Little pitchers have big ears.

Dan Savage, with his boyfriend, has initiated the "It Gets Better" video channel. It's a campaign to have lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people post videos explaining to LGTB and just plain bullied youth that school bullying doesn't last forever, and it does get better - if you can just stick it out. It's in response to a sad spate of bullied teenagers recently committing suicide rather than put up with the bullying they daily endured for being, or being suspected of being, LGTB.

In his latest column (warning: it's a blunt sex column and there is explicit language), Dan responds to a letter from a person who "loves the Lord" and who "does not support gay marriage" but who emphatically denies that s/he would ever, ever encourage his/her children to bully LGTB youth. Ever.

Dan has some thoughts about that.

ronnie

A brave young man lost.

Brendan Burke, the young student manager of the hockey team at Miami University (in Oxford, Ohio), was killed in a car accident Friday afternoon.

He was a member of an esteemed hockey family, the youngest son of Brian Burke, currently General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The loss of any 21-year-old is tragic. But Brendan - for such a young man - leaves a legacy that, within the hockey world, belies his short life.

The whole story - his revelation and its fallout - is nicely chronicled here. (Annoyingly, in the second person, but still.)

I followed the story as it played out in the hockey news. In the hockey world, it was a bombshell. I was so proud of Brendan, and especially his dad, who was very public in his support for Brendan (he said he stood by Brendan "with an axe!"). And of his employers, and of the team he managed. I was even proud of the website commenters and hockey fans who said, "Yeah, so the kid is gay. So what?"

Rooting homophobia out of sports is going to be done like this, one brave kid at a time.

Poor Brendan. I wish he'd lived to fulfill his promise. But I'm so glad he was brave enough to make a difference.

ronnie

12 Important Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society

Some of you may be aware of a Proposition that will be on the ballot in California next week which, if passed, will repeal that state's current allowance of marriages between two men or two women. As a Canadian who has witnessed first-hand the longer-term effects of legalizing gay marriage on a society, I thought it was very important to reprint this list of 12 Important Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society before California voters go to the polls.

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.

2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.

3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.

4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.

5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.

6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.

7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.

8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.

9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.

10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.

11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.

12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.

The above list was compiled by GatorGSA , a group of people who clearly have their heads screwed on straight, no pun intended.

[In all seriousness, marriage rights for gay men and women in California are seriously threatened by this proposition. The greatest outrage in my opinion is the pouring of millions of dollars into anti-gay-marriage propaganda ads by evangelical groups outside the state who presume to tell Californians what their values are. I can't even imagine the gutted feelings of married gay Californians who may be told for the second time that their lifelong commitment before their family, friends, any Higher Power they believe in, and the world is, sorry, invalidated. The Proposition 8 vote will be an important test of whether the US has made the leap with this election into the 21st century, or has not quite shaken off the yoke of theocracy. After the Presidential contest, Prop 8 will be my second-most-closely-worried-and-watched contest of this election.]

ronnie

World Refugee Day

Today is World Refugee Day.

Afghans make up the world's largest refugee population, with 2.1 million believed to be living outside their homeland of Afghanistan.

The second-largest population, thanks to their "liberation", are Iraqis. UNHCR estimates 1.9 million Iraqis are displaced internally, and up to 2 million in neighbouring states. In fact, the UNHCR says that the 14% increase in the number of refugees in the past year - the first increase in 5 years - is being "driven by Iraq".

Then there is the situation in Africa. 686,000 Sudanese, 460,000 Somalis and roughly 400,000 people each from DR Congo and Burundi.

Nine million of these wretched people worldwide are children.

The UNHCR World Refugee Day website has some suggestions on how you can help this appalling situation, but there is a very simple way that anyone can help - by supporting a generous refugee admission policy in your own country, by volunteering at a local immigrant-settling agency to act as a friend to a refugee family (in Canada, inquire about the HOST program, offered in a number of cities across the country), or by just smiling at the shy woman in African tribal clothing with her baby in a sling on the bus. The best solution would be to get these people resettled in their own homelands. In the meantime, surely the very least we who have so much can do is be kind to those who have gotten out.

ronnie

Happy Loving Day!

June 12, 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in the case of Loving vs.Virginia, which, if you are unfamiliar with it, struck down the so-called "anti-miscegenation" laws in the 16 states that still had them.

