The Bilerico Project

Needed: A Better Definition of Bigotry

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:30:00 -0500

Recently I ran across a striking comment by George Washington. In 1790, one year into his presidency, the former general wrote these words to a Jewish group in New Jersey: "The Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens."

Sad to say, if Washington were alive today, he would frown to see how open and powerful bigotry has become. It not only drives major government policy -- it is socially acceptable, even admirable, to many Americans.

Indeed, while Washington didn't shrink from using that word, some Americans are ouchy about saying it out loud. Conservatives don't like to hear the word "bigot" applied to them. Many liberals -- including some LGBT people -- are convinced that it's not cool to refer to other people that way.

I disagree 110 percent. "Bigot" is an excellent word -- a necessary word. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. History has shown us the awful picture of how bigots operate, and why we shouldn't mis-define their activities today. Read on and see why.

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Zenyatta: Why Should We Care About a Horse?

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0500

Whenever the U.S. economy is down and out, horse racing always manages to come up with a "feel good" champion that captures the public imagination. During the Great Depression, it was a homely little bay stallion from California named Seabiscuit. When he overcame defeats and infirmities to beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral in a historic match race, The Biscuit convinced a lot of unemployed Americans that they too could win their battles for survival.

Today, in the latest dark and gloomy time for America, that feel-good horse is a big beautiful bay mare from California named Zenyatta.

But Zenyatta is just a horse, right? Why should anybody give a hell about a frikking horse, with our country falling apart and LGBT people under fire everywhere?

Good question. But some people do see Zenyatta as a sign of hope for their own lives. This weekend at Santa Anita, when she scored the "impossible" win in the Breeders Cup Classic, most of my local LGBT horse-fan friends were in that crowd, screaming their lavender heads off. And the ones who couldn't make it to the track were glued to their TVs or their computer screens.

Why would they feel that way? Read on and find out.

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"Obedience" -- Bigotry at Work in Maine

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0500

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. When we go head to head at the polls with an ideological enemy who is more numerous than we are -- who has more money than we do to spend on lobbying and campaigning -- we are risking defeat. We can lose the way we did over marriage in Maine just now -- and in California over Prop 8 in 2008, and everywhere else that we've gotten clobbered on ballot measures, including Maine in 1998.

So -- in spite of that state's tradition of grassroots liberalism, in spite of all our best efforts, the bigots were able to get the winning numbers by herding their sheep to the polls. Why? Because sheep do what they're told...and so do religious righters. They read the Bible and note that the faithful are described as sheep. So they put their heads down and OBEY.

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LGBT History: A British Bisexual and American Religious Liberty

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0500

Seldom do LGBT historians have the chance to write about pre-1800 historical figures whose orientation was clearly non-hetero. Even more seldom do we dwell on bisexuals, since bisexuality is such a divisive political issue with some of us.

So I can't let our History Month pass without a hat tip to a bisexual of the 17th century -- a statesman who helped establish a radical new idea called "religious liberty" in both Olde England and the brand-new United States.

I'm referring to George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. He has been described as "one of the most scandalous and controversial figures of the Restoration." According to a contemporary of his, he "left no law unbroke of God or Man."

But there's way more to the Buckingham story than scandal. His courageous stand on religious liberty came at a time when thousands of British, including members of the aristocracy, had been cruelly persecuted merely for advocating this dangerous idea.

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E-Marriage? You Heard Right

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:30:00 -0500

My friend Bryan Wildenthal, who teaches constitutional law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, drew my attention to this startling proposal being put forth by two professors at Michigan State University. In a news release on MSU School of Law News, Adam Candeub and Mae Kuykendall "announce the creation of the Legal E-Marriage Project, a clearinghouse for legislative proposals to institute 'e-marriage.' Their proposal has the potential to alter the landscape of the marriage culture wars, as well as solve the problems that arise when a great distance separates couples who wish to marry."

Candeub and Kukendall talk about "breaking the marriage monopoly." Will the religious right boil over when they hear about this? You bet. More after the jump.

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Ardi, Apes, Creationists and the Evolution of LGBT

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:30:00 -0500

The other night, as I watched the Discovery special on "Discovering Ardi," I could picture the religious right going into meltdown over this latest claim to a "missing link" in human evolution. The discovery of Ardi had just been published in Science. Ardi knocks one more brick out of that ragged wall of biblical arguments built by creationists -- that God got inspired around 5700 years ago and made the world in 6 days.

