03/10/2006
The California State Supreme Court ruled today that a Berkeley Marina had the right to revoke free berthing privileges to the Boy Scouts of America because the Scouts' policies violate Berkley's anti-discrimination laws. Said Scouting spokesman Bob Bork spun the defeat: "This is another in a continuing legal backlash against the Boy Scouts for asserting and winning its constitutional rights in the United States Supreme Court."
Gay man fatally stabbed 17 times in Sagay City, Philippines after he allegedly engaged in a transaction for sex with his attacker.
Brokeback fans say "thanks" in Daily Variety; raised $16,000 to place full page ad.
Courageous 12-year-old Michael Gulliford-Green visited Florida's state capital on Thursday with a family portrait of his two dads and lobbied lawmakers in favor of gay adoption: "Three years ago, I was adopted by two gay men who are my parents now. I just want to get rid of this ban that was set 30 years ago and affects our family and a whole lot of families." He was adopted by Buddy Gulliford and Jim Green and chose to take the couple's last names as his own.
The granddaughter of Benito Mussolini showed that ugly genes run in the family on Thursday when drag queen parliamentary candidate Vladimir Luxuria criticized fascism. Said Mussolini: "Better to be a fascist than a faggot."
Dennis Quaid says he had "manorexia" in the 90's after losing a lot of weight for Wyatt Earp: "My arms were so skinny that I couldn't pull myself out of a pool. I'd look in the mirror and still see a 180-pound guy, even though I was 138 pounds. For many years, I was obsessed about what I was eating, how many calories it had, and how much exercise I'd have to do."
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who recently threatened to arrest and jail any clergy who performed same-sex marriage ceremonies in that country, has accused British gay activist Peter Tatchell of orchestrating a coup attempt from within the Zimbabwean Freedom Movement, an organization Tatchell spoke of last year in London.
New Zealand now accepting sperm donations from gay men.
Austrian pornographer faces deportation from Ghana after authorities catch him "engaging in homosexual activities" in an Accra hotel.
Posted 10:02 AM EST by Andy in Elsewhere | Permalink
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Great to see Jim & Buddy working on Florida's gay adoption legislation; I used to work with Buddy and I'm sure he and Jim make great dads.
Posted by: midnight lounge | Mar 10, 2006 10:15:06 AM
Re: Mussolini's granddaughter---I say, hang the bitch by her feet.
Posted by: toughasnails | Mar 10, 2006 11:01:17 AM
So... awesome...
That 12 year old kid deserves the best Christmas ever this year. He's gonna grow up to be a good man.
Posted by: Brian | Mar 10, 2006 11:04:32 AM
I can only think that Italians get a kick out of freaks like Alessandra Mussolini. I hope so, anyway. I mean, forget the bashing; this witch is outspokenly proud of her granddad in a nation that still recoils at the mention of his name.
Posted by: Jacko | Mar 10, 2006 11:51:32 AM
Frankly, if Italians are so RETARDED that they'd even listen to a decendent of Il Duce's (who follows the same party line, PUBLICLY), they get what they deserve.
When is Hitler's nephew running for office in Berlin? I'm sure his platform would be so weak and pointless that he'd have to make outrageous comments to get any press, also.
Posted by: Seangstm | Mar 10, 2006 11:54:46 AM
I think the answer to the BSA spokesperson is, Yes, that is true. Suck it up.
Posted by: Tyler | Mar 10, 2006 11:56:07 AM
Seems to me that the BSA was looking for "special rights," huh?
Posted by: Glenn | Mar 10, 2006 12:13:23 PM
We as Americans should not be laughing at other's countries' choice of leadership. Between Bush and the State of California's classic, typically brain-dead selection of Ahnuld as Governor, we should be embarrassed.
Speaking of which, when is that big earthquake due?
Posted by: nyc | Mar 10, 2006 12:19:15 PM
Um, I think the Governator is a joke and our current president is a moron... but neither of them are Mussolini. Italians would usurp our title as "most deluded electorate" if they vote that bitch in.
Posted by: Brian | Mar 10, 2006 12:23:43 PM
Brokeback Mountain - DVD:
Available 04/04/2006
Features:
Documentaries ("On Being a Cowboy: Directing from the Heart: Ang Lee" "From Script to Screen: Interviews with Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana" "Sharing the Story: The Making of Brokeback Mountain")
Posted by: Jacques | Mar 10, 2006 12:28:01 PM
About the Banner!
