San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Gender

Justice Scalia’s Passing Portends a Bitter Partisan Showdown

by

Apparently, the GOP thinks that Black Presidents only get 3/5ths of a term

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia moved on to his final judgment day over the weekend. The nation’s conservatives skipped past mourning mode for a man who’d immeasurably helped their causes and went directly to saber rattling.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, en route to his annual visit to the US Virgin Islands, wasted no time in letting it be known that President Obama shouldn’t waste his time trying to pick a replacement.

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell said in a statement. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”   [Read more…]

Stop Playing Word Games: Debate Moderators Must Ask Honest Questions About Abortion

by

By Jodi Jacobson / RH Reality Check

The media loves to obsess about—and stoke controversy around—abortion and contraception. Journalists and talk show hosts can endlessly plumb these long-simmering issues for ratings and sound bites. On the Sunday talk shows, in radio interviews, and presidential debates, politicians exclaim with abandon their support for any number of restrictions and laws, using their so-called pro-life stances to gin up their bases like matadors swinging a red cloak in front of a riled-up bull.

Rarely, however, do journalists stop to ask these politicians: Exactly what is the evidence for your position? And I have never heard anyone ask for some deeper reflection by a politician on the consequences of treating the lives of millions of people and families like so many political poker chips to bargain away at the election table.

After all, when some powerful senator blithely declares he “chooses life,” he’s not choosing to pay the medical bills for, diaper, feed, clothe, nurture, educate, and make a lifelong commitment to that child. He is leaving that to someone else who becomes a parent for the rest of their life, whether they wanted to be or not, or can afford to, or not.   [Read more…]

Faulconer Flunky Dukes It Out With Saldaña in UT Interview

by

Today’s Union-Tribune interview with mayoral candidate Lori Saldaña read like a debate between the former Assemblywoman with Mayor Faulconer’s campaign manager Jason Roe. This was coverage reminiscent of the Copley era.

Rather than give Saldaña a clear shot at explaining her views and critiques (and she has plenty) of the present regime, the Union-Tribune tapped the mayoral pit bull to refute her point by point.

This reminds me very much of the old days around the paper, wherein any viewpoints counter to “everybody knows” were quickly smothered with officially blessed counterpoints.   [Read more…]

Local Politics Gets Interesting: Block Drops Out, Castellanos Gets Scorned, and Saldaña Makes It Official

by

As January draws to a close, political campaigns in San Diego are beginning to take shape.

San Diego’s Marty Block took to the state senate floor on Thursday to announce his decision not to run for re-election, clearing the way for Assemblywoman Toni Atkins to take his seat.

City Attorney candidate Rafael Castellano’s run of local club support came to an end last night when the influential Democrats for Equality failed to endorse any candidate, following a forum where a past lawsuit for sexual harassment emerged as an issue.

And, as expected, former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña made her challenge to incumbent Mayor Kevin Faulconer official yesterday at a press conference in Old Town.

[Don’t forget! Friday’s Starting Line includes the Weekly Progressive Calendar]   [Read more…]

Grand Jury Clears Planned Parenthood, Indicts Fake Tape Activists Instead

by

District Attorney: “We must go where the evidence leads us”

By Common Dreams Staff

A grand jury in Texas, which was created to investigate Planned Parenthood’s Houston affiliate following the August 2014 release of an undercover video taken inside the clinic, cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing on Monday, and, instead indicted the anti-abortion activists who made the video.

Two secret videographers were indicted: David Daleiden, founder of the ‘Center for Medical Progress,’ was indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs. And activist Sandra Merritt was indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record.

In a statement, the Harris County district attorney, Devon Anderson, said Monday: “We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” Ms. Anderson said. “As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case.”   [Read more…]

‘The Best There Is’: World Mourns Artistic Maverick David Bowie

by

“I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman,” Bowie once sang.

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

The world on Monday mourned the death of David Bowie, the iconic rock star, record producer, artist, and performer whose influence spanned generations and whose ideas constantly pushed boundaries of creativity, sexuality, and custom.

Bowie’s death was confirmed by a post on his Facebook page, which said that the artist died peacefully in New York City on Sunday “surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.” He had just celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8.

