If you needed further proof of Muammar Qaddafi’s delusion, here it is. When speaking to international media last night, the dictator stated that all his people love him. “They would die to protect me,” Qaddafi said, and added that he is figurehead more resembling Queen Elizabeth II than Prime Minister David Cameron.
In a recent discussion about Israel Shamir—WikiLeaks’s associate in Russia, known for denying the Holocaust—Julian Assange told a British reporter that the story represented a larger conspiracy organised by Jews at British newspaper the Guardian in order to deny his organisation of Jewish donations and support.
The Guardian has more here.
One small step for most, one giant leap for Ireland.
“Two Swedish officers who were shot to death in Afghanistan in February last year appear to have been killed by Swedish bullets,” The Local reports. Horrible news for the Swedish army and the relatives of the dead soldiers. But what caught my attention is the headline. I know it’s correct to write that the officers were killed by friendly fire, but it seems odd to describe something so awful as “friendly”.
DreamWorks has bought rights to two books about Julian Assange, and is planning a dramatic feature based on his story. Please, God, no! I can’t take any more of Julian Assange being portrayed as some kind of hero when he is doing everything to escape the rape allegations against him.
It took the Catholic Church two thousand years to do this!!! (Via Bookslut.)
The Venezuelan “president” is offering a peace plan for Libya. “Chávez’s credibility does not fly very high,” says one commentator. About an inch from the ground, is my guess.
If you have a mother like mine, you probably think eating fish is good for you brain. Think again. A new study from Polytechnic University shows that even a small amount of the most common toxin in fish can slower brain function.
The latest survey on sexual behaviour in the United States conducted by the federal government reveals that about 13% of the women and 5% of the men aged between fifteen and forty-four have had sex with somebody of their own sex. Important to remember is that his should not be confused with people’s sexual identity. Another interesting thing shown is that 36% of women and 44% of men report having had anal sex. Remember this the next time some homophobic pastor goes on about sodomy.
Read more about the survey here.
“Just hours earlier he had been swaggering around, confident in the knowledge that he was almost untouchable,” the Daily Mail writes about one of the boy hired to do Muammar Qaddafi’s dirty work. “But one wrong look from this youngster and the rebels were on him, subjecting him to their own form of interrogation.”
The use of minors in war is nothing new. This is how ruthless dictators fight their unjust wars. When we hear about Qaddafi’s troops doing horrible things, it’s often manipulated children who are the soldiers.
From a European perspective, Judith Reisman is funny relic from ancient times. She is paranoid about all unbiased sexual information. Compared to her, the Pope is a promiscuous whore. She thinks gay people are recruiting new gay people by seduction; she thinks artists like Robert Mapplethorpe are Nazis for photographing naked people; and now she wants to sue Planned Parenthood—an organisation providing reproductive health service—for child abuse. Why? Because it uses facts and figures taken from the book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred Kinsey, an American academic Dr Reisman labels “a sado-masochistic pedophile, a bi/homosexual pornography addict”. What makes the whole thing even funnier is that she writes for World Net Daily, the most sectish news website on the Internet. As disturbing as the website is, it is a reliable source of never-ending entertainment from the lunatic right.
Mardi Gras marchers made a strong stand on recognition of same-sex marriage last night, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. What better way to demand equality than dancing in the streets?
According to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 45% of Americans say gay people should be allowed to marry. That is up from 37% in 2009. Meanwhile, 46% of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, which is down from 54% in 2009.
“Jews are the only race whose negative image as projected by racists is high-status,” writes David Baddiel in his article on the new trendy anti-Semitism endorsed and promoted by celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, John Galliano, Mel Gibson, and Julian Assange. And for people on the political Left, hating Jews has become a way to stick up for other races.
Read the whole thing in the Daily Telegraph.
The Britannica Blog brings the happy news to my attention and adds:
These new poll results should be no surprise. Part of the American project for more than 200 years has been extending the promises of the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—to more and more people. America is a country fundamentally shaped by libertarian values and attitudes.
And what are the values and attitudes of Sweden, I ask myself. Regulation, conformity, and the pursuit of benefits?
