Hate States On The Move

Today in Flori-duh, where Nazis can march and the governor doesn’t condemn them, lawmakers will be considering the state’s new Don’t Say Gay bill. This bill would regulate LGBTQ+ instruction and conversation in the classroom and would allow parents to sue over alleged violations.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican—because, of course—Joe Harding is also sponsoring an amendment to the bill that will out any child in Flori-duh schools to the parents. Harding does like to point out that the bill has an exception, allowing school personnel to decline to out kids to parents “if a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.”

So, if the gay kid might be abandoned by his or her parents, or beaten by his or her parents, or neglected by his or her parents, you aren’t required to out them, but you can. Keep in mind that LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide, but,  hey, those are the breaks I guess.

If a gay kid kills himself because a bigoted and hate-filled school employee decided outing them was the right thing to do, so be it. I guess that might be easier than going to school every day knowing you aren’t allowed to talk about your two dads, your two moms, your gay uncle, lesbian cousin.

In February, President Biden in February condemned the bill as “hateful” and added:

“I have your back, and my administration will continue to fight for the protections and safety you deserve.”

Joe Homophobe responded with a video countering White House talking points which features White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s remarks and his counterpunch:

“The President and his team decided to distort the truth and outright lie about my bill that empowers parents.”

The truth is you cannot discuss LGBTQ+ people in school if this bill passes.

The truth is if a child identifies as LGBTQ+ you can out them to their parents.

The truth is Flori-duh is walking backwards under its GOP leadership.

And Flori-duh isn’t the only Hate State.

A bill in Tennessee would ban textbook and instructional materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address [LGBTQ+]  lifestyles” in K-12 schools.

A bill in Kansas, seeks to amend the state’s obscenity law to make using classroom materials depicting “homosexuality” a Class B misdemeanor.

Legislators in Indiana are working to bar educators from discussing “sexual orientation,” “transgenderism” or “gender identity” in any context without permission from parents.

An Oklahoma Senate bill would ban public schools from employing anyone who “promotes positions in the classroom or at any function of the public school that is in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of students.”

We thought once we reached Marriage Equality we were safe. We are not; the GOP is coming for us with religion as the reason and so the march goes on …

CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE.

Florida Politics

The Hill

For Nico Hines and The Daily Beast Outing Seems To Be An Olympic Sport

Outing; I’m of two, well, maybe three, minds about it …

If you’re an anti-LGBT public figure or politician who makes a living denying The Gays equality while trolling bathrooms or internet sites or airport bathrooms looking for a same-sex hook-up, then I’m all for the outing; I’m looking at you Larry Craig.

If you’re a closeted public figure who has photos of yourself kissing and fondling your same-sex partner, but continue to play that tired “My life is private” line, then I’m kinda okay with the outing; I’m looking at you Queen Latifah, because I wonder how many closeted girls, especially young Black girls, you might help to come to love themselves and accept themselves and live out loud and open if you lead the way?

If you’re a public figure living a private life and don’t want to come out for reasons of your own, well, I say you should come out, or be outed; coming out is a deeply personal process that’s different for all of us, and no one should take that chance away from you; I’m looking at you Colton Haynes, whose coming out was used as sport by some, sadly, in the gay community.

But what about closeted athletes at the Olympics? What about outing athletes from different countries across the globe, some countries where these athletes cannot live openly for fear of persecution, prosecution, and even death? Yeah, that kind of outing is reprehensible and stupid and thoughtless, and it’s that kind of outing that Nico Hines, and The Daily Beast, tried to pull last week in Rio.

Hines, a straight journalist, had been covering the Rio games for the Daily Beast and he, and obviously his editors, thought it might be high-larious to see if they could spot, and out, gay athletes at the games.

And Nico Hines went so far as to create a fake profile on Grindr, a gay social app — for meeting gay people and, yes, even hooking up with other gay men for sex — to see how many athletes, just the gay ones mind you, were cruising for sex between events.

