[plug] Documentary Seeking African-Americans for Opinions re: homosexuality

Ann Arbor: Seeking African-American individuals who would be interested in being interviewed for a short documentary film about attitudes, beliefs and opinions about homosexuality in the black community. Interested individuals can be out or in the closet or somewhere in between and can be of any sexual orientation. Please note that I will protect the identity of those who might want to remain anonymous.

Interviews are being conducted in June 2006, and can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. We anticipate completing the project in Fall 2006 and each participant will receive a copy of the finished film as well as special seating at all local screenings.

For those interested in participating please contact Charlotte.

[news] Georgian Marriage Ban Violates State Constitution (for now)

A Georgia superior court (trial court) has struck the state's same-sex marriage ban on procedural grounds. Is anything really struck on procedural grounds, though?

(link to article)

[plug] Summer Coming Out Group

Spring/Summer Coming-Out Group! Our spring/summer coming-out discussion and support group/network is starting soon! This eleven-week group will help participants explore and discuss a variety of coming-out topics. *Free and open to the public!*

The group will meet Wednesdays from 5:30 to 7:30 pm in the LGBTA Office, starting on May 24th. Before joining, all interested participants must set up a brief meeting with Kevin Correa to make sure the group is right for them. To set up a meeting, please e-mail Kevin or call 734.763.4186.

LGBTA Office
3200 Michigan Union

[pics] Graduation 2006

(link to more pics)

[if you have pics from graduation, please send them my way]

[plug] Lav Law Event: FAIR v. Rumsfeld Workshop

Dear friends,

In response to inquiries from law students, faculty, staff and supporters about what to do next (in addition to protest) following the decision in FAIR v. Rumsfeld upholding the Solomon Amendment, the National Lesbian and Gay Law Foundation will be offering a special workshop at the 2006 Lavender Law Conference for law student, faculty and staff attendees that will teach why these constituencies are uniquely situated to advocate for the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and give them concrete strategies and tools for doing so. More detailed info is below. Because Lavender Law is in September this year, this workshop will kick-off the first post-FAIR v. Rumsfeld recruiting season. Please join us and forward this announcement on to all who may be interested.

SAVE THE DATE & SPREAD THE WORD!

What: The 2006 Lavender Law Conference of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Foundation will offer a special training academy on the key ways that law students, faculty and staff can impact the effort to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Attendees will return home with concrete strategies and tools. The training is entitled "From FAIR (v. Rumsfeld) to Equal: The Top Five Things Law Students, Faculty and Staff Can Do to Accelerate the Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,'" and faculty are Sharon Alexander, deputy director for policy at Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and Kara Suffredini, legislative lawyer at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Why: Since the FAIR v. Rumsfeld decision in March upholding the Solomon Amendment, there has been much discussion among law students, faculty, staff and supporters about what to do next (in addition to protest). In March 2005, the "Military Readiness Enhancement Act," which would repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has 115 cosponsors, and efforts are underway to introduce a companion bill in the U.S. Senate. As a national constituency of advocates with a long-standing commitment to nondiscrimination in recruiting and a history that includes achieving a partial repeal of the Solomon Amendment in 1999, law students, faculty and staff are uniquely situated to accelerate this repeal effort.

When: September 7, 2006, 4-5:30pm (in conjunction with the annual Lavender Law Career Fair).

Where: The Lavender Law Conference & Career Fair hotel, Washington, DC. Attendance at the training is open to registrants of the Lavender Law Conference. To register for the Conference, visit www.lavenderlaw.org.

Hope to see you there!

[opinion] California Making Gay History

The California Senate approved a bill Thursday that will require the teaching of GLBT folks' contributions to history.

Textbooks meeting the bill's requirements would not be incorporated into California classrooms until 2012. Social science courses would then include "an age-appropriate study" of the "role and contributions" that lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people have made to the "economic political and social development" of California and the United States.

Schools are already required to teach the historical and social roles of blacks, women, American Indians, Hispanics, Asians and other ethnic groups.

...

Advocates said subjects might include the history of the civil-rights movement and the 1978 assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, and textbooks could specify the sexual orientation of such well-known Americans as authors Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin and Willa Cather.

Measure would add gay history to texts, from The Seattle Times.

Here's a fairly common response I saw when digging through the internet.

This is an obvious attempt to indoctrinate the children of California into total acceptance of all forms of sexuality. At early elementary ages, children are very impressionable, especially when information comes from adults - and this info would come from teachers. Many people (especially Christians) in California see these forms of sexuality as perversions. Rather than allow a child's parents to instruct him or her in sex or religion, the California State Senate has decided what children should think about sex and religion. After growing up under these ideas for 14 years in public schools, California students will be well-bred secular humanist progressives.

