Edugation 101

[doh_phooey]

[queerart]

1. Great Comic!

"Making It Clear About Queer".... I Like It ;-)

[RetiredTrotskyite]

2. K&R

I like it, too!:)

[doh_phooey]

3. Gay: A Choice?

Gay: A Choice? Michigan City Hosts Competing Conferences

by Kilian Melloy
Tuesday Jun 2, 2009

Two versions of the "truth" about homosexuality are slated to come head-to-head in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At an area church, for a fee of $50 ($60 at the door; half that for students) the Focus on the Family-affiliated group Love Won Out will offer workshops on June 13 on "how to deal" when a friend or relative is gay, as well as offering advice on how prayer and counseling can "cure" gays.

Two days earlier, another event, headed by Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen, will be offered free of charge and is slated to explore the theme of "Religion and Homophobia: Spiritual Violence in Our Community" with a panel discussion. The discussion will include panelists from Grand Valley State University, which is hosting the discussion at its Pew Grand Rapids Campus, according to a June 1 item posted at the GVSU Web site.

Both sides have their personal witnesses attesting to how so-called "reparative therapy" either failed to turn them straight, or helped them claim lives of heterosexuality.

A June 2 article from the Grand Rapids Press, posted at MLive.com says that another core theme of both gatherings will be the question of whether gays "choose" their "lifestyle," i.e., whether it’s a matter of choice for an individual to experience a deep and undeniable attraction to members of the same gender while feeling nothing of the sort for the opposite sex.

continued:

http://www.edgemiami.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=92012

[doh_phooey]

4. Obama needs some edugating

Friday, June 12, 2009

Coalition Of LGBT Groups Join To Condemn DOJ Motion To Dismiss DOMA Challenge

A coalition of LGBT groups have issued a joint statement condemning the Obama administration's motion to dismiss a challenge to the Defense Of Marriage Act. Via press release:

We are very surprised and deeply disappointed in the manner in which the Obama administration has defended the so-called Defense of Marriage Act against Smelt v. United States, a lawsuit brought in federal court in California by a married same-sex couple asking the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits. The administration is using many of the same flawed legal arguments that the Bush administration used. These arguments rightly have been rejected by several state supreme courts as legally unsound and obviously discriminatory.

We disagree with many of the administration's arguments, for example that DOMA is a valid exercise of Congress's power, is consistent with Equal Protection or Due Process principles, and does not impinge upon rights that are recognized as fundamental. We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be "neutral" with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states.

There is nothing "neutral" about the federal government's discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of "neutrality" ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive. It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.

When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.

Signed:
American Civil Liberties Union
Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders
Human Rights Campaign
Lambda Legal
National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce


http://joemygod.blogspot.com/