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First things first: German producer Mousse T. is capable of some of the worst cheesy disco this side of Bob Sinclar's "Love Generation" (proof: "Is It 'cause I'm Cool?"). And then there's the fact that he keeps re-releasing his 1998 "Horny" single (it's alright, I guess, but how many times do we have to hear it?). The lyrics? I'm horny, horny, horny, horny
So horny, I'm horny, horny, horny
I'm horny, horny, horny, horny
So horny, I'm horny, horny, horny tonight
But for Mousse T. conosseurs (hm, are there any of those?) it should come as no surprise that he's got one of the best new mix compilations out there: MN2S Masterclass Series #1. He has also had his spots of brilliance and, as a producer, he has shown a deft ear for commercial play as well as classy house.
Mixing an ecclectic number of classic house tunes (his "I Feel Love" infused mix of Moloko's "Sing it Back," bt's "Remember" and L'il Louis' "French Kiss") with new should-be classics (Timo Maas and Kelis' "4 Ur Ears," Basement Jaxx' "Do Your Thing") and left-of center oddities (Trinah's version of Tina Turner's "Let's Stay Together"), Mr. T comes up all aces! And that's not all!
The T man features a bunch of jaw-dropping tracks that have been making the rounds over the past few months, including the slinky electro disco of Ame's "Rej," a nasty, grinding and stripped version of Recloose's sublime "Dust," and that new Ms. Barbara "Most Precious Love" Tucker track "Dutty Funk (We Can Do)," credited to Timmy Vegas.
Nothing, though, and I mean NOTHING, can beat the chills that go up your spine as the Barbara Tucker track bleeds into the driving, percusive, spiritual and uplifting beat of Ann Nesby's classic "Can I Get a Witness?" Get it NOW!
Extra credit for the GREAT packaging (see above) courtesy of jones. It a see-through jewel CD cover that uses x-ray like acetate cards for a cover image as well as the credit linings. Nice!
Mercedes Ruehl plays Sylvia Guerrero and JD Pardo plays Gwen Araujo in "A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story" which will premiere on the Lifetime channel on Monday, June 19th at 9pm EST (check local listings as well as the Lifetime website for repeat performances).
Lifetime, which has been tagged "television for women" from time to time, has been known for dumbing down 'real-life' stories and making them as bland as milque-toast (think: after-school specials).
Let's hope that they surprise us with their take on Gwen's life and death.
Previously:
This morning I got an e-mail from Reginald Harris that led to this link and the disturbing news that Kevin Aviance was attacked in the East Village last night. He was able to walk himself into Beth Israel for treatment for injuries that included a broken jaw.
Not surprisingly, the New York Daily News runs a scandalous headline and prints a photo of Kevin after the attack. Here is The New York Times take on it.
J's Theater has more on the attack here while Keith Boykin says that Clarence Patton of the New York City Anti-Violence Project told him that there were also reports of a similar attack here in Queens on Friday.
Happy gay pride?
UPDATES:
It wasn't surprising to see the Reverend Ruben Diaz, Sr. (and New York State Senator) dive once again into the issue of marriage rights for same-sex couples on the same date that the New York State Court of Appeals heard arguments about the constitutionality of allowing gays to marry (check out this essay in The National Review online). After all, he was a lead plaintiff in one of the briefs asking the Court not to allow same-sex couples to marry.
What is surprising is how anyone can take him seriously considering the series of investigative reports by James M. Odato at the Albany Times-Union exposing the immoral way that the Reverend redirected public funds meant to aid poor children in the Bronx towards his political campaigns (as well as his son's), to pay salaries for phantom jobs to which his current wife and ex-wife were named, and towards his Christian Community Benevolent Association.
Today Mr. Odato interviews three former Diaz employees who are speaking up (one of them anonymously for fear of retaliation) and confirming some of the Reverend's dirty deeds.
The Times-Union articles have mostly failed to get any traction by New York City media but have shined an unwelcome light on how Albany legislators use so-called "member items." In a separate piece, Mr. Odato reports that the Diaz scandal might be just the tip of the iceberg and exposes questionable allocations of "member item" funding including moneys flowing to a Bronx charity controlled by former State Senator Guy Vallela (despite the Senator being removed from office in 2004 for taking brives) and a $108,593 cushy salary for Brooklyn Assemblymember Vito Lopez' girlfriend (who only has to work for 25 hours a week).
