News of Note

Lesbian Judge No Longer Marrying Straight Couples

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News of Note: Gay Texas judge won’t marry straight couples

Tonya Parker, an African-American lesbian judge in Texas, refuses to marry straight couples until everyone in the state has the right to marry.

Turning away would-be newlyweds is “my opportunity to give them a lesson about marriage inequality in this state,” Parker told a meeting of the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas earlier this week.

She said it’s “oxymoronic” for her to perform a ceremony that can’t be performed for her.

Instead, she refers couples to other judges in the courthouse with an explanation along the lines of “I’m sorry. I don’t perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn’t apply to another group of people,” she told the meeting.

I’m very impressed to see a Judge using her authority to raise awareness about marriage equality. There is nothing discriminatory about what Judge Tonya Parker is doing, since she isn’t marrying anyone and she doesn’t have to. Tonya’s stance should serve as an example for us all. This type of integrity and moral leveraging is not common enough today.

in News of Note  by 02 Mar 2012 0 comments

Most single Christians are having sex

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News of note: A recent study reveals most single Christians are having sex. We undress why.

Dr. Jenell Williams Paris, an anthropologist and the author of The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are, says the high rates of premarital sex are a call to the Church to live in reality.

“We need to talk to people as they really live in the world they really live in,” Paris says. “If rates of premarital sex are really that high, but we continue to talk as if the vast majority of people are virgins when they get married, weʼre out of touch. We need to address reality.”

And the reality is the numbers arenʼt going down. Of those 80 percent of Christians in the 18-29 age range who have had sex before marriage, 64 percent have done so within the last year and 42 percent are in a current sexual relationship.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended. And of those, 40 percent end in abortion. More than 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year. But perhaps the most disturbing statistic for the Church: 65 percent of the women obtaining abortions identify themselves as either Protestant or Catholic (37 percent Protestant and 28 percent Catholic). Thatʼs 650,000 abortions obtained by Christians every year.

Why do people still go on about abstinence when so few people intend on practicing it? I agree that the high rates of premarital sex is a call for “the church” to live in reality. It is also a call for these projected virtues to be questioned. Remaining chaste until marriage represses one’s sexuality and significantly limits experience. I’m suggesting that everyone starts being honest with themselves, because our actions are speaking louder than words. Let us know what you think.

in News of Note  by 29 Feb 2012 0 comments

New Hampshire Lawmaker Urges Married Couples To Practice Abstinence

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News of Note: New Hampshire Lawmaker Urges Married Couples To Practice Abstinence

A New Hampshire lawmaker with a history of surprising statements suggested on Thursday that married couples who want to use contraception should practice abstinence instead of using birth control pills

State Rep. Lynne Blankenbeker (R-Concord) made the claim — noting that abstinence is available “over the counter” along with condoms — during a legislative committee hearing on a resolution urging the Obama administration to drop the birth control requirement for religious organizations. Blankenbeker was trying to explain her position on why the administration’s requirement to provide insurance coverage for birth control should be overturned.

“People with or without insurance have two affordable choices, one being abstinence and the other being condoms, both of which you can get over the counter,” she said.

The conservative battle against human sexuality seems to be endless. Telling married couples that sexual abstinence is another form of birth control, completely disregards all appreciation couples may have for sex. The religious belief that sex should exist only for procreation is both unhealthy and offensive. These backward ideologies only worsen the depth of sexual repression that our culture already suffers from.

Ever have sex without the intent of making babies? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

in News of Note  by 27 Feb 2012 0 comments

Occupy Joins the Fight Against Private Prisons

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News of Note: Occupy Joins the Fight Against Private Prisons

“Yango, a middle-aged African-American DC native active in both Occupy DC and the prison divestment movement, spent over a decade in Rivers Correctional Facility, a private prison located in Winton, North Carolina, 251 miles outside DC….

“Yango described his time there as “a horror story” marked by inedible sludge and negligent medical treatment, although he emphasized that the worst aspect was, “There are no programs for men who are housed there which means that when a guy comes out of Rivers, he is not prepared to come back to his community to make a positive contribution…

“According to the DC Department of Corrections, African-Americans make up 92 percent of the city’s prison population compared to just 55 percent of the overall DC population. With this in mind, it comes as a shock to many that GEO knowingly built the prison on the former site of one of North Carolina’s largest slave plantations. The symbolism of making a profit from jailing black nonviolent offenders atop the remnants of a plantation their ancestors were forced to labor on was not lost on the crowd.”

