Tuesday Male Beauty

Democrats Take Aim at G.O.P. Freshmen on Medicare

I am not one to stick my head in the sand in respect to the need to fix the USA's deficit problem. And I am not against bring so-called entitlement spending under control. But the GOP proposals to date are draconian in how they would impact the less fortunate while continuing the lowest tax rates an many decades for the fabulously wealthy. The GOP approach is clearly not in keeping with the reverence the party claims to hold for Christianity and the Gospel message. The GOP assault on Medicare - something that would savage seniors - and their families who would have to intervene - is something that the Democrats seem to be waking up to, albeit not as quickly as ought to be the case. It's a message that needs to be clearly communicated to both seniors and their children so as to show the ingenuousness of the GOP deficit proposal. Here are highlights from the New York Times on the timely targeting of GOP members of Congress:
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Members of the House are back home in their districts this week, and in the case of some Republicans, protesters are along for the ride. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has 20 Republican-held Congressional districts in its sights this week, hitting voters with automated phone calls denouncing the House Republican plan to revamp the nation’s Medicare program, and arming those who want them with signs to protest at town hall meetings across the country.
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By focusing on town hall meetings and the automated phone calls, Democrats are particularly hopeful that they will be able to spook members in districts with lots of older voters, like Florida and even Arizona, where Republicans are in firm control through much of the state.
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The big question for the week: Are Americans just waking up to the Medicare debate, and therefore more prone to engage on both sides of the issue at town halls than during the spring recess, or has enough time passed since the passage of the House bill to alter Medicare and Medicaid that interest is now waning?
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Perhaps presaging the week’s events, dozens of protesters carrying signs and chanting “Tax the rich” marched outside the Chicago hotel where Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee and architect of the Medicare proposal, gave a speech Monday on the federal budget and the nation’s debt situation, according to an account by The Associated Press.
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[O]n Bloomberg TV’s “Bottom Line” program, Ms. Pelosi clarified her remarks. “Let me be very clear because we are open to many, we are listening to every suggestion,” she said, “but one suggestion we are not open to is the abolishment of Medicare, and that is what the Republicans have put forth in their budget and we do not support that.”
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Will seniors wake up? They need to do so or else their "golden years" may become a nightmare.