As for our state leadership? Well, both Senate Majority leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are united in one thing: Refusing to release a listing of how these public moneys were spent and telling the Times-Union that the public does not have the right to look at the information.
Previous posts:
- State Minority Leader David Patterson on the Rev. Ruben Diaz, Sr. (April 26, 2006)
- State Assemblymember demands investigation of Diaz, Sr, and Diaz, Jr. (April 25, 2006)
- In Rev. Diaz' family saga, just follow the money (April 21, 2006)
- Like father, like son? (April 20, 2006)
- Does Eliot Spitzer need a homophobe's support? (April 9, 2006)
From tomorrow's New York Times:
How Hispanics Became the New Gays
By FRANK RICH
He never promised them the Rose Garden. But that's where America's self-appointed defenders of family values had expected President Bush to take his latest stand against same-sex marriage last week. In the end, without explanation, the event was shunted off to a nondescript auditorium in the Executive Office Building, where the president spoke for a scant 10 minutes at the non-prime-time hour of 1:45 p.m. The subtext was clear: he was embarrassed to be there, a constitutional amendment "protecting" marriage was a loser, and he feared being branded a bigot. "As this debate goes forward, every American deserves to be treated with tolerance and respect and dignity," Mr. Bush said.
That debate died on the floor of the Senate less than 48 hours later, when the amendment went down to an even worse defeat than expected.
Washington instantly codified the moral: a desperate president at rock bottom in the polls went through the motions of a cynical and transparent charade to rally his base in an election year. Nothing was gained — even the president of the Family Policy Network branded Mr. Bush's pandering a ruse — and no harm was done.
Except to gay people. That's why the president went out of his way to talk about "tolerance" at this rally, bizarrely held on the widely marked 25th anniversary of the first mention of an AIDS diagnosis in a federal report. Mr. Bush knew very well that his participation in this tired political stunt, while certain to have no effect on the Constitution, could harm innocent Americans.
When young people hear repeatedly that gay couples aspiring to marital commitment are "undermining the moral fabric of the country, that stuff doesn't wash off," says Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Most concretely, the Washington ruckus trickles down into sweeping assaults on gay partners' employee benefits and parental rights at the state level, as exemplified by a broadly worded referendum on the Virginia ballot this fall outlawing any kind of civil union. Had Mr. Bush really believed that his words had no consequences, he would have spoken in broad daylight at the White House and without any defensive touchy-feely bromides about "tolerance."
Mr. Bush prides himself on being tolerant — and has hundreds of photos of himself posing with black schoolkids to prove it. But his latest marriage maneuver is yet another example of how his presidency has been an enabler of bigots, and not just those of the "pro-family" breed.
The stars are in alignment for a new national orgy of rancor because Americans are angry. The government has failed to alleviate gas prices, the economic anxieties of globalization or turmoil in Iraq.
Two-thirds of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track. The historical response to that plight is a witch hunt for scapegoats on whom we can project our rage and impotence. Gay people, though traditionally handy for that role, aren't the surefire scapegoats they once were; support for a constitutional marriage amendment, ABC News found, fell to 42 percent just before the Senate vote. Hence the rise of a juicier target: Hispanics. They are the new gays, the foremost political piñata in the election year of 2006.
As has not been the case with gay civil rights, Mr. Bush has taken a humane view of immigration reform throughout his political career. Some of this is self-interest; he wants to cater to his business backers' hunger for cheap labor and Karl Rove's hunger for Hispanic voters. But Mr. Bush has always celebrated and promoted immigrants and never demonized them — at least in Texas. In the White House, he sidelined immigration after 9/11, then backed away from a "guest worker" proposal when his party balked in 2004. After bragging about his political capital upon re-election, he squandered it on Iraq and a quixotic campaign to privatize Social Security. Now Congress has acted without him, turning immigration reform into a deadlocked culture war not unlike the marriage amendment. A draconian federal law is unlikely, but the damage has been done: the ugly debate has in itself generated a backlash against a vulnerable minority.
