Category: Sexuality
In a stunning, carefully crafted 136-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker held in Perry v. Schwarzenegger that California’s Proposition 8, which outlaws same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional. The lawsuit was filed by two gay couples who sought to overturn Prop 8. Interestingly, the named defendant, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, did not defend Prop 8. Neither Read more…
“As we mark the end of America’s combat mission in Iraq,” President Barack Obama said this week, “a grateful America must pay tribute to all who served there.” He should have added “unless you’re gay,” because, despite his rhetoric, weeks earlier the commander in chief fired one of those Iraq vets: Lt. Dan Choi. Read more…
Queer is many things. It’s a critique of identity– critiquing/questioning the boxes and categories we are given to cage ourselves with. Example, we can be gay, straight, or bi. These are the choices we have. But they don’t describe reality and they do more to contain us than to liberate us. (Although, I have to Read more…
Bishop Harry Jackson has been more than a trusted ally of the religious right. In the past few months, from his church headquarters in Beltsville, Maryland, Jackson has led a coalition of mostly African American religious leaders in a battle over same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, on December 19, 2009, Washington, DC officially legalized same-sex marriage by Read more…
The U.S. experience of the Vancouver Winter Olympics was shaped, unfortunately, by viewers’ access to broadcasts and reports. NBC once again demonstrated its inability to understand this global competition and the sports within it. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo telling them that the Winter Olympics is supposed to be about the world coming together Read more…
Today’s Tiger Woods press conference was an exercise in painful self-abasement that will achieve the opposite of its intended effect. I haven’t seen anything this painfully scripted since the Phantom Menace. The same George W. Bush media advisers who gave us Mission Accomplished were hired by Tiger to present the world with Emission Regretted. Read more…
Lucy Ascaso: Local English Teacher SuspendedOn Monday, October 26, 2009, Southwestern High School's most popular teacher, Dan DeLong, was suspended. DeLong has taught English at Southwestern for 13 years and is known for his constructivist methods and risqué reading assignments. After assigning an optional assignment on rhetorical analysis, a parent complained that the content of the assignment was inappropriate for Read more…
On Wednesday, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court overturned a ruling made by a federal trial judge that would have allowed limited television coverage of a trial that will decide the fate of California’s Proposition 8. The trial, which is currently proceeding in San Francisco, is one of the most significant civil rights cases Read more…
WHILE OSTENSIBLY about the marriage rights of lesbians and gays in California, the Perry v. Schwarzenegger court case that begins January 11, 2010, will likely debate the constitutionality of discrimination against LGBT people nationwide. The trial is in a federal district court in California, but the smart money has the case winding up before the Read more…
Noah Berlatsky: Leaving CampAntony & The Johnsons, The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian) (Jan 2. 2009) — According to stereotype, people of idiosyncratic genders and sexualities congregate in cities. Their cabarets and fabulous performance events happen indoors and at night. For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, you probably wouldn’t expect to stumble upon Marlene Dietrich in Read more…