Actress and lesbian Cynthia Nixon has caused a firestorm in the gayosphere by saying that for her, sexual orientation was a choice.

Obviously, this view undermines the arguments of gay political orthodoxy, and gives the right wingnuts who run “gay rehabilitation prayer camps” support that they were right all along–”See Harold, I told you he was just doing it to be ornery.”  Of course, the truth is  probably like most things: The truth is somewhere in between. It may be for her, but it isn’t for most gay people.

At any rate, this becomes pretty scary when coupled with another news item from the week, news that conservatives are conservative because they are stupid. Full story »

by Marti Smith

“If all we feel is outrage, then we have not found a remedy.”- Jim Geringer, Governor, State of Wyoming, following Matthew Shepard’s death

Since I was a young girl and old enough to understand who I was, I have known discrimination. It hardens your heart and dampens your soul until you conquer the fear. Some don’t make it and commit suicide. To have the media, family, co-workers and friends tell jokes and make hurtful remarks is the life of a GLBT person. Unless you are a person of color, you likely don’t know what it is like to live a life of separation. As a GLBT person you are not allowed to do basic things like date, or attend the prom. You can’t hold hands or show affection in public for fear of retribution, or get relationship advice, or bring your boyfriend or girlfriend home to meet the parents. If you do, then you risk abandonment, ridicule, or even physical harm. There are churches who condemn us, and even reject us from attending. We are made to seem sub-human, and even demonic. You can’t experience the life you were born to live….freedom to choose, freedom to live, freedom to marry.

I had to leave a job I loved in my early career for fear of being found out. Full story »

Freddie Mercury was my John Lennon.

I remember when Lennon was killed. I also remember the reactions of his fans. I liked The Beatles, of course, but they were a few years ahead of me. And Lennon’s solo work underwhelmed me. So it’s fair to say that I really didn’t get his importance to Baby Boomers or the powerful emotional connection that many of them felt to him. As a result, I didn’t quite fathom the oppressive pall that seemed to fall over every part of the world inhabited by Boomers when, on December 8, 1980, he was gunned down on the streets of New York City. The Beatles weren’t my band. They weren’t of my generation. John wasn’t my hero. And I had never lost a rock hero before.

But on November 24, 1991 – 20 years ago today – I came to understand perhaps a measure of the grief felt by my older friends and colleagues. On that day the man who had been my rock hero succumbed to AIDS. We had only learned a few days earlier that he even had the disease, and I had no idea that the end would come so quickly. Full story »

Since we’re reclaiming our stake on Freddie Mercury this week, I suppose we need to reclaim all of him—including the schmaltz-fest that was Flash Gordon.

It’s common practice today for a band to accept a few bucks from someone who wants to appropriate its music for a soundtrack. Back in 1980, not so much. But Queen went far beyond that, aligning themselves so closely with science fiction schlock that they actually wrote the soundtrack.

And I loved every note of it.

Full story »

In 1995, only a year after South Africa’s first democratic election, I was working at a community centre in Nyanga, a shanty-town alongside Cape Town’s international airport. The centre had started a project which aimed to give HIV-positive single mothers a safe place to live and work.

My self-appointed task was to assist with setting up income generation projects. I had a “real” job during the week and would arrive early on Saturday mornings to a queue of toddlers and tiny children waiting to be picked up and swung. Little happy, snotty faces with upstretched arms taking their turns and then running to the back of the line to have another go.

And every one of them HIV-positive.

One day a child, late to be swung, came running too quickly and slipped. She fell hard on the concrete and scraped her arm and leg. Blood flowed and she began to howl. I stooped to pick her up and a nurse grabbed me, pulling me back.

“No,” she said, her face sad, “let her mother pick her up,” indicating the blood and cuts on my hands from where I’d injured myself working on my car.

That was the moment that the death sentence implied by AIDS hit home. None of these children would live more than another few years. Full story »

Here’s the chronology:

1. During a preseason game between the Flyers and Rangers last night, Philly’s Wayne Simmonds and New York’s Sean Avery engaged in some predictable contentiousness. I say predictable because Avery is without question the most annoying little fuckhead in hockey history and there’s always contentiousness when he’s in the building.
2. At one point, Simmonds is alleged to have called Avery a “faggot.” Full story »

A few days ago, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts revealed that he is gay. And the whole sporting world exploded yawned.

Okay, that’s not precisely true. There has been a bit of comment and analysis. But so far, no controversy. No homophobic ranting, no athletes stepping up to say that Jesus doesn’t approve, none of that. This is a wonderful thing. That the public response so far has amount to a collective shoulder shrug is evidence that America is finally getting over the idea that sports just isn’t ready for gays in the locker room. Full story »

By an overwhelming majority of 8-1, the “Super Supremes” ruled today to protect the free speech protests of Westboro Baptist Church members who have been picketing at the funerals of dead soldiers.

It was a stunning victory for free speech and the First Amendment and really endorses earlier U.S. Supreme Court rulings that even reprehensible speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution. It’s one of the bedrock principles the country was founded on. Full story »

I put out two or three Moments of Clarity per week. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe at www.youtube.com/LeeCamp2

The Marines are arguably the most conservative branch of the US armed forces. This is borne out in the results of a survey of 400,000 Service members where 21% of all Service members felt negatively about repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), compared to 32% of Marines who felt negatively. It is also borne out by the fact that the Marine commandant , General James Amos, has been saying that repeal would negatively affect the Marine Corps. Marines, like other Service members, take their cues from the top, and since the top Marine commander has been publicly against repeal, it’s entirely reasonable that the rest of the Corps would be against repeal as well.

