I had several news stories that either didn’t make the cut for this week’s Friday Five, or that I found after posting. And there was even a good strong theme emerging. And then I saw something that had totally slipped by me yesterday: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Has Suffered a Stroke – The Stonewall veteran and lifelong transgender activist has been hospitalized. Miss Major is one of the trans women of color who was involved in the Stonewall Riots. Unfortunately, she was struck on the head by a cop and taken into custody during the riots, and while in jail was beaten severely. Before Stonewall, she had been actively fight for trans rights and women’s rights, and she had continued the fight for all the years since.
So, I think this Weekend Update is more of an extension of my Pride report posted last night, today I want to point you to more information about Miss Major, and the role she and other trans people of color have played in the fight for queer rights:
Own the decision (click to embiggen)It’s the first Friday in July, the day after a big holiday here in the U.S. and I’ve been a slacker at blogging all week.
Last weekend we attended Locus Awards Weekeend plus watched part of the Seattle Pride parade and spent a couple hours are the Pride Festival. I used vacation time to make it a four day weekend so I would have Monday as a cool-down/unpack/do laundry/etc day. Then had two days at the office, most of which were filled with me fixing things people didn’t know how to do or didn’t have permissions for during the two days I was gone (which happened to coincide with a release date). And now, between the holiday and another vacation day, I’m in the middle of another four-day weekend.
Anyway, welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top two stories of the week, five stories about sf/f and science, five stories about deplorable people, and five videos (plus things I wrote).
Pregnancy and Biology 101. “I originally titled this “Pregnancy 101 for Guys,” but given the state of sex education in the U.S., I suspect many of us need some additional learning regardless of gender. But I’m mostly looking at my fellow guys with this thing, especially with all of the recent debate and discussion. Some of this is information I wish I’d learned sooner. Hopefully it will be helpful to others.”
(click to embiggen)Even though I had two Friday Fivepostss yesterday, I am once again finding myself following up on either stories the broke since then, or ones that I’ve linked to before that have had new developments. Or at least I have more information that I did when I last posted. I suppose I’m being overly pedantic.
Onward! So yesterday I posted about These 9 Pride-celebrating companies donated millions to anti-gay Congress members – Despite giving millions to anti-gay politicians, the HRC gave these companies a perfect 100 score. A lot of corporations out there want to take in queer people’s money, because even if (as many claim) we only make up 4.6% of the population, first, 4.6% of 330 million Americans is still 15 million people. But not only that, we have a lot of supportive straight relatives and friends and other allies who might also be included to patronize a particular brand if that company appeared to be supportive of queer people. The report I linked yesterday and this one show a bunch of really large companies who have done such a good job pretending they support us (while donating millions of dollars to politicians actively harming us) that the Human Rights Campaign has given them a perfect pro-queer rating.
To be fair, when contacted by the reporter who first broke this story, HRC admitted that their criteria up to now had been whether a company had non-discriminatory hiring practices, extended benefits to queer employees, and so forth. They have since said that clearly they need to revise their criteria and start taking into account corporate support for anti-queer politicians. I look forward to the new ratings next year.
So, I knew something was up with disgraced former U.S. Congressperson, Aaron Shock earlier this week because suddenly a bunch of people were clicking on a post I did about his financial crimes and the very poor job he was doing hiding his queerness while being an extremely anti-gay politician. Well, this one shouldn’t surprise us: EXCLUSIVE: Former Republican congressman known for his anti-gay policies and using taxpayer dollars to decorate his office like Downton Abbey is filmed slipping cash into a go-go dancer’s tiny briefs while partying at a gay bar in Mexico City. Gee, it seems like only a couple of months ago someone got video of the former Congressman making out with another man with his hands inside the man’s pants! He posted shirtless with a bunch of shirtless hunks at the music festival in question, and then the guys he had been partying with were informed what at rat-bastard anti-gay politician he was, and all felt the need to issue apologies on their Instagram accounts for not recognizing him.
I guess maybe he was hoping he would be less recognizable in Mexico?
Before anyone tries to lecture me for outing him or (the new accusation I saw recently) “weaponizing his sexuality,” let me make a couple things perfectly clear. When someone who has caused measurable harm to the community (voting for laws that denied us right, stripped us of existing rights, and so on), while secretly being a queer themselves, it is a moral imperative to expose the hypocrisy. Second, the only weaponizing that is going on is by him and his anti-gay allies. Because his is not just a white man, but a wealthy white man with extensive political and financial connections, he is able to avoid most of the forces of oppression that he has helped to create. And part of the protection that he gets from the anti-gay forces of discrimination is precisely because he so vehemently advocated against queer rights.