Himes says he was shocked, shocked he says, to find that Rio de Janeiro has become “a hotbed of partying athletes, hookups, and sex, sex, sex.” Well, just the gay sex was what Nico wanted to cover; and he did. And while he never named any athletes on the site, or any athletes that responded to his fake profile, he shared other information about them, like the sports they played and the countries they were from:

“Athlete profiles on the various apps during my short exploration included a Brazilian track star, an Italian volleyball player, a South American record-holder in the pool, a sailor from New Zealand, a British diver, and a handball player from a notoriously homophobic country.”

A handball player from a “notoriously homophobic country”? As in a country that might arrest this athlete, jail this athlete, kill this athlete? Because that could happen; I imagine once Hines described the athletes and told where they were from and what their sport was, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out who they were, or might be. A “South American record-holder in the pool” might be pretty easy to find.

So, how does this kind of reporting become “journalism” when it reeks more of a really bad Jacqueline Susann novel from the 70s? Also, why just the gay athletes? Why not troll Tinder and see how many straight athletes were hooking up for “sex, sex, sex”?

Oh, because Nico Hine, while straight and married, perhaps has a prurient fascination with the world of gay sex and the stereotype that all gay men are out to f**k or get f**ked. It’s ridiculous and stupid and careless and dangerous to equate his story with journalism of any kind.

Once again, this isn’t about hookups and gay men and sex; it about putting closeted gay men who live in countries where simply being themselves is a crime, in danger, and if even one athlete is harmed, or worse, by having their story told — albeit without ever mentioning them by name — then I would like to see Nico Hines and The Daily Beast held accountable.

Hines entrapped these gay men by faking a profile, by posing as a gay man interested in hooking up for sex, just to out them in a story. And now, both he and The Daily Beast are on the offensive … for being offensive.

After the story was published and the outrage, and backlash, began, Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon reworked Hines’ piece, allegedly removing any identifying information, but left the story online and added a ‘fauxpology’:

“We have made some editorial changes to the article, responding to readers' concerns, and are again sorry for any upset the original version of this piece inspired."

That’s not enough; not by a long shot. You have created a dangerous environment for these athletes when they return home and a little light editing does not absolve The Daily Beast or Nico Hines for that.

Of course, Nico Hines is also trying to justify his little article — originally titled, "I Got Three Grindr Dates in an Hour in the Olympic Village" — by saying he never lied:

"For the record, I didn’t lie to anyone or pretend to be someone I wasn’t — unless you count being on Grindr in the first place — since I’m straight, with a wife and child. I used my own picture … and confessed to being a journalist as soon as anyone asked who I was."

Huh; so Nico didn’t lie? He posted his picture to Grindr and said he was a gay man looking for action in Rio and that right there, the very beginning of this mess, is an outright lie.

Grindr is an app for men who wish to hook-up with other men; that’s what Grindr is. So, to be on that app when you aren’t looking for a hook-up with another man is absolutely a lie; it’s the textbook definition of a lie.

Again, if one gay athlete is harmed, jailed, persecuted, prosecuted in any way, then lay the blame at the feet of The Daily Beast and Nico Hines.

As one athlete, openly gay Tongan Olympic swimmer, Amini Fonua, did via Twitter:

“As an out gay athlete from a country that is still very homophobic, @thedailybeast ought to be ashamed.

“Imagine the one space you can feel safe, the one space you’re able to be yourself, ruined by a straight person who thinks it’s all a joke?

“No straight person will ever know the pain of revealing your truth, to take that away is just… I can’t. It literally brings me to tears.

“It is still illegal to be gay in Tonga, and while I’m strong enough to be me in front of the world, not everybody else is. Respect that.”

And then Amini Fonua posted this picture for Nico Hines ....

... with the following message:

“Yo @nicohines & @thedailybeast — if what you were looking for on Grindr was hot ass (and I don’t see any other reason why you’d be on there) here you have mine in all its proud glory … Now kiss it and f**k off.”

And maybe they did; shortly thereafter The Daily Beast completely removed Nico Hines’ piece:

“Today, The Daily Beast took an unprecedented but necessary step: We are removing an article from our site. [We do] not do this lightly. As shared in our editor’s note earlier today, we initially thought swift removal of any identifying characteristics and better clarification of our intent was the adequate way to address this. Our initial reaction was that the entire removal of the piece was not necessary. We were wrong. We’re sorry. And we apologize to the athletes who may have been inadvertently compromised by our story.

