GLBT News

[Zahir al Daoud]

Hmmmm. Methinks in the end he (and a lot of other candidates) will find Gay-friendly voters an easier-to-please constituency than right-wing extremists.

"O Let my name be in the Book of Love!
If it be there I care not of that other Book above.
Strike it out! Or write it in anew, but
Let my name be in the Book of Love!"
--Omar Kayam

[lustandrhymeremover]

Don't you just hate it when your name mysteriously appears on documents that you helped endorse. Or when you go around promoting something - but no one ever told you what it was you were promoting... Poor guy, so confused and all.

"Pronouns make it hard to keep our sexual orientation a secret when our co-workers ask us about our weekend. 'I had a great time with...THEM.' Great! Now they don't think you're queer, just a big slut!"-Judy Carter

[skittles]

This is from today's NYTimes and includes a reference to Anita Bryant , of whom a kitten was asking about recently.



NYTimes article link



Miami Facing New Challenge on Gay Rights

By DANA CANEDY



MIAMI, Sept. 4 — More than two decades after the campaign by the entertainer Anita Bryant to overturn one of the country's first gay rights ordinances divided Miami and cast the city as a symbol of intolerance, voters will face the issue again on Tuesday.



Conservative Christian groups have placed a measure on the ballot to repeal a Miami-Dade County ordinance approved four years ago protecting gays from discrimination



But this time the move for repeal has been met with outrage by many residents and city leaders who are not just opposed to it, but are actively campaigning against it.



The battle over the initiative is highly charged and is being closely watched by gay rights activists and civil rights organizations nationally. But the outcome may be more a measure of just how much Miami has evolved in its acceptance of diverse lifestyles since the first measure was repealed.



In a city often divided by race and ethnicity, a poll released today by The Miami Herald and the local NBC television station found strong opposition to the repeal measure in all racial and ethnic groups.



"We're trying to build an image of international metropolis, a bridge among cultures, but we would be saying, `By the way, it's O.K. to discriminate based on sexual orientation,' " said Mayor Alex Penelas of Miami-Dade County. "That would just be wrong. We would be turning the clock back several years."



Mayor Penelas has become so involved in the issue that he has recorded a phone message that is being played to residents in which he urges them to vote against the repeal.



Hundreds of other prominent Miami business, civic, community and religious leaders, including the singer Gloria Estefan, the Latin television personality Cristina Saralegui and the mayors of more than 30 county municipalities, also support the "No to Discrimination/SAVE Dade" campaign opposing the repeal.



Civic and community leaders say repeal would threaten not only the livelihoods of local gay men and lesbians but also the county's all-important tourism industry and Miami's image as an international city that embraces diversity.



Proponents of repeal, led by a group called Take Back Miami-Dade and supported by the Christian Coalition of Miami-Dade County and other conservative religious groups, say the ordinance extends unnecessary protection to people with deviant lifestyles.



Since getting the measure on the ballot, supporters have become less vocal in the face of widespread criticism.



But Nathaniel Wilcox, co-chairman of Take Back Miami-Dade, which was formed to support the repeal, said of gays: "They are using a tactic of deception in order to get into the government to force their lifestyle on people. As a Christian, as a man of God, I can't stand up and justify backing a behavior that destroys families."



The ordinance was passed in December 1998, when Miami-Dade County commissioners voted 7 to 6 to amend the county's antidiscrimination ordinance to prohibit unequal treatment of gays in housing, employment, credit and finance and public accommodation. The 1998 ordinance is similar to the one that had been overturned. At the time, there were two catalysts for the change here.



One was the case of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming who died in October 1998 after he was kidnapped, beaten and left tied to a fence for 18 hours. The crime prompted outrage over hate crimes nationwide and became a theme here during the hearing that preceded the 1998 vote.



The other factor was that many Miami-Dade political and civic leaders rallied behind the measure, arguing that intolerance was bad for an economy that depended on tourism and a county with a sizable gay population. Today more than ever, Miami Beach's trendy South Beach section is heavily populated with gay residents and attracts many gay tourists each year.



Organizers of the repeal initiative have been determined to challenge the ordinance since it was passed. Take Back Miami-Dade failed to obtain enough signatures on a petition to get the issue on the ballot in 1999. The group reorganized and gained the signatures needed to get the measure before voters on Sept. 10.



About 230 municipalities in 11 other states and the District of Columbia have antidiscrimination ordinances that extend protection to gay men and lesbians, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Officials in Ypsilanti, Mich., Tacoma, Wash., and Westbrook, Me., said today that challenges to similar ordinances in their cities were also pending.



Miami, though, is seen as the key battleground on the issue because of the historical significance of the local ordinance. "We have decided to draw a line in the sand and we will stop them," Lorri Jean, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said of the repeal organizers. "People all over the country are watching this and we want to show the world that the people of Miami-Dade aren't going to tolerate it."



The strategizing over the ordinance issue here has at times resembled guerrilla warfare. In one development, the legitimacy of the petition drive was called into question when two supporters of the repeal were arrested in August and charged with falsely claiming to witness petition signatures and two others were charged with illegally notarizing their own signatures. The defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which their lawyer called politically motivated.



In another controversy, repeal organizers circulated a flier in August at black churches that included an image of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a picture of two men kissing. It said, "Martin Luther King did not march or die for this" and urged worshipers to vote in favor of the repeal. Immediately after the flier began circulating, the King Center in Atlanta issued a statement on behalf of Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, calling for equal treatment for gay men and lesbians.



Take Back Miami-Dade has also claimed in broadcast advertisements and to its supporters that gays are "after our children," an echo of Ms. Bryant's campaign, which was called Save Our Children. Opponents of the group say Take Back Miami-Dade is using sensational scare tactics to create support for an otherwise indefensible issue.



"For our opponents, dealing with the facts is not as effective as trying to scare people into thinking this law is somehow detrimental to the community," said Heddy Peña, chairwoman of SAVE Dade. Ms. Peña said the repeal supporters' efforts had instead galvanized the community in support of gay rights and cited her involvement in Save Dade as an example.



"My husband is African-American and I am Hispanic, and when the issue surfaced about discrimination against a group that didn't affect us personally we had to ask ourselves when is discrimination right, and the answer is never," Ms. Peña said.



The vote is considered historically significant because the county was the first major urban area to pass legislation protecting gays when it did so in 1977. Ms. Bryant, a former Miss America who lived in Miami Beach, called the original ordinance an effort to legitimize "a perverse and dangerous way of life."



Ruth Shack, 71, the county commissioner who introduced the language to extend protections to gays in the 1977 ordinance, said she was troubled that the issue had now resurfaced.



