An estimated 100,000+ people showed for the 42nd Annual LGBT Pride Parade on Saturday, July 16.
The weather was perfect. The crowd was loud and proud, with an undercurrent of poignancy due to memories of the Pulse nightclub attack on June 12, where 49 people lost their lives to a gunman. People used the word Orlando in many ways throughout the event, symbolizing solidarity, love, and courage.
Photographer Haley Joy Porter was there and took these photos. [Read more…]
It’s a busy time of year in San Diego. There’s All-Star Baseball, there’s homeless being bullied because of baseball, there’s a protest over the plans build a football stadium in the East Village there’s Pride Week and plenty more.
Get your event listed: I try to list the next 10 days or so of mostly non-commercial events I think our readers might find of interest. I source my material from social media listings and press releases. In cases where there are competing but similar events or campaigns of the progressive persuasion, I do my best to list everything.
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By Aaminah Khan / Yes! Magazine
When I first came out, I thought I might be the only queer Muslim in the world. I was 19 years old, born and raised in the West. While I had Muslim friends and gay friends, I didn’t know anyone but me who was both.
The idea of coming out to the Muslims in my life—mostly people of my parents’ generation who existed in my mind as a forbidding monolith hushing me at Jummah prayers—was unthinkable. My only option, if I wanted friends around whom I could be my whole self, was a backwards coming-out of sorts. Rather than being a queer person in Muslim spaces, I could be a Muslim in queer ones. [Read more…]
By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet
This is a particularly interesting week to be traveling across the French countryside, as news fills the papers and the airwaves of another assault weapon-of-war used in another mass shooting done by another frightened—and thus hate-filled—American.
The Europeans know well the wages of hate and fear. And it goes way back into the dim mists of history, well before the era of the names we all know so well from the 20th century.
“The Other” is the key.
Once a demagogue successfully turns a person, a group, a gender (or gender preference), a region, a nation, or a race into the Other, the consequences are terribly but consistently predictable. [Read more…]
Today’s column is all about guns and the people that enable their abuse. A few corporations fund a ‘grassroots’ lobbying group. Data is suppressed by law. Thousands of people die every year and the only solution is supposedly prayer.
Or we’re supposed to chant the words Radical Islamic Terrorism three times, click our heels, and everything will be right in the world.
Once again the nation finds itself in the middle of a ‘debate’ over guns following a mass shooting. It’s a very one-sided debate. Vast majorities of people believe that common-sense measures are needed. The will of the people is likely to be ignored. [Read more…]
The Washington Post joined the ever-growing list of media barred from receiving credentials by the Donald Trump presidential campaign on Monday. The Post joins the Des Moines Register, Politico, the Huffington Post, the National Review, Univision, and a host of other outlets in Trumpian political purgatory.
‘Displeasing The Fearless Leader will get you banished’ is the message. He’s already promised to “open up” the law, no doubt to construe libel in terms of what the rich and powerful may lose by others writing anything about them. Enjoy your First Amendment while you can, folks.
Today, by the way, is Donald Trump’s birthday. [Read more…]
In the middle of all the anger and sadness I was feeling about the death and destruction in Orlando, I received an email that should have never been sent.
The sender, a long-time political activist in San Diego, was hoping for attention. I don’t think he’s going to like what I’m going to say.
Here’s the relevant quote, in the same all caps format as it was sent: PLEASE COME TO THIS RALLY. NEED BIG TURNOUT TO GET THROUGH MEDIA BLACKOUT DUE TO NIGHTCLUB MASSACRE IN FLORIDA!! [Read more…]
By Anne Haule / Musings of a Boomer Feminist
Juliet could not marry Romeo because of a long-standing family feud between her family (the Capulets) and his family (the Montagues). She laments that if it weren’t for the name “Montague” their love could survive – “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Brides from the 80’s to the present do feel that names matter and often put much thought into whether of not to take their husband’s birth name or retain their own.
The heterosexual tradition of the wife taking the husband’s name is based on English common law that held a husband and wife are one “person” under the law – resulting in the end of the wife’s separate legal existence – along with all her “single person” rights. Wives were considered “chattel” and were essentially owned by their husbands. This name change heritage is the reason many feminists beginning in the 70’s retained their birth names. [Read more…]
By Mukul Khurana
Now that we are at war with Afghanistan, we are bound to find out a lot more about their culture. It is a cynical commentary on our society, but we don’t tend to acknowledge countries and cultures until we are at war with them—take Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq for instance—for us, they didn’t “exist” until we bombed them.
The dark aspect fascinating us now about Afghan culture is a practice called Bacha Bazi (known as “boy play” – a centuries old tradition wherein older men engage younger boys as dancers, singers, and, sometimes, sexually…). Ask the men who follow the tradition and they will tell you about mentorship and the chance for a good life they provide the young boys. [Read more…]
By Jill Richardson / OtherWords
The time has come for me to play my Woman Card.
A male Republican politician in my state of Wisconsin has introduced a “bathroom bill” like the one passed in North Carolina, which requires transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth.
He says it’s to “protect women and children.”
Oh, knight in shining armor, thank you for trying to protect me and my fellow women. But I fear you misunderstand the real issues women have in restrooms. [Read more…]
By Susan Grigsby / Daily Kos
Rebecca Traister’s new book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, opens with an examination of the treatment of Anita Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee during the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
Rather than refute any of her charges of what came to be known as sexual harassment, the conservatives on the committee and in the media attacked Ms. Hill. It was suggested that she suffered from erotomania or had certain “proclivities” (according to William Safire, this word, used by Senator Alan Simpson, was “a code word for homosexuality”). [Read more…]
By Anne M. Haule
I had the most delightful chat with Janis Ian this morning. Her warmth immediately calmed my nerves (in this my first celebrity interview). I felt as if I were chatting with a friend. She is upbeat, articulate, humorous and amazingly candid. She was generous with her time and forthright with her comments. She is a self-proclaimed optimist with a sparkle in her voice.
We began by talking about her 50+ year career – and what a versatile career it has been and continues to be. Janis has received 38 awards and honors for her music, her writing, her audiobooks, and her social activism. [Read more…]