Today we did not uphold a deep set of The Daily Beast’s values. These values — which include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the world — are core to our commitment to journalism and to our commitment to serving our readers … The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn’t matter, impact does.

“Our hope is that removing an article that is in conflict with both our values and what we aspire to as journalists will demonstrate how seriously we take our error. We were wrong. We will do better.”

Here’s the part that I don’t quite get; you call yourselves supporters of the LGBT community, you call yourselves allies to our fight, but how did no one, no one, stand up and say, when this story was being bandied about as an idea, that it was all kinds of wrong? Did no one at The Daily Beast even take a moment repeat the idea out loud so you could physically hear how awful it sounded?

I hope Nice Hines and the Daily Beast have learned a lesson, because being gay is not a joke, not something to be made fun of on a global scale where we can be targeted, marginalized, criminalized and murdered for our sexual orientation. Our lives are not meant for fluff pieces by the likes of Nico Hines or The Daily Beast use to score higher readership numbers.

I wish every gay person could come out, but I know that’s impossible around the world and in some places, and some families, here at home. But I don’t want anyone to be put in danger by having some “reporter” tell some story about them. And so I, for one, will probably be looking at other websites for news from now on … apology or not.

sources:

LGBTQ Nation
NCRM
Pink News

Oklahoma Sets A New Record For Anti-LGBT Discrimination

I’m thinking of moving to Oklahoma, or, as I like to think of it, Oklahomo, after reading this week about a slate of new bills the state legislature is considering.

See, it looks like Oklahomo has no gun violence problem, no environmental issues, no economic concerns, no health troubles; it looks like it’s all good in Oklahomo, which is why I’ve suggested to Carlos that we move …except …

Since they have no other pressing issues in the state, the Oklahomo state legislature is preparing a slew of anti-LGBT measures because, well, it’s The Gays you know. In fact, Oklahomo has bested Texas for the most anti-LGBT measures before its legislature — there were 23 Hate Bills in the Lone Star state last year, but Oklahomo has some 26 pieces of hate pending:

HJR 1059 skips the committee process and doesn’t require the governor’s signature, but if approved by voters, it would amend the state constitution to allow any religious organization, private business, or individual to refuse to recognize any same-sex marriage and to be legally allowed to refuse to provide services and not be sued for discrimination. In addition, it guarantees that child-placing agencies would never be required to place a child with a family if it violated their religious beliefs.

HB 3044, proposed by anti-LGBT loon Sally Kern, bans school counselors, therapists, administrators, or teachers from providing students with guidance or information about “human sexuality” without notifying their parents, thus outing LGBT and LGBTQ students.

SB 1014 makes it illegal for a person to use a gender-specific restroom when that person’s biological gender is contrary to that of the gender-specific restroom.

HB 3049 bans transgender students from using sex-segregated facilities in accordance with their gender identities.

SB 1323 threatens school districts’ state aid if they accommodate a trans student; the only way a district could save its funding would be to reverse the policy and/or force trans students to use single-occupancy facilities.

SB 21 allows students to express religious viewpoints at any school event; the bill runs counter to anti-bullying policies that protect LGBT students if the bully claims that expressing their homophobic views was protected religious speech.

HB 1598 actually makes it illegal to ban ex-gay therapy.

HB 1371 says the state has no compelling interest in forcing anyone to “participate in any marriage ceremony, celebration, or other related activity or to provide items or services for such purposes against the person’s religious beliefs.”

SB 898 updates RFRA with provisions that make it clear that religious businesses can discriminate, even if it means violating local nondiscrimination practices.

SB 440 expands the definition of “religious entity” to include a privately-held business operating with a sincerely held religious belief.

SB 1289 says no municipality can pass a law that goes beyond what is set by state law, including the passage of LGBT anti-discrimination laws.

SB 1328 ensures that no individual would ever have to provide any service “used in a marriage ceremony or celebration of a specific lifestyle or behavior, or to promote, advertise, endorse or advocate for a specific marriage, lifestyle or behavior.”

HB 1597 is another piece of Sally Kern Hate and states that no business shall be required to provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges related to any LGBT person, group or association.

