lgbtQnews

Video: Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado – tribute to vital, exuberant teen

newseditor — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:24:22 -0800

Most of us first heard of 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado through news stories about his brutal murder. But what his family and friends will remember is the vitality and exuberance of a teen who had an infectious smile. Through this video montage, Steven’s family and friends have been gracious enough to share some of their memories with the rest of us.

Mourners will gather at vigils throughout the country tonight to honor Lopez.

Watch video at YouTube

The vigil page includes this statement from his mother:

When my son told me he was gay, I told him, ‘Now, I love you more.’ I want to tell the world that hatred is not born with human beings, it is a seed that is planted by adults and is fostered creating a climate of intolerance and violence. We must change our ways and understand that anyone …could have been my son. And I want everybody to know that Jorge Steven was a very much loved son.”

Hattip: Queerty Remembering the Life of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado / Queerty

Item: PA senator tries to shore up LGBT support with 3 co-sponsorships

newseditor — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:12:06 -0800

::: Sen. Arlen Specter (D,PA)—who was previously (R,PA) when he campaigned for his senate seat—has signed on in the past month as a co-sponsor of three important LGBT-related bill. He announced last week that he will co-sponsor the Uniting American Families Act, a bill that would give gay and lesbian citizens equal right to petition for their same-sex spouses or partners to live in the USA, LezGetReal reports. Although he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Specter announced in a Huffington Post column last month that he will now co-sponsor a bill to repeal the law, The Hill reports. “The states are the proper forum to address this divisive social and moral issue…” he wrote. He also announced his support for a bill that would “repeal entirely” the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Specter’s opponent in next spring’s Democratic primary, Rep. Joe Sestack, has been a vocal opponent of both DOMA and DADT. Progressives have charged that Specter has an anemic track record on LGBT rights legislation, so he appears to be trying to shore up some LGBT votes ahead of what’s expected to be a hard-fought primary, according to The Hill.

Source: Uniting American Families Act,- Senator Arlen Specter signs as co-sponsor - Lez Get Real

Eyecandy: Firefighter hunks still available for new year date (keeping)

newseditor — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:51:46 -0800

So you say you neglected to think ahead to this time when the oughts are about to end and the 21st century is about to enter its awkward teen years?

Don’t worry. There are still plenty of hot calendars out there that you can hang on your wall during the cold months, even if you haven’t actually consulted a paper calendar since the millennium started. There are, after all, other reasons to hang a calendar, like those presented above.

The guy on top (yeah…, yeah… Dream on.) is Arnold Collins, Jr. from New Orleans Fire Department’s Engine 8 Company. He’s one of the 13 smokin’ hot firefighters featured in the 2010 New Orleans Firefighters Look Hot calendar, available through the sponsoring foundation’s webpage for $20.

Below him, ably manipulating the big water-gun, is Mr. June from the NOLA calendar, Justin Schuelke, from Engine 29 company.

To the right are fellow NOLA firefighters Thomas Ussin (doing the Spiderman thing), Matt Chester, Brian Mendelson, and Gino Ascani.

Proceeds from sale of virtually all of the several firefighter calendars goes to charities of various sorts, but the New Orleans Firefighters Foundation, notes that departments still-important unique needs:

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina dealt the city a near devastating blow. The storm destroyed firehouses and equipment throughout the city. The New York City District Council of Carpenters and the Leary Foundation worked together to initiate the New Orleans Firehouse Restoration Project. Highly skilled union carpenters worked side by side with NOFD firefighters and civilians from across the country. Eighteen firehouses have been fully renovated and reopened. Some said it would take ten years and millions of dollars, but with dedication and generous support of so many organizations, the work continues with only two fire stations still working out of temporary trailers. NOFD is grateful for all the donations of materials, labor, and financial support.

Money raised from sale of the NOLA calendar “directly benefited the work of the New Orleans firefighters”, according to the foundation.

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Vermont judge awards sole custody of daughter to non-bio lesbian mom

newseditor — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:27:59 -0800

In a striking decision, a Vermont judge yesterday granted sole custody of 7-year-old Isabella Miller to her non-biological mother, Janet Jenkins, Mombian, the lesbian-mom’s blog, reports. For six years, the case has been jumping between courts in Vermont, where Jenkins lives, and Virginia, where her former spouse, Lisa Miller, now lives.