At the end of 2010, Subway had 33,749 restaurants worldwide, compared to McDonald’s 32,737, the Wall Street Journal reports. I predict a cultural swift of sorts. People are bored with the overpriced and fattening Big Mac.
A new poll by the BBC suggests that many hate the Jewish homeland. China, with its brutal occupation of Tibet and its many political prisoners, is more popular than the only democracy in the Middle East. (Via Commentary Magazine.)
Dan Savage writes about hate mail and remembers a past when the hater’s preferred gadget was unknown. He also notes that hate mail was of a much higher calibre back before email. I would like to add that what really turned the whole thing sourer was anonymous reader comments. But there’s still hope for humankind in cyberspace. The blog Techcrunch reports that a new Facebook comment system has silenced the trolls. Let’s hope.
I see no problem generally with minority groups isolating themselves from mainstream society, but it is ridiculous to demand secular institutions to adapt. The growing paranoia amongst ultra-Orthodox Jews is all about an imagined threat from secularism. In this case, it made a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews demand a schoolyard to be split in two by a wall keeping the secular Jews away from their own children.
“In the past 12 months, South Wales Police have dealt with 49 cases of forced marriage, up from a typical 30-35, with new cases almost every week,” BBC News reports. Horrible news, but one thing I like about BBC’s article is its clear distinction between forced and arranged marriage, two widely different procedures often treated as the same. BBC explains, “A forced marriage, as opposed to an arranged marriage, is where either bride or groom, or both, do not consent to a wedding and are coerced into accepting it.”
A group of Orthodox rabbis in Israel has set up a fund to finance so-called conversion therapy, which is an unscientific scam method used by religious homophobes to turn gay men straight (often resulting in depression and suicide). “This support for conversion therapy is a violation of everything Jewish,” Rabbi Sacks writes. “Rabbis must know that they are obligated to follow the best that science and medicine have to offer.”
Brilliant! Read the whole thing here.
Lately, there’s been a discussion in Britain about the value of a university degree. Some have argued that a degree is no longer worth the effort, but now there is some statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to prove the value and importance of a degree. These are American figures, but I think they might say something about Europe, too. A master’s degree doesn’t make you clever, but it’s one of a very few ways to compete for a well-paid job.
Read more here.
Daniel Gonzales posted this video on the blog Box Turtle Bulletin. “Yesterday a Colorado Senate committee held a hearing on civil unions legislation,” he writes on the blog. “Members of the public were free to sign up and testify.” And one Rosina Kovar—who represents the homophobic lobby group Eagle Forum—took this opportunity to talk about the human anus. Enjoy!
There you have it, folks. Gay rights cannot be accepted with respect to the anus.
My husband and I were in the audience at a public debate broadcast on Swedish opinion website Newsmill tonight. It took place at Lund University.
I had prepared a couple of questions to ask one of the panellists, but the cameras and the large crowd made me shy so I stayed quiet. However, I have been asked to write an article about the issues discussed for an online newspaper, which gives me an opportunity to ventilate my thoughts and maybe get some answers, too.
Above is a photo I took during the debate.
I an interview for Swedish football magazine Offside, Anton Hysén says he is gay. He is a pioneer. There have been several gay footballers before him, but they have all considered it impossible to be openly gay in professional football. Anton Hysén is the first professional footballer in Sweden to come out.
Anton Hysén’s decision to come out has become international news. In a comment on Pink News, the Gay Football Supporters Network writes:
This is great news. Hopefully the tide is turing and more professional players will feel comfortable enough to come out and be themselves.
Amen to that.
Moore is a great actress, but I think it’s strange they didn’t go for Tina Fay as Sarah Palin. She has a stunning resemblance to Palin and she has proven herself capable to do dramatic roles.
See Alan Friedman’s photograph of the sun here.
I hardly knew he existed until a few days ago. “A dark horse candidate whose name only recently entered into discussions about who would success Mona Sahlin as party chair,” The Local writes, “Juholt has been a member of the Riksdag since 1994 and also serves as the party’s chair in Kalmar County in southern Sweden.”
The Social Democrats returned to their old habit of electing beige middle-aged men as party leaders. I never liked Mona Sahlin much, but at least she broke a boring pattern.
