Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Trump Picks Anti-Gay State Legislator To Roll Of Secretary Of The Army
Eric Fanning made history when Barack Obama nominated him as the United States Secretary of the Army in May last year, making history as the first out man to head a military branch.
However, Mr Fanning was turfed out of his job when Donald Trump took office, with billionaire hockey club owner Vincent Viola serving in the interim role.
According to The Tennessean, he nominated Tennessee state senator Mark Green, a strongly anti-LGBT Republican lawmaker, to fill the role full-time.
Green is the author of Tennessee bill SB 127, which would grant businesses unlimited rights to discriminate without any action from state agencies, invalidating any non-discrimination protections.
The broadly worded states: “A government entity shall not take discriminatory action against a business entity on the basis of the internal policies of the business entity, including, but not limited to, personnel and employee benefit policies that are in compliance with state law.”
The bill was attacked by the Human Rights Campaign as a “thinly veiled legislative assault on LGBTQ Tennesseans and their families”.
HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow said at the time: “This proposal would forbid crucially important LGBTQ non-discrimination protections from being implemented by state and local government agencies.
“The Tennessee Senate should reject this shameful, discriminatory overreach of power.”
The formal announcement is expected this week.
Mr Fanning previously spoke movingly about a significance of being an openly gay men in the role.
Addressing a Pride event, he said: “For many in our military, Pride in San Diego has special meaning… With their actions, they sent a clear message to our country: that it’s possible to take deep pride in being part of two great families, the U.S. military and the LGBT community.
“I thought about my own experience when I first went to the Pentagon. I didn’t see anyone else like me in that large building.
“Each time I advance in [my] career, I get more attention and more people write to me, and I realize how many other people now see something they didn’t see before.”
Religious Bigotry On Trial In Mississippi
Mississippi is defending its
controversial “religious freedom” law in federal appeals court.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Carlton
Reeves halted the law before it took effect.
Republican Governor Phil Bryant, who
signed House Bill 1523 into law, is defending the legislation on his
own after Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood declined to appeal
Reeves' ruling. Private attorneys, including some from the Christian
conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, are handling the
appeal.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
heard arguments in the case on Monday.
Mississippi's Protecting Freedom of
Conscience from Government Discrimination Act allows businesses
to deny services to LGBT people based on their “sincerely held
religious beliefs or moral convictions.” It also seeks to provide
similar protections to individuals who object to transgender rights.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan, who
represented Edith Windsor at the Supreme Court in the case that
struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), is the lead attorney
for plaintiffs.
“The entire point of the religious
freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment is to protect the religious
beliefs of all Americans, not just the views of some Americans, or
even the views of the majority of Americans," Roberta Kaplan
said in a statement. "By enshrining three specific, anti-gay
religious beliefs not held by all religions or religious people in
Mississippi law, and by giving Mississippians who hold those beliefs
an absolute exemption from a wide variety of otherwise
generally-applicable laws and regulations, HB 1523 flies in the face
of this long and cherished constitutional tradition."
Kevin Theriot of Alliance Defending
Freedom said that the law protects Mississippians who believe that
marriage is solely a heterosexual union.
“Americans shouldn't have to live in
fear of government punishment simply for affirming marriage as a
man-woman union,” Theriot said in a statement. "Good laws
like Mississippi's protect freedom and harm no one. Those challenging
this law want to restrict freedom and impose their beliefs on others
by ensuring dissenters are left open to the government discrimination
that has already occurred in states without protective laws like this
one."
"Theriot said in a statement. "Good laws like Mississippi's protect freedom and harm no one." yeah, because in his eye's homosexuals are subhuman and not "real" people, so denying them goods and services harms no one of importance.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
The Kilted Coaches: Kilted Ballet pt 1
From their own description: An introduction to the Kilted Coaches. Stephen Clarke and Rab Shields have a wealth of knowledge on all things health and fitness. They also know how to balance your life as it's not all about training and nutrition. You must make room for the small luxuries in life.
The thing I love about these two str8 guys, they have quickly figured out who their audience really is and instead of just going it hardcore, they've embraced it and just have fun with it.
If you enjoy this vid, please feel free to pop on over, subscribe and give the guys some love.
The exercise routines are pretty challenging too.
Muslim Country Chechnya Gathering Gay Men And Murdering Them
Chechen authorities are posing as men looking for dates on Russian social networking sites and trapping gay men, according to Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
Gay men are being detained ‘in connection with their nontraditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such,’ reports indicate.
Denying any existence of gay men, the spokesperson said: ‘You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic.
‘If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,’ the spokesperson said.
Chechnya is a republic of Russia and is largely divided after years of devastating wars.
The aggression arose from a Russian activist group applying for a permit to have a gay pride parade.
The Russian LGBT Network responded to the claims, saying they were ‘highly disturbed and concerned’ with the reports.
A statement read: ‘Any references to “traditions” to justify kidnappings and killings are amoral and criminal.
‘The Russian LGBT Network makes every effort to contact the victims and to provide the emergency support.
‘Taking into account the recent statements of the Chechnya officials, we believe that the only thing that can work out is the evacuation,’ the statement read.