"I'm dismayed that the community has to go through this all over again," Ms. Shack said. "Substitute the word `Jews,' `blacks' or `women' for `sexual orientation' and eyebrows would raise and tempers would flare. All we're talking about is discrimination, and it's 25 years later."

skittles

.. for when I see you even for a moment, then power to speak another word fails me, instead my tongue freezes into silence... -- Sappho

[Pipsqueak]

God, this is so depressing. Gays are after our children? What the fuck ever.



At least the majority of Miami residents seem to see this for the drivel it is.

~~~~~~~~


"We're just ... stupid." -- Buffy, on Season 6
Check out my Buffy videos at http://www.pipsqueaky.com

Edited by: Pipsqueak at: 9/5/02 11:53:03 am

[tyche]

Baroness Young, for non-British people, was one of the biggest homophobes in the House of Lords.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2241234.stm

Section 28 is the ridiculous law in England and Wales which is supposed to prevent local education authorities from 'promoting' homophobia. In fact, it mostly prevents teachers from acting against homophobic bullying. There has never been a successful prosecution under the law - which was introduced in 1986 - which would tend to indicate to any sensible group of people that it isn't necessary. But then, the House of Lords generally aren't a sensible group of people.

[Willow] should have taken time out for a few minutes to slowly torture Xander for sounding like a Hallmark card on crack. - My fiance's review of the 'yellow crayon' speech.

[Kieli]

Oh...my..g-d. My home state has actually gone liberal on me! Whatever shall I do?! You know what this means.....methinks I'm going to go back to Lancaster County, PA and give them dang homophobes the what-fer

Love is tricky. It is never mundane or daily. You can never get used to it. You have to walk with it, then let it walk with you. You can never balk. It moves you like the tide. It takes you out to sea then lays you on the beach again. Today's struggling pain is the foundation for a certain stride through the heavens. You can run from it but you can never say no. It includes everyone."--Amy Tan "The Hundred Secret Senses"

[Rally]

Gays say Simon was for them at meeting His stance called same as in survey



Los Angeles -- In a critical meeting in his effort to court gay Republicans, Bill Simon expressed unqualified support for gay equality and the rights of domestic partners, say several members of the gay community who attended the meeting.



Simon's support for gay rights issues at the July 23 meeting was similar to positions the Republican candidate for governor took in answering a questionnaire later from a gay group, the Log Cabin Republicans -- positions he disavowed this week in the face of pressure from conservatives and the religious right.



Simon, whose campaign to unseat Democratic Gov. Gray Davis has struggled through a series of missteps, was so eager to win the backing of gay Republicans at the meeting that he noted the session had been arranged partly by one of his closest business associates, Alan Strasburg, who is gay.



Further, Simon told those at the meeting that a gay man had been one of his closest friends while he attended Williams College in Massachusetts. When the man later died of AIDS, Simon told the group, he ignored the hostility of some of his former classmates and proudly helped create a scholarship in the man's name.



"He was definitely sympathetic to our concerns and said his administration would reach out to the gay community and he would bring gays into his administration," said Brian Bennett, a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and the principal organizer of the gathering.



"He said he believes it's not a matter of choice, that you are born gay or lesbian. And when you believe that, it changes your whole perspective," Bennett said.



Frank Ricchiazzi, a co-founder of the national Log Cabin Republicans and another participant at the meeting, said Simon had even stressed that when he moved to New York as a young attorney, he had happily lived in a downtown neighborhood that was heavily gay.



"He tried to say he and his father had always been comfortable with gays and someone's sexual orientation was simply not an issue for him," Ricchiazzi said.



EMBARRASSING CONTRADICTION



The issue has become an embarrassment for Simon and has raised questions about his credibility since last week, when it was disclosed that he had backed a variety of gay rights' issues in his answers to the Log Cabin Republicans' questionnaire.



In his responses, Simon supported the idea of a statewide Gay Pride Day, said he would not challenge current laws on gay adoption and backed domestic partnership laws as long as they weren't based on sexual orientation.



But, after days of criticism from conservatives including Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, Simon said this week that he never saw the questionnaire and it didn't reflect his views on gay rights issues.



"There were statements in there that I just can't support," Simon told KRLA radio hosts Mark Larson and Larry Marino on Tuesday.



"My position hasn't changed," he said in San Jose on Wednesday, denying he was influenced by pressure from conservatives. "It's the same as it was last week, the same as it was a month ago."



But the answers on Simon's Log Cabin questionnaire "were almost verbatim what we had gotten at the meeting," said Jon Stordahl, president of the Orange County chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans and another participant. "He was comfortable and relaxed."



Mark Miner, Simon's campaign spokesman, confirmed that Simon had attended the meeting on gay issues but declined further comment.



The meeting was organized by Bennett with the assistance of Strasburg, who is the manager of the Los Angeles office of William E. Simon & Sons, Simon's family investment firm. Simon worked in the Los Angeles office before taking a leave of absence to campaign for governor.



THE MEETING



The meeting took place in the company's West Los Angeles offices and was attended by gay Democrats as well as Republicans.



Simon was joined by his wife, Cindy, campaign consultant Sal Russo and several other campaign aides.



Several of those involved said Simon had stopped short of endorsing new laws that would permit same-sex marriages, but he unequivocally offered support for domestic rights laws and said he would recruit gays for his administration if he won the race.



His later efforts to distance himself from at least some of those positions has dismayed most of those who were at the meeting, but many also admitted they were not surprised given the power of conservatives and the religious right in the state Republican Party.



"I think that Bill's heart is in the right place," said Strasburg, who has worked for Simon's family investment firm for nine years.



Ricchiazzi said the Log Cabin Republicans had purposely given the Simon campaign time to mull over the questionnaire in an effort to avoid problems with conservatives.



"We did everything correct in trying to give them all the opportunities to analyze what was sent and to call us, but they never called us," he said.



E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.

------------




Well officially, of course, I have to say that I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Dumbsaint]

Quote:

---

God, this is so depressing. Gays are after our children? What the fuck ever.

---

I'm sitting here at work with tears in my eyes, not because I think this is depressing, but because I'm really moved that so many people outside of the gay community are loudly stepping forward out there in Florida to defend gay rights, human rights. People are getting it. As frustrating and depressing as the impetus for all of it may be, I look at it as one step back and two steps forward.

"It's not real. I mean, there are no vampires, there are no witches. Well, there are Wiccans, but they're not making out with Alyson, so..." -Amber Benson

[Elianna]