It’s true! They actually drill their personnel how to work with gay people, as if everything would suddenly be different once gay soldiers don’t need to lie. Who trained them to cope with people forced to lie?
The move has caused some tension in the neighbourhood. “For the last 20 years the deal was that the skanks stayed in the area over Bealey Ave,” one resident tells the New Zealand Harald. “But now the skanks are hanging out here, they cross up and down the street and people are really nervous about them and the traffic and people they are attracting,” the angry local explains. “If you have one skank, other skanks will come. It just escalates. Where do you draw the line?”
I admit that the only reason I blog about this is the funny word skank. Is that really a commonly used term for prostitutes in New Zealand?
“In a major diplomatic victory for the Libyan opposition, France has become the first country to formally recognise Libya’s rebel leadership, pledging to exchange ambassadors between Paris and the Libyan opposition stronghold of Benghazi,” France24 reports. “The announcement followed a meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and two representatives of Libya’s Interim Transitional National Council in Paris Thursday.”
Brilliant!
Update: More in New York Times here.
“A powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 struck northeastern Japan on Friday, triggering a massive tsunami that swept away houses and cars in Miyagi Prefecture and killed at least 20 people in Miyagi and four other prefectures,” Japan Times reports. “The 2:46 p.m. earthquake is one of the strongest ever to have occurred in the quake-prone archipelago, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, with its magnitude surpassing the 7.9 registered in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo and its vicinity, which killed more than 140,000 people.”
I saw the pictures on BBC World when I woke up and they are truly unbelievable. Entire villages washed into the ocean and cars floating about in the Tsunami river.
This is probably the first even slightly interesting thing the new Labour leader has said since he was elected in September 2010. Everything else seems to be about more regulation and less liberty.
“A bill to legalise gay marriage in Maryland fell short Friday after supporters failed to find enough votes to overcome Republican opposition and misgivings by some Democrats in the deeply Catholic state,” the Seattle Times reports. “A final vote had been expected in the House, but the overwhelmingly Democratic chamber’s leaders instead withdrew it.”
What an annoying world we live in. Here in Sweden, a growing number of secularists wants to force their atheism on religious minorities, and in Maryland a group of Catholics wants to force their Christian ethics on everybody.
Astonishing pictures of the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami.
It’s bigger than most nations, so why not give Facebook an anthem, too. Could this be it? (Via Joe Jervis.)
After Italian Senator Emma Bonino voiced opposition to Berlusconi’s sexism, she is being attacked with even more sexism.
There are now 300,000 people living in Malmö, the Swedish city I call my home. It should be noted that Malmö is only one part of a much larger metropolitan area. With Copenhagen, Lund, and other nearby Swedish and Danish towns and suburban villages, there are about three million people living in this transnational metropolitan area.
Irshad Manji writes about a new attitude amongst Palestinian students:
In February of 2005, I found myself surrounded by students at An-Najah National University in the heart of the West Bank. During my impromptu visit, students seemed eager to talk. “Now that Arafat is gone,” one of them remarked, “it is time to accept Israel.”
He continued: “I want the occupation to end, but I am also a human being with dreams and hopes for the future. To reach my dreams as an individual, I have to live peacefully with Jews and we all have to go into the future.”
Other students could have denounced him to defend the sanctity of the national liberation campaign. They didn’t.
This is hopeful. Somehow, the two groups of people populating this small piece of land must learn to coexist. The Palestinian’s refusal to accept Israel blacks every chance of a peaceful coexistence. The progress towards peace must begin there.
I would argue that no single Jew has changed Judaism more than Baruch Spinoza has. He liberated Judaism from the idea of God as a supernatural being, which paved the road for philosophers like Mordecai Kaplan and progressive movements like Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism.
“While the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures share a conception of God as the creator of the natural world and the director of human history, Spinoza argues that everything that exists is an aspect of God that expresses something of the divine nature,” Clare Carlisle writes in a series of articles on Spinoza published by the Guardian.
From Carlisle’s article:
In chapter six of the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza addresses the “confused ideas of the vulgar” on the subject of miracles. Ordinary people tend to regard apparently miraculous events—phenomena that seem to interrupt and conflict with the usual order of nature—as evidence of God’s presence and activity. In fact, it is not just “the vulgar” who hold this view: throughout history, theologians have appealed to miracles to justify religious belief, and some continue to do so today.