Former Villanova Athlete Reveals He Is Gay

This week seems to be full of individuals coming out of the closet. Tony Perkins and his fellow Christofascists must indeed be convulsing and twitching. The latest to join the list is former Villanova basketball star Will Sheridan. To make matters worse in the eyes of the religious extremists, Sheridan was out to his team and accepted. He even dated men while playing for the university's team. In an interview, among other things, Sheridan stated "I'm proud of who I am." Kudos to Sheridan and those like him who continue to show the lie of the anti-gay stereotypes promoted by the enemies of the LGBT community. One can only hope that individuals like Sheridan and Don Lemon will open some hearts and minds in the black community. ESPN has an lengthy article on Sheridan and his decision to go public about who he really is. Here are highlights (read the whole piece):
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I just said, 'I need to tell you something … I'm gay,'" Sheridan said. "I'm gay." Those two words are the last hurdles to be cleared in sports, the five letters strung together that critics insist would destroy a locker room and more, destroy the athlete who utters them.
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Yes, there are plenty of gay athletes we know of, but few men and fewer still from the major team sports. On OutSports.com, a website that covers the gay and lesbian sports community, numerous stories can be found of gay team captains and star athletes -- and the teammates who accepted them -- but for the most part, these stories come from high schools and smaller colleges and now even the highest positions in professional sports.
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But in terms of American athletes being out publicly at the highest levels of competition (pro leagues and the revenue sports in Division I), former NBA journeyman John Amaechi; ex-NFLers Esera Tuaolo, David Kopay and Roy Simmons; Glenn Burke and Billy Bean from Major League Baseball; and former college football players Dwight Slater (Stanford) and Akil Patterson (Maryland) are essentially the beginning and end of the list. And, like Sheridan, all of those players came out only after their playing days were over.
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Which is why now, four years after his Villanova basketball career ended, Will Sheridan feels compelled to talk. Not because of Bryant or Avery. He decided to speak publicly months before either incident occurred. But because he just doesn't get it anymore. The big deal. The turmoil. The stigma. He's proud of who he is, confident, comfortable, borderline arrogant even. And although it wasn't easy, his wasn't the torturously impossible and lonely road so many presumed it would be.
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"I'm trying to have a voice, and I want that voice to reach as many people as it can," he said. "I mean, look at me. I'm black. I'm gay. I'm like a quadruple minority, and I feel like a little piece of me resides in everybody. Maybe there's a kid out there who doesn't think he's OK, and he can look at me and say, 'OK, he played college basketball. He went overseas. He has a music career and now he's living his life. Now he's who he wants to be and he's happy and confident and comfortable.' It's my responsibility to talk about that."
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[B]y the time Sheridan graduated from his Catholic university, most of his teammates knew he was gay, and they didn't care. Amaechi is on the record as saying the same thing happened when he was with the Utah Jazz. More and more, coming-out stories -- especially among the younger generation -- include teammate support or, at worst, indifference. Sheridan told Nardi first and over the years told other teammates as he grew comfortable and trusted them. There was never, Nardi joked, "a team meeting to discuss Will being gay." It was simple and private, friends and teammates sharing personal information about one another.
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The locker room dynamic, team chemistry, none of it changed. He and Nardi would room together for three of their four seasons, and Sheridan remained a popular teammate and vital part of the Wildcats' success.
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Evidence of the team's unity and comfort lies in one simple nugget: Jay Wright never knew his starting power forward was gay until after Sheridan graduated. No one ever went to him with a complaint or a worry. No one even bothered to tell him. "After I found out, I was like, 'Did you know?' And all the guys, they were like, 'Yeah, Coach, we knew,'" Wright said. "They just didn't care, and I guess I was just oblivious."
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Sheridan came out to his parents at the end of his freshman season. He describes the conversation as "epic," stretching out the word and his arms across the table at a New York City restaurant to emphasize just how epic it was. Perhaps naive then -- "I figured I was in college and my tuition was paid for by my sport, so you love me for me, right?" -- Sheridan now understands better his parents' struggle to accept his sexual orientation.
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"I don't care how open-minded you say you are, as a parent you project so much on your kids without even realizing it," Sheridan said. "You want them to be the best at everything, and you have dreams of what your life will be and their life will be. To them, this was just no way. Denial. It didn't fit with who I was, or who they thought I was. I was perfect. This didn't work."
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But after the initial shock wore away, Josie looked at her son and saw something that had been missing -- happiness. He was always a good child ("too good to be true," his high school coach once told her), but a tickle in the back of her mind, a mother's instinct, told her he should have been happier. And she could never figure out what was missing. Until she saw it.
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Josie Sheridan always preached unconditional love, and she meant it. And when the test came -- when her son, whom she calls her best friend, sat her down -- loving him wasn't hard. But accepting the news was. . . .Although his mother quickly came to grips with her son's news, Sheridan's dad took time. A long time.

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As the article continues, I'm glad to say that Sheridan's father has come around. Too often I suspect parents worry more about what others may think or their own dashed expectations than they do about their own child. As I have written before, I was lucky in that both my parents took my coming out in stride and accepted me.

The Growing Stridency of the Anti-Gay Industry

Yesterday, I lay the responsibility for anti-gay bullying and hate crimes where it belongs: at the feet of religious bigots and extremists. In a post on the Huffington Post, activist and opponent of the ex-gay myth, Wayne Besen (Wayne and I worked together to expose ex-gay fraud, Michael Johnston some years ago) , looked at the unequal progress that the movement for LGBT equality is facing even as more and more of the general public is becoming accepting of same sex marriage and gay couple adoption. Wayne rightly describes a so-called anti-gay industry. The term is appropriate because some of the leading hate merchants - NOM's Maggie Gallagher and the unhinged Catholic League's William Donohue are but to examples - are making lucrative six figure incomes. Judas' piece of silver pale in comparison. Meanwhile, the bogey man of the "gay agenda" keeps funds flowing into registered hate groups such as Family Research Council. While it is comforting to know that these groups and individuals are slowly but steadily losing the "culture wars," the slow pace - especially in backward states such as Virginia - is at times maddening. Moreover, as society shifts increasingly against the haters, their viciousness and stridency will likely increase. They are today's equivalent of rabid segregationists and active members of the Klan. In my view, there will be no true freedom of religion in the USA until the toxic hate and religious based discrimination of these people is erased from the nation's laws. Here are highlights from Wayne's post:
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To boil it down, there are two distinct reasons why LGBT people do not have full equality:
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1) Our greatest source of new support are younger Americans who came of age in a Will & Grace world. However, younger voters are the least likely to head to the polls, which extends the fading power of the aging homophobic demographic.
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2) The concentration of anti-gay sentiment among white fundamentalists - who are well-organized and more likely to vote - has created a situation that allows the political climate to lag behind a broader cultural shift.
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Examples of such retrograde politics can be seen in the anti-gay views expressed by virtually every GOP presidential candidate. At the federal level, the Republican Party is enthusiastically defending the (un)constitutionally of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In the states, the Minnesota Senate approved a 2012 ballot measure asking voters whether the Constitution should be amended to "provide that only a union of one man and one woman" be recognized as marriage. However, even before social conservatives could celebrate, a Star Tribune Minnesota poll found that 55 percent of respondents said they oppose adding an amendment while 39 percent favor it. The newspaper said that this is "a sharp reversal of poll results seven years ago."

