9th Circuit Says Prop 8 is Unconstitutional
...read moreA federal appeals court on Tuesday declared California’s same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Kill the Gays” Bill is Back in Uganda
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, popularly dubbed the Kill-the-Gays bill, is back before the Ugandan Parliament. It could be brought for a vote in the Lower House at any moment.
...read moreDisabled Bodies in Able-Bodied Contexts
No one wants to be pitied, but many people are comfortable having others to pity. And it’s easy, if you haven’t thought it out, to pity someone in a wheelchair, or someone who walks tapping her way with a white cane. It’s much more complicated to think about that wheelchair, or that cane as something that opens up the person’s life … and would open it up much more if buildings and streets were more accommodating to a variety of needs. It’s not only complicated, but potentially deeply disturbing, to think about high-tech prostheses, maximized for the needs of a particular person with particular skills at a particular time in his or her life, to think that a “disabled” person perhaps has something that works better than what “normal people” are issued with.
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Some Transformative Justice Links
In the wake of recent conversations, I’ve been looking around for further resources on transformative justice. I haven’t been able to do a lot of intense follow-up on the topic lately, because in mid-January I had major spinal surgery (after breaking my neck in an accident back in 2011); this obviously has involved many painkillers and a lot of sleep and not-working as much as possible. However, I have been able to do some reading, and I want to share some of what I’ve found most compelling.
...read moreLessons Learned And Unlearned
I realized something recently. I realized something about rights, about oppression, and about voices—specifically, Native American voices.
I can already hear some of you exhaling in thought, shuffling through your memories, trying to recall a recent incident, a story in the news, a connection between this post about Native Americans and current events. There isn’t one. There isn’t one because stories of Native American hardship don’t get told very much. While headlines do occasionally appear, most people have never heard of the abject poverty suffered by the Attawapiskat, or the imprisonment of five Makah men for their participation in a traditional hunt, or of the state of South Dakota essentially kidnapping Crow Creek children from their community. Many of us carry out our lives completely unaware of what is going on just miles away from the communities that we know.
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Filming Against Odds: Undocumented Youth “Come Out” With Their Dreams
By Anne Galisky, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine.
“Papers”is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. More than two million undocumented children live in the U.S. today, most with no path to obtain citizenship. These are youth who were born outside the U.S. and yet know only the U.S. as home. The film highlights five undocumented youth who are “American” in every sense but their legal paperwork.
...read moreIdeological zealots: Usually bad news.
The latest battleground in Israel’s struggle over religious extremism [...] has the unexpected public face of a blond, bespectacled second-grade girl. She is Naama Margolese, 8, the daughter of American immigrants who are observant modern Orthodox Jews. [She has] become terrified of walking to her elementary school here after ultra-Orthodox men spit on her, insulted her and called her a prostitute because her modest dress did not adhere exactly to their more rigorous dress code.
Extreme Debate Makeover: Public breastfeeding edition
I have a real distaste for bad debate. It’s such a good and enjoyable pastime, debate, and an opponent who chooses to fall back on tired, flaccid arguments really tarnishes the joy of the sport. Like the story of Natalie Hegedus, the woman who was dressed down in front of a courtroom for breastfeeding. There’s [...]
...read moreOn wresting good from stupid: Herman Cain, sexual harassment and sexual assault
This is a guest post by Emily L. Hauser.
With the revelation of what is turning into quite a slew of accusations of sexual harassment and/or assault (“Hey, baby, you’re lookin’ gooood tonight!” [or some such] being the former; grabbing a woman’s inner thigh and pulling her head toward his crotch [the actual accusation that Sharon Bialek has leveled] being the latter) we have an opportunity to wrest some objective good out of this mountain of stupid.
Mapping Bias: LGBT Resources on the South Side of Chicago
This is a guest post by Kayla Higgins
The interesting thing about maps is that they are almost never objectively accurate. Rather, they depict a space through the perspective of the Chicagoan mapmaker. And such is the case of the various maps of gay life in Chicago. They are “Gay Chicago” as seen through the eyes of a particular mapmaker or, sometimes, an entire demographic. But they cannot be said to depict “Gay Chicago” as it objectively exists.
Suing for Looks Discrimination
Pretty people finish first — that’s a well-documented phenomenon. Folks who fall outside of cultural beauty norms — who are fatter or not white or less white or older or whatever else — make less money over their lifetimes. Economics professor Daniel S. Hamermesh suggests that people who are discriminated against because of their looks [...]
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