you'll learn something about what is exceptionally critical to me (and about a gajillion other peeps).

UPDATE: Speed up to 3:58 or so to see "my" question and answer if you can't take the 7 or 8 minutes to see the whole thing.

We're all a community. Well, we are in my head and in the heads of Kristin and Dannielle. So, J is my husband? Discuss.

image via everyone is gay

It Gets Better: Bishop Gene Robbinson Comes to the Defense of a Loving God

It Gets Better: A Theological Response

Professor Stephen Sprinkle is "out and free" and is an ordained Baptist minister and professor of divinity at Brite Divinity School. His message is honest and wise, and I loved hearing his encouraging and courageous story. "Tie a not at the end of your rope and hang on."

via Slog

Actual Required Viewing

Please, please watch this. Please spread it around.

The Advocate:

Writer Dan Savage is reaching out to LGBT teenagers to let them know life may be difficult now, but "it gets better."

The "It Gets Better" Project is inspired by the suicide of 15-year-old Indiana teenager Billy Lucas, who hanged himself last week in his family's barn after enduring bullying from his classmates. After writinga post on The Slog about Lucas's death last week, one commenter expressed a desire to have spoken to him to tell him that things get better.

What Wanda Sykes Said

via Slog

Freedom To Marry

Lucky you. You can get married. Everyone else should be allowed to marry, too.

Take the pledge.

via Slog

Suggested Viewing: New From Athens Boys Choir

Remember how I love Athens Boys Choir? Well, fellow devotees, Katz is back with a new music video and there's even a Matisyahu reference. Sublime!

Check it out!

What He Said: "Pat Robertson Can Suck It" Edition

Dan Savage:

Pat Robertson doesn't understand why gay issues "dominate the news," since gay and lesbians represent "a tiny, tiny fraction of our population." Here's the reason why gay issues dominate the news, Pat: because gay people are unhappy about being discriminated against, thrown out of the military, denied the right to marry, etc. Stop fucking with us—stop discriminating against us—and you'll hear a lot less about us and a lot less from us. Give us what we want—full civil equality—and the struggle for gay rights ends and gay issues no longer dominates the news. It's that simple. You can go right on hating us, Pat, and we can get on with our lives. But until that day comes...

Massachusetts' attorney general filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the U.S. government that seeks federal marriage benefits for about 16,000 gay and lesbian couples who have legally wed in Massachusetts. The state is challenging the constitutionality of the federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, saying the law denies "essential rights and protections" to same-sex couples who have married since Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to legalize gay weddings in 2004.

The federal law interferes with the state's "sovereign authority to define and regulate marriage," according to the suit filed in federal court in Boston. It calls the law "overreaching and discriminatory."

The suit is the latest skirmish over gay marriage in the U.S. federal court system after handful of political filmmakers led by a Democratic consultant crafted a gay rights challenge in May that they hope will reach the U.S. Supreme Court.... Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who filed the suit, cited several benefits denied gay couples, including federal income tax credits, employment and retirement benefits, health insurance coverage, and Social Security payments.

"We view all married persons equally," Coakley told a news conference.

Read this slowly, Pat: DOMA discriminates against same-sex couples, same-sex couples or our allies sue, reporters write up the lawsuit, gay issues continue to dominate the news. No DOMA, no discrimination, no lawsuit, no news stories, no domination.

Mirriam-Webster, I Think You're OK!

marriage: noun

(1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage b: the mutual relation of married persons : wedlock c: the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage

redefinition news via Slog

Isolating the Gay Gene

Funny new Mr. Fish via Truthdig:

What He Said

I just can't do it as succinctly and cleverly as Dan Savage. You should just read what he says.

I'd prefer to see President Obama do away the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives—recently renamed the President's Policy Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships—but if this separation-of-church-and-state violatin' office is gonna exist, well, I'm pleased that Obama has appointed a fag to sit on it. Take that, Saddlebackers.

via Slog

Stop What You're Doing and Watch This Because it is Hilarious

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

via Imago Andei

Dan Savage on Bill Maher

Plus they make fun of Ashton Kutcher (referenced emails) and an Episcopalian defends gay marriage with scripture. A great show! It almost makes me regret tossing HBO and requesting the same fate for the balance of the fancy cable.