Most Americans who are in favor of stricter border enforcement are not bigots. Far from it. But some politicians and other public figures see an opportunity to foment hate and hysteria for their own profit. They are embracing a nativism and xenophobia that recall the 1920's, when a State Department warning about an influx of "filthy" and "unassimilable" Jews from Eastern Europe led to the first immigration quotas, or the 1950's heyday of Operation Wetback, when illegal Mexican workers were hunted down and deported.
"What a repellent spectacle," the Fox News anchor Brit Hume said when surveying masses of immigrant demonstrators, some of them waving Mexican flags, in April. Hearing of a Spanish version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, introduced a Senate resolution calling for the national anthem to be sung only in English. There was no more point to that gratuitous bit of grandstanding than there was to the D.O.A. marriage amendment. Or more accurately, both had the same point: stirring up animosity against a group that can be branded an enemy of civilization as we know it.
The most pernicious demagogues on immigration often invoke national security as their rationale, but no terrorist has been known to enter the United States from Mexico. Even the arguments about immigrants' economic impact are sometimes a smokescreen for a baser animus. As John B. Judis of The New Republic documented in his account of Arizona's combustible immigration politics, the dominant fear in that border state has less to do with immigrants stealing jobs (which are going begging in construction and agriculture) than with their contaminating the culture through "Mexicanization." It's the same complaint that's been leveled against every immigrant group when the country's in this foul a mood.
That mood was ratcheted up last week by the success of Brian Bilbray's strategy in winning the suburban San Diego House seat vacated by the jailed Duke Cunningham. Mr. Bilbray, a card-carrying lobbyist, was thought to be potentially vulnerable even in a normally safe Republican district. But by his own account, his campaign took off once he started hitting the single issue of immigration, taking a hard line far to the right of the president who endorsed him. Mr. Bilbray goes so far as to call for the refusal of automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants — a repudiation of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War to ensure citizenship to everyone born in the United States.
His victorious campaign set a tone likely to be embraced by other Republicans fearful of a rout in 2006. The election year is still young, and we haven't seen the half of this vitriol yet. Some politicians, like Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, are equal-opportunity bigots: when he isn't calling for the Senate to declare English the national language and demanding that immigrants be quizzed on the Federalist Papers (could he pass?), he is defending marriage by proclaiming that in his family's "recorded history" there has never been "any kind of homosexual relationship." (Any bets on how long before someone unearths the Inhofes' unrecorded history?) Vernon Robinson, a Republican Congressional candidate challenging the Democratic incumbent Brad Miller in North Carolina, has run an ad warning that "if Miller had his way, America would be nothing but one big fiesta for illegal aliens and homosexuals."
The practitioners of such scare politics know what they're up to. That's why they so often share the strange psychological tic of framing their arguments in civil-rights speak. The Minuteman Project, the vigilante brigade stoking fears of an immigration Armageddon, quotes Gandhi on its Web site; its founder, Jim Gilchrist, has referred to his group as "predominantly white Martin Luther Kings." On a Focus on the Family radio show, James Dobson and the White House press secretary, Tony Snow, positioned the campaign to deny gay civil rights as the moral equivalent of L.B.J.'s campaign to extend civil rights. James Sensenbrenner, the leading House Republican voice on immigration policy, likened those who employ illegal immigrants to "the 19th-century slave masters" that "we had to fight a civil war to get rid of." For that historical analogy to add up, you'd have to believe that Africans voluntarily sought to immigrate to America to be slaves. Whether Mr. Sensenbrenner is out to insult African-Americans or is merely a fool is a distinction without a difference in this volatile political climate.
Mr. Bush is a lame duck, but he still has a bully pulpit. Here is a cause he has professed to believe in since he first ran for office in Texas, and it's threatening to boil over in an election year. Imagine if he exercised leadership and called out those who trash immigrants rather than merely mouthing homilies about tolerance and dignity.
Tolerance and dignity are already on life-support in this debate. If the president doesn't lead, he will have helped relegate Hispanics to the same second-class status he has encouraged for gay Americans. Compassionate conservatism, R.I.P.