Ardi may also knock a brick or two out of another wall -- that of conventional evolutionist dogma. Some scientists can be no less dogmatic when they take a position that they believe to be "proven." Already there are hot debates about which prehistoric primates Ardi was related to, and what sex might have been like in Ardi's world. We LGBT people can add our own wonderings about orientation and gender differences that may have left their fossilized footprints along that long-ago horizon.

Who was Ardi, aka Ardipithecus ramidus? She lived around 4.4 million years ago, in what is now the Ethiopian desert. She stood about four feet tall, weighed maybe 110 pounds.

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LGBT History and Hispanic Heritage Month: Two Puerto Rican AIDS Activists

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0500

As Americans argue over healthcare reform and whether poor people should receive government-funded health care, one of the first and bloodiest battles ever fought over this issue took place ten years ago in Puerto Rico -- and got little coverage in the mainland media.

The central figures were two pioneering AIDS activists, José Fernando Colón and his partner Anselmo Fonseca. They fought -- and continue to fight -- the corruption and outright inhumanity so entrenched in our healthcare system, that have the United States in such a clamor today. The two men's activism, though largely unrecognized in the mainland LGBT community, has had a major effect on mainland AIDS policy.

"We went against the whole system and threw them down," José told me in a recent interview for A & U Magazine.

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Victory Garden: A Way to Avoid Eating at Least a Few of Those GM Foods

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0500

Even in a weekend of political explosions from the National Equality March, my "urban gardening" theme is relevant. How do I connect my Victory Garden with the marchers in D.C.? Many of them will surely be munching on fast food to stay alive, and the fries on their plates are not likely made from genetically modified potatoes. The humble spud has been the focus of a huge battle.

In 1998 Monsanto did a study on its own GM variety -- and learned that lab rats fed on these potatoes sustained a lot of organ damage. Around 19 percent of the rats died. The FDA approved the potato anyway. Monsanto suppressed the study for many years. But McDonald's refused to buy the transgenic tuber, saying that their customers were uneasy about GM fries. Other fast-food chains followed suit. So the GM potato market went bust overnight. But now it's recovering, with Simplot, the Idaho potato company, and several others aiming to GM the huge global potato market.

Meanwhile in my garden, I'm harvesting my little crop of organic non-GM potatoes. Why the prejudice against GM? Because I'm one of those Americans who is uneasy about eating this much-ballyhooed and little-tested stuff.

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Banned Books Week -- 10 LGBT Books to Keep Unbanned

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:30:00 -0500

Banned Books Week is an annual happening that celebrates the First Amendment freedom to get your hands on a book, whether for information or a good story. BBW also points up the dangers and insanities of censorship. I selected my Top 10 from the banned-books list of 2007-08 (pdf) because they were targeted for homosexual content. In alphabetical order, they are:

AND TANGO MAKES THREE, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (Simon & Schuster). Challenged at the Lodi County Public Library in California because "it's a homosexual story line that has been sugarcoated with cute penguins."
BLACK BOY by Richard Wright (Harper). Challenged in the Howell, Mich. high school because of "strong sexual content." Reviewed by county law enforcement to see whether laws against distribution of sexually explicit materials to minors had been violated.
THE CHOCOLATE WAR, by Robert Cormier (Dell; Pantheon) Challenged at the Harford County High School in MD because it is "peppered with profanities, ranging from derogatory slang terms to sexual encounters and violence."
FALLEN ANGELS, by Walter Dean Myers (Scholastic). Challenged at Chinquapin Elementary School in Duplin County, MC because it "is littered with hundreds of expletives, including racial epithets and slang terms for homosexuals."
KAFFIR BOY by Mark Mathabane (NAL). Banned from the Burlingame (CA) Intermediate School because of "two graphic paragraphs describing men preparing to engage in anal sex with young boys."

The list continues after the jump.

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Socialism and Gay Marriage -- Horse and Carriage?

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0500

There seems to be no limit to right-wingers' inventiveness when they start elaborating on the awfulness of "gay evil." With righters inveighing against both socialism and gay marriage, it was inevitable that some lightbulb was going to link those two "evils." The other day, Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) did just that.