HR 1032 says that “natural marriage” between one man and one woman remains the law, regardless of any court decision — screw you, SCOTUS — to the contrary, and demands that the Attorney General to defend against marriage equality.

SB 973 prevents the government from funding the “licensing or support of same-sex marriage.” So, a county clerk issues a license for a same-sex couple to legally marry, he or she would no longer receive a salary.

SB 805 is another version of the “Preservation of Sovereignty and Marriage Act” that was introduced last year.

HB 1599, another version of the “Preservation of Sovereignty and Marriage Act” cuts off administrative support for same-sex marriage without technically banning it.

SB 811 ensures that ministers can officiate marriages even if they oppose the requirement of a state-issued marriage license.

SB 733 requires marrying couples to undergo a blood test to prove they do not have communicable syphilis or any other communicable disease; if a physician identifies a disease that is communicable — and that includes HIV, HPV and even the flu — the couple cannot obtain a marriage license.

SB 724 establishes covenant marriage — one man and one woman — in which couples undergo premarital counseling and accept limited conditions for divorce.

SB 478 guarantees that no individual or religious entity would ever have to recognize a same-sex couple’s marriage or provide any service related to that union if it violated their religious beliefs.

HB 1663, more Sally Kern Hate, creates a new section of law not to be codified in the state code called the “Marriage Act of Oklahoma.”

Wow, it’s all hate in Oklahoma it seems, though there is one tiny pinprick of light in one bill — yes, just the one — that actually does some good for LGBT people:

HB 1345 would create statewide employment protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, though it does not take up housing or public accommodations.

Really, Oklahomo? There is nothing else going on in your state you’re your elected officials have the time to create twenty-six pieces of proposed legislation, all of to allow discrimination of LGBT citizens? Is this what you want Oklahomo?

I don’t believe you do, and even if you do, are you willing to pay, via your taxes, when the state is sued by LGBT citizens, and the United States of America, for discrimination? That’s what will happen. And if you’re fine with your tax dollars going to pay off your state’s legal debts then sit tight and allow discrimination to become the law of the land.

But remember, those people allowing discrimination today are the very people who might face discrimination tomorrow, and who will stand up for you?

Think Progress

The Daily Hypocrite: Brent Randall

I am not one for outing people, though I do believe, and I will keep saying it until it happens, that every single LGBT person needs to come out now.

Think of the change in the world if there were no closet doors and no hiding; gone would be the shame; gone would be the pain; gone would be the intolerance, well, at least the blatant in-your-face intolerance because we would be everywhere.

Still, I don’t think it’s my job to out anyone … unless … and you knew there’d be an 'unless' .... Unless you’re a hypocritical anti-LGBT-Bible-Thumping-Holier-Than-Thou politician who works to deny civil rights to Americans based on their sexual orientation while you troll gay dating sites looking for a hookup.

Brent Randall.

Randall is a Republican, of course, who opposes expanding anti-discrimination protections to LGBT people, of course, through the law. He lives in Goshen, Indiana, and is a sports broadcaster and businessman, and has decided to run for the Goshen City Council.

Now, Goshen does not have an LGBT civil rights nondiscrimination law and Brent Randall is running on the platform of keeping Goshen anti-LGBT and claims, wrongly, of course, because he’s a Republican, that LGBT people are already protected by law.

Oh … and Randall has an active profile on  Adam4Adam, an online dating site that boasts it's the "world's largest gay hookup site." And when asked about his Adam4Adam profile, Randall said:

“I don’t even know if I consider myself bisexual or not. I just experimented a little since I was single again.”

So, maybe he’s bisexual, maybe he’s gay, but the last time I checked that’s at least two of the letters in LGBT, the very group he says does not need anti-discrimination protections; and he isn’t changing his stance … not to be confused, I think, with Larry Craig’s wide-legged stance in the men’s room stalls of airports and such:

"I don’t know why they feel they need special protections when there are other categories that might need protections. My little experimentation over the last six years hasn’t changed my view on that."

First off, Brent, don’t say ‘they’ say ‘we’ because you’re an online queer boy, no matter what you call it; and, seriously, when one has been experimenting for six years one should have already learned the answer to their question.