In other words, it determined once and for all that it was unconstitutional to deny couples the right to marry on the basis of being of different races.

The fact that this is the 40th Anniversary was a little mind-boggling for me, because while it wasn't in my conscious memory, it is within my lifetime that these archaic and wicked laws were on the books, and were removed only by appeal to the highest court in the land.

The parallel between the unfairness of anti-miscegenation laws and denying gays and lesbians the right to marry has already been argued to death. If you're anti-gay-marriage, the differences are so fundamental as to render the comparison pointless.

But if you're pro-gay-marriage, the parallels are too obvious to ignore. So it's not surprising that a gay marriage advocacy group in the US is running some very interesting - and very carefully targeted - ads pointing out not only the parallels, but how the benefits of Loving vs.Virginia are being enjoyed by a number of key people in positions of authority and power.

If nothing else, reading the story of black woman Mildred Jeter and her white husband, the suitably-named Richard Loving, should inspire you. (An account is about halfway down the page of the Freedom to Marry Loving decision anniversary ad campaign site linked above.) This couple left their native Virginia - where they were forbidden to marry - to wed, and upon returning to Virginia were arrested in the night, in their own bedroom with a copy of their marriage certificate hung over their bed. Convicted of violating the anti-miscegenation law, and given the choice of prison or 25 years' exile from Virginia, they chose the latter, and began their fight for justice - a fight that took them all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

There must've been some very, very dark days during that fight. One can only imagine the abuse, mockery and threats they suffered, and the "friends" and family who turned their backs.

It should inspire you. And remind you of how far we've come.

And how far we have to go.

Happy Loving Day. If you're straight, take a moment to reflect on your privilege to proudly introduce the person who is the most important person in the world to you as your spouse without a soul raising their eyebrow.

If you're gay, and married, as I know some of the readers of this blog are, take a moment to reflect on the fact that you have - finally - attained - and claimed - the same privilege. Mostly. Except for the raised eyebrow here and there. Pat yourself on the back. No shrinking violet, you.

And if you're gay and unable to marry - yet - know that it's only a matter of time.

Just like Loving vs. Virginia.

ronnie

Supreme Court of Canada Strikes Down Security Certificates

A lot of people I know have been working for a long time on this.

It hasn't been part of my day-to-day work, being mostly pursued by the national organizations, but it's been something I've been keeping an eye on.

Even so, I was surprised at the intensity of my reaction when I read the news this morning. I felt very emotional. It really felt like a terrible injustice was beginning to be corrected.

This is the best possible income, I think. The Supreme Court is acknowledging that some special mechanisms for investigating terrorism suspects must be in place, and acknowledges that some information must be treated with high sensitivity. At the same time, it has confirmed what human rights groups said all along - that detaining someone indefinitely, while not allowing them or their lawyers to know anything about the nature of the evidence against them - is completely contrary to Canada's understanding of inalienable human rights. From the above-linked Globe and Mail story:

"While carefully paying heed to fears of terrorism and the special
difficulties of protecting national security, the court said that certain
elements of fairness cannot be dispensed with -- including the right of a
detainee to know the case against them and to make full answer and
defence.

'While there is a risk of catastrophic acts of violence, it would be
foolhardy to require a lengthy review process before a certificate
should be issued,' the court said.

However it said the various forms of review in which a designated lawyer is empowered to act on behalf of detainees could pass constitutional muster."

The groups that have been working on this issues - Amnesty International Canada and others - have always suggested some kind of middle ground that protected security while not involving a draconian suppression of human rights. For example, as suggested above, an independent lawyers could be allowed to see the evidence against the detainee; while the detainee and his or her lawyer would not have access to it, a third party could at least determine if it seemed to be reasonable grounds for detention.

There are many routes for compromise, and the Supreme Court has given the Canadian government a year to find some. It is a just response to an untenable situation. Locking people up, indefinitely, without charges, without informing them of the charges against them, and without allowing them or their lawyers to see any of the evidence against them, seems the very definition of "un-Canadian".

ronnie

My new hero

It is an insult and an irritant to every Canadian citizen that not only did the United States deport one of our citizens to a foreign country to be tortured, but that the gentleman in question now having been cleared by Canadian authorities of terrorist ties, that same United States refuses to take him off their no-fly and terrorist watch lists, much less apologize for destroying his life.