The surge in acceptance has caused anti-gay activists to become more strident and extreme. . . . Speaking of NOM, the group's former strategist, Louis Marinelli, released a new video this week expressing his support for marriage equality in New York. Equally frustrating for NOM was the recent influx of more than $1 million into the pro-marriage equality campaign by major New York GOP financiers, such as Paul Singer and mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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If this was not troubling enough for the anti-gay industry -- LGBT people are now challenging traditional bastions of homophobia. For example, in the middle of the National Basketball Association playoffs, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts came out of the closet.
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Anti-gay efforts to target African Americans will also be hampered by this week's coming out of CNN anchor Don Lemon. And, most disconcerting for extremists are efforts from within the church, highlighted by a recent New York Times article titled "Even on Religious Campuses, Students Fight for Gay Identity" and the Presbyterian Church USA becoming the fourth mainline Protestant church to approve ordination of gay people.
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If it seems like opponents of equality are increasingly taking the low road, it is because they have clearly lost the high ground of public opinion.

More Monday Male Beauty

David Frum to GOP: Stop Flirting with Debt Disaster

David Frum is one of the increasingly rare species of rational conservative. As a one time member of the GOP - an activist even - I am continually amazed at the ever increasing insanity and hypocrisy of today's GOP. As I've noted before, to be a member of the GOP base one must be either clinically insane, horrifically ignorant, or have had a lobotomy. And at the leadership level, demagoguery seems to be all that folks like Boehner and Virginia embarrassment, Eric Cantor , seem to know. In a column on his blog, Frum Forum, Frum takes the GOP to task and warns them of the potential self-destruction the party is courting with its deficit reduction games. Given the quickly tarnishing shine of the GOP in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, Frum's warnings seem well placed. Here are some highlights:
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Here is John Boehner speaking last week to the New York Economic Club: It’s true that allowing America to default would be irresponsible. But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling without simultaneously taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and reform the budget process.
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Wrong! Default would be the single most irresponsible thing the United States of America could possibly do. America’s debt has been paid in full and on time since 1789. To cast away that record even in a genuine financial emergency would be a terrifying action. To cast away that record to score a political point? Reckless almost beyond description.

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I always assumed that the first American political party to contemplate default as a way to achieve its political goals would be the Communist Party of the USA, not the GOP. I’m going to tell myself that it’s all just a bluff, and that Boehner is talking wild as a prelude to lowering the boom on the Tea Party. But wild talk has a way of generating its own momentum – and leading to wild results.
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[W]hat this default talk looks like is that the GOP wants a crisis, not a deal. A deal would involve real pain for real voters: Medicare reductions, farm spending reductions, military reductions, and revenue measures. A crisis creates an exciting substitute for such a deal – especially if the GOP can temporarily and delusively convince itself that it can pin the blame for the crisis on President Obama. That will not be true. The whole world will see that the crisis was avoidable, and will see who insisted on forcing it. And however high you imagine the financial and political price – it will be higher.

CNN's Don Lemon First Interview; A Message To Bilerico

I wrote about CNN anchor Don Lemon this morning and his decision to come out in his new book. Today, Lemon did his first interview since the story broke in the New York Times and I've inserted a video clip below of the interview. I have great respect for Lemon and applaud his courage. I do believe that he's correct when he says if more people came out publicly - especially those in role model/celebrity positions - that there would be fewer needless gay teen suicides. I wish Lemon the best as he continues his journey.

As an interesting aside, Don Lemon is a friend of The Bilerico Project for which I am a a regular contributor. Bil Browning, editor of Bilerico, posted a message that Lemon sent to those of us at Bilerico. Here's the message:
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"Today I chose to step out on faith and begin openly living my own truth. And let me say right up front that I hope many of you will be inspired to do the same thing in your daily lives. Some of the things I've chosen to reveal in my book Transparent were very difficult to share with even those closest to me.
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There was a time when I was terrified of revealing these things to the person I love most in this world - my own mother. But when I finally mustered the courage to tell her that I had been molested as a child and that I was born gay, my life began to change in positive ways that I never imagined possible. Yet I still chose to keep those secrets hidden from the world. I, like most gay people, lived a life of fear. Fear that if some employers, co-workers, friends, neighbors and family members learned of my sexuality, I would be shunned, mocked and ostracized. It is a burden that millions of people carry with them every single day. And sadly, while the mockery and ostracizing are realized by millions of people every day, I truly believe it doesn't have to happen and that's why I feel compelled to share what I've written in Transparent.
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As a journalist I believe that part of my mission is to shed light onto dark places. So, the disclosure of this information does not inhibit in any way my ability to be the professional, fair and objective journalist I have always been.
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My book is dedicated to the memory of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who jumped to his death from a bridge after his dorm mates streamed his private business over the Internet for the world to see. Tyler might still be with us today if more gay men and women had chosen to live proudly and openly. It is also dedicated to the millions of young, gay people who believe they are alone when dealing with their own sexual identities. You are not alone! There are people, like me and many others, who are thriving in their personal and professional lives and although we sometimes have a hard time with it ourselves, we are here to show you by example that you too can overcome any obstacle as long as you stay strong and, most of all, stay alive."
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With love and honesty,
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Don Lemon
May 16, 2011

Religion, Hate Crimes and Anti-Gay Bullying

As the San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets are reporting, a new study published in the Journal of School Health, the journal of the American School Health Association, has confirmed what many of us in the LGBT community already knew: high levels of anti-gay bullying increase the levels of depression, suicide attempts that require medical care, STD's and risk for HIV in LGBT teens and young adults. The report also underscores the importance of addressing and preventing anti-LGBT victimization at the structural or school level to reduce health disparities among LGBT young people. Here are some highlights from the Chronicle article:

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They found that LGBT young adults who were victimized in school because of their LGBT identity reported much higher health and adjustment problems, while students with low levels of school victimization had higher self-esteem and life satisfaction as young adults.

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"We now have evidence of the lasting personal and social cost of failing to make our schools safe for all students. Prior studies have shown that school victimization of LGBT adolescents affects their health and mental health. In our study we see the effects of school victimization up to a decade later or more. It is clear that there are public health costs to LGBT-based bullying over the long-term," said lead author, Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, University of Arizona.

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Director of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University and study co-author Caitlin Ryan, Ph.D., pointed out, "The pervasiveness of bullying and lack of research on outcomes in adulthood have masked the serious long-term health costs for LGBT children and youth.

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LGBT young adults who reported high levels of LGBT school victimization during adolescence were 5.6 times more likely to report having attempted suicide, 5.6 times more likely to report a suicide attempt that required medical care, 2.6 times more likely to report clinical levels of depression, and more than twice as likely to have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease and to report risk for HIV infection, compared with peers who reported low levels of school victimization.
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So who/what is responsible for the continued bullying of LGBT individuals with utter disregard for the real and serious consequences? To me, the answer is blatantly obvious: religion and its extremist adherents who are only happy when trashing others and making the lives of others a living Hell. A column in the Capetown Mail & Guardian (influenced no doubt by the "corrective rape" of area lesbians) supports this conclusion. Here are some highlights:
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As regards the claim that I unfairly and inaccurately blame religion for hate crimes against gays and lesbians in South Africa, let me reiterate what I wrote in the previous post: I do not exclusively blame religion. My point is more nuanced. It is that organised religion (or some prevalent fanatical religious preaching, then) has a role to play in and therefore a responsibility for the perpetration of hate crimes against homosexuals.
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Organised religion’s role in and responsibility for hate crimes ensues as a direct result of its dogmatic teachings according to which homosexuality is an abomination. In 1986, the Catholic Church, on the basis of the above belief, officially opposed extending civil rights protection to homosexual people. It does not take the intellect of a rocket scientist to see that the flipside of the coin amounted to the condonation of anti-gay violence.
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No one can deny that, with very few exceptions, religion condemns homosexuality. When one condemns a practice as wrong, the logical implication is that the practice stands in need of punishment and correction. And the truth is that (having been told by their church that homosexuality is sinful and abominable) some people take the punishment and correction into their own hands, justifying their actions on the basis that they were acting as God’s committed soldiers. Against the background of the atrocious violence that has, in the modern age, been perpetrated in the name of religion all over the world, it is simply naive to assert that religion consistently teaches peace and tranquility.
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It is interesting that none of the outraged commentators refer to (let alone problematise) the separation of church and state in South Africa. It is simply ignored, almost as if it never took place.
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Lest there be any doubt as to the direct responsibility religious based discrimination - something illegal under both the USA and South African Constitutions - a pastor at New York State Senator Ruben Diaz' hate rally in the Bronx yesterday made the connection perfectly clear. Think Progress reports as follows:
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[J]ust minutes before Diaz took to the microphone to stress his respect for gay people, Rev. Ariel Torres Ortega of Radio Visión Cristiana said that the gay people are “worthy of death”:
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Committing sexual acts between man and man. And receiving the retribution of the things that they have done from straying away. And because they did not take God in count. God gave them over to reprimand their mind to do things that are not right, being against all justice, fornication, perversity, aberrations, malignity…those who practice such things are worthy to death, not only do they do it, but those who also practice it. God bless this earth. That is the word of God.
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Here's a clip of the hate filled batshittery:
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Monday Male Beauty

More than Economic Reasons Justify Gay Marriage

In the New York battle ground for same sex marriage a number of powerful economic players have come out in support of marriage equality saying that among other things gay marriage is important in the world of global competition and that “attracting talent is key to our state’s economic future.” There is much truth to the argument and I've used it myself in condemning Virginia's anti-gay jihad at the behest of the Christian Taliban centered on The Family Foundation based in Richmond. but, as an op-ed piece in the New York Times points out, much more than economic benefit dictates that allowing full same sex marriage is the right thing to do. Among them, full equality for all citizens and much more. Here are highlights from the column:
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IN a letter to the New York State Legislature last month, top business executives endorsed same-sex marriage on the ground that “attracting talent is key to our state’s economic future.” The signers — among them the banker Lloyd C. Blankfein, the financier Ronald O. Perelman, the real estate developer Jerry I. Speyer and the publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman — declared that legalizing gay unions would “help maintain our competitive advantage in attracting the best and brightest people the world has to offer.”
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The letter was only the latest example of a trend toward promoting marriage equality as a boon to businesses and state and local budgets. While these arguments are appealing at first glance, and may be politically effective in the short run, they ultimately hurt the broader struggle for gay and lesbian equality.
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Those making these economic arguments probably have the best of intentions. After all, why can’t gays and lesbians have full equality, while also saving the state money and bolstering local economies? Aren’t civil rights narratives consistent with the economic case for same-sex marriage? Shouldn’t supporters use all possible arguments in the hopes that at least one will finally stick?
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And yet supporting marriage on economic grounds dehumanizes same-sex couples by conflating civil rights with economic perks. Americans should be offended when the value of gays and lesbians is reduced to their buying power as consumers or their human and creative capital as workers.
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Why can’t same-sex couples have access to the same rights and protections as their straight neighbors simply because they are citizens? How would we respond if the right to interracial marriage were based on the prospects that these relationships made good business sense or added to the state budget?
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Worse yet, this narrative neglects the most economically vulnerable gay and lesbian couples and plays into the inaccurate stereotype of same-sex couples (particularly male couples) as being mostly well-educated and affluent.
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So if you support same-sex marriage, do so not because it brings in tax revenue and tourism dollars and prevents people from becoming a burden on the state, but because you value gay men and lesbians as citizens who deserve equal access to the rights and responsibilities of marriage.