Conservative "Christian" groups are
voicing opposition to anti-bullying legislation in Illinois because they say that it is part of a "homosexual agenda" and will infringe upon their right to deride gay and trans people. The groups include the Illinois Family Institute and Concerned Christians of America, who say that anti-bullying rules "promote unproven, non-factual beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and 'transgenderism'." The anti-bullying rules do not mention homosexuality or transgenderism. Whatever that is.
— Cory
Gwinna at anthropologist.livejournal.com writes: "Contrary to myth, Christianity's concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has constantly evolved as a concept and ritual. Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the 'Office of Same-Sex Union' (10th and 11th century), and the 'Order for Uniting Two Men' (11th and 12th century)."
(via @joshuahol) — Xeni
By Xeni Jardin at 5:40 pm Wednesday, May 9
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Photo: At a bar in San Francisco, Horst Linsen of Germany watches TV as President Obama voices support to same-sex marriage. (Reuters)
U.S. President Barack Obama said today he believes same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, taking a stand that is likely to please his political base and upset conservative voters. Your thoughts on the news, and what it means for the presidential election season in America, are welcome in the comments.
By Xeni Jardin at 1:29 pm Tuesday, May 8
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The Guardian (UK) has published a nifty information graphic breaking down gay rights in the US, state by state. Issues like marriage, adoption, employment discrimination protection, hate crime laws, and whether schools have regulations to ban harassment based on gender and sexual orientation. Is the rainbow color scheme of this blatantly pro-homosexual infographic a coincidence? I think not. (via @janinegibson)
Nikki Araguz of Wharton, Texas (population 9,000) is
suing the town where she and her husband lived: she was denied workers’ compensation benefits because she is transgender. Her husband Thomas Araguz, a volunteer firefighter, was killed while fighting a fire in 2010. A judge voided their marriage and denied death benefits because the state does not recognize same-sex marriages (this isn't one), or recognize trans people as the gender to which they've transitioned.
(thanks, Antinous!) — Xeni
By Cory Doctorow at 9:00 am Wednesday, Apr 25
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Danah boyd's "The Power of Fear in Networked Publics" is a speech delivered at SXSW and Webstock New Zealand (that's where this video comes from). Danah first defines a culture of fear ("the ways in which fear is employed by marketers, politicians, technology designers [e.g., consider security narratives] and the media to regulate the public"), then shows how "attention economics" can exploit fear to bring in attention ("there is a long history of news media leveraging fear to grab attention") and how this leads fear to dominate many of our debates:
Every day, I wake up to news reports about the plague of cyberbullying. If you didn't know the data, you'd be convinced that cyberbullying is spinning out of control. The funny thing is that we have a lot of data on this topic, data dating back for decades. Bullying is not on the rise and it has not risen dramatically with the onset of the internet. When asked about bullying measures, children and teens continue to report that school is the place where the most serious acts of bullying happen, where bullying happens the most frequently, and where they experience the greatest impact. This is not to say that young people aren't bullied online; they are. But rather, the bulk of the problem actually happens in adult-controlled spaces like schools.... Online, interactions leave traces.... The scale of visibility means that fear is magnified."
And that's where her critique of "radical transparency" starts:
Increasingly, the battles over identity are moving beyond geek culture into political battles. The same technologies that force people into the open are being used to expose people who are engaged in political speech. Consider, for example, how crowdsourcing is being used to identify people in a photograph. It just so happens that these people were engaged in a political protest.
Radical transparency is particularly tricky in light of the attention economy. Not all information is created equal. People are far more likely to pay attention to some kinds of information than others. And, by and large, they're more likely to pay attention to information that causes emotional reactions. Additionally, people are more likely to pay attention to some people. The person with the boring life is going to get far less attention than the person that seems like a trainwreck. Who gets attention – and who suffers the consequences of attention – is not evenly distributed.
And, unfortunately, oppressed and marginalized populations who are already under the microscope tend to suffer far more from the rise of radical transparency than those who already have privilege. The cost of radical transparency for someone who is gay or black or female is different in Western societies than it is for a straight white male. This is undoubtedly a question of privacy, but we should also look at it through the prism of the culture of fear.
The whole paper and the video are both worth your attention.