In an interview with WingNutDaily, King insisted that socialism and gay marriage go together like the horse and carriage in the pop song. He said, "If there's a push for a socialist society, ...one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal."

When Republican right-wingers lie about history, they know they can get away with it because most Americans are so uneducated about history.

So let's look at history. Is socialism automatically gay-marriage-friendly? Or even gay-friendly without marriage? Does socialist government come to a country as a result of "traditional marriage" being "plowed through" by gay marriage? I don't think so.

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Victory Garden: Looking Ahead to Those Halloween Pumpkins

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:30:00 -0500

Today, September 22nd, is the date that fall officially arrives in our hemisphere. The sun is crossing the celestial equator in its march south, so day and night are about the same length. Fall means Halloween...and pumpkins. If you're making plans to do a jack-o-lantern or two for your front door, don't throw the pumpkins away afterwards. Make a fabulous pie or two (see below).

If you're a home gardener, save the pumpkin seeds. Separate them from the stringy pulp, spread them out somewhere and dry them. Put them in an envelope (not a plastic bag, please -- seeds are alive, so they have to breathe) and keep them in a cool dry place till spring. Then plant them outside as soon as frost danger is past.

And get ready for pumpkins to give you one of the biggest victory-garden adventures there is. More after the jump.

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HIV's Politically Invisible Cousins: HTLV-1 and -2

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0500

To explore the reasons why these formidable relatives of HIV have such a scanty public profile in the U.S., we need to take a detective's look back over some AIDS history.

In 1983, French researcher Luc Montagnier and a colleague discovered a virus that they called lymphodenopathy-associated virus, or LAV. Then in 1984, U.S. researcher Robert Gallo announced that he had discovered something similar that he called human T-lymphotrophic virus type 3. Subsequently HTLV-3 was renamed the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Gallo and Montagnier both claimed credit for discovering HIV. After years of French-American legal strife over the credit, most authorities agreed that Montagnier and his colleague had discovered the HIV virus first -- and the Frenchmen were given the Nobel Prize.

But this thumbnail history leaves us with questions. Before HTLV-3, came HTLV-1 and -2. What diseases do they cause? What have so few Americans heard of them...and what happened to obscure them in public-health policy?

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My House Made Headlines at 5 a.m. This Morning, or, America Is Falling Apart

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:00:00 -0500

Last night, around 3 a.m., our corner was suddenly the frantic focus of Los Angeles municipal emergency services. I was actually awake and working at my computer, when the water pipes in the house made a strange whooshing sound. Lights went on in my neighbors' house. We met on the sidewalk outside -- to be greeted by the sight and sound of a gusher of water erupting at the corner. The water main had blown.

My house, which stands right on the corner, was the one most at risk. Already the flood was deep enough to wet the floor of cars parked along the street, and the water level was surging into my front gate, to the first step in the walk.

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Have They Been Twisting Caster Semenya's Arm?

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:00:00 -0500

IAAF results of Caster Semenya's gender test are evidently in, but not announced yet, though the sports body has already announced that it won't strip the South African runner of her gold medal. But South Africa's enthusiastic support of its controversial track star may have come at a huge price, for her. The 800-meter world champion and gold medalist has let herself be packaged for the red carpet...in gold bling, stiletto heels, a low-cut cocktail dress, nail polish...and her famed corn rows now teased into an afro.

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Victory Garden: Delight and Danger with Peppers

patricia@bilerico.com (Patricia Nell Warren) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0500

The fiery colors of autumn come to the garden a little early...in the form of peppers getting ripe. With the Labor Day holiday hitting America, many of us are going to be doing family feasts or cookouts, and the menu is sure to include chile peppers in some form. I have a mad, wild love for these giant berries, especially the hot variety. They are easy to grow, as colorful as flowers, fascinating to look at -- not to mention the adventure of eating them.

Did you know that people have been chowing down on chiles for 7000 years? Did you know that the hot pepper is multi-purpose -- staple, spice, disinfectant, preservative, health food, medicine, even a weapon? Neither did I, till a few years ago, when I was introduced to chile growing by Arizona writer/book reviewer Ken Furtado, who wrote for Echo Magazine for many years.

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