Obama Speaks Up for Net Neutrality

Obama Contradicts FCC Chief on Fast Lanes, Net Neutrality Backers Say

Net neutrality is the idea that the Internet should be an open platform, and broadband companies shouldn’t be able to interfere with your right to access content and services on line. — Sam Gustin for motherboard.vice.com

President Obama made a strong and clear declaration supporting net neutrality during his remarks on Tuesday to the US-Africa Business Forum since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced plans to make new rules governing the Internet.

“I personally, the position of my administration, as well as a lot of the companies here, is that you don’t want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users,” Obama added. “You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed.”

Free Press Flickr/creative commons

Free Press
Flickr/creative commons

Besides allowing for innovation by maintaining net neutrality, any restrictions on free access to the Internet will make it more difficult for organizations and others to be heard, essentially destroying the inherent democracy intended in the first place.

Instead of treating it like any other utility as it should, the FCC is seriously entertaining a proposal to allow certain big corporations such as Verizon and Comcast to pay more for broader and faster access, costs which consumers will ultimately bear, and overpowering the service that others get.

The period for public comments, variously estimated to be 677,000 to more than one million, ended in mid-July, and the FCC has promised to read and consider each one. These comments are now available to analysts, journalists, and consumers, and early reports have them running 99 to 1 in favor of no special interest regulations.

But because monied corporate power seems to have no bounds these days, we have keep paying attention to this issue until the FCC formally rejects the very notion of these pay-to-play regulations.

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Barney Frank: Elder Statesman Or Just a Grouch?

Barney Frank Sharply Criticizes Gay Rights Groups’ Flip on ENDA by Amanda Terkel for The Huffington Post

A handful of groups said last month that they no longer back the Senate-passed version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because of its sweeping religious exemption, which would allow religiously affiliated businesses to fire someone for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The provision’s language goes far beyond religious exemptions afforded under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion or national origin.

 

Former Rep. Barney Frank’s latest sound-off criticizing the thinking of several leading gay rights organization’s rejection of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (EDNA) followed his public rebuke just last week of President Obama for having “lied” to the American people when he said people would be able to keep their existing health insurance after implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Calling the President a liar was such overreach, I remember thinking at the time that Frank just wanted to get people talking about him now that he has become a private citizen following his retirement from Congress last year. Obama absolutely misspoke as he tried to gloss over this specific criticism. In fact, this applied to only a small percentage of people who had existing plans plans were below the new standards and safety net set by the ACA meant to the improve health of all Americans, prevention being key to lowering future healthcare costs overall. They didnt lose their insurance, but they were forced to upgrade their coverage. It was a failure of Obama in not figuring this out before he made blanket statements, but Frank made no room for nuance, adding nothing to the debate but fueling the right flank and getting his name in the media stream. It was a disappointing display to many people.

Frank has always seen himself as the best spokesman for gay rights, the grand poobah expressing assessments that every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) person should listen to. He may have had the highest profile platform after he finally came out the closet in 1987, but he has been unforgiving of others with positions that differ from his own.

2011 National Equality March, Washington, DC Flickr/creative commons

2011 National Equality March, Washington, DC
Flickr/creative commons

In 2010, when Dan and I were involved in planning the October 2011 Equality March in Washington, DC, Frank was a vocal critic, saying we were wasting a lot of time and energy that will have no real results, just “ruining the grass.” But our hearts swelled as we witnessed hundreds of thousands crest Capitol Hill that day and knew everything was about to change, radically. History proved him wrong very quickly as the march yielded the greatest expansion and upstep in national organizing for equality rights to date.

Now Frank is thoughtlessly disparaging our movement once again by calling LGBT groups “ridiculous” for rejecting this session’s version of the bill just because of its broad religious exemptions, now super-charged in the era of Supreme Court-approved corporate personhood and religious right to discriminate. Again, he argues for the incremental approach, the hoped-for future fix. The rest of us understand there will be no future fix whatsoever, and in fact the successful passage of this bill would formally institutionalize broader discrimination in the work place.

“Having weaker protections for LGBT people sends the message that anti-LGBT discrimination is more acceptable than other forms of workplace discrimination,” said Ilona Turner, legal director of the Transgender Law Center. “

Remember 2007 when you clung to your faith in an incremental approach a few short years ago when pushing for an ENDA that excluded rights for trans people? You thought that version was good enough, too, but at the urging of trans leaders at the time, one in particular, Dr. Dana Beyer, you began your re-education by expanding your congressional staff with the very capable Diego Sanchez (now the national political director for PFLAG, Parents, Families, and Allies United with LGBT People). Only then were you able to see the infinite wisdom of including trans people in any version of ENDA.