Bill Simon's opinion just seems to waver depending on who he's talking to.



On another note, from the LA Times,

"Another Hate Beating Reported"



LOS ANGELES

Another Hate Beating Reported

By ANDREW BLANKSTEIN and JESSICA GARRISON, TIMES STAFF WRITERS



A third man was attacked early Monday morning near the spot where a 33-year-old actor and a friend were beaten with a baseball bat and a metal pipe, Los Angeles County Sheriff's said Thursday.



Both incidents are being investigated as hate crimes, officials said.



Officials said the third victim made his report Thursday, after learning of the first attack, which left Treve Broudy in critical condition.



"It was the same night. The same street. The same exact MO," said Deputy Donald M. Mueller of the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station.



The third victim, whose name was not released, was walking near Hilldale Avenue and Cynthia Street about 1:30 a.m. when a car pulled up and two men jumped out, Mueller said.



The 35-year-old West Hollywood resident was struck in the back of the head before he could escape and run toward busy Santa Monica Boulevard. His assailants chased him and hit him again before they fled. He suffered large bruises on the back of his head, but did not seek medical help, Mueller said.



The third victim made the report Thursday as officials held a news conference to release a composite sketch of one of three men alleged to have participated in the beating of Broudy and a friend.



Meanwhile, outraged family members and a local business offered a reward of $35,000 for information leading to arrests in the beating of Broudy. And West Hollywood community officials announced unity marches tonight and Saturday night in response to the attacks.



Broudy's condition was upgraded to serious at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, four days after he and a friend were assaulted in the 8900 block of Cynthia about 12:20 a.m.



At a news conference Thursday, Sheriff Lee Baca called that crime an outrage and said the victims appeared to have been targeted because they were believed to be gay.



Sheriff's officials said that patrol deputies were actively searching for a 1987 or 1988 light brown or faded red, four-door Nissan.



The vehicle, authorities said, is described as having tinted rear windows and may have California license plates with the partial numbers 3SDO or 3SOU.



Sheriff's Det. John Kniest said the department was investigating the incident as a hate crime because of the location and timing of the attack, which took place just after Broudy and his friend had embraced.



Kniest said other evidence also pointed toward a hate crime, but he declined to release details. Mueller said the second attack was also being investigated as a hate crime.



In addition to the beating inflicted on Broudy, the attackers smashed two windows on Edward Lett's car and hit him on the arm as he sped away, Capt. Lynda Castro said.



Two witnesses driving by saw Broudy struck with a metal pipe and kicked. They flashed their lights and the attackers fled, sheriff's officials said.



"We want to show that the business owners and the residents--we're just not going to put up with this," said David Cooley, owner of the Abbey, a West Hollywood restaurant that put up $10,000 of the reward.



City officials plan to distribute copies of the sketch in West Hollywood bars this weekend.



Steve Martin, mayor pro tem of West Hollywood, said the attack left his community rattled and determined to do more to combat discrimination against homosexuals.



"It just really brings home the reality of some of the mindless hatred that hangs over our lives," said Martin, who is gay.

Cozy Moments will not be muzzled!
P.G. Wodehouse

[thuringwethil]

Just delurking to post this



From The Globe and Mail



Marriage definition discriminatory Quebec court rules

















Advertisement

















Canadian Press



Montreal — The opposite-sex definition of marriage is

discriminatory and unjustified under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a Quebec Superior Court judge ruled in a landmark decision rendered late Friday.



Justice Louise Lemelin echoed an Ontario court ruling in July that said that province's government had to register gay and lesbian marriages. Ontario Superior Court suspended that ruling for two years to give the federal government time to redefine the term marriage.



"The court has . . . sent the message loud and clear to Parliament: stop discriminating against same-sex couples and respect the Constitution," said John Fisher of the gay-rights lobby group Egale Canada, in a statement.



"We call on Parliament to act now in accordance with the court's decision and allow same-sex couples to marry. How long must Canadians in same-sex relationships wait for equality?"



Madam Justice Lemelin's ruling recognized that the 30-year relationship between plaintiffs Michael Hendricks and Rene LeBoeuf was already a marriage in everything but name.



Lawyers for the Montreal couple had argued that only their sexual orientation had caused them to be given different treatment under the law when it came to marriage.



Catholic and Protestant lobby groups argued that redefining marriage would threaten the institution and said it was clear that the architects of the Constitution intended the union to be between men and women.



But after reviewing jurisprudence pertaining to marriage and common law unions, as well as recent efforts to expand conjugal rights for gays and lesbians, Madam Justice Lemelin found that "the definition of marriage imposes a discriminatory distinction in excluding couples of the same sex."



She said that it would be simple to modify the wording of the Charter from saying marriage is between "a man and a woman" to read "between two persons."



But she left no doubt legislators would have to address the issue.



"The state has the benefit of mechanisms for consultation and diverse methods of easing the dialogue among Canadians," she said. "It can solicit expertise to illuminate [the issue]. Legislators must judge the impact of the changes in respect to social, religious and cultural values to better respond to needs."



Madam Justice Lemelin said she approved of the Ontario court's decision to give the government two years to act and said "the court prefers to leave the initiative to the legislators."



Last May, Quebec Justice Minister Paul Begin tabled a draft bill eliminating the heterosexual wording from the definition of marriage and allowing same-sex partnerships in civil unions, a special status just short of wedlock. Unlike marriages, which fall under federal jurisdiction, civil unions are a provincial responsibility.



A British Columbia judge ruled last October that while Canada discriminates against same-sex couples by refusing to allow them to marry, it is justified under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.



The Law Commission of Canada, in a study released in January, said restrictions on same-sex marriage are discriminatory and should be removed.



Two years ago, Parliament revised several laws to ensure same-sex couples have the same benefits and obligations as other common-law couples, but it excluded same-sex couples from legal marriage.



Many MPs continue to support restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.



If Quebec's legislation is passed, it will join Nova Scotia as the only provinces to recognize civil unions for gays and lesbians, though not marriage. Gay couples can adopt children in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta.



In a court proceeding last year, lawyers representing the federal government argued that if same-sex weddings are permitted, marriage as it is now known would be gone.

[urnofosiris]

Now that is a judge who understands the meaning of justice.

Quote:

---

Catholic and Protestant lobby groups argued that redefining marriage would threaten the institution and said it was clear that the architects of the Constitution intended the union to be between men and women.

---