For Spinoza, however, talk of miracles is evidence not of divine power, but of human ignorance. An event that appears to contravene the laws of nature is, he argues, simply a natural event whose cause is not yet understood. Underlying this view is the idea that God is not a transcendent being who can suspend nature’s laws and intervene in its normal operations. On the contrary, “divine providence is identical with the course of nature”
Contemporary debate on religion is often centred around the traditionally theist conception of God. I think that conception is very naïve. To an increasing number of people, believing in God has noting whatsoever to do with the idea of a supernatural, anthropomorphic being.
“Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have expanded their effort to marry gay men and lesbians who live together in order not to violate their faith’s prohibition against homosexual sex,” the Advocate reports. I think this is absurd, but I figure it’s a better alternative to “conversion therapy”, which only results in depression and suicide.
Venezuelan de facto dictator Hugo Chávez has found a new aspect of liberty and capitalism to direct his anger at—breast augmentation. In his weekly several-hours long monologue on state television, Chávez said that this trend in cosmetic surgery is a “monstrous thing”.
The Jewish human-rights organisation, based in Los Angeles, urges the Swedish government to take over the onerous cost of protecting Jews and Jewish institutions in Sweden, a cost it consider a special tax on Jews. “Sweden intelligence has identified over 400 Islamist radicals and Neo-Nazis,” says Rabbi Abraham Cooper in a statement. “Coupled with global threats from ‘lone wolf’ operatives, Jews are a primary target for hate crimes and terrorists.”
The Local has more.
Lawmakers in the American state of Kansas refuse to repeal a law banning homosexual acts. The law cannot be enforced because it violates the American constitution, but the state legislators want it to remain in print. “I think their motivation is pretty clear,” said Thomas Witt, head of Kansas Equality Commission, a gay-rights organisation. “They don’t like gay people and they’re going to make sure in the eyes of the law we’re still considered criminals.”
(Via Americablog Gay.)
Representative Jerrold Nadler and Senator Dianne Feinstein have introduced bills that would scrap the federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriage. “This defies common sense and harms thousands of married couples who are denied federal responsibilities and rights, including access to programs like Social Security, that other couples can count on when getting married,” Nadler said at a press conference yesterday.
Read more about it at the Washington Blade.
A few minutes ago, the United Nations Security Council backed a resolution on Libya that supports military action but rules out an invasion. Democracy activists are reported to celebrate the decision in the streets of Benghazi.
While world leaders are gathering in Paris to discuss military action, Libyan dictator and madman Muammar Qaddafi is slaughtering civilians in the rebel stronghold Benghazi.
Read about it at BBC News and Al Jazeera.
A 28-year-old man in Pennsylvania has been charged with murder after telling police that he stoned a 70-year-old man to death. The two men knew each other well, but when the older man showed sexual interest, the younger man was commanded in a prayer to kill his friend.
Read more about it at NBC Philadelphia (via Joe Jervis).
As a cute cub, the German polar bear Knut became a media phenomenon in 2007. Knut’s popularity generated toys, films, books, and stamps (like the one from Germany seen above). Earlier this afternoon, Knut died alone in his compound at the Berlin Zoo. “It’s terrible,” Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit says in a comment. “He had a special place in all of our hearts. He was the star of Berlin Zoo.”
Read more about it at Spiegel Online.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved a special top-level domain for pornography. The idea for this new domain has sparked some intense debate since it was first submitted to ICANN in August 2010. Some fear it will encourage pornography while others fear censorship.
“Our air force will oppose any aggression,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement following a meeting with Western and Arab leaders in Paris earlier today. I think it’s a fair assumption that Qaddafi’s days as dictator are numbered.
Follow the live coverage at BBC News and France 24.