Naturally, the Republican Party is standing by their gay anti-gay candidate because, well, anti-gay:

“He is the same person today as he was yesterday and is the right person to serve on City Council representing District 5. We are deeply saddened to see someone’s private personal life be exposed, by no choice of his own, for what can only appear to be political motivations. His entire life is turned upside down. ”

Let me make this queer; Randall Brent is the most pathetic form of gay man on the planet, so self-loathing, and self-hating that, not only does he hide himself deep within a closet but he wants to be put in a position of power to keep openly gay people down, to allow for discrimination of openly gay people. That’s the height of hypocrisy.

But, as I said … Republican.

NCRM

Court Says Outing Students Does Not Violate Rights To Privacy

It's hard enough to be the gay kid at school, facing your peers every day, who may, or may not, bully and belittle you while you walk the halls. But throw in teachers and coaches who bully gay students and it becomes even more disgusting, and then toss is the ruling, the bullying ruling, of the US court system bullying you, and it's no wonder gays kids are trying to find a way out these days.

Barbara Wyatt sued Texas' Kilgore Independent School District and two of its coaches—Rhonda Fletcher and Cassandra Newell—saying that the two women violated her daughter’s privacy when they confronted Wyatt and her 16-year-old daughter, Skye, about a lesbian relationship the teen was having.

Skye hadn't yet told her mother she was gay.

During a 2009 confrontation, Rhonda Fletcher and Cassandra Newell allegedly took Skye into a locker room, threatened her, interrogated her and eventually kicked her off the team for her involvement with another female student; then they told her mother that her daughter was gay. See my original post HERE.

After the confrontation, Skye became anxious and depressed; her grades went down, she started missing classes and even attempted suicide. So, her mother sued the school district over what those coaches had done to her daughter. Good for her, right?

It would have been accept last month the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled coaches Fletcher and Newell didn't violate the Skye’s privacy because there is no precedent regarding a public school student's right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment when it comes to sexual orientation:

"The Fifth Circuit has never held that a person has a constitutionally-protected privacy interest in her sexual orientation, and it certainly has never suggested that such a privacy interest precludes school authorities from discussing with parents matters that relate to the interests of their children. Therefore, when the magistrate judge in this case held that there is a constitutional right that bars the unauthorized disclosure by school coaches of a student's sexual orientation to the student's mother, he proclaimed a new rule of law."

There was one judge, Judge James Graves Jr., who disagreed, saying that because the coaches themselves acknowledged the private nature of the information--remember they took her into a locker room to confront her, away from everyone else, then it should fall within the category of highly personal information protected by the law.

But Graves was in the minority, which I guess means, that if she’d been a straight girl schtupping her boyfriend, she would be entitled to privacy, but being of a different sexual orientation, Skye has a different set of rules placed upon her.

Bad enough she might get bullied at school by fellow students for being gay, but then she was attacked and belittled and, in my mind, held against her will and bullied, by Rhonda Fletcher and Cassandra Newell. Then, to top it all off, the United States judicial system decided to jump on the Bully Wagon and say that because Skye Wyatt is a lesbian, she isn’t entitled to the same privacy as her heterosexual counterparts.

In 2013. In America.

source

It’s Time To Out Lindsey Graham

I read this piece on AmericaBlog and was going to talk about it, but all I could think was that John Aravosis already said it all, and a helluva better than I could. So, I'll just post the entire piece, verbatim. John Aravosis, writing for AmericaBlog:

_________________________________

IT'S TIME TO OUT LINDSEY GRAHAM

It’s time to finally out Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Graham has had it coming for a while now. Not because he’s a Republican. But because he’s an anti-gay Republican. And while it’s one thing to be gay and a closet case, it’s quite another to be a hypocrite, an anti-gay gay, someone who uses his power to harm others in the name of morality, all the while knowing secretly that he is one of the others.

In this case, Graham’s hypocrisy that broke the camel’s back is immigration reform. I have it on good authority from someone intimately involved in the immigration reform process that Lindsey Graham is the central reason that the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which would help stop the forced deportation of foreign-born gay spouses, is being blocked from being added to the immigration bill. While other Senators might be bluffing about their opposition to addressing the immigration needs of gay binational couples in immigration reform, I’m told Graham isn’t bluffing.

The obvious question arises as to why Graham is holding gays hostage in the immigration bill.