The Bay Area Reporter reports that the search is on for Luis Peña, a gay Colombian man who has been missing since May 30th.Reporter Cynthia Laird says that his roommate, Marta Sanchez Vasquez initially thought that Peña had simply gone to see some friends but realized something was wrong when those friends called her back later in the week to ask for him.Peña is described as 5'10" tall, 150 lbs., with brown eyes and brown hair (although he might have shaved it). The San Francisco Police Department is asking anyone with information to call their missing persons bureau at 415-558-5508 or, if calling after-hours, their operations center at 415-553-1071.
As for Adrian Alun Dennis Exley, missing in Massachusetts since May 24th, I haven't seen any updates.
UPDATES:
Ah, yes! That darn marriage amendment!Aparently we have much, much, much to celebrate from today's proceedings in DC and elsewhere. You've probably heard all about it so let's get to stuff that you might have missed (or not?):The Omen? Mia Farrow and Liev Schreiber were good, hottie Julia Stiles was miscast, the movie seems to be too much paint-by-the-numbers (rather than ominous exposition leading to outright fear), and the original remains superiously creepy (Liev is pictured 'cause he's just as big a hottie as Stiles and 'cause I had the pleasure of staring at him while he rested in between shots during my brief film production career in the '90's as he waited to film a scene in a movie that time forgot).Ehem! Where were we? Ah yes! Trumped-up discriminatory practices for political gain (just as everything else is failing).
- David Link has a great OpEd piece that ran today in the Los Angles Times on President Bush and the word 'gay.'
- Anti-immigration flag-bearer Lou Dobbs (from CNN) says that the marriage amendment is "sheer non-sense" (Hm, where was he when the amendment was first introduced a couple of years back? Is he jumping on the 'beat-up-on-Bush' bandwagon? Enquiring minds want to know!).
- Best: John Stewart tearing Bill Bennet to pieces on the marriage amendment here!
Last week, word came my way that William C. Thompson, the Comptroller of the City of New York (along with the Empire State Pride Agenda and Gay Men's Health Crisis) had decided to name me as an honoree at the Comptroller's annual LGBT pride event. Must have been at the last minute since my name does not appear in the mailed version that I got the next day (oops!) but I still feel honored to be recognized in this way.It comes seven years after the former Comptroller of the City of New York and current State Comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, also extended the same recognition to me in 1999. So, in a way, it feels as if both honors are book-ends to a period of LGBT activisim in my life (go figure!)In the activity, to be held at the LGBT Community Center on Thursday, June 15th, tennis legend Billie Jean King will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. Other honorees include Safe Horizon CEO Gordon J. Campbell, Gender Identity Project Coordinator Carrie Davis, Queens Chronicle Editor in Chief (and friend) Daniel Hendrick, Rent's Anthony Rapp and Gay Financial Network founder Walter B. Schubert, Jr. Click on above image for larger version and additional information should you have some time to join us at the Center.
Ok, I was going to post a lengthy one on this but over the weekend the Chicago Tribune did me a favor and had an article on this soap opera, which is aparently the first government-sponsored television show to tackle bisexuality and homosexuality on Cuban television. In "Helping Cubans realize what it means to be gay" (Chicago Tribune, June 5, 2006), reporter Gary Marx writes about the changing environment for gays in Cuba (as in most of Latin America) and the diverse reactions that the storyline has provoked. Back on May 3rd, the BBC also ran an article on the series which you can read here.
For those of you who read Spanish, there has been a barrage of articles and essays on this soap as of late. Here is a sample which includes commentary from a couple of Cuban-based publications:
- Terremoto al otro lado de la luna (Cubanet, May 12, 2006)
- El tema de la bisexualidad polariza a Cuba (La Jornada, May 8, 2006)
- TV cubana llama a ser tolerantes con los gays (AP, May 4, 2006)
- Un mensaje al descubierto (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- "Nuestro objetivo no ha sido escandalizar" (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- Cuatro apostillas sobre la telenovela cubana de turno (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- La cara oculta de... Yassel (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- Evidencias de un relieve incomodo (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- Entre la pelota, el sexo y la tele (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- Opinion de Reynaldo Gonzalez (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- Opiniones Varias (La Jiribilla - Dossier, April 29, 2006)
- El lado oculto de la gente (Ahora, April 26, 2006)
- Sobre la cara oculta y la montana quebrada (Juventud Revelde, April 26, 2006)
With 100% of votes counted, Bloomberg news, AP, Reuters, the New York Times, and Diario de Lima Gay are reporting that former Peruvian president Alan Garcia has won today's presidential election against a populist left-wing candidate, Ollanta Humala.