Exodus International, a radical religious organisation known for bullying gay people into depression and suicide, has created an iPhone application said to mobilise “the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality,” i.e., cure gays. Now Apple is under fire from gay-right activists for approving the application. Personally, I hate the message of the homophobic lobby, but in a free society, homophobes must be allowed to speech their perverted ideas. Of course, Apple owns the right to decide what applications will run in its devices, and if they whose to delete this one, I have no problem with it. However, to delete every controversial and morally upsetting application might not be into the company’s interest. A better way to combat religious homophobia would be to create an application designed to help people who struggle with the backwards, fundamentalist theology of these groups.
Read more about it at the Huffington Post.
“Jin Xing was once a man and a soldier,” Melinda Liu writes. “Then he had a sex-change operation, and became a mother and one of China’s premier dancers.” This is an interesting article about a successful transsexual woman who left her life as a male high-ranking army officer for a life as a female premier dancer. Fascinating life story.
Read the article at Newsweek.
In atheist discourse, religion is merely an irrational ideology about the supernatural. But many people’s concept of religion differs from that of the atheist movement. Annoyed by this fact, the British Humanist Association now criticises the religion question in a census for being flawed because it allows people to identify with a religious culture whose orthodox theology they don’t agree with. The atheist organisation refers to a recent poll showing that nearly half of the Britons interviewed who said they were Christian believed that Jesus was a person. Because this doesn’t fit the British Humanist Association’s sham definition of Christianity, the organisation wants these Christians to pick “no religion” in the census. To me, that’s as silly as saying that only those in favour of the monarchy can be British subjects.
Read more about it at the Guardian.
The homophobic iPhone application has sparked anger in the gay community and beyond. “More than 80,000 people have signed a petition calling on Apple to remove a ‘gay cure’ app from its iTunes store,” Pink News reported a few hours ago. When I write this, the number of signatures has risen to 116,000. I have not signed the petition because I fear it would set a bad precedent. As I wrote on Saturday, I would prefer a counterattack. Why not create an application curing homophobia?
A new survey conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation has found that 72% of Poles, 68% of Hungarians, and 50% of Germans believe Jews try to take advantage of having been victims of Nazism. Moreover, 63% of the study’s participants in Poland and 47.7% of the participants in Germany agree with the statement “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians”.
“It is astonishing to see these figures and a damning indictment on efforts to fight hatred and intolerance in Europe,” says the President of the European Jewish Congress. “The governments of Europe, and the European Union, have to wake up to this before it is too late.”
I’m not surprised. European mainstream media has been very successful in its description of Israel as a hostile and immoral country fighting a war against an innocent people. The reports about the constant, never-ending terror attacks on Israel is few and often treated with less importance. We have been fed with this bigoted reporting for decades, and the result is before us in this new survey.
Read more about it at Ynetnews.
A Christian publishing house is cancelling the launch of a book about how Jesus turns gay people straight in fear of a planned protest by gay-rights activists. I don’t for moment believe this is why the homophobic book has been cancelled. I do, however, believe it has to do with publicity and the problems Christians have with science in this matter.
“Christians in particular are worried as science moves towards seeing being gay as a genetic thing—they are running out of ammunition. If science says this, Christians cannot say ‘you are evil’ because it’s something you’re born with, like your skin colour,” gay-rights activist David Allison says. “Most people have finally got the message that being gay is like having blue eyes or brown hair—it’s something you can’t change.”
Read more about it at Pink News.
“The Obama administration Tuesday called on the UN Human Rights Council to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians around the world,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “Human rights are the inalienable right of every person, no matter who they are or who they love,” America’s ambassador to the council in Geneva says in a statement.
Nice. I’m all for it. But does anyone seriously think that a UN council with homophobic strongholds like Saudi Arabia, Poland, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Uganda, as members will do anything to support human rights for gay people? I don’t think so. But it’s a nice move from Obama and America.
No official announcement from Apple yet, but Jim Burroway reports that the app is no more.
A bomb exploded at bus stop in the Jewish capital earlier this afternoon. About twenty people were injured. The police say a device placed at a telephone booth near the bus stop caused the explosion. The device was found nearby.
Read more about it at the Jerusalem Post, Ynetnews, and Haaretz.
New census data shows that Detroit’s population had plunged by 25 per cent over the last decade, the New York Times reports. It is the largest percentage drop in history for any larger American city, apart from the unique situation of New Orleans, where the population dropped by 29 per cent after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is fascination how quickly a city’s population can change. Some large cities in Asia are said to double its population every five years, and now we have an example of a former industrial city losing a quarter of its population in ten years.