Frankly, Mr. Frank, it is your grouchiness that you are revealing when you criticize our current leaders who reject ENDA altogether as “not being for anything that could pass” so we can consider ourselves “cutting edge.” Rather it is your total rejection of more evolved thinking, again, being reactionary instead of trying to educate yourself on all the antecedents, that can be considered “ridiculous.” While you have had a remarkable and admirable public career, these recent comments to the press make you look foolish and thoughtless.

More far-seeing is the work of activists on an all-inclusive American Equality Bill, legislation fashioned after or through current civil rights legislation. Just add SO+GI (sexual orientation and gender identification) has been the rallying cry to add these designations to existing civil rights legislation (right along side 50-year-old protections from discrimination based on gender, religion, national origin, or race) or through a new bill. The organizations rejecting ENDA because of senseless religious exemptions also have in mind the urgency to protect LGBT people everywhere (and every when), not just in employment but housing and healthcare and all other areas of human endeavor.

ENDA, with or without religious exemptions, is too inadequate in its exclusive focus on employment. Support for a singular, inclusive equality bill would also protect LGBT people’s religious freedom by not forcing them to abide by the religion of another person or corporation.

So, Mr. Frank, we ask you to step off. The purpose of all privilege can only be to give it away to the voiceless, not to try and silence those around you. It’s time to expand your horizon again, Mr. Frank, and recognize that the drive for full equality need not, and should not, compromise.

by Jorge Elias Flickr/creative commons

by Jorge Elias
Flickr/creative commons

 

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Real Democracy Demands Economic Democracy

The Garment Worker Scott Beale/laughingsquid.com Flickr/creative commons

The Garment Worker
Scott Beale/laughingsquid.com
Flickr/creative commons

“Only 1 out of 8 American households is able to have the American Dream.”

Richard D. Wolff, author of Democracy At Work: A Cure for Capitalism, and leader of the Democracy At Work movement, appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Real Time

We were told as children that capitalism was good because it supported the middle class. We were sold on the idea as “the American way,” but we all must admit at this point that capitalism has led us to some very bad consequences, burying this country in turmoil by making everyone poor so a few can become rich . . . very, very rich.

Wolff is a heterodox economist and Professor at The New School in New York City, looking more broadly at systems that work for all people, not just the “winners,” the few at the top. Wolff shows us how our capitalist crisis heaps “huge burdens on us for years,” taking issue with Americans total rejection of marxist criticism and other critics who actually had a few good alternatives for how to better approach commerce.

Wolff has become the chief spokesman bringing people to understand why democracy is absent from our economic system. 

For example, Wolff explains in the video below how new associations can make substantive change by replacing capitalism with worker self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) wherein workers decide how to use profits.  

Upon our relaunch this past spring, our Manifesto for A New Age of Sexual Freedom offered up the formula for real progress: the elimination of old, inhumane, and coercive systems; the preservation of what is old but also humane; and the creation of new, humane, and voluntary systems. We like to catalog progress, taking note when we we see it. Democracy At Work is one of the best examples of this new movement and is worthy of our attention and support. Together, we can make a difference.

 

Also see: The Silenced Majority by Amy Goodman

 

Adam Lambert’s Post-Gay World

Adam Lambert Is a ‘Killer’ Queen by Daniel Reynolds for The Advocate

Dan Massey and I had a somewhat secret passion for Adam Lambert ever since he sang Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen for his audition on American Idol in 2009. (Can you even remember who came in first to his second place finish?) We once spent a weekend in Baltimore and Washington, DC, attending two of Lambert’s early concerts coinciding with his first album. They were medium-sized venues, and at the last one I got lost finding the restroom only to run in to Lambert, face to face, as he was going out on stage.

Yes, he glowed.

Adam Lambert Flickr/creative commons

Adam Lambert
Flickr/creative commons

For several years, Dan not-so-secretly finished each of his emails by attaching some of Lambert’s lyrics we were especially fond of, ones like these that captured VenusPlusX’s campaign for a better world.

Welcome to the Master Plan
Don’t care if you understand
Don’t care if you understand
Welcome to the Master Plan.
(“Master Plan”)

And . . .

I was born with glitter on my face
My baby clothes made of leather and lace
And all the girls in the club wanna know
Where did all their pretty boys go?
(“Sure Fire Winners”) 

Lambert set out to answer that question, Where did all their pretty boys go? Something we are explaining to each other in our joint search for equality rights.

