After a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, New Zealand’s biggest fertility service, Fertility Associates, has decided to accept sperm from gay men – previously barred because of a supposed higher HIV risk. Responding to the move, Canterbury University associate professor of genetics Frank Sin called for potential recipients of sperm from gay donors to be told that "the gay gene(s)" could be passed on to the child.
Dr Sin told The Dominion Post that it was "not daydreaming" to suggest that sexual orientation could be inherited. Animal models had clearly shown the existence of a gene that controlled sexual behaviour, he said. Though there was nothing so conclusive in human studies, there was strong evidence – particularly from twin studies – of a significant genetic component.
Environment also played a role, Dr Sin said. Though he had nothing against homosexuality, Dr Sin said people had the right to know the trait could be passed on.
Notice however, that he’s not saying that anyone with gay relatives in their bloodline should also have their sperm so labeled. My parents were both straight, as are the parents of most gay children…and yet they produced a gay son. So who does this guy think he’s fooling? Perhaps he’s got nothing against homosexuality, but he’s clearly got a problem with homosexuals.
In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.
…
Specifically, Mr. Panse was charged with making “comments that students could construe as being of a sexual or personal nature…or using [his] position as a teacher to put students into any situation reasonably likely to make them feel uncomfortable because of the injection of sexuality into…the substance of [his] comments”.
One parent complained and the shit hit the fan. Oh for chrissakes…it’s a goddamned art class! What’s it going to be next…they demand art museums put fig leaves on all the nude sculptures and paintings before anyone under 18 years old will be allowed to enter?
Nudity. Flesh. Skin. You know what this is all about? It isn’t sex. Over in the Netherlands, they’re talking about showing images of gay couples kissing to new immigrants as a way of testing whether they’ll adapt to the open and tolerant culture over there. But they don’t even have to do that. Just show them Michalangelo’s David (or better still, Donatello’s David and his Narcissus), Rodin’s "The Kiss", Picasso’s "Blue Nude", Lord Leighton’s "The Fisherman", Anne Swynnerton’s "Cupid and Psyche", Chavannes "The Little Fisherman" and just to make things fun, Broc’s "The Death of Hyacinth" and if they get red faced just tell them to take the next boat back home. It’s not that they hate gays, it’s not even, that they hate sex. The fundamentalist radicals hate the human species, and nothing makes that plainer then the way they react to the sight of the human body itself. It’s not that nudity is obscene, it’s that taking an awed appreciation for and pride in our physical selves is horrifying to them. It’s not sex they think is dirty, it’s the human race they think is dirty.
You may have noticed a slight change in the way things look around here. That’s because I’m migrating the blog, finally, to a blog maintainance system… WordPress. When I moved the site to Winters Web Works (webmaster/host for Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World), Jonah, the admin here, coaxed me into it. For the past several months he’s been letting me experiment with a mirror WordPress blog and I’ve grown to like it, and in particular, the convenience of not having to manually do every little thing, like update the archive file and keep the permalinks and the comment links correct. It’s a very nice system, and one that should allow me to post from any computer with an Internet connection and a browser, so now I won’t have to carry my entire web site with me everywhere I go on a flash stick.
I’ve got a nice rich text editor I can compose my posts in (provided the browser I’m using follows the standard document model) and a spell checker (very necessary) and I can cut and paste links and text and format everything much more easily then editing the HTML by hand. I can also work on a post and save it without publishing, to work on it later, even from another location if need be.
There’s a new comment engine built right in to WordPress, which I’ll be using from now on. But Jonah has migrated the old comments over (which is why some of the old posts have duplicate comment links in them now). If you have any trouble with the new comment engine let me know. My blog should be RSS Feed enabled now, and better integrated with Technorati’s blog update notification system. Hopefully that will make things easier on the readers here who’ve asked me about it.
There may still be some dust to setting after the change over. If you notice anything amiss let me know. But I think the blog looks really nice now. Jonah made some suggestions about the banner image and the overall layout that I think work really well, and I’m very happy with how things look now. And since it’s a lot easier for me to just sit down and drop in a post I’ll probably be posting a tad more often now. I’m pretty sure this will end up being one of those "Why didn’t I do this before" kinda things…
Last week in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at American University, was requested to testify.