Homosexual agenda advances in schools - SB1437 and SB1441 pass in California, from redstate.com

There's nothing new about this conversation. There are actually three parties to it, and not two: (1) gay rights advocates, (2) those who have made it their career and callings to oppose gay rights, and (3) the vast majority of the public who doesn't care much one way or the other, but could be swayed if necessary. Both extreme groups are talking to the middle group, hoping to win a heart or mind.

The anti-gays (I'll call'em) have a slight positional advantage. They have tradition on their side, and they can point to the gays and say that gays are demanding "special treatment." In the anti-gay framework, that makes sense: gayness is something that should be treated poorly by default. To ask for it even to be treated "equally" (whatever that is) would be to ask for special treatment. The indifferent majority might agree with them--people's sense of social justice usually involves "picking yourself up by your bootstraps," and self-actualization. The indifferent majority, by definition, has not faced gay discrimination and therefore won't be able to easily understand how rooted in our culture it is.

The gays also have an advantage, though. We have that same tradition of gay invisibility. With that has come a slew of negative consequences for GLBT folks. And especially for GBLT kids. The anti-gay folks can only point to hypothetical (and somewhat vague) harms that will arise if we remove that invisibility. We gays, on the other hand, can point to very real problems that invisibility has created. The indifferent majority can associate with those problems: nobody wants to see their son or daughter picked on, nobody wants a kid to be suicidal.

I think, and I hope, that I've just described the balance that will play itself out. The indifferent majority, when forced to tilt one way or the other, will decide that gay kids need more support than straight kids who don't approve of homosexuality. Or, more accurately, gay kids need more support than those parents who don't want their kids to approve of homosexuality. Of those two groups--suicidal and socially abused children, and morally offended parents--it's not hard to decide which group should just suck it up.

[plug] Wolverine Coalition for Human Rights Meeting

WCHR meeting will be on:
Monday, May 15th, 2006 from 5:10 - 7:00 pm (or end earlier if possible)
Room 1804, School of Social Work Building

WCHR (The Wolverine Coalition for Human Rights) is a student led activist organization, with a mission to achieve full and appropriate implementation of the recommendations that were made in the Spring 2004 Report of the Provost's Task Force on the Campus Climate for Transgender, Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay (TBLG) Faculty, Staff and Students.

[news] Fall Out Boy is so gay. Iraq is so scary. And, Massachusetts is so referenduming.

There's a lot of gay in the news. Let's sum it up.

(1) Fall Out Boy (site) pissed off some mom for stating a positive opinion on gayness at one of their shows. How dare they talk between songs? Musicians, according to Mother Morals, are only supposed to sing. Says bassist, Pete Wentz, "I encourage fans of our band to grow up to become good people and to change the world. Unfortunately, I don't believe that treating other people as inhuman is acceptable. If that is offensive to you, I apologize, but we don't want you to be part of our fanbase. [Our show] is not a liberal homosexual rally, but at the same time, it will never be a Ku Klux Klan rally. We don't need to sell tickets that badly."

(2) Police forces in Iraq have allegedly "summarily executed" a 14-year-old boy for engaging in homosexual prostitution. And here I thought we had established a liberal democratic government there. Where'd they get the idea that killing gay kids was cool? Oh, Grand Ayatollah Sistani (wikipedia), via fatwa on his website, calling for the execution of gays in the "worst, most severe way." E-fatwas? I checked--he's not on myspace. But I did poke him on facebook. I hope he pokes me back.

(3) And, some folks in Massachusetts are pushing for a referendum to overturn the court decision that said gay marriage is legal under their constitution. It'll take them until about 2008 to get the intitiative through to the voters. The legal question right now is limited: apparently their constitution (possibly) bars constitutional amendment referenda specifically aimed at overturning court decisions. If so, that sounds like an odd provision to me--why should the court, but not the legislature, be immune from popular reversal? I wonder what their constitution says about Fall Out Boy.

[note] WOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Congratulations to everyone who made it through another year!

It is the last night of the semester. Tomorrow, the 3Ls are going off to work. The 2Ls will be looking forward to not doing shit for a whole year. The 1Ls will...probably pass out somewhere. Everything is right with the world.

I'm not sure if this site will pick up speed over the summer or if it will move a little slower. It depends entirely on how much people stay in touch. I hope, to be honest, to have great stories to post from people at their summer jobs. If not, I'll just make stuff up.

Best wishes, everyone.
--robert.