Bowie, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, south London, was lauded as a performer who was always ahead of his time.   [Read more…]

A Brief History of Vagina Worship

by

The vagina has been seen as a symbol of strength and fertility—and sometimes punishment

By Carrie Weisman / AlterNet

Despite the prevalence of sexually suggestive imagery in our culture, we’re still a bit squeamish when it comes to vaginas. But that wasn’t always the case.

“Before Western religion introduced the pesky concept of shame, female genitalia were venerated in ancient mythology,” writes Catherine Blackledge, author of The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality. Blackledge details how skirt lifting, or “ana suromai,” was once thought to help ward off evil and increase crop yields. She points out that 17th-century drinking mugs used to sport depictions of Satan cowering at the sight of an exposed vagina. Meanwhile, the ancient Greeks paraded around cakes shaped like vulvas during the three-day, women-only Syracusan Thesmophoria festival.   [Read more…]

How America’s Insane Anti-Choice Crusaders Screw Over Women All Over the Globe

by

The misrepresentation of American attitudes on abortion is influencing policy abroad—for the worse

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet

Laura Bassett and Ryan Grim, in a piece for Huffington Post, point out that misleading domestic and international news coverage of the abortion debate has led to abortion policy changes abroad. There’s also the matter of the Helms Amendment—named for the late North Carolina senator who opposed pretty much everything decent in this world—which bans the use of U.S. foreign aid to fund abortions for any reason.   [Read more…]

Donald Trump’s Audacity of Hate

by

The debate went on inside my head throughout the night as I drifted in and out of dreams. Should I call out this latest batch of hate-mongering from The Donald? Or am I just giving him what he wants? The man sees his polls drop in Iowa and he’s at the ready with some new bit of outrage to keep his name in the headlines.

‘If you see something, say something’ won the debate. Plus, I realized Trump’s merely surfing the wave of fear empowered by his fellow chicken hawks and amplified by the media. Today I’ll examine reaction to the latest proclamations from the GOP candidate.

The press has also been remiss in letting the whole issue of the Planned Parenthood shooting get swept under Trump’s and the GOP’s rug. After what amounted to a conservative campaign to question whether or not the women’s health care provider was targeted, we now know the shooter was indeed after Planned Parenthood.   [Read more…]

So Let’s Have That Bathroom Conversation…

by

By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos

Last week’s defeat of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, which would have provided nondiscrimination protections to people based on 15 different characteristics , seems to have come down to one question: Where will people pee?

The anti-equality crowd hitched their star to one deceptively simple slogan that won the day: “no men in women’s bathrooms.” It’s a conversation involving which restrooms queer and transgender Americans are allowed to use that establishment gays seem to shrink from like Kryptonite, which frankly makes it the perfect topic to delve into.

Truth be told, I too am a bit hesitant to take it on because I’m not transgender, so I don’t pretend to speak for the trans community in any way other than to shed some light on the bathroom conversation. But based on my personal experience as a self-identified woman who has short hair and dresses in rather boxy or otherwise “boyish” clothing, my sense is that people’s obsession with who uses which bathroom has little to do with people’s genders but rather whether someone challenges their idea of what people should look like.   [Read more…]

Social Security Stuck with the Bills as Companies Subvert Workman’s Comp

by

By Doug Porter

A study released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) makes the case that so-called reforms to workman’s compensation programs at the state level are tied to a rise of the number of workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (DI).

Over the past quarter century, the number of beneficiaries in this program has gone from 25 per thousand to 59 per thousand, bringing the DI trust fund close to depletion in 2015.

Republicans are claiming the rise in claimants for disability benefits is being fueled by lower-wage workers seeking an easy way out of the labor force. It’s just the latest wrinkle in the old “poor are shiftless and lazy meme” at the heart of so-called reform schemes.   [Read more…]

Thinking of Josephine and James and Langston and Other Gay Icons

by

By Ernie McCray

After writing recently about a five-year-old girl being kicked out of a Christian Academy, in what seemed to me to be an example of rampant homophobia in the black community, I began thinking “Is it just me?”

Then a childhood friend commented on what I had written with these words: “This is all new to me in the black churches… many gay persons played the music, sang in the choir, helped get those fashion shows together and no one said a mumbling word or they never appeared to out loud.”

What a relief to discover it just wasn’t me who feels the way I do because what my homey had to say is so how I remember things back in the day – so how I happened to live all these years thinking that black folks were okay with folks who are gay.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry