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Gender & Sexuality

MD Gov. Deval Patrick | Gay Marriage and the Right to Be Ordinary

Fri, 05/17/2013 - 17:04 — Dave Culver

 

"Nine years ago Friday, same-sex marriages started happening in Massachusetts, and the time since then has proved wonderfully unremarkable. The sky has not fallen. The earth has not opened to swallow us up." 

 

Gov. Deval Patrick, Washington (DC) Post

 

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

 

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signing H.3810, 'An Act Relative To Gender Identity,' in the Senate Reading Room at the State House on Thursday. (photo: Eric Haynes/Governor's Office)

May 16, 2013 | I had an uncle whose second or third wife nobody in my family liked. I don’t really know why, and I didn’t have an opinion of my own. Yet no one uttered a contrary word in their presence. We may have been poor folk on the South Side of Chicago, but we had a Victorian sense of decorum. It was generally understood both that my family disapproved and that my uncle and aunt’s marriage was nobody’s business but their own.

 

When I was 10, around the same time I was coming to understand my family’s attitude toward my uncle’s marriage, the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to prohibit blacks and whites from marrying. Now, that seems like another world ago. Interracial marriages are common today. Loving v. Virginia marked a seismic cultural shift. Yet what applied to my uncle’s marriage made sense here, too. Some things are private matters, nobody else’s business.

 

Full story…

Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality
Government & Politics

Military Sexual Assaults Spike Despite Efforts To Combat Epidemic

Fri, 05/10/2013 - 12:43 — Dave Culver

  • The report released Tuesday by Defense's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) follows the Sunday arrest of Lt. Col Jeffrey Krusinski, head of the Air Force SAPRO program, under allegations of sexual assault of a woman.
  • Film shows challenges of female veterans.

Molly O'Toole, Huffington Post

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed "disgust" Monday at the arrest of an Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Officer on Sunday on allegations of sexual assault. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

05/07/2013 | Sexual assaults occurred at an average of more than 70 per day in the United States military during 2012, according to an annual report released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Reports of sexual assault in the military rose during October 2011 through September 2012 by 6 percent from the prior year. A total of about 26,000 service members said they experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, nearly 7,000 more than in 2010, when about 19,300 members of the military reported inappropriate sexual contact.

Full story…

Related:

Film shows challenges of female veterans, Tom Wilemon, The Tennessean

  • Sue Downes, who served as a driver and gunner in Afghanistan, had both legs amputated below the knee after her Humvee hit landmines in 2005.
  • Stand with anti-war veteran Mike Prysner against right-wing attacks!

 

Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality
Peace & Nonviolence

Dave Granlund | Depressed teens / media.cagle.com

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 10:46 — Dave Culver

Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality

Gay teens starved, tortured, killed at camp to turn them into ‘men’

Sat, 05/04/2013 - 10:33 — Dave Culver

  • Game ranger course 'general' is on trial for murder, child abuse, neglect, and allegedly forcing teen to eat his own faces.
  • Honey, we’re praying for you

Joe Morgan, Gay Star News

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

29 April 2013 | Three ‘gay and effeminate’ teens have died after being starved, tortured and killed at a camp that promised to turn them into 'men'.

A picture of Raymond Buys, 15, taken in April 2011 showed a skeletal, emaciated figure fighting for his life.

Just 10 weeks before, the teen’s parents signed him up to the Echo Wild Game Rangers training course in South Africa in perfect health.

Full story...

Related:

Honey, we’re praying for you, Aaron Hartzler, Salon 

  • My parents can't handle the fact that I'm gay, and we'll never agree on religion. But I've found acceptance anyway.
  • Bayli takes the fight against bullying to Washington

 

Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality
Youth & Education

Honey, we’re praying for you

Fri, 05/03/2013 - 19:22 — Dave Culver

  • My parents can't handle the fact that I'm gay, and we'll never agree on religion. But I've found acceptance anyway.
  • Bayli takes the fight against bullying to Washington.

Aaron Hartzler, Salon

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(Credit: Lincoln Rogers via Shutterstock)

Saturday, March 30, 2013 | “Honey, we’re praying for you.”

This is how my mother ends every email she sends me. Typed in italics and peppered with smiling emoticons, Mom’s electronic missives are as precious as she is — as earnest as the Empty Tomb Cake she bakes each spring on Good Friday. An edible replica of the cave where Jesus was buried after dying on the cross for our sins, the Empty Tomb Cake is the standard passion week centerpiece in my childhood home. It is frosted in gray, surrounded by a field of green coconut grass, and finished off with a Hostess Ding-Dong as the stone that was rolled away. On Saturday night, after everyone goes to bed, Mom steals into the kitchen under cover of night and rolls the Hostess Ding-Dong away from the door of the Empty Tomb Cake, then retouches the frosting. On Easter morning Jesus has risen — right there in the middle of the kitchen table.