He did so. At the end of his testimony, a right-wing senator said: “Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man & a woman. What do you have to say about that?”
Raskin: “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”
The room erupted into applause.
According to 365Gay.Com, the right wing state senator was Nancy Jacobs, republican (surprise, surprise) from Cecil and Harford Counties. So Dwyer isn’t the only nutcase in Annapolis.
Merrill Keiser, Jr., is a trucker by trade, and he’s hoping his next journey takes him all the way to Washington. His goal is a seat in the US Senate, but first he has to make it through the primary that will determine which Ohio Democrat will be the November ballot.
The Fremont man is causing some controversy with one of his beliefs. He tells News 11 homosexuality should be a felony, punishable by death. “Just like we have laws against murder, we have laws against stealing, we have laws against taking drugs — we should have laws against immoral conduct,” Keiser says.
1-40 lashes for crime of maliciousness, like graffiti, porn, strip clubs.
Execution for crime of adultery. (Leviticus 20:10)
Execution for crime of homosexual acts. (Leviticus 20:13)
We have met the Taliban, and they are us. A decade ago I might have said these nutcases stand absolutely no chance of being elected. Now I’d have to say that they both have excellent chances of being elected. And that’s not because a majority, or even a significant number of Americans want to live in an old testament theocracy. It’s because there is no vigorous political defense of individual liberty in America anymore, and in particular, in defense of religious liberty. Religious liberty in America has come to mean that the most extreme fundamentalists can agitate for stoning to death people for old testiment sex crimes, and burning heretics at the stake, and anyone who speaks out against them is anti-Christian.
Believers in the American Dream, defenders of liberty and justice for all, had better start getting as angry, and as loud, and as in your face as the theocrats, or we’re headed for Shira law here in America.
The Associated Press reported today Dobson received a six-paragraph personal note from Alito. In the letter, Alito thanked Dobson for backing his nomination to the Supreme Court.
Read the note, “This is just a short note to express my heartfelt thanks to you and the entire staff of Focus on the Family for your help and support during the past few challenging months. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family during this period.”
Alito went on to write, “As long as I serve on the Supreme Court I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me” and expressed his desire for a personal meeting with Dobson.
States have already begun passing anti-abortion laws so that Roberts and Alito can overturn Roe. And after they’ve accomplished that, expect them to start passing sodomy laws next so Lawrence can be overturned.
Theocracy. That’s what the democrats who wouldn’t filibuster Alito voted for. And that’s what everyone who voted for Bush last election voted for. Well, it looks like you’re going to get it.
So I’m watching my local NBC affiliate do their nightly news thing, and I notice that the story about the West Virginia police chief who prevented a gay man who was dying of a heart attack from getting CPR had drawn the attention of the mainstream news media. I’ve been meaning to say something here about that, because the story really shines a cold hard light on the reality of what decades of relentless gay bashing by the religious right and the republicans does to gay people, but I’m still deep in this sleepless funk I’ve been in for weeks now and my outrage buffer is so maxed out now that I’m like that dog in those David lynch cartoons that just stands rigidly at the end of its leash completely immobilized by anger and I haven’t been able to type a word or skritch a line on paper for weeks now. But…I digress…
So…anyway…the news story deliberately obscures key facts of the story because the facts are so completely damning and journalists can’t take sides, and especially they can’t take sides when there are dead homosexuals involved. So when someone says that police chief Robert K. Bowman prevented Claude Green’s friend Billy Snead from giving him CPR, and tried to discourage the paramedics from doing the same because according to Bowman Green had HIV, never mind that they don’t bother pointing out that the reason the EMS workers ignored the drooling moron and kept on giving Green CPR was because you can’t fucking catch HIV from giving somebody CPR, they basically leave out of the story the part about how Green actually didn’t have HIV, and Bowman only assumed he did because he knew that Green was gay. Hey…he’s a 43 year old filthy homo, and didn’t Paul Cameron say that 43 is about as old as a homo gets? I’m surprised NBC News didn’t give Bowman credit for his remarkable restraint in not evacuating the entire town. But there’s still time for that I reckon.
Can I mention here how much I hate the news media? This is my blog…right? I can say what I want to here can’t I? Good. I fucking hate the news media.
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