Tomorrow's international newspapers will say that the leftist tide in Latin America is turning back to the center (following Colombia's re-election of President Alvaro Uribe last week) which will probably elicit a collective sigh of relief from international economic powerhouses. This will be a facile way of looking at the complexity of modern Latin American politics.
Diario de Lima Gay, while not necessarily rejoicing about the electorate results, also runs an OpEd piece by self-described "left-wing" commentator Ho Amat León taking Raiz Diversidad Sexual to task for endorsing Humala over the weekend. He writes (excerpts):
The feeling among many activists, that candidate Ollanta Humala represented a violent option, was backed by the candidate's own campaign, which throughout his electorate stops did not cease to call for hatefulness between [segments] of the population... [this led to] many of us activists accepting the possibility of backing Alan Garcia.
[...]
But if many of us activists feel dissapointment for what it means to vote for Alan Garcia, it is a little less than incomprehensible that an organization such as Raiz Diversidad Sexual would have declared itself... in support of Ollanta Humala.
[...]
...what is left is the bad sensation that the bet made by this last LGBT collective, Raiz Diversidad Sexual, is based on interest, since their political interests have trumped their concern for the LGBT cause.
Previous post:
In a press statement sent out to different e-mail lists Friday night, Raiz Diversidad Sexual, a radical socialist Peruvian LGBT-advocacy organization known for their sometimes disruptive actions and rhetoric, decided to endorse former military commander Ollanta Humala in today's run-off presidential election. This despite the furor that followed statements made last March by his mother, Elena Tasso, to the effect that if two gays were shot it would serve as a warning to other gays and stop "immorality in the streets."According to the statement, the move follows recent efforts by Humala's party, the UPP, to reach out to the Peruvian LGBT community. The Spanish-language statement reads as follows (translation by yours truly, apologies for run in sentences and lack of punctuation):Just hours away from the electoral process and putting aside our personal sympathies, it is important to recognize that there is a possibility that our demands will be effectively heard for the first time; as a matter of fact Union por el Peru (UPP), which [stands behind] candidate Ollanta Humala, presented their proposals to the LGBT community at a recent forum that took place last Wednesday, May 31st, which counted with the presence of Dr. Silvia Pessah, from the UPP's Governing Commission, who spoke about the need to eliminate every form of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender, stating that in Ollanta Humala's government, a number of public policies will be developed to guarantee full access to education, health, employment and social security, additionally she also presented a group of planned projects to confront HIV/AIDS, and in this sense confirmed that the nationalist movement has their doors open to the LGBT community.
This is extremely important since - due to the fact that such a compromise has been adopted by the UPP - there is new hope for the LGBT community that in an eventual Ollanta Humala government our rights will be respected and we will have a government that will begin a path of authentic change that will help to overcome the multiple exclusions and seocial inequalities. But not only does an Ollanta Humala government open an opportunity to broaden our rights, but also to put an end to the injustice and corruption represented today by Mr. Alan Garcia, who represents the conservative and retrograde forces.
Another important aspect is that the compromise expressed by the UPP generate a number of expectations in response to which all social and popular organizations must have an active role of vigilance, in a way that we can guarentee that an Ollanta Humala government will be a government of the people which will not defraud the poor and those who are discriminated in Peru, finally we can only ad that with a few hours before elections we are cetrain that hope will conquer fear.