I've seen that argument before. It is a statement not based in fact. It is easy to say this but could they also elaborate on *why* this would be a threat? In the Netherlands marriage has no longer been restricted to a man and a woman for over 2 years now and I still see heterosexual people are getting married and the world did *not* end.

--------------------

Tara: "uh Willow?"

Willow: "No dancing naked, huh?...It just won't be the same."

Tara: "That's all right, we can save it for later" ----From Wilderness, the newest WT comic written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

[drlloyd11]

This is appaling, and I cant beleave it is happing here. Silber is such a peice of crap...





story.news.yahoo.com/news...udent_club



At the request of the chancellor of Boston University, a support group for gay and lesbian high school students at the prestigious BU Academy was disbanded this week.



Chancellor John Silber feels that "it's not appropriate for a school, particularly one that begins at the lower end of the secondary level, to be getting involved in the sexuality of its students," university spokesman Kevin Carleton told the Boston Globe.



Two unnamed teachers at the academy, however, told the Globe that Silber had threatened to cut off funds if the academy's gay-straight alliance was not abolished.



State Sen. Cheryl Jacques, who is openly gay, criticized the move.



"It's misguided," she told the newspaper. "Gay-straight alliances are important organizations that help teach tolerance and prevent tragedies."



There are more than 800 schools in the United States that have gay-straight alliances, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).



Last week in Indiana, a U.S. district court judge ordered Franklin Central High School to reinstate its gay-straight alliance after students filed suit. The district plans to appeal the decision, and officials told the Indianapolis Star that the students who were interested in starting the club have since graduated.

[roamin]

this was in the NYT



September 7, 2002

Gay Group Banned at Boston School

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS





Filed at 1:08 p.m. ET





BOSTON (AP) -- The chancellor of Boston University ordered a support group for gay students at a college-run preparatory school to disband, saying he believes it encouraged premarital sex.



Chancellor John Silber gave the orders to the BU Academy headmaster James Tracy, who complied.



``We're not running a program in sex education,'' Silber told The Boston Globe. ``If they want that kind of program, they can go to Newton High School. They can go to public school and learn how to put a condom over a banana.''



The outspoken Silber, who ran for governor in 1990, said the student-organized group didn't belong at BU Academy. He said he wants the elite school for students grades 8 to 12 to focus on education.



``The last thing in the world we want to do is to introduce these children to the importance of premature sex,'' he said. He said children get messages about sex ``pounded'' into them ``from the time they're 6 years of age.''



Gay rights advocates reacted angrily, as did Newton North High School's gay-straight alliance adviser, Michael Quinlan.



``Our gay-straight alliance is not about teaching safer-sex practice, it's about providing a safe environment for any adolescent,'' Quinlan said. ``It's about acceptance, tolerance, and understanding differences.''



Statistics compiled by the Massachusetts Department of Education indicate that in the 1998-99 school year, 24 percent of gay students reported being threatened with a weapon and 20 percent reported being involved in fights that required medical attention.



``Mr. Silber doesn't understand that gay-straight alliances are not about sex education,'' said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the New York-based Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. ``They're about combating prejudice based on sexuality.''







Copyright The Associated Press | Privacy Policy

[skittles]

New York Times Book Review



'Middlesex': My Big Fat Greek Gender Identity Crisis

by Laura Miller --- NYTimes September 15, 2002



Even before she's born, Calliope Stephanides's gender is up for debate. Her parents, Milton and Tessie Stephanides of Detroit, want a girl, and a bachelor uncle convinces Milton, ostensibly on the authority of an article in Scientific American magazine, that if the couple have ''sexual congress'' 24 hours prior to ovulation ''the swift male sperm would rush in and die off. The female sperm, sluggish but more reliable, would arrive just as the egg dropped.'' Tessie complies, despite her worries that ''to tamper with something as mysterious and miraculous as the birth of a child was an act of hubris.'' Once Tessie is pregnant, Milton's mother, Desdemona -- a refugee with her husband, Lefty, from a Greek village on the slopes of Mount Olympus -- dangles a silver spoon tied to a string over the belly of her daughter-in-law and pronounces the child a boy. Her son storms in to protest the divination; the baby is a girl, he insists. ''It's science, Ma.''



They're both right, after a fashion. Callie will spend the 1960's and early 70's, the first years of her life, as the relatively unremarkable daughter of an entrepreneurial Greek-American family, only to discover at 14, in the office of a Manhattan physician, that she is a hermaphrodite -- or, more precisely, a pseudohermaphrodite, a sufferer of 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. ''To the extent that fetal hormones affect brain chemistry and histology, I've got a male brain,'' explains Cal, the man Callie decides to become after she learns the truth and the narrator of ''Middlesex,'' Jeffrey Eugenides's expansive and radiantly generous second novel. ''But I was raised as a girl.''



Eugenides's first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), was a dreamy, slender book about the gulf in understanding between the adolescent boys in a Michigan suburb and the five daughters of a strict Roman Catholic couple living in their neighborhood. The boys fill that gulf with romantic obsession, a beast that thrives in a vacuum, and the girls, stricken with a fatal loneliness, die by their own hands like a bevy of unlucky fairy tale princesses. ''Middlesex'' may be an entirely different sort of book -- it's longer, more discursive and funnier, for a start -- but it's equally preoccupied with rifts. There's the gap between male and female, obviously, but also between Greek and WASP, black and white, the old world and the new, the silver spoon and the sluggish sperm. Finally, there is the tug of war between destiny and free will -- an age-old concern of Greek storytellers, as every college freshman learns, reborn in the theories advanced by evolutionary psychology.



Evolutionary psychology, at least in its popular incarnation -- which seems to get more popular every day -- keeps chipping away at the garden-variety humanism espoused by most novelists. That's why it's surprising so few of them (at least within the genre of literary fiction) have bothered to take notice of it. Viewed through a sociobiological lens, infidelity, the novel's favorite meat, is transformed from the stuff of betrayal and moral failing to the mere playing out of a Darwinian reproductive imperative; despair springs from an inherited defect in the regulation of neurochemicals, not from an existential apprehension of the absurdity of the human condition. The tangled parks and gardens that have long been the novelist's stamping grounds are being bulldozed to make way for sleek, sterile industrial complexes where, in cataloging each molecule in the human genome, scientists may ultimately be able to tell us which gene caused Anna Karenina to cheat and gave Oliver Twist the nerve to ask for more gruel.