The former couple, who split up in 2003 after entering a civil union in Vermont, have since then been battling in the courts over custody and visitation rights to their daughter, who was born to Miller. Miller says she is no longer a lesbian and has enlisted the far-right Liberty Counsel to argue her case.

Rutland Family Court William Cohen ruled Friday that granting sole custody of Isabella to Jenkins was in the child’s best interest because Miller has consistently refused to comply with prior custody and visitation orders, Rutland Herald’s Brent Curtis reports.

In September, Cohen told Miller that he was fed up with her repeated disobedience to his visitation orders. He warned Miller that she would lose custody if she didn’t comply with the prior orders.

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Must read: Box Turtle on new ‘Christian’ manifesto – ‘a war over religious domination’

newseditor — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:18:42 -0800

On Friday, a group of clerics and political activists released a document called “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience”. The manifesto bears 152 names, including a who’s who of right-wing political/religious activists along with a few new names, including nine Roman Catholic archbishops—fresh off of their own victory in getting all US bishops to agree last week to the church’s own version of this right-wing declaration.

At the superb blog Box Turtle Bulletin, Timothy Kincaid offers an in-depth analysis and explanation of the document, which he calls “a statement of political purpose by an alliance of socially conservative activists who oppose abortion and marriage equality.” He writes:

[A]lthough the document speaks in lofty terms of Christian tradition and religious freedom, the only commitments it makes are to oppose legal abortion (some day down the road) and the immediate attack on the ability of gay people to avail themselves of civil equality.

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Exclusive!!! Varnished Take! (Fake) Q&A with Adam Lambert

robinev — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:22:10 -0800

EW.com touts a very brief piece now on the site as an “Exclusive Q&A with Adam Lambert”. To be fair, this brief item is to be followed by a series of additional “Exclusive! Q&A” postings dealing with other subjects.

For this first installment of the “Exclusive!” series, Whitney Pastorek—the not-quite questioner for this Q&A—tackles the obvious questions which concern what she calls the “OUT magazine kerfuffle”.

She refers, of course, to the editor’s letter that Out editor Aaron Hicklin penned for this week’s big “Out 100” issue.

Lambert, obviously, is one of the 100, but Hicklin complains in his letter that Lambert’s management, in talks with the magazine, was reluctant to offer to Out the kind of full cover-story access that they gave to Details magazine, for example.

Lambert is about to release his eagerly anticipated first album, For Your Entertainment. After several weeks as a best-seller on Amazon when it was still more a month from actual release, the album will finally be available for purchase Monday.

Because of that, Lambert appears to be something of a celebrity it-boy this week. He is on a promotional tour during which he, like anyone else on such a tour, will talk to almost—but not quite—anyone with a microphone or a laptop.

In that context, EW.com—whose chosen job it is to do such things—can’t be faulted for overhyping its smarmy, shallow puff-piece on Lambert.

EW’s writer asked only the most obvious questions, and didn’t probe at all or ask any of those pesky “follow-up” type questions. Perhaps there was something arranged before hand between interviewer and publicist?

That means that this “Exclusive Q&A” has far too few Q’s, so we’ve added (exclusively!!) a few fake Q&As below along with the real repartee which is indented.

[Q, below, is the fake Pastorek for whom I’ve done my best to maintain some of the spirit of her it’s-just-us-against-the-silly-gays smarminess. A. is the fake Lambert. Unfortunately, I can’t really guess what the real Lambert might have said if he’d been asked something like these question. But he appears to be articulate and thoughtful in this brief interview, so I’m sure they would have been an interesting read.]

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Anti-gay or anti-militarism? Memphis vandalism reinterpreted

newseditor — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:11:31 -0800

Did the radical queer anarchist group Bash Back Memphis “take credit” for defacing a billboard in Memphis that showed a local gay Marine?

‘Yes, they did’, reported several major blogs last week.

‘No, we didn’t’, claims an unidentified “representative” of Bash Back Memphis who spoke with a reporter for Memphis Flyer, a weekly newspaper.

What remained after the MGLCC ad was torn down was a billboard palimpsest that included parts of a Patti Labelle ad

The dispute centers around the meaning of a blog entry posted about a billboard that was put up in September for Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC), but quickly torn down by vandals.

Out & About reported that MGLCC paid for the billboard and several others as part of a campaign to promote National Coming Out Day.

The billboard featured an image of a saluting Marine (above). It bore the words, “I’m gay and I protected your freedom”, along with MGLCC’s name.