Full story…

Related:

Bayli takes the fight against bullying to Washington, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 

  • She needs your help.
  • Catholic Church ramps up opposition to Minnesota anti-bullying bill.

 

 
Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality
Religion & Spirituality

Bayli takes the fight against bullying to Washington.

Tue, 04/23/2013 - 18:54 — Dave Culver

  • She needs your help.
  • Catholic Church ramps up opposition to Minnesota anti-bullying bill.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

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Bayli Silberstein is taking her fight against LGBT bullying from her middle school in Leesburg, Florida all the way to Washington D.C. She fought for over a year to form a Gay-Straight Alliance club at her school to address the hateful bullying she and her friends faced. Tens of thousands of ACLU supporters around the country stood with her, and now she has real hope that she'll be able to form her club by the end of the year.

But we can't be there every time a student is bullied and the school does nothing. We need to make change at a bigger level, for the countless students who are the targets of hateful discrimination and violent harassment just because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. That's why Bayli and the ACLU are fighting for the Student Non-Discrimination Act, which would make clear that hatred has no place in the classroom. The bipartisan bill would ban discrimination of LGBT students in our nation’s public schools and require schools to take this harassment and bullying seriously.

Bayli is sharing her story with the media and members of Congress in Washington to build support for the Student Non-Discrimination Act, but she can't do it alone. 

Please sign the petition to urge members of Congress to co-sponsor the bill today—for Bayli and every student like her.

Full story…

Related:

Catholic Church ramps up opposition to Minnesota anti-bullying bill, Beth Hawkins, MinnPost

  • “All we are asking folks to do is to make sure a school setting is safe and allows a child to learn,” Senator [Scott] Dibble" — a Minneapolis DFLer and the chief author of both the same-sex marriage bill and Safe Schools said. “Why should it be so hard to make sure kids are not singled out for harassment?
  • “The archdiocese has done nothing to sit down and problem-solve what would be best for kids,” Dibble concluded. “The truth is bullying is a problem we have to solve. It happens every day and it is a real problem.”

 

 

Section(s): 
Activism & Organizing
Gender & Sexuality

Adam Zyglis | Slippery Slope / media.cagle.com

Tue, 04/23/2013 - 16:51 — Dave Culver

Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality

Catholic Church ramps up opposition to Minnesota anti-bullying bill

Tue, 04/23/2013 - 16:33 — Dave Culver

  • “All we are asking folks to do is to make sure a school setting is safe and allows a child to learn,” Senator [Scott] Dibble" — a Minneapolis DFLer and the chief author of both the same-sex marriage bill and Safe Schools -- said. “Why should it be so hard to make sure kids are not singled out for harassment?
  • “The archdiocese has done nothing to sit down and problem-solve what would be best for kids,” Dibble concluded. “The truth is bullying is a problem we have to solve. It happens every day and it is a real problem.”

Beth Hawkins, MinnPost

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has come out strongly against proposed anti-bullying legislation, linking it to the push to legalize same-sex marriage. MinnPost file photo by Beth Hawkins

4/22/2013 | Calling it an extension of the push to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota, the Catholic Church is urging parishoners to call on lawmakers to reject an anti-bullying law.

According to a column in the Catholic Spirit, the official publication of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the proposed Safe Schools legislation is an “Orwellian nightmare” that would “usurp parental rights” and create “re-education camps.”

Full story…

Section(s): 
Gender & Sexuality
Religion & Spirituality

Women Leaders in the Great Turning

Fri, 04/12/2013 - 13:26 — Dave Culver

This week we celebrate women who are leaders because we see the rise of women as a positive sign and we celebrate the growing culture of resistance which includes all people who seek peace, justice and sustainability.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Occupy Washington, DC

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

April 12, 2013 | As is true each week when we report on resistance movements, there is a lot going on, too much to report in one summary.  One common denominator we noted this week that we highlight here is the prevalence of female leadership on many fronts.

We point this out, because we see leadership by women as an essential element in the creation of a society that is capable of sustaining a peaceful and just existence. As Riane Eisler documents in The Chalice and the Blade, the most repressive and violent periods of human history correspond with times when women were dominated and traditional feminine values of caring and empowering were viewed as weak.

Full story…

 

Section(s): 
Books & Liturature
Gender & Sexuality

Ensure all Minnesotans have the freedom to marry!

Fri, 04/05/2013 - 13:34 — Dave Culver

Help the ACLU of MN protect civil liberties

ACLU of Minnesota 

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of all reader supported Evergreene Digest readers like you. Thank you!

All Minnesotans deserve the right to have their loving, committed relationship recognized both publicly and privately. In order for that to happen we need to urge our legislators to pass SF925 / HF1054, which would grant the freedom to marry to same sex couples.

Take action today and tell your legislators to Vote YES for the marriage bills!  Use the editable form, but please include your own personal story as well. Adding your personal story will make the message more compelling.

Full story…

 

Section(s): 
Activism & Organizing
Gender & Sexuality

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