Random Musings

Y’all know this story … on December 27, 2014, Leelah Alcorn, a 17 year old transgender youth wrote posted a suicide note on Tumblr and then walked in front of a semi-truck on a busy highway.

Leelah explained how her parents had forced her to attend conversion therapy, pulled her out of school and isolated her in an attempt to change her gender identity and so a petition has been created to enact Leelah’s Law to Ban All LGBTQ+ Conversion Therapy.

If the petition receives 100,000 signatures within the first 30 days, the White House will respond. Right now, the petition has 93,891 signatures, and needs 6,109 more to qualify by February 2. While it won't guarantee a bill or a law, greater awareness means greater possibility for action.

Take a moment, click HERE, and sign.

Thanks.

Now on to a more fabulous note … Diana Ross will be taking up residency in Las Vegas.

No, Diva ain’t living there, but she will be performing at the Venetian for nine days in April, and could make it a permanent thing.

I need to get my ass to Vegas …. Maybe she’ll ask me to dance with her again.

Down there to Alabama, where marriage equality is becoming legal, the state’s first and only openly gay state legislator, Democratic Representative Patricia Todd has taken to Facebook to fire back at politicians alleging that same-sex marriage would erode "family values" if it becomes legal in Alabama.

Todd called out the hypocrisy of many lawmakers using the rallying cry of "family values" to prop up their anti-gay views when they are having extramarital affairs, and basically says she’ll out these hypocrites.

Here’s my deal: why sink to their level. Patricia? I mean if Joe Blow Congressman is schtupping someone other than the missus, who cares? Outing them only makes The Gays seem vindictive and petty; why not just show statistics from places where same-sex marriage is legal that disprove their idiotic arguments.

Fight negativity with positivity, m’kay.

That said, if Joe Blow Congressman is anti-gay and has a little boytoy on the side, then out him as the ultimate hypocrite.

I hate these closeted gay men and women who seek to deny equal rights to The Gays. They should have their closet doors blown open.

Photo of the Week:

This could be in gossip, except the photo qualifies it for its own segment. While Lohan was hospitalized after her Bora Bora mosquito bite — and no word on how sick the mosquito became after sipping Lohan blood — she was bored. So she began posting selfies in her underwear to the net, but she doesn’t have the Photoshop skills of Queen Bey so …

Notice Lindsay’s remarkably thin waistline? Look at the bottles on the shelf behind her, and how they inexplicably lean toward her.

Bad Photoshop! Bad.

If sometime this evening you hear a blood curdling scream from sea to shining sea, well, it’s Carlos … because I’ve just told him that the next season of Downton Abbey will be the last one. 

Writer Julian Fellowes is ending the show — which was supposed to run for one, maybe two seasons — after its sixth year to work on a new project about 19th century New York.

Brooklyn Abbey?

Just wondering … now, let me get a cold compress for Carlos.

Sometime last year I DVR’d Ten Years because it starred Channing Tatum and he has a habit of baring his most gorgeous ass in all his films. Sadly, in this film, he did not, which only made it even worse than I thought.

The lone bright spot was the character of Reeve, played by Oscar Isaac; his was the only character that wasn’t a stereotype of some high school student at his reunion. Plus, he’s hot.

And this week, I heard that Isaac was to be on The View so I watched … and he’s hotter than that, sweeter than that, smarter than that.

He’s my new Hugh Jackman. I’ve told Carlos that when … when not if … Oscar Isaac comes to Smallville to sweep me off my feet, well, I’ll be going.

Hot. Oh, and he has a new movie out called A Most Violent Year with the faboosh Jessica Chastain. I'm making Carlos see it with me this weekend.

So that rug at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office that read ‘In Dog We Trust’ instead of ‘In Cat … I kid … God We Trust’ has been replaced and the Oops Version was sold at auction for $9,600.00.

The money will be donated to Canine Estates, a Palm Harbor nonprofit for injured and abandoned animals.

Thank Dog.

I loves me some Nashville …I love that they are taking a risk by having a gay character on the show — I mean, country music and openly gay people don’t generally mix — especially when the gay in question is played by hunky Chris Carmack [down there], who has macked on quite a few dudes since joining the cast.

And maybe, just maybe, he’ll be macking on Kyle Dean Massey [up there] who has joined the show in the recurring role of Kevin Bicks, a successful singer-songwriters in Nashville who also happens to be openly gay.

I expect sparks, Nashville.

I kinda like Sam Smith, that Brit singer who many call … wrongly, I think, the male Adele … though I got tired of him not talking about being gay and yet now that’s all he talks about.

But that’s not the Musing today. When I first heard his single, ‘Stay With Me’ I liked it … because I’d heard it before. I remember tooling down the road and singing along with it, only the words I sang didn’t match up because I was actually singing Tom Petty’s ’I Won’t Back Down.’

And yet I never heard any mention of the similarities until now, when I heard that Smith has agreed to fork over songwriting royalties to Tom Petty after Petty's lawyers called him out on the very apparent similarities.

But I keep wondering why it took so long; I mean, I knew this months ago. Maybe I should be Petty’s lawyer?

I’d never heard of Joni Ernst, the newly elected Republican senator from Iowa, until she was tapped to give the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address last week, in which she spoke about her family’s humble beginnings and wearing bread bag on her feet:

“They had very little to call their own except the sweat on their brow and the dirt on their hands. But they worked, they sacrificed, and they dreamed big dreams for their children and grandchildren.”

It all sounds very Joad Family — Google it youngsters — except … Ernst failed to mention that her family did not succeed alone, but had a boatload of federal cash to help them out.

Her father, Richard Culver, received $14,705 in conservation payments and $23,690 in commodity subsidies by the US government, while his brother, Dallas Culver, received $367,141 in federal aid, with some $250,000 geared toward corn subsidies. And the brothers’ late grandfather Harold Culver received $57,479 from the government between 1995 and 2001.

But the farm subsidies weren't the only payments her family received: a construction company owned by Joni’s daddy received more than $200,000 in county contracts while Joni served as auditor of Montgomery County, Iowa, despite a strict conflict of interest code governing contracts to family members of county officials.

Uh huh. I guess with all that government money coming in, Little Joni Ernst never bought a computer to see what a quick Google search would bring up when you start spouting off about being poor and working hard and getting nearly half a million dollars in federal aid.

But she’s a Republican so they don’t like to talk about that stuff. Now, I’m sure her family worked hard — farming is hard — but they did not do it alone, and for her to play it off like they did is the typical GOP bull sh*t.

Shame on you Joni.

Rumor has it — and I heard it from Rachel Maddow — that Bryan Fischer, the virulently anti-gay Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, has been fired.

Maddow says the firing was due to Israeli press reporting that Reince Preibus and the RNC are taking a trip to Israel which is being funded by the AFA, while Fischer has said, more than once in his program, that "Jews have no right to practice the faith of Judaism in the United States" and that The Gays are behind the Holocaust and Naziism.

Fischer, for his part, says he has not been fired. Stay tuned.

I’d never heard of Hozier before, but one night, driving home from work, I heard this little ditty, ‘Take Me To Church’ and it has been stuck in my head ever since.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s an anti-organized religion tune, which plays up the hypocrisy of organized faith, and that there's a couple of gay guys in it.