When we expose these hypocrites we are de-weaponizing their rhetoric, you see.
That’s enough about that jerk. Let’s move on to another.
Jerry Falwell, Jr. Lashes Out at Christian Critic of Refugee Children Conditions. So, what happened? Well, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a man named Russell Moore, expressed some sympathy for the refugee children our Republican government has chosen to put in concentration camps. He didn’t actually condemn the camps or the government, he just said that children ought to be treated with dignity and respect. Jerry Falwell, Jr, couldn’t have that. He launched into a bizarre attack about Moore having never be the head of a corporation that had to meet a payroll… and somehow this means he can’t comment on what the Bible says about how he and is co-religionists treat others?
I don’t quite see the connection. Also, it is deeply ironic the Fallwell, Jr., who became the wealthy real estate tycoon thanks to questionable investments from his father’s ministry plus obscene salaries as various offices of the far-right Christian college his father founded, would fault someone else from never starting an enterprise “from scratch.” Again, how that is relevant to expressing sympathy for grossly mistreated children, I can’t fathom.
Remember during the first year of our hellish dystopia when the neo-Nazis were marching with tiki torches? And there was a protest where one young man, who had been saying on line for some days before hand that he was going to drive his car into the counter-protesters and kill as many as he could? So, he pled guilty to 29 separate crimes, including killing one young women, injuring a bunch of others, and attempting to kill more. And at his sentencing he had the temerity to Charlottesville Killer Begs Court For Mercy. ‘Don’t ruin my life because of one little mistake!’ Yeah, right. Thank goodness, the judge wasn’t having it: Man who killed a woman when he rammed his car into Charlottesville counterprotest gets life in prison. Seems about right.
Finally:
I don’t even want to dignify the stupidity that is the straight pride parade in Boston. Literal Nazis are organizing this thing (some of them people connected to the Charlottesville rallies) were being portrayed as trolls, but given some of the past rallies and harassment and worse they have perpetrated, I’m not sure trolling is the right label.
I said plenty about why straight pride isn’t needed and is redundant, but let’s just close with this:
“Gay pride has zero to do with whom I sleep with and everything to do with the fact that I survived you and your friends in school and now I am tough enough to walk down the street in my own skin.”
Since I’m on vaction and trying not to stress too much about the housework and packing I need to do before leaving for our mini trip, and because I did a fairly basic Friday Five last night after working later and because I saw several interesting animal stories when checking the news this morning, here is a bonus Friday Five!
So, here are five stories and five videos to add some cuteness and fun to your Friday:
It’s the final Friday of Pride Month, and my husband and I are going on a small vacation.
It’s once again time for Locus Awards Weekend, a small sci-fi event we’ve been going to for a few years that is on the same weekend as Pride and whose hotel is conveniently really close to the end of the parade route and the location of the festival. So, Happy Pride!
Anyway, welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five stories of interest to queer folks, the top two stories of the week, and five videos (plus things I wrote).
(click to embiggen)This is not a usual Weekend Update. I changed the format of my Friday posts a few years ago for several reasons, one being that to include all of the links I gathered in a week took a much longer time to assemble the post than if I limited myself to a smaller number. This week was the first time since 2017 that I had significantly more than five videos I wanted to include, for instance. Plus a larger number of links than usual. Since I am running an online roleplaying game today, I know I won’t have time to do a typical Weekend Update on Saturday morning, so I’m assembling this post from links that almost, but didn’t quite, make it to the Friday Five.
Franklin Graham is wrong — real Christians aren’t offended by the pride flag. Also, on a personal note, I want to point out that my Great-grandmother, who is mentioned in my recent Father’s Day post, was a United Church of Christ member. Represent! (click to embiggen)It’s the third Friday of Pride Month, and rainbows are bursting out all over.
The weather has been a bit milder this week. Unfortunately, I, my husband, and a bunch of my co-workers have been experiencing symptoms of some sort of cold-like thing. No fun. OTOH, my adventures with trying to squirrel-proof my bird feeder since the squirrel I named Crazy Ivan last fall is no longer content to forage through the spillage under the feeder have been interesting.