Gayest SNL Ever

SNL responded to California passing Prop 8 by doing a show packed with gayness: pixelated male nudity, man on man make out sessions, Justin Timberlake in a leotard, men proposing to men, more gay gay gay.

Also: Justin Timberlake is hilarious during the Weekend Update when he hosts the show in 2 minutes flat.

UPDATE: I had to replace Justin in a leotard with the "Kissing Family" sketch. The video I found was illegal (eagle). Boo.

Anti-Gay, Anti-Family

Dan Savage's 11.11.8 NYT OpEd:

Countless Americans, gay and otherwise, are still mourning — and social conservatives are still celebrating — the approval last Tuesday of anti-gay-marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and, most heartbreaking, California, where Proposition 8 stripped same-sex couples of their right to wed. Eighteen thousand same-sex couples were legally married in California this past summer and fall; their marriages are now in limbo.

But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.

That state’s Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart “the gay agenda.” Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Even before the law passed, the state estimated that it had only about a quarter of the foster parents it needed. Beginning on Jan. 1, a grandmother in Arkansas cohabitating with her opposite-sex partner because marrying might reduce their pension benefits is barred from taking in her own grandchild; a gay man living with his male partner cannot adopt his deceased sister’s children.

Social conservatives are threatening to roll out Arkansas-style adoption bans in other states. And the timing couldn’t be worse: in tough economic times, the numbers of abused and neglected children in need of foster care rises. But good times or bad, no movement that would turn away qualified parents and condemn children to a broken foster care system should be considered “pro-family.”

Most ominous, once “pro-family” groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we’re unfit to raise those we’ve already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?

The loss in California last week was heartbreaking. But what may be coming next is terrifying.

Utah Boycott Urged After Calif. Vote

From the Washington Post:

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 7 -- Utah's growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its aggressive promotion of California's ban on gay marriage.

It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah, with world-class skiing, spectacular red-rock country and the film festival founded by Robert Redford among popular tourist draws.

Gay rights activist John Aravosis, whose well-trafficked AmericaBlog.com is urging the boycott, is unapologetic about targeting Utah rather than California, where voters defined marriage in the state Constitution as a heterosexual act.

Utah, Aravosis said, "is a hate state," and on this issue, "at a fundamental level, the Utah Mormons crossed the line. . . . They just took marriage away from 20,000 couples and made their children bastards. You don't do that and get away with it."

cartoon via Slog

Recently, in Gay News

Great news: Connecticut legalized gay marriage!

Connecticut became the third state to legalize same-sex marriage today in a 4-3 decision by the state Supreme Court.

In an 85-page decision issued at 11:30 a.m., the court ruled that the state had “failed to establish adequate reason to justify the statutory ban on same sex marriage.”

The justices noted in the majority opinion that they recognized “as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health … that ‘our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law.’”

The case, Kerrigan v. the state Commissioner of Public Health, was brought by eight same-sex couples who were denied marriages licenses by the Madison town clerk. They argued that the state’s civil union law was discriminatory and unconstitutional because it established a separate and therefore inherently unequal institution for a minority group. Citing the equal protection under the law, the state Supreme Court agreed.

“In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry,” says the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Richard N. Palmer.

via Slog

Also, from Hilary Duff...



via Slog

Ellen Degeneres Likes Her Politics Like She Likes Her Men

I love Ellen Degeneres. I really do. She's on hiatus and in reruns and I caught the Barack episode which was totally delightful. Here's the monologue:

Then they danced.



Then Barack called a viewer and talked about his family.

I wish I could have the whole thing for you. If the portion of the interview in which they talk about gay marriage is available, I overlooked it; but the whole thing was great. Even if you can't get behind him, you should watch. Perhaps he'll charm you and you'll abandon all others.

Re: Um.... What?

I can't stop watching the Athens Boys Choir. Did you watch? Do it. Then watch it again 4 or 18 times. Revel in the fatuousness.