Humala's rival in the run-off election is former Peruvian President Alan Garcia, a pro-business elitist who left the country in economic shambles during his first presidential term and now is seen by the Peruvian economic power-base (as well as international economic powers) as their only alternative to the left-wing nationalist Humala. Accordingly, the race has turned ugly with Garcia claiming that a Humala presidency will be akin to turning the country over to Venezuela's left-wing President Hugo Chavez and others playing up the fear of a man with an indigenous ethnic identity being a threat to other ethnic communities. He has also been painted as politically naive and dangerously authocratic.
From afar, though, he seems to be smarter politically than given credit, able to distance himself from the more radical members of his family and less prone to Chavez's well-known and self-serving histrionics (though some argue that there are striking similarities).
Garcia was projected a winner in the polls leading to today's vote by a margin of 5 to 10 percentage points but his popularity stems from a campaign that has played to fears of "the other." Then again, analysts also say that the type of popular vote that Humala might elicit has been difficult to measure in polls and that he might end up surprising everyone.
Should Humala eek out a victory, let's hope that Raiz Diversidad Sexual is right (there are some past indications that they might just well be).
For the latest on the peruvian elections: http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/peru/
UPDATE: Alan Garcia wins Peruvian presidential elections (June 4, 2006)
Previous posts:
In "Costa Rica high court rules against same sex marriage," The Advocate online picks up information attributed there to Sirius OutQ News but also is suspiciously similar to blurbs in conservative religious websites such as Lifesite and Catholic Online. All of them have one thing in common: They name Notivida, an extremely homophobic religious Spanish-language site based in Argentina that calls itself a "News-bulletin related to the promotion and defense of human life and the family" as the original source.Although I understand that most LGBT press does not have the resources or staff to monitor, translate and /or investigate issues related to LGBT issues throughout Latin America and mostly rely - instead - on international news feeds from UPI, EFE, AP, Reuters and others for their reporting, it is still problematic to me when these news just retread what Latin American conservative sites say about these issues (just imagine these and other LGBT news publications exclusively relying on Focus on the Family press releases for articles on LGBT rights!).I personally brought the issue a few years ago to Bruce C. Steele, current Editor in Chief at The Advocate, when I noticed a similar problem about a blurb on gay rights in Puerto Rico (in that case I was told that the actual source was the AP). Mr. Steele proved to be candid and extremely open to suggestions on the improvement of their coverage of issues related to the Latino LGBT community and, to be fair, their coverage of Latino LGBT issues has indeed improved greatly under his direction.Now, as you know, Blabbeando has been following the developments in Costa Rica closely (see below for past entries). And, even by our journalist standards, we could have told Sirius and The Advocate that some key information is missing from yesterday's blurb.- Attorney Yashin Castrillo went to court to challenge already existing language in Costa Rica's Family Code - not the constitution - limiting marriage to that between a woman and a man.
- While the Court ruled 5-2 against Castrillo, in an interesting development, they also used the ruling to encourage the government to seek "an appropriate norm to regulate these type of unions, specially if they bring conditions of stability and loyalty."
Checking with Costa Rican gay activist (and Indiana University professor) Daniel Soto today, he confirmed that some LGBT advocates in the country saw the ruling as opening some doors even if it ruled against removing the discriminatory language from the Family Code.
There are also renewed efforts by Costa Rican LGBT rights advocates to engage the government in making sure that they follow the Court's mandate to study other options that might be available to recognize same-sex partnerships.
Previous posts:
Both Diario de Lima Gay and Deambiente.com have photos from Tuesday night's anti-homophobia candle-light vigil (just click on the hyperlinks to see them). Diario de Lima Gay reports that the vigil begun at 8pm with an act in which shirts and pieces of cloth were laid down in front of the La Merced Church, representing those lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Peru who have fallen victims to homophobic - and transphobic - violence. Candles were lit and placed on the ground. Some participants threw flower petals as well.At 10pm close to a hundred individuals made their way to San Martin Plaza, some leaving flower petals over the streets of Lima. A lesbian performance group, Proyecto Experiencia, awaited them with a symbolic street theatre performance. The vigil then made its way to the Justice Palace, where police kept close distance while participants laid down the shirts on the floor once again and a banner was unfurled with the legend "LA HOMOFOBIA MATA" (or "homophobia kills" - photo above courtesy of Jorge A. Chavez and Edu Stagnaro).The vigil ended at midnight with a minute of silence after Tito Bracamonte from the Homosexual Movement of Lima (MoHL) urged the crowd to eradicate homophobia from Peruvian society.