One theory is that UAFA is Graham’s legislative beard. A beard is a woman a gay man socializes with in order to throw off suspicions that he’s actually gay. In this case, the theory goes, Lindsey Graham is using UAFA in order to throw off the suspicions of the Tea Party voters back home who are challenging him in a high-profile primary. Their suspicions are that: A) Graham is a liberal; and B) he’s gay.

Graham’s support for immigration reform is hardly helping him dispel the closet liberal image.  But his opposition to UAFA, the theory goes, is a two-fer: It let’s Graham oppose something, anything, related to immigration reform (his support for the measure has been a thorn in his side with the far-right back home), and it has the added benefit of bashing gays.  Everyone knows that a closeted gay man wouldn’t bash his own people, right?  So bashing UAFA “proves” that Graham is straight.

Roy Cohn, a closeted gay man who destroyed the lives of other gay men. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection.)

And that is why it’s finally time to out Lindsey Graham.

If Lindsey Graham thinks an open discussion about the evils of homosexuality is necessary to further our country’s, or his own, best interests, then let’s have at it.

Lindsey Graham voted against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, because he believed that gays should not be serving in the US military.  Yet Lindsey Graham himself is a colonel in the Air Force Reserves.  If Lindsey Graham thinks gay are unfit to serve in the US military, and he were in fact gay, then he’d be unfit to serve in the US military by his own definition, would know it, but would still be serving in spite of that knowledge.  That would make Graham a hypocrite, a liar, or both. (And let’s not even talk about the security risk people with dire secrets, and Senatorial security clearances, pose.)

The question facing us is not whether you or I think Lindsey Graham’s sexual orientation is relevant to a public policy debate.  The question confronting us is whether Lindsey Graham thinks one’s sexual orientation is relevant, and he does.  So by the Graham Standard, America deserves to know if Air Force Reserve Colonel Lindsey Graham is gay.

Lindsey Graham celebrating the anti-gay Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.

And the same goes for Graham’s position on UAFA.

And it’s not just those two issues.  Graham has been terrible on gay issues for years.  In the last three Congresses, the Human Rights Campaign scorecardgives him a 0, a 13, and a 15 out of 100.  Graham also famously participated in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, in order to show solidarity with the chicken-chain’s anti-gay views.

Lindsey Graham clearly doesn’t believe that sexual orientation is a non-issue.

Graham is a queer duck. He’s what I like to call a closet heterosexual: Somehow who avers to being straight, but does so in such a diminutive, and odd, manner so as to lack all credibility.

Straight people aren’t normally shy about being straight.  Usually, they don’t even realize the degree to which they“flaunt” their heterosexuality.  They bring dates to public events, go on vacations with their significant other, and more generally have a public record of people they’ve gone out with.  Everyone does, gay or straight.  So you start to ask questions when you find someone like Lindsey Graham, who’s 57 years old and says he’s straight, but for whom the entirety of his Wikipedia “Personal Life” section reads:

Graham has never married.

It makes a girl wonder.

I don’t know if Lindsey Graham is gay.  But I’m having a difficult time believing that he’s straight (and I’m clearly not the only one). And what’s more, he seems to be having a difficult time proving it, or even explaining it.  Even Graham’s full-throated denial came off to many as incredibly gay:

During a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest-worker program out of fear that the Democrats might otherwise expose his homosexuality. (Graham smirked when I brought this up. “Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin,” he said. “I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.”)

Lindsey Graham decided long ago that one’s sexual orientation was fair game for politics, then so be it.  It’s time someone did an in-depth investigation of whether Lindsey Graham is gay, straight, or asexual, because under the Graham Standard, America has a right to know.

If Lindsey Graham wants to make his primary about being gay, then it’s time to click his heels three times and give him his wish.