Yesterday, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who noted that he lives near Canada and knows something of its ways and its people, finally took his government to task for their actions publically. In a public flaying of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, he demanded some answers on the case.



The blame for the appalling incident lays partly with Canada; a public inquiry into the affair found out that the RCMP had given the US erroneous information about Arar that contributed to his deportation to Syria. (The then-Commissioner of the RCMP resigned in disgrace after the Commission's report was released.) However, even after being told that the Canadian evidence was bogus, the US stubbornly insists it has other information that makes him worthy of suspicion. (The same information, presumably, that Antonio Gonzalez promised to have available for Patrick Leahy "next week".)

Well, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said outright yesterday that "[Arar] should not be on a watch list", adding that Canadian counter-terrorism officials had been shown the U.S. dossier and found "nothing new" in it.

It will be extremely interesting to see what, if any, public reaction Leahy has to the information Gonzales has promised to show him next week.

Of course, for Maher Arar, a victim of torture, a man whose career was destroyed (he is still unemployed), a man branded with the blackest label that exists in the 21st century, a man whose family suffer the ripples of this nightmare, it's all academic now, really.

There's no window where you go to get your life back.

But for making me feel, for just a few minutes, like someone down there gave a goddamn, really gave a goddamn about what happened to him, Senator Patrick Leahy is my newest hero.

ronnie

Tempest in a Sea-Tac

Unwelcome as the annual office party, prickly as a clove-studded orange, as mildly nauseating as a little too much eggnog, the annual tempest in a teapot has erupted somewhere over the "war on Christmas". This time a Rabbi threatened to sue Seattle-Tacoma International Airport unless a menorah display was erected next to the airport's largest Christmas tree. Faced with the terrifying spectre of benign expression of multiple faiths , the airport authorities jerked their knees in the direction of the graveyard-shift maintenance crews, who were ordered to take down all eight of the airport's Christmas trees overnight. (The Port Authority's belated rationale: if they put up a menorah they might have to put up displays from other religions as well, something the staff didn't have time for during the busy holiday season. Damn those pushy Hindus and their multi-armed holiday statue displays, those Buddhists with their chubby December decorations and the Muslims, with their ban on iconograpy, the worst of all!)

So everyone was unhappy, and with good cause, as I can think of current wars in the Middle East which have been handled with more forethought and tact.

Rabbi Mark Gellman gets the tone just about right in his column on the holiday fiasco. How much fuss we could save ourselves if we stopped trivializing important issues!

The good news? Sanity prevails, long after the Rabbi and the Port Authority managed to get everybody mad at them in particular, and Jews and pig-headed beaurocrats in general. The airport will put its trees back, the Rabbi won't sue, and next year the Jewish community will be consulted on the holiday display. Which suggests that a menorah may in fact go up. Expect a staff-drowning avalanche of other religous imagery and display to follow. Or not.

ronnie

Macaca, mezzuzot and munchies.

Now, darlins, I know all y'all don't have the macabre fascination with American politics that I do, so I'm going to take some time out of my busy day to draw your attention to what is rapidly becoming the most entertaining show south of the border (even more entertaining than Kinky Friedman's run at becoming Governor of Texas, which is looking less and less every day like an entertaining train wreck and more and more like a kind of sad bus crash).

Republican George Allen, a self-styled Good Ol' Boy and incumbent Virginia Senator, was expected to be a shoo-in for re-election when he first hove into national and then international view for making some odd statements to a young man. S.R. Sidarth, Virginia born-and-bred but of Indian descent, had been sent by Democrat Jack Webb's camp to follow him about and videotape his speeches - a not-uncommon tactic among campaign strategizers, who analyze these things like coaches poring over tape of last week's game. And so the games began:

• August 11, 2006: At a campaign rally, Allen makes the following bizarre remarks in reference to, and to, Webb campaign worker Sidarth: "This fellow over here with the yellow shirt - Macaca or whatever his name is - he's with my opponent...Let's give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."