Concerned citizens of Chechnya are advised to help spread information on evacuation procedures or call the helpline on 8 800 555 73 74.
The Russian LGBT Network says: ‘We understand that many people want to help those in need.
‘But please remember that any uncoordinated actions can put in additional danger people in need and those who are ready to help.
‘Therefore, we do not recommend to collect the addresses of people who are ready to provide temporarily shelter,’ they said.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Ex-Governor Pat McCrory Gloats: The Good News Is LGBT Activists Lost The Battle
Pat McCrory, the former governor of
North Carolina who signed House Bill 2 into law, has called repeal of
the legislation a defeat for LGBT activists.
Despite loud objections from LGBT
advocates, Democratic
Governor Roy Cooper signed the legislation on Thursday.
House Bill 2 was approved last year
during a one-day special session. It blocks cities from enacting
LGBT protections and prohibits transgender people from using the
bathroom of their choice.
The compromise bill approved Thursday,
House Bill 142, repeals House Bill 2, but it also leaves bathroom
regulation to the state and enacts a moratorium on local LGBT
ordinances until December 1, 2020.
McCrory has blamed his reelection
defeat on the uproar over the controversial law.
“The good news is this: LGBT rights
advocate the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) lost the battle,” McCrory
said during an appearance on Washington
Watch, the radio show hosted by Christian conservative Tony
Perkins. “With their resources and power and money, and their
tying to get some other corporations to help support them in the
battle … The fact of the matter is, they did not get a full
repeal of HB2.”
McCrory added that he believes the
issue will be decided by the Supreme Court.
“Hopefully, with a new Supreme Court
justice that's been nominated by President Trump, there will be a
ruling in which we keep the definition of gender as we've been using
in the 1964 Civil Rights Act for generations. And I think that's
where this is going to be resolved,” McCrory said, referring to
the right of transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice.
A lawsuit brought by the ACLU to stop
enforcement of HB2 has likely been derailed by its repeal.
Gilbert Baker Designer Of The Pride Flag, Dead At 65
Gilbert Baker, creator of The Rainbow Flag that has become the symbol of the modern LGBT movement, died on Friday (31 March).
Baker died of natural causes at the age of 65 at his home in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
His work as a flag maker spans 39 years and includes two world records for flag making.
The first Rainbow Flag made its public debut in 1978 at San Francisco Pride.
Each stripe on the original eight-color flag had a meaning starting with hot pink which represented sexuality. Red represented life, orange was healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic and art, blue for serenity and harmony and violet for spirit.
‘I am heartbroken,’ activist and author Cleve Jones wrote in a Facebook post.
‘My dearest friend in the world is gone. Gilbert gave the world the Rainbow Flag; he gave me forty years of love and friendship. I can’t stop crying. I love you forever Gilbert Baker.’
Jones, creator of the world-famous AIDS Memorial Quilt and a protege of Harvey Milk, asked friends to meet him Friday night at Baker’s flag that waves at Castro and Market streets in San Francisco. It has flown in the Castro District permanently since 1997.
Baker did not profit from use of the flag as a commercial product because it is in the public domain as are all flags.
‘Flags are torn from the soul of the people,’ he told a writer for the 2007 book The American Flag, Two Centuries of Conflict and Concord.
Baker served in the US Army from 1970-1972 and was stationed in San Francisco just at the start of the gay liberation movement. His story as a soldier is featured in Randy Shilts’s book Conduct Unbecoming.
He was honorably discharged from the military and stayed in San Francisco where he taught himself to sew.
‘I had to look like David Bowie and Mick Jagger every single moment of my life, but I had no money,’ Baker told ABC News earlier this year.
‘I had to learn how to sew and to be able to express myself.’
Baker credits his friend, the late Harvey Milk, for inspiring his work.
Milk asked Baker to create something that would take the place of the pink triangle used by the Nazis to identify homosexuals and Baker knew it had to be a flag.
‘Flags are about power,’ he said in the ABC interview. ‘Flags say something. You put a rainbow flag on your windshield and you’re saying something.’
He applied this sewing skills to making banners for gay and anti-war street protest marches whenever asked by Milk, the San Francisco City Supervisor who was murdered with Mayor George Moscone on Nov 27, 1978.
In 1994, Baker created a mile-long rainbow flag carried by 5,000 people when New York City was remembering the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot.
Then in early in 2008, Baker returned to San Francisco to recreate the 1970s-era banners and flags for the feature film Milk starring Sean Penn.
Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar for writing Milk, paid tribute to Baker in a Facebook post.
‘Even rainbows weep. Our spectacular Gilbert Baker has left us. In more ways than one, our LGBTQ world is far less colorful without you.
‘But Gilbert created the #RainbowFlag to UNITE us. To make us stronger. In Gilbert’s memory #UNITE again. In Gilbert’s memory find #STRENGTH. Find #BEAUTY. Find #LOVE. And #RiseUp again.
‘I love you, Gilbert. Thank you for everything you taught me, for all of the flags you sewed for me, and for helping all of the us’s become such a big, colorful, proud family.’
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