About the Banner!
About the Banner!
;-)
Posted by: Rich | Mar 10, 2006 1:12:04 PM
That is a great thank you ad for BBM. It's very classy and very appropriate. I didn't donate originally, but think I will now.
And kudos to the 12 year old boy. There should be a documentary (if there isn't already one - I've seen a couple of news pieces only) documenting the incredible stories of the wonderful GLBT parents who are out there making new families.
Posted by: Tina | Mar 10, 2006 1:15:28 PM
Gays can donate sperm in Austria, but we can't donate blood in the U.S. What a fucked up place!
Posted by: Mike in the Tundra | Mar 10, 2006 1:17:24 PM
wow..really impressed with the classy fan thank you to Brokeback. Impressive..they should be proud.
Posted by: Art | Mar 10, 2006 2:08:38 PM
i salute the boy. he's amazing.
Posted by: fendi | Mar 10, 2006 2:55:13 PM
Andy,
It's interesting that you should have that story Mussolini's bigot granddaughter and criticize her yet you also link to Andrew Sullivan, someone who believes in that people of color are intellectually inferior to Caucasians.
So homophobia is wrong but racism is okay as long as it comes from a gay white guy?
Posted by: noahj | Mar 10, 2006 7:26:27 PM
Glad the BSA was ruled against.
Posted by: Chad Hanging | Mar 10, 2006 7:59:08 PM
Noah, big deal. Everyone is racist now. Haven't you seen Crash?
Posted by: Chad Hanging | Mar 10, 2006 8:03:06 PM
Ms. Mussolini has been a character on the Italian political scene for decades. Since 1946, since the formation of a republic, there have been as many Italian governments as there have been Latin American military coup d'etats.
Italy's love of fascism is hard-wired in a complex cultural psyche. After all, Italy as a modern nation dates back to the House of Savoy and the 1870 reunification. Most of the "Boot" was a Papal theocracy - the infamous Papal States, where the prisons and lack of freedoms were the worst in Europe. It is interesting to note that Italy still has two of the postage stamp nations....Vatican City and San Marino.
As the global economy breaks into three camps - the American dollar, the Eurodollar, and the Chinese Yuan - there is a belief that right-wing governments and theocratic religion and a volunteer and compliant military and militarised police force - are necessary in imposing the New World Order.
I am afraid that we are in the grip of forces of fascism not unleashed upon the world since the 1930's.
Posted by: Raymond | Mar 11, 2006 5:14:11 AM
Even Sandra Day O'Connor thinks so now.
Posted by: Chad Hanging | Mar 11, 2006 12:01:11 PM
Ah ! Sandra was a classic conservative who realises that she sat in SCOTUS with neocons intent on making corporate global interests trump American democracy and the American people's legacy and treasure.
The question that I have is why she didn't wait a few years before retiring and deny them the right to a lifetime appointment?
Posted by: Raymond | Mar 11, 2006 2:05:24 PM
Abortion matters
Michael Bronski
Roe v. Wade today, Lawrence v. Texas tomorrow
This past Monday, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed a comprehensive bill that would enact a near-total ban on abortions. He described the bill as a “direct frontal assault’’ on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave women the right to have abortions. What he didn’t say, but could have, is that the bill is an assault on gay rights as well.
The attack on the constitutionality of abortion rights is an attack on the right to privacy — the same constitutional right to privacy that in 2003 won us Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court decision that abolished sodomy laws in the United States. In the language of Roe v Wade, a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term was predicated on a constitutional right to privacy and that this “right of privacy” was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether to terminate her pregnancy.”
Make no mistake about it. The people — be they right-wing religious leaders, conservative politicians or far-right ideologues — who want to dismantle a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term would be more than happy to begin rolling back the clock on all aspects of gay rights. They are not just looking at the barely-gained right to marriage equality, but to many other aspects of civil rights for gay people — the right to adopt children, the right to be foster parents, the right not to be discriminated against, as well as the right to simply engage in same-sex relationships. The preservation of abortion rights are the new line in the sand for gay rights.