• August 13, 2006: Video of Allen making the comments are posted to YouTube where they begin generating immediate buzz among bloggers; the story is picked up by the mainstream media. Allen can't explain why he referred to Sidarth as "Macaca", saying that it is just a nickname he - or someone on the campaign gave the guy following them around. His campaign workers spin that it may have something to do with Sidarth's "mohawk haircut". (Here is a photo of Sidarth around the time.) Allen denies there's any racial context to it, nor racial significance to his comments about "welcom[ing]" Macaca "to America".


• August 14, 2006: It's pointed out that "Macaca" is a derogatory term for Arabs in Tunisian French. Allen's mother is a francophone Tunisian.


• August 14, 2006: Allen apologizes in the press for calling Sidarth "Macaca". He neglects to actually apologize to Sidarth.


• August 23, 2006: Nine days later, Allen remembers to apologize to Sidarth.


• August 25, 2006: Intrigued by mention of Allen's mother and her Tunisian background related to the controversey, Jewish publication Forward magazine does a little investigation and publishes an article musing on Allen's probably-Jewish roots. (Allen has repeatedly mentioned on the campaign trail that his father was "incarcerated by the Nazis" during World War II "for being an Allied sympathizer". This wording seems a bit odd in retrospect as the elder Allen's roots are revealed - as Wonkette notes, "Grampa Lumbroso was almost certainly an 'Allied sympathizer', as the Allies were the ones who didn’t want to gas him".)


• September 17, 2006: During a televised debate, reporter Peggy Fox gets Allen annoyed when she asks him if he'd ever heard the term "macaca" from his mother, but he absolutely blows a cork when she asks him whether he has Jewish forebears. Stuffing his foot even further into his mouth, he reacts as if he's been slapped and refers to the question as "casting aspersions" on him.


• September 18, 2006: Jews around North America say some variation on, what the fark?"


• September 19, 2006: Allen releases a statement stating that his mother was raised Christian and he was raised Christian. But he assures everyone he embraces his Jewish ancestry - which he says he found out about from the Freedom article and which his mother confirmed.


• September 20, 2006: In an interview, Allen refuses to back down from his assertion that the reporter's question was offensive because "the question, the assertion, the offensive remarks that your mother taught you this slur, and that somehow it's because she has -- either she or her father was -- was Jewish." (She did not. She asked if he knew the term because his mother was French Tunisian. The Jewish question was her follow-up, and unrelated to the "macaca" question.)


• September 20, 2006: Speaking to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in his ongoing efforts to show that he has the greatest respect for the Jewish people, Allen announces that "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops".

You cannot make this stuff up. And there's still six weeks of campaigning to go.

ronnie

Aids Walk 2006

As promised, here are photos of the AIDS Walk, which Husband and I took part in last Sunday, September 10.

Mama Alice led the walk again this year. She's my "African Grandmother" - she is everyone's African Grandmother in the multicultural community around here. She's very involved with both AIDS NB and the local African community, which is why she's deeply involved in the AIDS walk.

She's very much a public figure in the area and has been interviewed and photographed many times, which is why I don't mind sharing her photo with you. She is an incredible, remarkable spirit who came to Canada from Lesotho by way of South Africa and I adore her. One of my favourite stories about Mama Alice is that Husband and I were leaving the grocery store one day and we saw her with another older lady sitting with all her groceries. Husband noticed her and pulled up and I said, "Mama Alice, can we give you a lift home with your groceries?"

"No," she said, her grandson was coming to pick her up, "but here, you can give my friend a ride home," and she hustled her friend, a Russian immigrant who we'd never laid eyes on before, with her groceries, into our car (over the good lady's flustered protests) so that we could give this complete stranger a ride home. Which we didn't mind doing, of course - but it was just another example of Mama's generous spirit and the way she "thinks different".

Crowds were bigger this year than ever and we raised some money for AIDS/SIDA NB and some money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, working on AIDS in Africa. This year's focus was The Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, a program in support of the large group of older African women who are raising an entire generation of children, many HIV-positive, because the intervening generation - the Grandmothers' children and the childrens' parents - have died of AIDS.


And here, for the record (specially for those of you who coughed up $dinero$ to sponsor Husband or I), is photo evidence of the tired but happy couple at the after-walk Bar-B-Que in Officer's Square. Thank you, everyone, and I'll repeat what I said about this last year - if people only knew the sneaky little secret that you feel incredibly good after doing something like this, they'd be beating volunteers away from the doors with field hockey sticks...

ronnie