Cal isn't a faithful adherent of either the nature or the nurture camp; he eventually runs away to avoid undergoing surgery and hormone treatments at the hands of a doctor who thinks that 14 years of living as a girl must count more than the male identity Cal wants to embrace. Eugenides, after all, is an artist, not a polemicist, and the truth about what shapes us may never be settled. ''Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome,'' Cal vamps in the book's opening pages. (''Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too.'') By mimicking an ancient author equally preoccupied by the tension between preordained fate and self-determination, Cal telegraphs a very modern question: Is ''Middlesex'' -- or any novel, for that matter -- the story of its hero/ine or the history of a particular configuration of DNA? As Cal -- sometimes -- chooses to tell it, the novel describes the ''roller coaster ride of a single gene through time,'' how it found its twin in the mingled gametes of Desdemona and Lefty, who, it turns out, are brother and sister as well as husband and wife, able with their freshly minted American identities to consummate a union they could never have gotten away with back in their home village. Practically the whole first half of ''Middlesex,'' like a doorstop biography run amok, takes place before Cal is even born.



If all this makes ''Middlesex'' sound like a novel of ideas, well, it is; but it's several other things too. It's a saga that takes Desdemona and Lefty from the burning of Smyrna through Detroit's purgatorial assembly lines, the shadow economy of Prohibition and the founding of the family's legit businesses, first a bar and then a restaurant. The Stephanideses career through the Depression, World War II, the cataclysmic Detroit race riots of 1967, the counterculture, Watergate, the energy crisis.



''Middlesex'' is also a coming-of-age story, albeit an exceptionally fraught one, as it gradually dawns on the adolescent Callie that there's something seriously odd about her body -- and that she's besotted with a female classmate. There's a bit of road novel as well, when, enlightened as to the actual state of his chromosomes, Cal hitchhikes to -- where else? -- San Francisco. And, finally, there's the sliver of a love story, as the now 41-year-old Cal, ensconced in a safely nomadic State Department career, gingerly courts a Japanese-American photographer, wondering if he can trust her with the surprise between his legs.



Eugenides pitches a big tent, but one of the delights of ''Middlesex'' is how soundly it's constructed, with motifs and characters weaving through the novel's various episodes, pulling it tight. The young Armenian doctor who saves Lefty in Smyrna and sees his own children butchered by Turkish soldiers becomes the aged, bleary-eyed family retainer who overlooks Callie's unusual anatomy. Middlesex, the modern house the Stephanideses manage to purchase in the exclusive suburb of Grosse Pointe (it's too peculiar and unfashionable to sell to WASPs) is ''like communism, better in theory than reality.'' Which makes it also like the blank-slate notion of gender identity advanced by the doctor who wants to drag Cal under the knife.



And while some of the odds and ends Eugenides tosses into the mix (a disquisition on Michael Dukakis, a supporting character's bizarre connection to the Nation of Islam) don't quite integrate, far more often than not the novel feels rich with treats, including some handsome writing. When the author describes the pulchritudinous teenage Desdemona's braids as ''not delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver's tail,'' for example, the metaphor has an elemental eroticism worthy of Hardy.



Because it's long and wide and full of stuff, ''Middlesex'' will be associated by some readers with books by David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen, brilliant members of Eugenides's cohort. Those writers, however, have more satirical, even self-lacerating inclinations; there can be an air of penance to their work (as there is to ''The Virgin Suicides''). Here, at least, Eugenides is sunnier; the book's length feels like its author's arms stretching farther and farther to encompass more people, more life. His narrator is a soul who inhabits a liminal realm, a creature able to bridge the divisions that plague humanity, endowed with ''the ability to communicate between the genders, to see not with the monovision of one sex but in the stereoscope of both.'' That utopian reach makes ''Middlesex'' deliriously American; the novel's patron saint is Walt Whitman, and it has some of the shagginess of that poet's verse to go along with the exuberance. But mostly it is a colossal act of curiosity, of imagination and of love.



Laura Miller is an editor at Salon.com.

skittles

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby. -- April Rain Song, Langston Hughes

[kyraroc]

Of all people, Bill O'Reilly of The O'Reilly Factor has expressed his support of gay adoption, at least when the alternative is foster care hell - much to the horror of usual fans of his show like the Concerned Women of America. Good for him.



Strange bedfellows . . .



--- KR

[Rally]

S.F. gay-book slasher put on probation

Vandalism charge also a hate crime



Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, September 19, 2002

Click to View Click to View



The hate crime was not book burning, it was book slashing -- 607 books,



to be exact.



For nearly a year, someone lurked in the stacks at San Francisco's Main Library and the Chinatown branch, vandalizing books. Almost always they were volumes on gay and lesbian subjects, some of them out of print and hard to replace.



Some books had cat eyes cut into the covers or pages. Others were defaced, then stuffed with Christian religious material. Sometimes, the attacker would insert the torn-off covers of romance novels.



"It was really kind of insane," said Rachel MacLachlan, head of library security. "It was hard to try to figure out who was behind this."



Finally, a librarian who had staked out the stacks on her day off caught John Perkyns just as he was returning a freshly slashed gay history book to the reference shelves at the Main Library. On Wednesday, Perkyns pleaded no contest in San Francisco Superior Court to one count of felony vandalism with a hate-crime enhancement.



He will be placed on five years' probation, will undergo counseling, must stay away from all city libraries and will pay $9,600 in restitution to the library system.



Just why the 48-year-old Perkyns, a security guard at an apartment building,



did what he did isn't known. By all accounts Perkyns is a mild-mannered man, and he had no criminal record until now.



HORMEL CENTER HIT HARD



Library employees first noticed the slashings during the summer of 2000. About 200 of the damaged volumes were in the Hormel Center, a collection of works of gay and lesbian literature that opened in 1996, thanks to a gift by philanthropist James Hormel.



Not all the vandalism consisted of slashings. Sometimes the culprit would hide books in the compartment at the base of the shelves, MacLachlan said. Among the volumes stashed from view were books on the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality.



Other literature was found stuffed into books, she said, including torn-up Catholic missals and copies of the gay newspaper the Bay Area Reporter.



The vandal's antipathy toward things gay didn't stop at homosexuality. He damaged books by Gay Talese and the historian Peter Gay, and he even defaced a book of poetry by Mark Levine titled "Enola Gay," after the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.



The vandal also damaged seemingly unrelated books on such subjects as weddings.



"He was all over our collection," MacLachlan said. "He hit a fun photo book for adults on pigs."



The book, "The Complete Pig," was meticulously cut up, with the behinds of the pigs snipped from the photos on the cover.



"It was very difficult to figure out what was going on in his head," MacLachlan said.



WHAT MADE VANDAL TICK?



She said librarians and volunteers had devoted hours trying to figure out what made the vandal tick and watching for him to strike. Perkyns was caught in April 2001 by a librarian who saw him stashing a pink-colored volume titled "Becoming Visible -- An Illustrated History of Lesbian and Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America" underneath a shelf.