Lambert has become the personalization of gay is good, slowly emerging as one our most articulate gay icons in the entertainment industry.

[Like last year, Lambert is continuing] “as spokesperson for AT&T’s “Live Proud” campaign. The initiative encourages all people – regardless of sexual orientation – to share memes illustrating their pride through social media channels. Five lucky participants in the campaign, which ends August 10, will have the chance to attend a private event with Lambert in New York. The goal, he says, is ’empowerment,’ and to give others ‘a voice to be what and who they are.'”

Through the AT&T campaign and in practically all of his public statements, Lambert is showing youth what it’s like to just be yourself, no matter who that is, and to not only be proud but to be exceedingly happy that you are you. After all, there is no one in the greater universe that can be that person.

Right now Lambert is finishing up a well-reviewed tour with the band QueenHe inhabits the lead spot formerly held by Freddie Mercury, who happened to have been an openly bisexual artist who died of AIDs in 1991. Mercury lived through some bitter years when being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans (LGBT), especially in the public eye, was a grim affair with mostly everyone else in the closet. The AIDs epidemic changed all of that because it has become a matter of life and death to acknowledge LGBT people. 

“I feel like it’s one of the things that I respect about him a lot. He never really made any apologies for anything,” Lambert says of Freddie Mercury. “He just was who he was. And if there’s something I can take from that, it’s that sometimes, especially in today’s world, where we’re at, there’s such a strong statement in just boldly being what and who you are.”

Lambert’s builds on our shared history by heralding the coming ordinariness of being openly gay, a world where we all can live in a post-gay and post-gender, a new age of sexual freedom unimaginable just a couple of decades ago.

Even as the industry continues to close doors on many out musicians, Lambert attests to a noticeable shift to what he terms a “post-gay place.” He maintains that younger generations do not share the stigmas that were more prevalent in Mercury’s day and they refuse to be pigeonholed with labels on their identities.

“This next generation coming up is like, ‘Hey, it doesn’t fucking matter… My sexuality, doesn’t [determine that] this is the type of music I listen to, or this is the type of activities I’m into, or these are the type of people I hang out with. It’s getting to the point now where we’re more mainstream, and we’re allowed to do anything we want, and we’re allowed to be with anybody we want,’” Lambert says. “So there’s not as much segregation… and I think that’s really exciting, because I don’t think it should matter.”

Daniel Reynold’s article today is well worth a full reading.

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Park your formulaic sex at the door

Like a lot of people, I took note a couple of weeks ago when Cosmo, Cosmopolitan Magazine, the fun girl’s bible, ran a story with pictures laying out 28 Mind-blowing Lesbian Sex Positions.

Flicker/creative commons

Flicker/creative commons

The modern Cosmo was the brainchild of its brilliant editor and author Helen Gurly Brown in 1965, who started dialogs on topics unheard of in print at the time, skillfully merging sexuality with a commercially available mainstream magazine. Long considered a sexual freedom advocate, she told women they could “have it all.”

With this article on lesbian sex, and few others on gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects during the last year or so, Cosmo can be commended for branching out and acknowledging lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, appearing to be more inclusive while trying to tap into that lucrative market they’ve ignored for decades. They are trying even while acknowledging that many or most feminists and lesbians have shunned Cosmo, put off by so much editorial about how the average woman, once objectified, can make herself sassy and attractive to their male partner/s.

While wondering if any lesbians were consulted in the making of that article I came across some criticism by real lesbians who posit that this entire concept seemed to have been the product of frat boys based on their porn fantasies (pretty much the style of most of the magazine’s stories). That may well be true but I think it was overreach — when making fun of the positions, these critics called them “stupid” saying they were either undoable or useless, dismissing them entirely.

It was impossible to hold up one’s own body weight, let alone the body weight of the other person in half of them. We had to balance on our tip toes and contort our bodies in the most insane ways. And, most importantly, there was nothing arousing about any of it.

What I think is being missed here by all parties is that touching bodies in unusual or unexpected ways can be rewarding, bringing you to heights you might at first have overlooked. It seems that, once liberated from the constraints of men, feminists and lesbians have gradually become more like men in how they approach satisfying their own desires.

We have sex. We fuck. We use our fingers and our bodies and our mouths and our toys and we get ourselves and each other off. Just like straight people do. There’s stimulation and penetration and vibration. There’s licking and sucking and smacking and grabbing. 

Instead of exploring erotic encounters that expose oneself to unexpected delights found all over the body, not rushing so much and staying curious to couple all parts of the body in surprising ways, men, and now it seems many straight women and lesbians, tend to recreate a slalom with specific goals to be met at every turn, usually in a certain order to get to their orgasm in as straight a line as possible.