Sure, it happened last week, but the legislative body of one of the Caribbean's least homophobic islands managed to throw out from Parliamentary debate a bill that would have banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in Bermuda (a move that, in effect, killed the bill).
The move, which came as a shock to advocates who expected easy passage and left legislators struggling to explain themselves, drew editorial scorn from The Royal Gazette and OpEd writers such as Larry Burchall and Fred Barritt who rightly took legislators to task for failing to provide previously promised support for the bill.
The a Limey in Bermuda blog has been following developments much more closely that we could, digging up some Parliamentary hypocrisy in the process and challenging some of the excuses given by the legislators as to the failure of the bill.
Some good news, though, as noted in a photo caption in this Bermuda Sun article: Ms. Sybil Barrington (aka Mark Anderson, pictured above), was able to have her day in the sun after all - despite protests at this year's Bermuda Heritage Day Parade (video here at 2:13 minutes)
Update:
- "New York group accuses MP's of 'weaselling out'" (The Royal Gazette, June 2, 2006); The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's Executive Director Paula Ettlebrick tells the Gazette: "Politicians are endorsing discrimination."
Previously:
Not sure if anyone had as much difficulty with the live web video feed during the hearing on the right of same-sex couples to marry by New York State's highest court on Wednesday but it became a completely frustrating experience for me. Worse, what little I managed to see and hear left me feeling it was a lost cause.
Thankfully, I was able to go to the Court's website the next morning and finally watch the full hearing (It's actually pretty fascinating stuff - if you have a couple of hours, click here).
This week's issue of Gay City News has a good article on the proceedings by Duncan Osborne. It also has a great piece of analysis by Arthur S. Leonard (yup, that's his blog on the right under "Personal Links").
For a while, most analysts of the issue seemed to think that it would be tough to get the Court to rule in favor of the right to marry for gays (even in this, one of the most progressive of states, where a majority actually supports the right to marry).
Ever the pessimist, I'm still not sure that the Court will rule in our favor even if some of what I saw on repeat viewing gave some reason to hope. A ruling is expected within the next couple of months.
Let's cross our fingers...
Previous posts:
- An Update from Daniel and Curtis (May 30, 2006)
- A City Hall Meeting on Marriage (May 12, 2006)
- A Political Experience (March 25, 2006)
- New York Marriage Ambassadors (February 22, 2006)
- "Marriage Equality Matters" is Launched (February 14, 2006)
- New York Court says No to Same-Sex Marriage but does Not Have Last Word (December 9, 2005)
- Fernando Ferrer: I will withdraw City's appeal to same-sex marriage ruling (October 6, 2005)
- Bloomberg's lawyers on gay marriage: Procreation must be protected! (October 4, 2005)
- Newspaper Watch: Hoy NY and Same-Sex Marriage (September 19, 2005)
- So I know this couple... (September 11, 2005)
The Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund has updated their website and have graciously featured some of the photos I took at the April 15th Memorial March organized by Rashawn's friends and family. In addition, the Fund has also launched a myspace page (myspace.com/rbmf) and a blog (rashawnbrazell.blogspot.com) to further spread the word on Rashawn's life and death.
In the meantime, Cathy Smith, Chad Ferreira's mom, has also recently read our postings on her son's murder in San Francisco. She has left a comment thanking us for focusing on the case. Ms. Smith has criticized the fact that the man who is being held for the attack that took her son's life is not being charged with murder.
As with Rashawn's mom, Desire Brazell, we want to express our support and gratitude to women such as Ms. Smith who have stood up for their gay sons and demanded justice for their murders.
First things first: German producer Mousse T. is capable of some of the worst cheesy disco this side of Bob Sinclar's "Love Generation" (proof: "Is It 'cause I'm Cool?"). And then there's the fact that he keeps re-releasing his 1998 "Horny" single (it's alright, I guess, but how many times do we have to hear it?). The lyrics?
Posts