"The Power of Fear in Networked Publics"
(via Schneier)
By Xeni Jardin at 2:35 pm Thursday, Mar 22
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Via the New York Times: In Chile, a judge who lost custody of her daughters in 2004 because she is a lesbian will now receive damages, after an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling. Karen Atala will get $50,000, and $12,000 to reimburse court costs. Not much comfort after being separated from your kids by the state for 6 years, but the ruling sets an important precedent in the region.
By Jody May-Chang at 10:47 am Wednesday, Mar 21
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Billionaire anti-gay campaigner and Mitt Romney campaign co-finance chair Frank VanderSloot is whitewashing his tarnished image with a public relations campaign. After years of trying to silence journalists critical of him and his record, all that's left to do is dodge the difficult questions.
After a recent scathing commentary from Salon's Glenn Greenwald, echoed nationwide on MSNBC by The Rachel Maddow Show, VanderSloot's history of threatening critics was exposed. The game changed. But his efforts only highlight a long record of local campaigning whose dirty tricks and litigious tactics now deserve national attention. Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin at 9:00 am Friday, Mar 16
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Boing Boing pal and periodic guestblogger Andrea James sends word of a cool and worthy project she's doing, and raising funds for via Kickstarter: "Family Restaurant," a film for children whose moms and/or dads are LGBT.
"There are very few family-friendly films where kids with gay or
lesbian parents can enjoy a fun story that reflects their own lives," Andrea says, "I think it's going to be pretty cute and a teensy bit controversial. All art is political!"
From Andrea's project description:
"Family Restaurant" celebrates young children with gay or lesbian parents. It shows them a magical world filled with cute characters who reflect their family lives. Set in a family restaurant, it features talking ketchup and mustard bottles among the colorful residents of the diner. It has a mix of puppetry and actors, including a number of real children with gay or lesbian parents.
I serve on the Board of Directors of Outfest, a prominent LGBT film festival. Each year, Outfest has a family day for children to watch movies, but there are very few family-friendly films where these kids can enjoy a fun story that reflects their own lives. It's time to make something specifically for these wonderful children, with a story that's charming enough to appeal to all young people.
Pitch in or learn more here.
By Cory Doctorow at 4:48 am Friday, Dec 9
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If you watched Rick Perry's viral campaign video Strong, perhaps you were struck with by how it seemed a little off (and no, I don't mean the fact that a blowdried asshole like Perry recorded a video of himself conducting a homophobic rant while wearing the gay cowboy costume from Brokeback Mountain). No, it was something more sinister and weirder. Something about a rant that goes, "$INFERIOR_HATED_MINORITY has infiltrated our soldiery, and what's more, our educational institutions have prohibited $DOCTRINE_THAT_WE_EMBRACE from being taught to children at government expense."
If, like me, you struggled for an apt comparison, perhaps you, like me, will discover what you seek in this simple bit of netmemery. Maybe this explains how Mr Perry came to produce YouTube's most hated video.
Vote for Lord Perrymort 2012!
By Cory Doctorow at 6:44 am Monday, Aug 1
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Irene says, "Among the tourists who were near Utøya on July 22, during the terrorist attack, were Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen, a married lesbian couple from Finland who deserve the title of heroines. When they heard the gunshots, they went in their boat to help. They made four trips in all, and were able to rescue about 40 teenagers from probable death."
“We were eating. Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake,” says Dale to HS in an interview.
The couple immediately took action and pushed the boat into Lake Tyrifjorden.
Dalen and Hansen drove the boat to the island, picked up from the water victims in shock in, the young and wounded, and transported them to the opposite shore to the mainland. Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat.
Since there were so many and not all fit at once aboard, they returned to the island four times.
Why does it matter that they're married? Well, because in some jurisdictions, when the question of gay marriage comes up, those who object to it say that gay marriage is associated with low moral character and a general erosion of public ethics. It's a belief you'd have to be mad or terrified to embrace, but perhaps some of those scared or crazy people will have their hearts softened by this incredible example.
Married lesbian couple rescues 40 kids during Norway shooting rampage
(Thanks, Irene!)
(Image: cropped, downsized thumbnail from Helsingin Sanomat, taken by Maija Tammi)
