LGBT

Off To College? Are You Ashamed? (Part 2)

This continues from Part 1 a discussion about private colleges and universities obtaining religious exemptions to legally discriminate against students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and against their faculty and employees with whom they differ, straight or not. We began with The Shame List put out by Campus Pride showing which institutions are complicit, and threw in a short refresher course on the actual meaning of freedom of religion. Even if you do not attend one of these colleges, you should first be appalled by the power over sanity that our government continues to bestow on ...

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in Grassroots / Key Issues / lgbt / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Off To College? Are You Ashamed? (Part 1)

Maybe you are packing suitcases right now, or helping your teenager to pack, while planning the big drop off on campus in the next few weeks. You might be unaware of the religious intolerance you may face as part of your new community. As a student on one of these campuses or an employee or faculty or even just a tax-payer in the same state you have much to be concerned about. The number of colleges and universities officially filing, or already have successfully filed, for Title IX exemptions in order to legally discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ...

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in Grassroots / Key Issues / lgbt / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Hail the Passing of a Paranoid Homophobe

Tim LaHaye, left in a screenshot from the documentary "The God Who Was Not There," courtesy of Niklas Pivic

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State noted this week the death of 90-year-old Tim LaHaye, a name known and condemned by everyone who believes in equality rights. Like me, you may remember his blockbuster Left Behind series of prophecies or other books he wrote as founder of Liberty University's Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy. An avowed dominionist christianist, the series served to brand him forever as homophobia personified and as the darling of the Religious Right. LaHaye earned millions of dollars trying to smash every argument for equal rights for women and LGBT people. Americans United featured a quote from LaHaye's 1977 Understanding The Male ...

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in Key Issues / lgbt / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Science and Sex

Feature

Poking around VenusPlusX's Library recently, I rediscovered many "papers" Dan Massey wrote. They were not posts, just part of the infrastructure holding together our concept of cosmic destiny and the critical, central role that our sexuality plays in finding out, for each of us, what our personal destiny is. Much of this work is tagged with our term, Transhuman Erotic Freedom, to describe this destiny-sexuality connection. Combined with a 10-part series, A Course In Immortality, these works constitute the Appendices of a forthcoming book on this subject. The somewhat technical/scientific approach to some the work in the ...

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in A Course in Immortality / Dan Massey / Key Issues / lgbt / Library / Public Information / The Unseen Journey (working title) / transhuman / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

NetrootsNation 2016 Wraps Up

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Reminder to everyone that this year and every year, Netroots Nation offers all of the keynote addresses and various workshops, via lifestream and video, for progressives who are unable to attend. I was lucky enough to be here all week, starting with the pre-conference NetrootsConnect LGBT. St. Louis is a troubled city trying to do better in a purple state. It struck me as a very southern city, in pace and overripe hospitality, but with a clearly liberal bent. All of the conference hotels were unionized. Here are some highlights with lots of links to full session videos. Thursday's opening plenary was revolutionary, a ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Weekend Convo: Intersex and Trans Children Counter Transmisogyny

Misogyny is the objectification, discrimination, and violence and murder against women. Transmisogyny is a particularly virulent type of misogyny that is directed solely at girls and women who currently identify or previously identified as trans. There are two realities that will, over time, undermine this behavior but that will not, sadly, be soon enough to stem the rising tide of violence and murder of trans women, especially among people of color. These two realities will eventually help dismantle transmisogyny even though it is entirely about the misogynist's emotional, irrational reaction to their own deep-seated fears and sexual insecurity. Because transmisogyny has no intellectual basis, it cannot be talked ...

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in Campaigns / End Police Bias / Grassroots / Key Issues / lgbt / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Transhuman Erotic Freedom / Transunity & Transleadership  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Religious Non-Profits Ignore the Law

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There is new reason to hope that the influence of religion in government has finally embarked on its long journey to extinction. More and more, the hypocrisy of every argument made that seeks to vacate our constitutional right to church-state separation is being more fully exposed and often struck down by the courts (here, here). There is nothing inherently wrong with religion or faith in a god's eventual salvation of man. There is even room in government to work alongside "faith-based" organizations in satisfying the population's need for social services. Whether a large behemoth like ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

Combatting the Infection of the Religious Right

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"[Y]ou’re not able to see somebody else as a human being," 

Some may predict that the influence of the religious right is waning as the number of Americans identifying as evangelicals declines, but that misunderstands and underestimates the festering infection of their ideas, already in full flower. You can be an secularist but your world is still affected by the disease of fundamentalist thinking that has made and continues to make a deep impression on our laws and policies. The rubric of religious freedom has been fully distorted to protect racial bigotry and legalize discrimination. President Obama Read More›
in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

The First Amendment Doesn’t Need Any Defense

The proposed First Amendment Defense Act is Congress's attempt to legalize LGBT discrimination. Aligning with faith groups to diminish the influence of religion in government was one of the chief strategies we developed while meeting with like-minded activists at the recent Netroots Nation and LGBT Netroots Connect. While this includes tactics such as direct contact with welcoming congregations, the nexus of this alignment right now centers on defeating the passage of the nefarious First Amendment Defense Act, the aim of which is "to prevent discriminatory treatment of any person on the basis of views held with respect to marriage." While the  Read More›

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized  by Alison Gardner 0 comments

NYT Threads the Needle on Religious Liberty

Fair Use/Educational

A few days ago, Emily Bazelon (@emilybazelon), New York Times Magazine Staff Writer, successfully drew a fine line between government accommodation of religious beliefs and how the political religious right has turned that on its head for the sole purpose of unlawfully discriminating against minorities with whom they disagree. It is worth of a full read.

It's a thorny issue, no doubt, as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago in Religious Freedom vs Religious Liberty (Part 1 and Part 2), part of my month-long ...

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in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information  by Alison Gardner 0 comments