But that is so, so boring.

Even the critics include a paragraph with two contradicting statements, aptly portraying the push and pull between anxiety about reaching the goal of orgasm and the desire for sex to be more than just that.

But there is not, I repeat, there is not anyone rubbing foreheads on each others’ belly buttons or rubbing bottoms against anyone’s sternum, not in the name of having an orgasm any way. By making sex all about an orgasm we miss the erotic excitation of our minds as well as our bodies.

Sex is an erotic encounter that stimulates physical, psychological, and, some agree, spiritual growth. If you focus less on scoring the goal you will play a more artful and nuanced game that is rewarded of surprises and new stimulation.

Slow down, set aside your usual formula for a week and see what happens.

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: Do your own research


The level of sex education in America’s schools is impartial at best and at its worst calls for abstinence. What has been your experience?

Many people believe that the responsibility for sex education lies with your parents. How has the worked for you?

The bottom line makes you responsible for your own sex ed, researching those aspects that teachers, parents, and even your peers left out. There are plenty of good sources of sex ed on the Internet (and in your local library), including sites especially for teens such as teen source, Scarleteen, and sexetc, so you don’t need to be left in the dark.

What have you done to complete your sex education?

If you believe is sexual freedom, then sex ed is an important tool for you.

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

More videos.

McDonald’s Corporation on the hook

McDonald’s NLRB joint employer ruling

Yesterday’s ruling gives litigants and activists alike a bigger target, and a big boost for fast-food workers’ rights everywhere. 

We like to catalog progress when we see it.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finally came to its senses by ruling that McDonald’s Corporation could no longer avoid complaints from its workers by asserting that they were not responsible for what goes on in their franchised stores, the vast majority of its 14,000 restaurants. This single ruling gives renewed hope and power to dozens of court cases to end unfair labor practices, and to fast-food workers everywhere demanding higher hourly wages.

[C]ompanies have sought to distance themselves from the pay protests by saying they don’t determine wages at its franchised locations.

Besides low wages, McDonald’s employees are imposed on in so many inhumane ways, such as showing up on time only to be asked to wait around on site before clocking in (and being paid) so the restaurant can maintain the company’s closely monitored ratio of labor costs as a percentage of sales.

Activists and labor organizers have always believed that these companies must be accountable because it controls every aspect of how the restaurants are run and how their employees are trained. Now the NLRB agrees with the workers. From now on McDonald’s and other fast-food companies with franchises, such as KFC, Burger King, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, will be fully liable for all of its management practices.  

Heather Smedstad, senior vice president of human resources for McDonald’s USA, said in a phone interview that the company has never been determined to be a joint employer in the past and that it would fight the decision by the labor board.

“This is such a radical departure that it should be a concern to business men and women across the country,” she said.

 

The International Franchise Association also opposes the NLRB ruling, focusing on municipalities that go ahead and enact higher minimum wages (for example, Seattle’s $15.15/hour) and how this hurts these “small businesses.”

Conservative lawmakers, who haven’t allowed a rise in the minimum wage for 5 years, still contend that the market should decide wages and link them to productivity. They have a right to this opinion but not the facts: if wages had been linked to productivity for the last 20 years, the minimum wage would be not $8, not $10, not $15, but $22/hour. Productivity has steadily risen, as have corporate profits, but workers haven’t benefited.

Taxpayers have been bearing the burden of these sub-standard wages because those at the bottom of the pay scale use more government resources, like food stamps, to make ends meet. That means that taxpayers like you and me are subsidizing big companies and complicit in keeping these wages so low.

Not so ironically, minimum wage hikes actually raise the number of jobs created throughout the community because higher wages are spent immediately on necessities and stimulate the entire local economy.

Minimum wage workers rights throughout the country deserve this ruling from the NLRB which protects them from draconian labor practices and assures every worker is getting a living wage.

 

 

The Sexual History of America

US-GreatSeal-Obverse600px

First, consider the mottoes and symbols of our nation, but meditate upon their true meaning.

E Pluribus Unum—from many, one—unity without uniformity

Annuit Coeptis—he approves our undertaking—divine providence is assured

Novus Ordo Seclorum—a new order of the ages—we’re here to change the world

What is this all about? Are these empty classical boasts, or do they hold genuine meaning for understanding our national purpose?

The study of the history of sacred sexuality in “western culture” in turn shows how these ideals, ideas, and practices date from ancient, if not prehistorical times, progressively converging to the present day when we are at last able to begin to openly celebrate sexual freedom in all its manifestations.