He had a razor blade in his jacket pocket and the ripped pages from a book about lesbianism, as well as the torn-off pink cover of a romance novel, "The Tarnished Lady."



A police search of his apartment in the Tenderloin last October turned up evidence from vandalized books. Religious writings were tacked on the walls.



"He's very much sort of an unassuming man, sort of quiet,"



MacLachlan said. "It was kind of frightening to see someone with that kind of anger."



Prosecutor Sam Totah said he didn't know what motivated Perkyns. "He has an agenda," Totah said. "It could be religiously based, but it just seems to be focused on gays and lesbians.



"He's a very odd man," Totah said.



Outside court Wednesday, Perkyns declined to comment. His attorney, Stephen Naratil, said his client is a deeply religious man but would not comment on the prosecution's theory of a religious motive.



'HE RISKED GOING TO PRISON'



"We reached a favorable agreement for both sides," Naratil said. "He risked going to prison. There was some evidence against him, obviously."



After leaving court, Perkyns wrote out a $2,000 check, the first installment of his restitution. Police Inspector Milanda Moore, who worked the case for two years, brought it to the library.



"They were so happy," she said. "They were kissing the check."



James Mason, materials manager for the hard-hit general collections section on the Main Library's third floor, said some of the damaged volumes might not be replaced because they were single copies of out-of-print books.



"It's a loss," Mason said. "My opinion is the $9,600 wouldn't cover the replacement of 600 books."



E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.

------------




Well officially, of course, I have to say that I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Dumbsaint]

Sometimes people scare me. Lots.

[jeepchick scully]

Why in the world would someone go through so much trouble to do something of that sort? I thought that people were getting MUCH better with accepting gays and lesbians but I guess there will always be people who need to cause problems...

[semiramis]

www.ssonet.com.au/showart...cleID=1861

25 steps to equality





NSW attorney-general Bob Debus



Parliament due to approve same sex law reforms.

By Stacy Farrar

The gay and lesbian community was due to pick up a swag of new rights last night with the state government approving changes to 25 pieces of discriminatory legislation.



Dubbed the “missing pieces” legislation, the 25 Acts of parliament were left over from earlier efforts to bring state laws up to speed for same-sex and de facto couples.



When the Star went to press, both the Labor and Liberal parties were due to support the changes.



On the Labor side, attorney-general Bob Debus brought the Miscellaneous Acts Amen-dment (Relation-ships) Bill before the NSW Lower House last week. He was due to add one minor amendment to include a tax exemption for same-sex couples.



Shadow attorney-general Chris Hartcher told the Star before the debate the Liberal Party had agreed to support the changes, but would move an amendment to protect the term “spouse”.



“We are looking for a separate definition for people who are married to each other. We still support granting rights for homosexual people – this won’t affect that,” he said.



The controversy over the use of the term “spouse” emerged when the debate was previously heard in the state Upper House.



Reverend Fred Nile from the Christian Democrats moved an amendment to the legislation during its first hearing, seeking to separate the term “spouse” from de facto and same-sex relationships.



“Spouse”, Nile argued, was a word which recognised the higher status afforded to married couples.



The Liberal upper house members supported Nile’s amendment, which was eventually lost.



Following that debate, the Sydney Anglican Diocese issued a statement calling for the term “spouse” to be maintained as a separate term for traditionally married couples.



Sydney Diocesan secretary Mark Payne said while the church had no opposition to giving “similar” rights to those in same-sex or de facto relationships, its members were concerned the redefinition of the word “spouse” ignored the sanctity of marriage.



“The policy of the Bill could easily have been achieved without compromising the traditional and common meaning of the term ‘spouse’,” Payne said in the press statement.



“Our concern is that this legislation is the first step to change by stealth the community understanding of the marriage relationship, and ultimately to erode marriage so that it is generally seen as equal to de facto relationships and same-sex unions.”



Payne promised the church faithful would “carefully monitor” the debate in the lower house.



The bipartisan support for the “missing pieces” changes has also raised questions about other discriminatory pieces of legislation which were not included.



Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby co-convenor Andrew Pickles said there were glaring holes. These included 11 Acts of Parliament which could have been changed without any extra angst for the government.



“There seems to be no reason for leaving some of these things out. At the end of the day it’s the same type of thing, it’s about having the same change in definition of the word ‘spouse’,” he told the Star.



Pickles said the most obvious omission was the Anti-Discrimination Act: “At the moment it’s unlawful to discriminate against some one on the grounds of their marital status. Changing the Act to include people living in same-sex or de facto relationships would have been simple.”



The 11 omissions did not include three perceived as more difficult to change – the Adoption Act, to allow co-parents adoption rights, the Industrial Relations Act and the Crimes Act, which would equalise the age of consent for gay men.



Pickles said the Lobby would continue to push for equal rights in those areas left unchanged.



Changes to the Crimes Act, which would see an equal age of consent for gay men in NSW, have gone to an upper house committee and will be debated after next year’s election.



After the first debate, Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said changing the missing pieces legislation would not be the end of homophobia in NSW politics.



“Other homophobic stains remain on the NSW statute books – the Adoption Act still prohibits same-sex couples from adopting, and the Anti-Discrimination Act still allows private schools and church organisations to practise homophobic discrimination,” Rhiannon said.



“The government is to be congratulated on the Miscellaneous Acts Bill, but it is only one step in the right direction.”

[urnofosiris]

Quote:

---

By all accounts Perkyns is a mild-mannered man, and he had no criminal record until now.

---

Hmm yeah, just like Norman Bates. He even targeted the word gay, someone should tell him it means happy as well.

--------------------

Tara: "uh Willow?"

Willow: "No dancing naked, huh?...It just won't be the same."

Tara: "That's all right, we can save it for later" ----From Wilderness, the newest WT comic written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden

[skittles]

from the NYTIMES Campaign News Column



G.O.P. Oregon Senator Has a Gay-Friendly Campaign

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE



George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism never embraced protection of gays from hate crimes. But Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, is expanding the definition of compassion in the Republican lexicon.



In what appears to be a first for a Senate candidate, Senator Smith is promoting his candidacy by advertising his support for gay issues. His newest 30-second commercial features a testimonial from Judy Shepard, above, the mother of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old who was killed in Wyoming in 1998.