The billboard image, which was put up in a mostly-black neighborhood near downtown Memphis, was torn down in late September in what was widely interpreted to be an act of homophobic vandalism. PFLAG’s national blog called the vandalism a “hateful expression of intolerance”.

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Item: AWOL lesbian soldier wins new chance for Canadian asylum

newseditor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:09:26 -0800

::: US Army Private Bethany Smith, 21, (aka Skyler James) will have another chance to argue her case for getting asylum in Canada because of a key court victory Friday, Canada.com reports. A judge ordered Canada’s refugee board to reconsider her failed asylum claim, taking into account, this time, what the judge said is “compelling evidence” that she was persecuted by fellow soldiers and that her sexual orientation could mean stiffer punishment for going AWOL. Federal Court Justice Yves de Montigny concluded that Smith's sexual orientation puts her in a more sympathetic category. “She could be punished not only on AWOL (absent without leave) and desertion charges, but also for simply being gay,” he wrote. He wrote that Smith had been “harassed and threatened at the same base where a gay member of the army was beaten to death” nearly a decade ago—referring to the case of Pte. Barry Winchell, a gay US soldier who was beaten to death with a baseball bat at Fort Campbell, KY. Smith says that she sought a discharge from the army under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don't Tell” policy that requires openly gay service members to leave the military. But she was told, she said, that DADT-discharge paperwork could not be done until after she returned from a scheduled deployment to Afghanistan.

Source: Lesbian U.S. soldier wins bid for asylum

Lessons in homophobia: Philippines denial of LGBTQ party’s ballot bid

newseditor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:19:45 -0800

Philippines Senate hopeful Danton Remoto photo by Ralph Camus, from Danton’s campaign blog

“I will definitely run as senator in 2010,” said Philippine LGBTQ rights advocate Danton Remoto said Wednesday. “I’ve been invited by two parties to run for senator so I’m not running as an independent."

Remoto made that statement as he talked to reporters outside the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Manila, where he had just filed an appeal of a decision by the commission to deny accreditation to an LGBT party group called Ang Ladlad (Out of the Closet), Philippines TV network GMA reports.

Remoto is a prominent LGBTQ activist and an English professor at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University. He and other LGBTQ activists in the Philippines had originally hoped to run a national slate of gay-friendly candidates under the Ang Ladlad party banner in the 2010 ballot, Associated Press reports.

Candidates and political parties that plan to run in the 2010 election must be approved for the ballot by Comelec, which is charged with verifying that the candidate or party satisfies specified legal requirements.

Ang Ladlad’s petition for accreditation was, to the surprise of the candidates and most political observers, denied.

The commissioner’s ruling has sparked outrage within LGBTQ communities in the Philippines, but also—and more significantly—from politicians and from columnists in the country’s mainstream newspapers.

What has sparked the most criticism is the reasoning offered by the Comelec commissioners for their decision.

Commissioners Nicodemo Ferre, Lucenito Tagle, and Elias Yusoph cited passages from the Bible and the Quran condemning homosexuality, and wrote that Ang Ladlad “tolerates immorality which offends religious beliefs” and exposes young people to “an environment that does not conform to the teachings of our faith,” AP reports.

The decision has sparked widespread discussion of homophobia in the country where LGBTQ people have long been tolerated if not accepted, despite condemnation of homosexuality by the country’s two dominant religions, Roman Catholicism and Islam.

Newspaper columnists and Philippines politicians have decried the ruling, and the commissioners’ justifications for it.

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DC Agenda, the ex-Blade staff’s new paper, launches its website

newseditor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:58:46 -0800

DC Agenda, “The LGBTQ Community’s Newssource”—according to its web tagline—is now out on the web. If it isn’t already there, the new newspaper will, apparently, be available today in printed form at outlets in the Washington, DC area.

Update: A press release from Agenda summarized by Dallas Voice, says that the paper version is, indeed on the streets:

At 9:30 this morning, EST, the DC Agenda hit the streets, providing “critical coverage of local and national LGBT issues along with much needed community news,” according to a press release. It was hand-distributed by 17 former Blade staff members.

“Don’t judge us too harshly,” editor Kevin Naff writes in his first “Letter from the Editor” in the first edition of the paper. “[T]he edition of DC Agenda you’re holding is a modest, early iteration of what we hope to achieve in the wake of Washington Blade’s sudden closing this week.”

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