Anyway, welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five stories of interest to queer folks, the top two stories of the week, five stories about homophobes and hater, five stories about bad religion, five stories about the impeachable one, and five videos (plus things I wrote).
Trump and the Rhetoric of Fascism. This op-ed tries to make the case that Trump isn’t actually a fascist, but the contradictions in his argument are… laughable.
For the first time ever, after four decades buried deep in the vaults, a previously unreleased version of ‘Time’, recorded in 1986 by Freddie Mercury for the concept album of the hit musical:
(Click to embiggen)It’s Saturday morning and time for a news update. Once again, there have been some news stories that broke after I composed this week’s Friday Five which I want to comment on and don’t want to wait until next Friday—when there will have been at least (according to the latest statistics) at least 72 new lies from the alleged president, alone. So, let’s get to it!
A few years ago you may recall in a series of court cases various peddlers of so-called ex-gay therapy were forced to admit that no one was ever cured of being gay, and some of those organizations were shut down under consumer fraud laws? Well, at least one of them didn’t shut down: Judge cracks down on barred Jewish gay conversion group for operating under new name.
Back in 2015 a jury found that the organization then calling itself JONAH had defrauded a number of people while claiming to “cure” their homosexuality. The jury awards the former “patients” everything, including $3.5 million in legal fees. The judge later approved a settlement whereby the couple operating the charlatan ex-gay organization would pay only a fraction of the fees if they agreed to dissolve the organization and never engage in such practices again. The charlatans lied, and have been operating a similar scam since. So, the judge as issued a lifetime ban on them serving as an officer of any non-profit, dissolved their new company, and now they are on the hook for the entire $3.5 million. Good. Maybe this will shut them down.
Yesterday I included links to the hate pastors who are having a “Make American Straight Again” conference in Orlando. They picked the date to be close to the anniversary of the Pulse massacre, where 49 people were murdered in a gay nightclub. I want to pause for a moment here and remind you that the owner of Pulse (who opened the club in honor of her decease gay brother) had always said she wanted the club to be a place where queer people felt welcome, and where they felt they could bring their mothers. A couple of the people shot that night were, indeed, non-gay family members of queer people. Anyway, the hate pastors explicitly dedicated their conference to celebrating that massacre, because their mis-reading of six verses they have cherry-picked in the Bible are more important that the numerous times Jesus said to love each other, I guess. So they were live-streaming yesterday, until Youtube shut them down. The Friendly Atheist monitored it and got some quotes:
“If we can get the queers to go back into the closet, that’d be great. I mean, if we can get the government to actually do what it’s supposed to do and put them to death, that’d be amazing. They’ll kill you and it won’t bother them. They’ll molest your kids and it won’t bother them.
“They’ll go to bed with men, with women, with animals. They’ll do whatever and it won’t bother them. Why? Because their conscience is seared. If the government would put them to death, it would make America safe again. And here’s what we’re saying. When they die, we don’t feel bad about it. When they die, we don’t care!”
Can’t you just feel the unconditional love of god in every word (sarcasm)? Another of these paragons said:
I’d love to be able to just work for [a transgender suicide hotline] for, like, a week and just let them know that, “Hey, it’s okay, go ahead and just kill yourself.” Because these people were sick!
Apparently today since many of the pastors speaking and attending have Youtube channels of their own, and vow to keep switching channels as Youtube shuts them down so their hate can do its job? I really don’t know. Anyway, don’t forget that one of these hate-mongers is a Sheriff’s deputy, who, after he was outed as a hate preacher and warned by his superiors that a cop literally advocating for cops to start executing gays isn’t exactly in keeping with the oath to uphold the law, he went back to his pulpit and doubled-down.
That’s enough about them. Have you ever wondered why more of those kinds of stories don’t get reported more prominently in national media? Well: The lack of dedicated LGBTQ media is a disaster. The article isn’t saying that there aren’t enough queer news sites, it rather talking about both the lack of diversity in major news organizations and the cut backs in such organizations that his eliminated a lot of reporting jobs that used to be assigned full time to particular communities and areas of interest. It’s a good read.
We had record-breaking heat on Wednesday. The official National Weather Service temperature for Seattle was 90 degrees, which may not seem like too hot, until you find out that the previous record for June 12 was 78 degrees. That’s quite a jump!