“Effectively, [Libya’s] air force no longer exists as a fighting force,” Air Vice Marshall Greg Bagwell said to journalists at an air base in southern Italy. “And his [Muammar Qaddafi’s] integrated air defence system and command and control networks are severely degraded to the point that we can operate over his airspace with impunity.”
For the Libyan people’s sake, I hope Bagwell is right.
Read about it at Al Jazeera.
Israeli Religious Services Minister Yakov Margi has lost his mind. In a speech on Tuesday, the ultra-Orthodox minister called for legislation making the Israeli Chief Rabbinate the supreme rabbinical institution in the world, and said he wants to determine by law that “there are no streams in Judaism, only one that has been passed down to us from generation to generation”. In other words, he wants Judaism to have a pope and delegitimise a large majority of world Jewry.
Read more about it at the Jerusalem Post.
As most of you know by now, Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday. I have no relationship with her works and did not intend to write about her since I know so little, but when I read about her devotion to gay rights and fighting AIDS, I felt it appropriate to mention her passing in my journal. Great people deserve recognition. Read about Elizabeth Taylor at Pink News, the Advocate, and 365 Gay.
Unfortunately, Taylor’s funeral is about to become yet another opportunity for the perverted Phelps sect that has made it its mission to picket funerals with their homophobic message. Read about it at Pink News.
“Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall,” the Washington Times reports. “Key themes are that sexual orientation will no longer be a bar to service, that all service members must respect each other, and that the partners of gay troops will not receive the benefits of heterosexual spouses.”
I think its funny that the American military makes such a big deal of something that is a non-issue in Europe, Israel, and elsewhere. But the last sentence annoys me. What it says is that if your partner has a genitals resembling your own, he or she will not have the same benefits as the partners of your fellow soldiers. That’s absurd. Another absurd thing is the headline of the Washington Times article, “Military Indoctrinated on Gays Kissing”. Indoctrinated? Funny how people always use that word for information they don’t like.
It’s fascinating how religion always plays a role whenever gay people are discussed. “A Marine recruiter may not refuse to induct a gay civilian even though he views it as violating his religious beliefs,” the article reads. Imagine if someone quoted one of the Christian Bible’s many anti-Semitic verses when speaking about fair treatment of Jews in the military.
Needless to say, the article also touches on the delicate topic of showering. It ensures that commanders may honour a request not to shower with known gay soldiers. When Israel scrapped its gay-ban, the table was turned and the army promised to help the gay soldiers who want to shower separately. The last thing I heard about it is that neither gay nor straight soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces demand separate showers.
I have caught a cold with high fever. Therefore, I have decided to do something I rarely do nowadays—take a few days off both work and blogging. I’m an optimist and think I will feel better on Monday, so emails and phone calls will be answered then. The blog will rest, too. But, as always, I leave room for an acute blog entry in the case of something extraordinary happens that I must comment on.
“A group of Chinese scientists from the National Institute of Biological Sciences have appeared to find a way to regulate sexual preference in male mice,” Shanghaiist reports. “The secret apparently lies in the brain chemical serotonin—male mice bred without this chemical lose their sexual interest in females.” Needless to say, both the article and the research itself assume that the news is that homosexuality can be turned off and on in male mice. This is what heteronormativity is about—taking for granted that heterosexuality is the norm. However, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that these new scientific findings cannot be used to “cure” heterosexuality.
Catholic Priest John Hollowell has posted a three-part video of how he teaches homophobia at the Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis. The priest delivers a long monologue against marriage equality and human rights. Only a few decades ago, the same arguments were preached against interracial marriage. Then, too, equality under the law for all was portrayed as a threat to majority culture. Naturally, the hate lobbyist Maggie Gallagher is denying the obvious similarity between homophobia and racism. However, distubing as this is, some students seem to see through the hate propaganda. But still, imagine what it would be like to be a gay person in this class.
Read about it at Towleroad.
The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article about French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. The newspaper says he may deserve as much credit for prodding the international community to act on Libya as President Sarkozy.