So what exactly is the legal and constitutional connection between abortion rights and gay rights? Conservatives are fond of arguing that there is no right to privacy in the constitution. And they are right — if you read the Constitution as an originalist, that is, as it was understood in the specific historical context in which the founding fathers wrote it. Nowhere in the Constitution is a right to privacy — especially as we understand it today — explicitly stated. But the Constitution is a living document. Not a dry, legal one that emerged in a particular point in history and cannot be interpreted as social mores and thinking progresses. This was clear to lawmakers as early as 1791 when the Ninth Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights, stating that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This “open door” policy to rights “retained by the people” allows the articulation of the “right to privacy.”
But the idea of constitutionally protected privacy is a fairly new invention. Early legal cases such as Robertson v. Rochester Folding Box Company, in which a woman sued a company for using her photograph without permission, addressed general issues of privacy. But it wasn’t until the last 40 years that issues of privacy and sexuality came to the Supreme Court. In its 1964 decision Griswold v. Connecticut the Supreme Court ruled that a constitutional right to privacy gave married couples the right to use contraception within marriage. In 1967, the Court expanded the right of privacy to the institution of marriage when in Loving v. Virginia they knocked down state laws that forbid interracial marriage. By 1972 the Court took up the privacy issue of contraception again and in Eisenstadt v. Baird, ruled that unmarried couples had the right to use contraceptives. As the Court expanded the idea of a personal right to privacy in matters of sexuality and reproduction, it was a logical step to 1973’s Roe v Wade. In Roe the Court — using the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments found support for a constitutional right of privacy that was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether to terminate her pregnancy.”
One would think that this clearly articulated right to privacy would be easily applied to issues of non-heterosexual sexuality, but alas, that would take another 30 years. In 1987, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the Court ruled that homosexual sodomy — as defined by various state laws — was not constitutionally protected. And it was only in 2003, when the Court overturned Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas that same-sex sexual activity was finally granted constitutional protection.
As shocking as it is to realize that it was less than three years ago that queer people had the constitutional right to simply engage in sexual behavior. It is important to remember that just over thirty years ago it was illegal for unmarried heterosexual couples to even buy and use birth control. Since the mid-1960s — remember the famous Summer of Love? — we have lived in a culture that has promoted increased sexual freedoms. But these cultural changes and freedoms have always been far ahead of the legal protections that were needed to secure and support them.
There is no doubt that there is a war against the very idea of a “constitutional right to privacy.” We heard it in the arguments in Lawrence v. Texas and we hear it explicitly now in the language of those that are against a woman’s right to an abortion. We heard it continually in right-wing commentary during both the Roberts and Alito confirmation hearings. During those hearings Justice Roberts stated that he considered Roe v Wade settled law — implying, but never actually stating — that he would not overturn it. Justice Alito gave no such assurances.
While Griswold v. Connecticut, Loving v. Virginia, and Eisenstadt v. Baird are all vitally important decisions it is Roe v Wade that is — both legally and symbolically — the keystone to our contemporary ideas about a constitutional right to privacy. If Wade is overturned — or chipped away to such a degree that it becomes completely ineffective — then there is little doubt that the folks who went after Roe v Wade would also, in some form, go after Lawrence v. Texas. The right of people of different races to marry and the right of couples, be they married or not, to use birth control are so commonplace now that the American public would never tolerate turning these rights back. But homosexuality and gay rights — like a woman’s right to choose — are still hotly contested issues. There is no general public consensus. And just as President Bush has stated that he is against abortion and would welcome Roe v. Wade being overturned, he has also stated, when he was governor of Texas, that he approved of the sodomy law that Lawrence v. Texas overturned.
Last November, Dan Savage wrote an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “Can I Get a Little Privacy” in which he argued — seriously, but with a touch of humor — that liberals should stop fighting these small “right to privacy” battles and take the fight to the next level and simply introduce and fight for a new Constitutional Amendment that would ensure a right to privacy for everyone. It’s a great idea, but one that has a long, and very rocky road ahead of it. In the meantime, it’s imperative for the sake of basic gay civil rights — as well as the welfare of women — that queer activists fight against all laws that chip away at or try to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Michael Bronski is a Visiting Lecturer at Dartmouth College. He can be reached at mabronski@aol.com.
Posted by: Raymond | Mar 13, 2006 4:43:49 AM
I'm a gay man. How does this affect me?
Posted by: Chad Hanging | Mar 14, 2006 11:37:16 PM