I’m so glad to see the Occupy movement still making headlines. Raising awareness about private prisons and the connections they have with big banks is an incredibly noble and valuable feat. These prisons are for-profit businesses that bribe their way into filling every single bed with anyone they can, farming human lives for tax dollars. Do I need to remind you that America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world? We should be outraged. This life destroying charade must come to an end.

 *Creative Commons image by Casey Serin

in News of Note  by 25 Feb 2012 0 comments

“Whistleblower Improvement Act of 2011” does the exact opposite

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H.R. 2483: “Whistleblower Improvement Act of 2011” introduced in July amends the  Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Commodity Exchange Act to require a whistleblower employee to first report information relating to misconduct to his or her employer. It prohibits any award unless this is first step is taken unless the company lacks whistleblower protections or a anonymous reporting system, and permits the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to make awards discretionary rather than mandatory. Further, it requires the SEC to notify the pertinent entity before beginning any enforcement when possible, and allows for an impact study on how a whistleblower incentives program has affected shareholder value. More here.

Basically, if you notice illegal activity happening within your company, you have to warn the company before the SEC, jeopardizing your job as well as any incentive to report misconduct. The bill should be called the “Whistleblower Abolishment Act.” I can’t imagine how anyone could read this bill and not pick up on its evil intentions. The face you see above is Rep. Michael Grimm [R-NY13], the man sponsoring H.R. 2483. The more attention people pay to bills like this, the less likely they will sneak past us and become law. Please spread the word and share your thoughts.

in News of Note  by 23 Feb 2012 0 comments

Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich All Promise To Ban Porn

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News of Note: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich All Promise To Ban Porn

The top three Republican presidential candidates pledged a war on porn today which means that they have promised more action to ban porn than to create jobs.

The conservative group Morality In Media is head over heels today after all three top Republican candidates promised to go war against the distribution of porn. In a written statement, Rick Santorum said, “Federal obscenity laws should be vigorously enforced. If elected President, I will appoint an Attorney General who will do so.”

Not to be outdone, Mitt Romney gave a statement to the group that said, “(I)t is imperative that we cultivate the promotion of fundamental family values. This can be accomplished with increased parental involvement and enhanced supervision of our children. It includes strict enforcement of our nation’s obscenity laws, as well as the promotion of parental software controls that guard our children from Internet pornography.”

Then we have Newt Gingrich, who wasn’t satisfied with a written statement. In a face to face meeting, Gingrich told Morality In Media that, “Yes, I will appoint an Attorney General who will enforce these laws.” The existing laws that each of these candidates were referring to are federal laws that they and Morality In Media feel make the distribution of pornography illegal.

Pornography prohibition? There is absolutely no way that will work. Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry that covers the whole globe. This very moment, tens of thousands of people are looking at porn online. It’s far from uncommon for the conservative and the repressed to get involved with the very sexual acts they claim to oppose. How can anyone even listen to these hypocrites?

Sometimes I wonder if these candidates (and people like them) are systematically turning our basic human instincts against us. Maybe they’re just hateful monsters who actually believe the dribble they spew, but I like to imagine US presidential candidates would have a higher level of intelligence than these bigots.

in Key Issues / News of Note  by 21 Feb 2012 0 comments

Russian cities introduce baby ‘drop boxes’ to stop unwanted children being left in bins

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News of Note: Russian cities introduce baby ‘drop boxes’ to stop unwanted children being left in bins

Anonymous baby drop boxes have been introduced for the first time in Russia.

The Krasnodar Territory in south Russia bought five of the so-called baby drop boxes in the beginning of November so mothers could drop off unwanted children anonymously.

The first three were installed in Sochi, Novorossiysk, and Armavir, and by the end of the month one child had already been left.

The move was aimed at providing sanitary conditions for unwanted children, instead of ‘having them left in garbage containers, health officials told Ria Novosti.

Elena Redko, the head of the Krasnodar Health Department, told the news service the first child to be left, a baby girl, was healthy and would be passed to childcare officials.

It is unfortunate that any society would need these baby “drop boxes,” but it seems like a necessary evil. In a perfect world full of accessible birth control and sexual education, hopefully we wouldn’t need these at all. These drop boxes are not some new Russian concept, similar programs exist all over the world. (In the U.S., all the states have Safe Haven Laws allowing newborns to be left anonymously in hospitals and fire stations.)

