Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

“Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” Luke 6:37

Two-time Emmy Award winner Bea Arthur dead at 86 – CNN.com.

Now that’s better! None of this 4 measly paragraphs business.

RIP, Bea Arthur!

`Golden Girls’ star Bea Arthur dies at 86.

RIP. 🙁 We were just watching my “Golden Girls” DVDs last night. 🙁

p.s. WTF is up with CNN’s itty-bitty blurb about her death? The woman was a groundbreaker! She deserves more than a few terse sentences.

Joe. My. God.: Report: Masters & Johnson Faked Their “Gay Conversion” Study.

The religious right loves to cite a famous claim made by noted sex researchers Masters and Johnson that they had "successfully converted 70%" of their gay patients to heterosexuality. However Scientific American is now reporting that assistants who worked with the duo back in the 70's never saw any evidence of the research and believe that Masters made up the work.

There’s more in the New York Times.

YouTube – Weathering the Storm (Response to NOM Gathering Storm).

Police Intervene in Case of Anti-Gay YouTube Poster, 12 :: EDGE Boston.

An email, huh? I’d like to see something more official stating that it’s been addressed, although the county seems accurate. You would think there would be an official statement and not just an email.

Joe. My. God.: Authorities Intervene At Home Of 12 Year-Old “Ex-Gay” YouTuber.

Thank goodness. I just hope the kid gets some real help – I still want to know if his parents knew what was going on. I was one of the people who contacted Texas DFPS, and clearly I wasn’t the only one. I imagine they got quite a few calls; thank goodness the Internet community was finally able to do something right.

Transgender murder, hate crime conviction a first – CNN.com.

Just read the things this guy said about his crime. He deserves the worst.

Same-sex destination weddings booming – CNN.com.

Just think, CA, that could have been you reaping all those rewards…

Commentary: Miss California, thanks for being honest – CNN.com.

My take:

My problem with her answer was not that she expressed her opinion about what marriage *should* be, but that she displayed an ignorance of the reality faced by same-gender couples. For most of us, the “choice” of same-sex marriage is not available. We don’t live in a country where people get to choose opposite-sex marriage or same-sex marriage; we live in a country where people like Miss California get to make that decision FOR people like me. So to me, it sounded like she was either completely misinformed as to whether same-gender couples can actually marry in America, or was saying, “Hey, you chose to be gay, so you don’t get to be married.” Either way, her answer was far from honest. An opinion is an opinion, but she flat out lied.

The Supreme Court takes failing to get it to a new level in a strip-search case. – By Dahlia Lithwick – Slate Magazine.

Wow. Supreme Fail.

Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will – WSJ.com.

Jewish legacy inscribed on genes? – Los Angeles Times.

If they can prove it, more power to ’em. Until then, I’m going to stick with the more logical reason that as a people, we place a huge emphasis on education and literacy, and when an immigrant group has a high literacy rate in their native language, that translates to higher success achieving literacy in the new country, which in turn leads to a greater likelihood of economic success. And, you know, education.

A Gaythering Storm from FOD Team, Jane Lynch, Alicia Silverstone, Lance Bass, George Takei, LizFeldman, Jason Lewis, Sarah Chalke, Sophia Bush, and lauren.

LMAO. Go to the URL they list at the end. SRSLY.

Joe. My. God.: The Hits Keep Coming!.

Another NOM “Gathering Storm” parody!

In the midst of everybody’s comments and posts and jokes about the significance of today being “420,” let’s not forget that something else happened on this day 10 years ago.

Take a moment to reflect, if you care to.

The killers at Columbine were bullied relentlessly for years before getting to the point they were at when they murdered their classmates and teachers, and finally themselves. After Columbine, schools all over the country seemed to be in competition to be the most quick to take swift action… against the victims of bullying.

I like to think about how schools could have handled the aftermath differently.

Perhaps after seeing the damage wrought by both perpetrators AND victims of bullying and torment, schools could have actually taken efforts to end school bullying rather than turning a blind eye, or worse, executing a witch hunt for anybody wearing a black trench coat or pale makeup.

And perhaps they could crack down on the vicious anti-gay slurs being lobbed at outcasts regardless of sexual orientation. Homophobia kills, and it is blind to your true sexual orientation.

And maybe, just maybe, schools could start holding bullies accountable instead of blaming the victims for their own persecution.

(If you want some deeper insight to this – or if you just want to read a good book – I suggest the novel Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. It’s not a perfect book, but it does tell a story that is too often overlooked.)

I was a senior in high school when the Columbine shootings took place. No, I wasn’t in Colorado – I was several states away, in southern California. You would think we would have been a little more enlightened than that sheltered little town of Columbine, right?

Not so much. The day after the shootings, a 10th grader came to school in a black trench coat – as he had every day for at least the past year or two – and the school took it away from him. They confiscated his jacket, like that was somehow going to fix the world’s problems. I’m sure they gave it back eventually, but they wouldn’t let him wear it, and for the rest of that day, they had him walking around in one of the administrators’ letterman jackets. No joke. And that was extraordinarily mild compared to what happened at some schools.

I don’t mean to minimize the suffering caused by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Lifes were destroyed, and families taken apart. Bullying is no excuse for that. But it is a reason. Not the only one, but a major one. So armed with that knowledge, what are schools going to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

Afghan cleric defends controversial marriage law – CNN.com.

Can you believe it’s 2009 and women are still treated like this?

I can just picture NOM taking notes.

The Bilerico Project | Rick Warren operatives trying to whitewash his anti-gay positions from Wikipedia entry.

The Stranger | Slog | He’s Actually an Opportunistic Bigot.

Well hey, it worked for McCain…

Oh, wait.

Giulliani does this and it’s 100% proof that he has sold out to the Dark Side.

Scottish Singer Susan Boyle’s Web Popularity Is at Numbers Never Seen Before – washingtonpost.com.

The thing to bear in mind, though, is that MANY people have watched this video MANY times.

I only hope she lives up to this in her second performance, or the “backlash” will be really awful.

Teabag Obama.

Lest anybody think it was just perverted liberals who latched onto the teabagging joke…

This page is completely serious!

Joe. My. God.: Wingnuts Call For Firing Of Anderson Cooper Over Teabagging Joke.

LMAO.

a) uh, since when is this a gay thing?
b) LMAO.
c) Sorry, these people walked RIGHT into this joke. If you don’t want to hear jokes about teabagging, don’t theme your national protest around teabags, particularly when your camp is also launching a campaign called “2M4M,” and PARTICULARLY when your camp tends to be extremely prudish and sexually repressed/oppressive. SRSLY.

YouTube – Miss California Gets OWNED Miss USA 2009 Speech.

Umm…. how can you “choose” when you can’t actually “choose”? This answer would have made perfect sense and been perfectly respectable IF we actually HAD the right to marry. But hey, guess what? We don’t. So we don’t get to choose between same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage (like it’s some kind of eenie meenie miney moe or something). We get those choices made FOR us by people like her.

McCain campaign manager: GOP should back same-sex marriage – CNN.com.

The Colbert Coalition’s Anti-Gay Marriage Ad | April 16th | ColbertNation.com.