And that’s the reason that Richard Cohen of the Washington Post called in his column today for Amos to resign. It may well be that, as Cohen says, Amos “is one step short of being a bigot” and has “not an iota of sympathy for what might be their difficulties or any tolerance for their lifestyle.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Amos should be forced out. Full story »

In a recent discussion on one of my political lists Sara Robinson (easily one of the brightest folks in the blogosphere) made an important point about what often causes people to migrate from socially conservative perspectives to more progressive points of view. In describing her experiences with a particular activist group that helped people leaving fundamentalist religions (something that can be emotionally traumatic at the very least, and that frequently comes at a significant price in their lives – lost families, ostracization, etc.), she noted:

[T]he first sliver of doubt came about when the person’s authorities asked them to believe something that they simply could not reconcile with their own experience. In a plurality of cases, this dissonance was caused by knowing and caring for someone who was gay, and realizing that the conservative storyline on the inherent evil of homosexuality just didn’t line up with what they knew of this wonderful person. (If the religious right knew just how often this one issue triggered those first unignorable doubts, they’d walk away from gay-hating and never go back to it.) Full story »

I’ve been listening to news about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) ever since a federal judge in California overturned it and subsequently had her ruling stayed by the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals. I’ve heard about generals who are arguing against it, claiming that allowing openly homosexual servicemen and women will damage the military’s readiness to fight by interfering with unit cohesion. I’ve heard about men and women who were discharged under DADT who filed to rejoin the military one day only to find that their ability to do so was stopped cold the next. And I’ve heard activists complain bitterly that the Department of Justice under President Obama is defending DADT instead of letting it die as Obama would personally prefer.

I have some thoughts on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Full story »

At the turn of the 18th century, when the US colonies were just figuring out how to be states, it would be hard to imagine that all of these hundreds of thousands of slaves would be set free on humanitarian grounds. Those fighting the civil war would find that women would have an equal right to vote as men across the nation sixty years later as being pretty far fetched. And those women casting their first vote would be stunned to know that in another half century there would be national laws set in place to protect wild animals and to regulate what is put in our waterways. Likewise, those living under the Reagan Administration wouldn’t think that gays marrying each other or serving openly in the military or marijuana legalization would be very likely now, but it’s now just around the corner. Full story »

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis (italics mine) in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

Judge Vaughn R. Walker
August 4, 2010

And this, my fundamentalist Christian fellow citizens, is precisely why you are not the boss of me, or of gay couples, or of women, or of African-Americans or of anyone but your own selves (and your children, until they escape you). Irrationality. Beliefs based on, well, belief. Faith without reason. Useful for searching souls, perhaps, and it seems to fill the plates and build the megachurches, but it’s no way in hell to run a country. Full story »

Being born a woman (albeit a “natural” and therefore conservatively acceptable one), the prospect of joining a club in which my functions would be limited to possible figurehead, full-time cook and designated dicksucker* baby machine has consistently failed to seduce me. Short version: I’ve never been tempted to become a Republican. It’s difficult to imagine that any female could ignore the patriarchal worldview that is the GOP, no matter how terrifying crime and the shaky economy are… and yet self-identified Republican women exist and thrive here in the steamy crotch of the Bible Belt. I see the bumper stickers in the preschool parking lot. I hear the conversations everywhere from Neiman-Marcus to Target. Several of my friends and acquaintances have an elephant in their closets.  Hell, I love and trust one enough to leave my daughter (Her Majesty in the picture there) with her at least once a week, more often if her grandfather can wheedle hard enough. Full story »

by Ann Ivins

I’ve been thinking with increasing irritation about that perennial conundrum-within-an-enigma-which-actually-isn’t-that-difficult-at-all: the separation of church and state, this time in the context of gay marriage. The issue becomes more annoying the more headspace I give it, and it’s not the prejudice or the public protests or the proclamations of any group on either side. The question that makes my brain twitch is this: why is this even an issue?

I firmly believe that the followers of any given religion have the perfect right to include, exclude and/or vilify anyone they choose. Full story »

On Nov. 3, 299,483 citizens of the state of Maine were persuaded to tell women who love women and men who love men that they cannot marry. Those Downeasters who voted “Yes” on Question 1 — to repeal a same-sex marriage law — bashed gays, but with a referendum rather than a fist.

Those 267,574 people who voted “no” — which would approve the same-sex marriage law — were not dissuaded by an anti-gay coalition of conservatives and churches wielding more than $3 million, including more than $2 million from out-of-state donors, according to a report by the National Institute On Money In State Politics.

Much of the sparring over the referendum was funded on both sides by groups outside the state of Maine. Given that gay marriage has been a wedge issue for years, that’s hardly surprising. But in Maine?
Full story »

“I keep telling you guys my aim is to become a legend,” said Usain Bolt, after smashing the world 200 metres record and becoming the first man to hold the 100 and 200 metres sprints in both the Olympics and the Athletics World Championships.

Competition at international sporting events is fierce and the pursuit of an edge, sometimes measured in hundredths of a second, leads some to cheat.  Steroid abuse aims to increase the strength, speed and endurance of what is natural.  But the androgens created by the body are not set to any standard.  Some people do genuinely produce more than others.  Figuring out what is normal and what is not is difficult.

And, sometimes, something else is going on. Full story »

Let’s begin with a brief Q&A with America.

Q: Let’s say you’re sick with a potentially deadly disease. Who do you want for a doctor?
A: The smartest, most experienced and highly qualified expert in the field.

Q: You’re looking to invest your life savings. Who do you trust to handle your money?
A: The brightest, most agile financial mind I can find.

Q: You’ve been selected to participate in a “private citizens in space” program. Who do you want in charge of building the rocket? Full story »

A modest proposal, perhaps.

It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)

On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”

On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full story »