I didn’t realize how easy (in the legal sense) it was for a mother to anonymously get rid of a child. How do you feel about the existence of these baby drop boxes? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note  by 19 Feb 2012 0 comments

Bill Gates gives $750 million to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

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News of Note: Gates Foundation gives $750 million to Global Fund

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave $750 million Thursday to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to help assure that the organization can keep supplying AIDS drugs while it seeks to adjust to the economic downturn.

The Global Fund, which has disbursed $15.1 billion to low-income countries over the past decade, said in November that it would not award any new grants until 2014. Nearly all of the fund’s money comes from governments in the industrialized world, many of which were unwilling to increase their donations or, in a few cases, fulfill previous pledges.

The fear has been that some AIDS programs in Africa might run out of money, forcing patients to stop taking the antiretroviral drugs that are keeping them alive. While such dire events were never likely, they are even less likely now.

Seven hundred and fifty million dollars? That is a profound amount of money, thank you Bill Gates! Now I’m curious how much of this money will make it into the right hands as well as how much will contribute to finding a cure for HIV. The Global Fund has raised nearly 30 billion in pledges from developed nations since 2002. That is a tremendous amount of money floating around, and a significant portion of that is being spent on treatment. I just hope that no one involved in the distribution of this wealth sees treating HIV/AIDS as more profitable than finding a cure. Never the less, I applaud anyone who donates $750 million to relieve human suffering.

Creative Commons Image: Source

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note  by 17 Feb 2012 0 comments

Afghan woman slain for giving birth to daughter

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News of Note: Afghan woman slain for giving birth to daughter

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan — An Afghan man killed his wife for giving birth to a third daughter rather than the son he’d hoped for, police said Monday.

The 28-year-old victim, who was known by the one name of Storai, was strangled by her husband — a local militia member — and his mother on Saturday, authorities said.

Storai had given birth to the couple’s third daughter three months ago in Mohasili village in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province.

Police said they arrested the victim’s mother-in-law in connection with her death, but Storai’s husband was still at large, likely sheltered by heavily-armed militia colleagues.

“The existence of militiamen is a huge problem and therefore we face difficulty in arresting him,” Kunduz police chief Sufi Habib said.

Nadera Geya, head of the Kunduz women’s affairs department, called the killing one of the worst examples of violence against women she had encountered.

Acid attack
Violence against women is common in Afghanistan. In late November in the same province, an Afghan family that refused to give their daughter in marriage to a man they considered irresponsible was attacked at home by assailants who poured acid over both parents and three children.

This kind of male-dominated society can be seen all over the world. Even with the onset of technology like abortions, male children are often preferred in counties like China, India, Pakistan, Korea, and Taiwan, leading to a significant number of missing females from the population. Not to mention burqas and female genital mutilation; we still have long way to go. How do you think society’s portrayal of gender affects sexuality? Will we ever collectively move past this inhumane gender bias? Please share your thoughts below.

Creative Commons Image: Source

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note  by 15 Feb 2012 0 comments

Iran confirms death sentence for ‘porn site’ web programmer

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News of Note: Iran confirms death sentence for ‘porn site’ web programmer

Iran’s supreme court has upheld the death

sentence for a web programmer who faces imminent execution after being found guilty of developing and promoting porn websites.

Saeed Malekpour was picked up by plainclothes officers in October 2008 and taken to Evin prison in Tehran, where he spent a year in solitary confinement without access to lawyers and without charge.

A year after his arrest, the 35-year-old appeared in a state television programme confessing to a series of crimes in connection with a porn website. On the basis of his TV confessions, he was convicted of designing and moderating adult materials online by a court in Tehran, which handed down death penalty.

Malekpour later retracted his confessions in a letter sent from prison, in which he said they had been made under duress.

According to Malekpour’s family, he is a permanent resident of Canada and is a programmer who wrote photo-uploading software that was used by a porn website without his knowledge.

Giving someone the death penalty is a big deal. Giving someone the death penalty for being related to a pornographic website is absurd. The fact that Saeed simply wrote image-uploading software and was not running or participating with actual pornography makes this incident absolutely insane.

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note  by 12 Feb 2012 0 comments