"My son Matthew was viciously murdered simply because he was gay," Ms. Shepard says in the commercial, which is filled with soft-focus images of her son.



"Gordon Smith stands with me in the fight against hate," she says. "I would consider Gordon to be a good friend because he's very compassionate. Matthew would have liked Gordon a lot."



Gay rights groups say the advertisement, produced by Chris Mottolas of Philadelphia, appears to be the first by any statewide candidate to mention gay issues in a positive way. Senator Smith plans to show it to his Republican colleagues at lunch on Tuesday.



John Easton, Mr. Smith's chief of staff, said the campaign wanted to convey that Mr. Smith was an independent Republican.

(end of story)

skittles

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby. -- April Rain Song, Langston Hughes

[semiramis]

Great article here

www.smh.com.au/articles/2...34419.html

Out on a TV near you

By David Dale

September 23 2002

Gay activists in the United States are complaining that since September 11 last year, there has been a marked decline in the number of gay and lesbian characters portrayed on television. Australia, by contrast, maintains its pioneering tradition of presenting gay people as everyday characters in mainstream viewing.



Gay milestones

• 1974 Joe Hasham as Don Finlayson in Number 96

• 1981 Maggie Kirkpatrick as Joan "The Freak" Ferguson in Prisoner

• 1994 Libby Tanner as Zoe Marshall in Pacific Drive

• 1995 Damian Rice as Dr Martin Dempsey in GP

• 1996 Heath Ledger as Snowy Bowles in Sweat

• 1997 Tony Scanlon as Helen Blakemore in Water Rats

• 1998 David Walters as Wazza in Blue Heelers

• 1999 Jake Blundell as Tony Hurst in All Saints

• 2001 Spencer McLaren as Richie Blake and David Tredinnick as Simon Trader in Secret Life of Us

• 2002 Tammy McIntosh as Dr Charlotte Beaumont in All Saints; Steven Rooke as Nick Greenhill in Always Greener

-------------------------------------------------------

The land that introduced the world's first sympathetic gay soap character - the lawyer Don Finlayson in Number 96, in 1973 - has seen at least 10 gay and lesbian continuing characters on prime-time TV this year.



This month alone, we've seen two girl-on-girl kisses - on Seven's All Saints and Nine's Stingers. Same-sex clinches are so common on Australian TV these days, they no longer make news.



In the US, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation claimed last week that "the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters in lead, supporting or recurring roles on network TV" has dropped from 20 last year to just seven this season.



"The diversity of the gay community cannot be conveyed through seven characters, especially when all of those characters are white," said Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the alliance.

He said the networks imagined that Americans wanted safe, predictable storylines because they had been unsettled by events in the past year.



"I believe they are programming for comfort, and that's very, very narrow programming, and the gay and lesbian community, like all other minorities, don't bring a lot of comfort in the eyes of programmers," Mr Seomin said.



The major US shows featuring gay or lesbian characters this season are ER, Will and Grace, NYPD Blue, Buffy, Dawson's Creek and MDs.



MDs is a new hospital drama that has been bought by Seven to be shown here next year. All the others are part of Australia's regular TV diet.



In addition, Always Greener (7) has the troubled teenager Nick Greenhill; The Secret Life of Us (10) has barman Simon Trader and actor Richie Blake; and All Saints (7) has Dr Charlotte Beaumont, who last Tuesday kissed nurse Bron Craig.



Three weeks ago Detective Christina DiChiera had a lesbian kiss on Nine's Stingers, though this may have been part of an undercover operation. Teen soap Home and Away (7) has dealt with lesbian and gay relationships in recent months, but, showing at 7pm, it cannot use those words.



SBS is showing the US version of Queer As Folk, the English gay drama originally shown here only on pay TV. Nine's Sex and the City and Six Feet Under regularly deal with homosexuality. And Ten's The Simpsons features Waylon Smithers, executive assistant to Montgomery Burns.



A Seven spokesman said yesterday its high number of sympathetic gay characters was not the result of a specific policy but "just good luck". "Channel 7's dramas contain many real-life issues including, from time to time, people's sexuality. These storylines are handled in different ways depending on their context - just as they are in real life. They reflect the diversity of Australian life."

[GigglesNSwing]

Hey KR -

I agree a (very suprising) kudos to Bill O'Rielly,

and indeed strange bedfellows.

- KR here 2

[skittles]

Sorry this is late, but I didn't see it until today.... not that it is good news, because it is terrible news, but...



from the New York Times



Attacks on Gays Upset Los Angeles Suburb

By CHARLIE LeDUFF



WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Sept. 24 — A heavy worry has settled over the normally carefree streets here after a gay man was attacked earlier this week by two men swinging a baseball bat and a metal pipe. The police say they believe the motivation for the beating was homophobia.



The attack is especially upsetting to residents as it comes on the heels of two other assaults on gay men this month. In one of those cases, a young actor was left in critical condition with a swollen brain and unable to breathe without a machine's help.



The authorities believe that the same two men, who remain at large, delivered the beatings.



"We're doing everything we can to find them," said Deputy Sheriff Richard Pena of Los Angeles County. "Let me assure the citizens: these men are going to be caught."



The latest attack came early Sunday morning, when two men jumped out of a car and beat a 55-year-old gay man as his back was turned, the authorities said. The man, whose name has not been released, was rescued by a cab driver who chased the attackers before speeding the victim away. The injured man checked himself into a local hospital and has since been released.



The beating happened near the busy intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Palm Avenue, the site of two attacks on Sept. 2. In one case, Treve Broudy, an actor, was left bloody and unconscious on the sidewalk. A friend of his escaped serious injury.



The police said Mr. Broudy was hugging the friend good-bye when two men pummeled him from behind.



Police patrols have been doubled in West Hollywood, and undercover officers are working the streets of this two-square-mile community, home to sizable gay, lesbian and Jewish populations. Rewards of more than $80,000 have been posted for information leading to an arrest.



Still, some residents don't feel safe. "I can't believe they had that much gall to come back and do it twice," said Stan Delfs, a retired school teacher, as he waited for his food order at a lunch counter near the scene of the attacks. "You stop and think now. I think twice about going out after 10 and certainly not after midnight anymore."



The fact that anyone would come to the heart of a gay community to find people to hurt is part of a wider, more disturbing trend in Los Angeles, where gay and lesbians are increasingly the victims of beatings and harassment, said Rebecca Isaacs, interim executive director of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center.



According to statistics kept by the center, 63 gay people reported in 2000 that they were victims of violence simply because of their sexual orientation. The number this year has already reached 95, the center said.



"In these kinds of hate crimes the virulence is very high," Ms. Isaacs said. "The level of brutality has to do with fear and loathing. They go after someone because of their sexuality and they do it with bats and metal pipes."