I’m still too ill for normal working pace, but instead of just lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, I decided to see this opportunity to type some code and bring my blog into the promised cyberland known as HTML5 and CSS3. Gone are the old meta tags and the tired XHTML doctype—and the stylesheet got a couple of brand new properties, too. The W3C validator says my website and stylesheet are a fine, but let me know if you see something strange that might have to do with the new code.
Saudi Arabia is definitely one of the most illiberal countries in the world—I guess it is second only to North Korea. Today I read in the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star that the Siudi kingdom will hold municipal elections in September, but only men are allowed to vote. “Women will not participate in this session,” says Abdul-Rahman al-Dahmash, director of the electoral commission. “We are not ready for the participation of women in these municipal elections.” This is nothing short of gender apartheid.
Read more about it here.
The Senators fear rapid change in attitude towards gay people could soon open for marriage equality. In order to make it more difficult for future politicians to legalise same-sex marriage and equality under the law, the current politicians have voted in favour of altering the state constitution.
Read more about it at Indystar.com.
Update: “Conservatives are the most hypocritical beings,” a commenter on the website writes. “They want smaller government but are perfectly fine with a oppressive government.”
The 20-year-old Swedish footballer (soccer player) Anton Hysén became an international celebrity after he came out a few weeks ago. Now Patrick Barkham of the Guardian has interviewed him.
Time has put together a list of the most popular people on Twitter, and Homer Simpson—yellow celebrity overeater of Springfield—has 274,812 followers. What fascinates me the most is that Mr Simpson has a verified account. As a defender of fictioanalism in most areas, I’m delighted.
Follow Homer here.
A group of extremist Christians has been invited to speak at a conference at Harvard University in April. Amongst the speakers are people who financially and ideologically support the Ugandan efforts to legalise genocide of gay people.
“An armed group of seven people attacked the Catholic Church of St. Thomas in the military district of Wah, about 45 km from Islamabad,” Jibran Khan writes. “The extremists hurled stones, damaged the building and tried to set fire to it, but they did not shoot.”
This was the third attack against a Pakistani church in less than a week. The violence is a result of a pastor Wayne Sapp in Florida who burned a copy of the Koran on 20 March.
This is what happens when extremists are allowed to represent their religions. Extremists always collectivise guilt and responisbility, and they always consider an insult by one man to be the opinion by the larger group of people that one man is part of.
As a child, I was very fond of Lego. I even forced my parents to bring my Lego on holidays so I could build copies of what I’ve seen during the day. I built boots, aeroplanes, shops, towns, skyscrapers, people, and cars with my Lego. That’s how I processed everything important for a number of boyhood years. And although I no longer play with Lego, I still like to see what other people make of it. So naturally, I’m a fan of the Lego interpretation of Britain’s Prince William’s forthcoming wedding to Kate Middleton.
Read about it at the Daily Telegraph.
Few things embarrass me more than the stupidity of the Western gay organisations that devote their time to anti-Israel activism. Organisations like the Canadian Queers Against Israeli Apartheid realy should be ashamed of their bigoted activism and the internalised homophobia they manifest.
“Israel is the only—with a capital ‘O’—Middle Eastern state that guarantees sexual rights and freedoms to its LGBT citizens, whether they are Jews or Arabs,” Stuart Appelbaum and Benjamin Weinthal point out in a Forward article. “LGBT progressives should be embracing Israel’s system of gender and sexual freedoms as a model for the Middle East.”
I second that. Israel is an island of liberty for gay people in a big ocean of violent homophobia.
“The Washington Legislature has approved a measure that recognises out-of-state domestic partnerships,” Seattle Times reports. “Under the measure, gay marriages performed elsewhere would be recognised as domestic partnerships here, as well as domestic partnerships performed in other states.” It’s not marriage equality, but it’s progress.
Creationism seems to have friends in the most unepected places. “I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the Canadian Minister of State for Science and Technology, says when asked if he believes in evolution.
Read about it at the Globe and Mail.
“The planned action-comedy cartoon is called ‘The Governator,’” the San Francisco Chronicle reports. “It will focus on a superhero living a double life as an ordinary family man.” The former governor of California will be the voice of the main character.