The common basis of association that brought together the “founding fathers” was actually a system of rational thought that had existed for centuries in secret groups, which finally emerged in Western Europe, triggered the Enlightenment, and inspired the deistic but non-sectarian approach that was able to unite thirteen colonies into one nation. The label publicly attached to this world view was “Rosicrucian.” If any labeled tradition can be said to lie at the foundation of our nation, it is Rosicrucian.

Rosicrucianism involves many things beyond such ideals, but the single, central core of the system has always been the sacred employment of sex and eroticism in the service of individual moral growth and spiritual perfection. And this dynamic, too, is being reborn today in evolution of American society.

For more, see one of our presentations, first delivered in 2011, Dawn of the New Age.

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

 

New Anti-HIV Condom Available

Starpharma: VivaGel® Condom Receives TGA Device Certification – Launch Preparations to Follow

Don’t Get Too Excited About The ‘HIV-Killing’ Condom Yet

by Gabe Av Flickr/creative commons

by Gabe Av
Flickr/creative commons

An Australian company, Starpharmahas just received its government’s approval to produce and sell a promising new condom incorporating VivaGel®, a lubricant purported to block viral infections, including HIV, HPV, and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), up to 99.9% of the time. The Australian consumer brand is LifeStyles Dual Protect, and the company has plans to market worldwide. 

Some experts, such as Dr. Anna-Barbara Moscicki, initially raised red flags. Dr. Mosciki submitted that her earlier study on HPV transmission and and other studies on HIV prevention, showed that VivaGel(R) can cause irritation of surrounding tissues, which of course increases the likely incidence of infection.

Starpharma’s clinical studies included 1000 participants, and its spokespeople were quick to neutralize these concerns by pointing out that those studies used a 3% concentration of VivaGel®, while its study used 1% and the drugstore version will be .5%, neither of which was shown to cause irritation.

If VivaGel® succeeds it promises to significantly reduce infection rates when these condoms are used for safer sex.

However, like all other condoms before these, they have to actually be used, making it doubtful that those needing it the most, the highest risk populations in certain countries, and others insisting on unprotected sex, will benefit.

The important take-away is that if used consistently and correctly, reliance on condoms, VivaGel® or not, significantly reduce the incidence of HIV and other STDs. This is underscored by trends showing that young people are chancing unprotected sex believing incorrectly that HIV is easily curable. It’s not. Go forth and have as much sex as you wish but make sure it is safer sex.

So what do you think of this new product, and how it may say lives?

Condom poster by Jun Jhen Lew Flickr/creative commons

Condom poster by Jun Jhen Lew
Flickr/creative commons

 

Decriminalizing Sexting

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Manassas Case Rekindles Debate Over Penalties for Sexting

The recent efforts of Manassas police and Prince William County prosecutors to photograph the erect genitalia of a 17-year-old boy for evidence in a “sexting” case has revived a debate in Virginia over whether such conduct between minors should be illegal at all . . .

Sexting is a phenomenon that emerged with the digital age, the sending of nude or semi-nude photos via a smartphone. In the “old days” people exchanged polaroids if they could, easier to hide, and to destroy.

If charges are brought, punishment, even for consenting teens, can include jail time and a permanent place on the Sex Offender Database along with all the pedophiles and child pornographers and rapists.

“The laws are outdated and literally make my daughter a violator,” the mother said.

First Amendment lawyers across the country defend these cases and many work on forging better state and federal legislation that would make sexting a misdemeanor with counseling and education versus felony punishments. Some lawyers and some defendant’s parents reject even that notion, positing that teens sexting with their friends doesn’t constitute pornography — that is free speech covered under the First Amendment. But we are along way from this sane point of view in the United States. 

[The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia] opposes . . . any bill that will put sexting into the state  has opposed Surovell’s bill and similar attempts to put sexting into the state code. “We will resist as actively as we can anything that seeks to define this behavior as criminal at any level,” said executive director Claire Gastañaga. “Making it a misdemeanor just invites prosecutions and convictions.”

Another lawyer, Jonathan L. Phillips, who has defended sexting teens and worked on new legislations, calls their use of smartphones, “immaculate weapons of their own self-destruction.” 

A friend of mine, Lawrence G. Walters, Esq., is a nationally recognized expert on the front lines of this issue for a long time, defending cases and fighting to drop or reduce charges and shorten sentences. Click here to learn more.

What’s going on in your state? in your community? Should sexting between consenting minors, or adults for that matter, be a crime? Let us know what you think!