West Hollywood is a clean and well-kept city that prides itself on its laissez-faire attitude. It is a town of 36,000 tucked between Beverly Hills and Hollywood, and the population swells to 100,000 on weekend evenings because of its nightclubs and other attractions.



"Intolerance is not what we're about," said Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a former mayor of West Hollywood.



Nine days ago, two Jewish men were accosted by a group of Muslims outside a West Hollywood nightclub. The mob beat the two with feet and fists while chanting, "Kill the Jews," the police said. The authorities say they believe that it was a rivalry between two groups of Persians, many of whom live in the area. Two men were charged with assault with a deadly weapon.



But the buzz around town today focused on the gay-bashings. There are reminders everywhere — on the streets and in the shop windows. The wanted posters are inescapable: Suspect No. 1, perhaps 5 feet 5 inches tall, wears a nylon cap. Suspect No. 2 is more than 6 feet tall and wears his hair in cornrows. They drive a 1987 or 1988 Nissan with tinted windows, either brown or faded red.



Though some residents are anxious, others are defiant. "I'm from New York, so let them come after me," said Joe Carino, 25, a muscular bartender at The Abbey, a bar and restaurant popular with gay men. "In fact, I walk extra slow now."

skittles

Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby. -- April Rain Song, Langston Hughes

[GigglesNSwing]

U.S. & the futile attempt to legislate morality:

Bored now.

Imagine the same energy applied to peace, world hunger, disease irradication, etc.

Brilliant!

[tyche]

Story from The Guardian:

www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,802853,00.html

Quote:

---

Gay rights protest at Mobo awards



Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent

Wednesday October 2, 2002

The Guardian



Gay rights activists picketed last night's Music of Black Origin awards in London in protest at the nomination of three singers whose songs advocate the incineration of homosexuals.

Capelton, Elephant Man and TOK - all nominated for best reggae act - have become notorious for lyrics that urge the burning, shooting and battering to death of gays.

In the event, none of the three made it to the winner's rostrum at the London Arena. Instead, after taking the £20,000 Mercury Prize last month, it was again Ms Dynamite's night. The 21-year-old songwriter, known to her Scottish mother in Archway, north London, as Niomi McLean-Daley, took best single, best new UK act and best newcomer, a relatively modest showing given her stellar talent. Tellingly, her music does much to subvert misogynist rap stereotypes - her lyrics even have a pop at R&B's obsession with fashion and conspicuous consumption.

For once female artists dominated the awards, reflecting the way new black British music has emerged from the underground scene to become a worldbeater in the past two years. Mis-Teeq won the Daily Telegraph best garage act, a musical form until now inseparably linked with guns and gangsta violence, while Norah Jones, the daughter of the Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar, took the jazz award.

Two of the prizes were posthumous. Aaliyah, the American killed when her plane crashed into the Caribbean, won best video. There was a lifetime achievement award for Lisa Lopes, killed in a car crash in Honduras in April, where she was doing voluntary work for a children's charity.

The cult popularity of controversial reggae stars such as Capelton has put broadcasters and record companies in Britain in something of a fix, with the BBC - which was forced last month to withdraw his songs from its websites - arguing that such dancehall hits had almost become "unofficial anthems for some people in Jamaica".

Capelton is regarded by many critics as a major musical figure, the heir to the legacy of Bob Marley. He is also one of the leaders of a new wave of fundamentalist burn-again Rastafarianism, Bobo Dread - known as "the Jamaican Taliban" to their detractors - that is sweeping the island. While Marley's militancy was softened by a mellow ganja vibe, Capelton's concerts are more like religious revivalist meetings with fans holding hundreds of burning aerosol cans in the air.

Capelton insists the fires he sings about throwing gay men into are metaphorical allusions to cleansing and purity. "Is not really a physical fire. Is really a spiritual fire, and a wordical fire, and a musical fire," he said. "But people get it on the wrong term. People get confused ... We come to burn for injustice and inequality and kill indignity and exploitation."

But his explanations did not wash with Peter Tatchell, of the pressure group, OutRage!, who organised the protest outside the London Arena.

"I hope other Mobo award nominees will publicly dissociate themselves from the homophobia of TOK, Capelton and Elephant Man. It would be great if some Mobo winners used their acceptance speeches to make it clear that racism and homophobia have no place in popular music," he said.

---

[Willow] should have taken time out for a few minutes to slowly torture Xander for sounding like a Hallmark card on crack. - My fiance's review of the 'yellow crayon' speech.

[Salamaslove]

This sounds very similar to the flap that Janet Jackson got for recording w/Beenie Man who has been vocal in his dislike of gays--it was also pretty hypocritical of her considering gay men make up a huge portion of her fan base.



I also find it interesting because of how much the media focused on Eminem and his lyrics--but these artists are not being given the same flap for saying the same things.. Is it because we don't expect this from white men? Is it because the media doesn't acknowledge the fact that, respectively, these people are as famous as he is in their own countries and internationally? Or is it because that white youth aren't listening to those performers as much as Eminem? The inherant racism of this just kills me..

[tyche]

The Mayor of Paris is openly gay, and he was stabbed by a crazed homophobe this weekend:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2305849.stm

[sexy bexy]

I am a 24 yr old lesbian hip/hop nu-metal fan. I'm also an English Lang graduate, who is highly interested in the effect language has on society and our perceptions.

I have never bought an eminem record (his music is actually banned in Sheffield university students' union) but on the scene I hang out in, his music is pretty much unavoidable. So in the past I've tried to suspend judgement on him, you know, "It's all just to sell records, no one believes that sh*t anyway", stuff like that.

However, I saw an article in Kerrang! magazine about his new book explaining his lyrics (called "blonde" something). In the vague hope that this wasn't just a shameless cash in, I read the review. The reviewer drew attention to one line in particular that seemed to sum it/him up well, "I'm not homophobic, just don't bring that sh*t near me".

Can a man who makes a living manipulating words and their meanings, really be SO unaware of the message he is sending out? Or is he just AMAZINGLY stupid?



Incidentally, here in England, there's currently a new tv advertisement out designed to recruit new teachers, which millions of pounds were probably spent on. There's a line that goes something like, "Could you explain this?" and the shot is of an elderly man with a number tattooed on his arm with a triangle underneath. Was this a mark used to designate gay men in concentration camps?

If so, no we bloody well couldn't explain it in a school lesson, thanks to Section 28, which bans any discussion/acknowledgement about/of homosexuality in the classroom!

[kyraroc]

"Was this a mark used to designate gay men in concentration camps?"



The pink triangle was used in the concentration camps, and I believe may even have had its origin there - it was the mark used to designate homosexual prisoners, much as the yellow six-pointed star was used to designate jewish prisoners.



Tattoos were also used to mark prisoners, so a tattooed triangle probably also represented a homosexual prisoner.



--- KR

Lost in Ecstacy