Anyway, welcome to the Friday Five. This week I bring you: the top five stories of interest to queer folks, the top two stories of the week, five fantasy and science stories, five stories about homophobes and hate, five stories about the impeachable one, and five videos (plus notable obituaries and some things I wrote).
We will beat them again!
And now we have another round of me commenting on some news that broke after I composed this week’s Friday Five, or new developments in a story I’ve linked to and/or commented on before.
First, let’s talk some more about that so-called Straight Pride parade! So yesterday I linked to the story about how Brad Pitt disavowed the parade and threatened to sue the organizers if they kept using his name and image, right? That didn’t really surprise anyone. I was, frankly, confused as to why the organizers even went there—Pitt’s support of marriage equality long before it became legal was well known, for example. And clearly the only sort of people who even think a Straight Pride parade needs to be a thing are insecure homophobes, right?
So now everything becomes clear. They knew that announcing a straight pride parade and applying for a permit would get them some news coverage. Mentioning a well-known celebrity like Brad Pitt as the parade’s “mascot” without Pitt’s permission served multiple purposes. First, it increased the odds that mainstream news sources would carry the initial story. Second, because they didn’t just name Pitt, but had pictures of him on their web site, it guaranteed a response from Pitt and/or his agent no doubt threatening legal action. Which git them a second day of being in the news. Then, they can announced the change in the mascot the next day, before any official cease and desist letters arrive, and get another day of press coverage. And they announced the change on their web site with some digs at Pitt (that aren’t actionable) that are phrased in exactly the way needed to appeal to any Incels/Men’s Rights Activities who weren’t already cheering them on.
This also explains why they are using the term “mascot” instead of “Grand Marshall” or something (I know there are headlines out there using saying Grand Marshall, but the official web site uses mascot exclusively). Because Milo isn’t just a neo-Nazi apologist who incites hate against muslims, jews, and trans people, he is also infamously gay. Which is a weird person to pick to symbolize and lead a straight pride march, but mascot? Sure, the lapdog gay boy—who loves to spout off the same genocidal racist, anti-semitic, sectarian, misogynist, transphobic nonsense that the rest of the organizers of the event believe—he can be a mascot.
Based on the past histories of all the folks we currently know are involved in this, the real point of the parade (beside publicity, which they hope will translate into donations) is to try to get a situation where protesters show up, one or two of whom might be provoked to take some action that will give the cops an excuse to go after the anti-fascists, as police are wont to do. So the purpose is to generate headlines and video that can be used to try to paint those of us who are opposed to the goals of the alt-right as the bad guys. And, of course, to provide money to Milo, who is deeply in debt.
With Milo’s involvement, the other thing we can expect is if the City of Boston requires parade permit holders to pay for police services, et cetera, those bills will not get paid (that’s how he racked up a couple million dollars of debt in Australia alone!).
One last thing before we change topics. The same group as officially announced a straight pride flag. They have had at least one made and, oh my goodness, is this the ugliest thing ever, or what? I understand that there are actual studies that show a high correlation between lack of cognitive skills and holding very conservative beliefs, but really, that attempt at symbolism is an insult to the intelligence of the people they hope to embrace the flag. Maybe they think they’re being ironic?
Okay, these don’t really need much in the way of commentary: to the surprise of no one with a functioning brain cell: State Dept Bans Embassies From Flying Rainbow Flag. It was only a week ago that the alleged president was tweeting about supporting LGBT people and joining the international fight against the criminalization and state-sponsored killing of LGBT people. And yet, this… I mean, compared to the very long list of anti-gay actions the trump administration as taken against us, this is pretty minor, but still!
I had several news stories that either didn’t make the cut for this week’s Friday Five, or that I found after posting. And there was even a good strong theme emerging. And then I saw something that had totally slipped by me yesterday: Miss Major Griffin-Gracy Has Suffered a Stroke – The Stonewall veteran and lifelong transgender activist has been hospitalized. Miss Major is one of the trans women of color who was involved in the Stonewall Riots. Unfortunately, she was struck on the head by a cop and taken into custody during the riots, and while in jail was beaten severely. Before Stonewall, she had been actively fight for trans rights and women’s rights, and she had continued the fight for all the years since.
Here’s hoping Miss Major has a swift recovery. If you’re so inclined, send love, healing thoughts, and good vibrations for one of our heroes.
Font Folly 