Good News Friday #2: The Bishop and The Priest

Terence Finlay [l] and James Ferry

Twenty years ago, Terence Finlay was Anglican Archbishop of the Diocese of Toronto, and  James Ferry was a priest at St. Philip’s Church in Unionville. James Ferry was also a gay man, and in 1988, he met a man named Ahmad, a refugee from Lebanon: "It was love at first sight. I did not believe in love at first sight. But when it happens, well, it happens.”
James Ferry and Ahmad began a committed relationship, which became widely known in his parish. When some people declared their contempt for the couple,  Ferry went to discuss his relationship with Archbishop Finlay.
As Ferry says today: “And the rest is history.”
Finlay ordered him to end the relationship, but Ferry refused. Angered by Ferry's refusal, Finlay wrote a letter to be read at all Anglican parishes, in which he 'outed' James Ferry as gay, and forced him from to stop performing his pastoral duties. Ferry was, in a way, fired, and made “an outcast” in the church.
But Finlay wasn't done, just yet. He brought charges against Ferry and, in early 1992, a rarely used "bishop's court" was convened. After hearing both sides, the court concluded that the only thing James Ferry did wrong was to disobey his superior.
But Terence Finlay still wasn't done. He withdrew the priest’s licence.
James Ferry lost almost everything--his livelihood, his faith that the church loved all its people. And, for a while at least, he also lost Ahmad. Lebanese culture was not exactly welcoming to gay men, and Ahmad's family didn't even know he was gay. So the story of The Priest and The Archbishop, which gained worldwide attention, also effectively outed Ahmad to his family. 
The two men separated for a while, but reconciled a few months after the bishop’s court ruling, and the subsequent furor had passed. They remained together until Ahmad’s death from lung cancer in 2007 at the age 43.

James Ferry: “A person is fortunate once in a lifetime to find somebody who’s their soulmate.”

But it wasn't only James Ferry who suffered the last twenty years after his 'outing'. Finlay spent much of the last two decades thinking about what he'd done. He realized he'd caused great pain, and shame, to both James Ferry and Ahmad. 
And Terence Finlay changed. He began speaking out about the “local option,” which allows individual dioceses to determine whether or not they would bless same-sex couples. After doing the unspeakable, Terence Finlaybegan to change.
In 2006, he officiated at a same-sex marriage in a United Church in Toronto, for which he was admonished and disciplined by his successor: “I’ve moved in different directions. And I have been very supportive of the gay and lesbian community, and also the whole question of gay marriage.”

When he became the special envoy to the church’s reconciliation with First Nations survivors of residential schools in 2004, Terence Finlay decided that he must reconcile with James Ferry over what he had done some twenty years earlier.

So, this next Sunday, Terence Finlay and James Ferry will participate in a rare public service of personal reconciliation at the Church of the Holy Trinity. For Finlay, now 74, the service is a “personal opportunity for me to express my regret” for Ferry’s suffering. “It was a very, very difficult time for both of us.” 
The reconciliation service--the Eucharist, prayer, scripture readings, and statements from both Finlay and Ferry--is “something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” Finlay says.“I felt this was something I wanted, to reach out to Jim and to do and to express my regrets or that pain and what was experienced then and continued for him, I’m sure, these past years.”
As the Anglican Diocese of Toronto says about the Finlay-Ferry service, “when deep pain has been caused, it is important to have an opportunity to share our sorrow for that pain and seek a renewed relationship.”
Ferry says the two have been in touch “from time to time” over the years and that the relationship is “amicable enough.” When he was forced from the church, Ferry had to find another way to make a living, and began working as a rights adviser to psychiatric patients at area hospitals.
James Ferry: “One of the things that one has to do is to learn how to let go of pain,” he says. “Not to fixate on events of the past and let them take over your life.”Last summer, however, twenty years later, almost, James Ferry's licence was reinstated and he was appointed by Archbishop Colin Johnson as an assistant priest at Holy Trinity, though he is not on the church payroll.
James Ferry: “I don’t know how things are going to unfold. I’m 59 now. There’s a 20-year gap in my ministry as licensed clergy. But I know that I have a calling.”
While he believed, back in 1992, that the church had abandoned him, he never abandoned the church. As he says, he remained “on the margins, as a voice crying out for justice, love, and full inclusion in the life of the church family.
I started out just loathing Terence Finlay for what he'd done, but then you realize that this was twenty years ago, this was something that went against the church's teaching, against what Finlay believed with all his heart and soul. But Finlay evolved, and changed his mind, and understood, really, what i think religion means: to treat everyone as you would be treated; to love one another, and accept one another for our differences; to understand, that, if you believe in God, that we are all here because of Him, or Her.
I like this story.
I like the story of people changing and learning and growing and understanding. Though i wish it hadn't taken so long.
I like that James Ferry says, today: “I believe it will not be too many years before my hope and faith will be vindicated.”  

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Coaches Threaten To Out Student

I should have gone to a betting site. I should have gone to a betting site to see how far into 2011 we'd get before we hear our first story of anti-gay bullying. But, I can't imagine any betting site would wager that the bullying would not be student-to-student, but adult-to-student. That is a whole other wager, though it would be a winning one.

See, down in good ole boy Texas, at Kilgore High School, two female high school softball coaches took a student--identified only as SW in a lawsuit filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project--into an empty locker room, locked the door behind them, accused the girl of being lesbian, of having sexual relations with another student, and threatening to out her to her mother.

Back on March 2, 2010, SW was having a normal day at softball practice when, after practice ended, her coach, Cassie Newell and another coach, Rhonda Fletcher, told the other girls to go home, and told SW to stay.

These two coaches then took her into a locker room and locked the door and asked if she was gay. They also accused her of having a sexual relationship with another girl, and claimed that SW was spreading gossip that this other girl was "Coach Newell's girlfriend." Fletcher and Newell threatened SW by saying they would out her to her mother, and told her that she would not be allowed to play in that night's softball game until they had told her mother.

They then followed through on their threats and called SW's mother, Coach Newell even offered the other girl's contact information to SW's mother; information she retrieved from her cell phone; information which lead SW, her mother, and the Texas Civil Rights Project attorneys, to assume that the harassment, and outing of SW was done in a fit of jealousy, because the other girl had previously been dating Coach Newell.

A jealous coach takes her anger out on a student. But it doesn't end there. SW was subsequently kicked off the softball team and her academic performance faltered. Her dreams of using a softball scholarship to attend college to study sports medicine was destroyed.

SW and her mother, along with the Texas Civil Rights project, filed suit only after the mother exhausted every other avenue to remedy the situation. She spoke to the high school principal, the superintendent, and the district's Board of Trustees, but no one offered any solution.

No solution to harassment of a student by a teacher, a person in a position of power, a person in a position of trust. No solution to a girl being held against her will in a locker room by a jealous coach.

Well, there is a solution, and it's called 'You're fired.' There is a solution and it's called education. There is a solution and it's called holding people in positions of power, of trust, responsible for their actions.

Bullying. By teachers.

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Another Politician Outed

It's getting old, these folks living in the closet and running for office, pretending to be something they're not in order to win an election. And this one especially has me riled up. See, Gregg Kravitz has been outed by his opponent, Babette Josephs, as, I know it hurts, a straight man.

Yes, the thought of those people running for office makes my blood boil, too. I mean, why would someone choose to hide their heterosexuality? It's okay to be straight. Really. Lot's of folks I know are straight. Um, my own parents, for example, are lifelong members of the heterosexual community. It was a cross to bear growing up, but I stood by them, proud of their decision to be openly opposite-sex partners.

But I digress.

Up in Philadelphia last week, Babette Josephs accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to LGBT voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs announced at a fund-raiser, leaving some in the audience to gasp or laugh. "[N]ow he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."

Kravitz, for his part, tried to "in" himself, by saying that he is sexually attracted to both men and women. "That kind of taunting is going to make it more difficult for closeted members of the LGBT community to be comfortable with themselves. It's damaging."

Wow, who ever thought we'd see such a thing in this day and age. outing heterosexuals. Or, is it called "inning"? No, that's baseball, I think. But still, open heteros running amok in our streets, pretending to be gay? Why not just ban them all together, or give them plaid triangles to wear so we'd know who was straight, and then could know for whom we should be voting.

On a serious note, if Kravitz is actually straight, he is one of the most reprehensible people I've ever heard about. To pretend to be anything to win votes is disgusting. And, if Josephs is saying he's lying about being bisexual when he is, in actuality, a two-way street, then she's just as disgusting. I tell ya........

But, how about this for a thought? People should be themselves and be open about themselves and then we wouldn't have closets for people to come out of or go into as their mood and/or situation changes. How about that?