Obama on Gay Marriage: "Attitudes Evolve, Including Mine"

via CBS Politics, by Brian Montopoli

But I also think you're right that attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. 
- Obama

Read it all.


Related, read:
"Obama appoints record number of gay officials" in the Washington Post.

Less than halfway through his first term, President Barack Obama has appointed more openly gay officials than any other president in history.

Gay activists say the estimate of more than 150 appointments so far - from agency heads and commission members to policy officials and senior staffers - surpasses the previous high of about 140 reached during two full terms under President Bill Clinton.

GAYS OKAY - Pentagon Study Shows Majority Of Troops Accepting Of Gays In Military

via HuffPo

An internal Pentagon study has found that most U.S. troops and their families don't care whether gays are allowed to serve openly and think the policy of "don't ask, don't tell" could be done away with, according to officials familiar with its findings.

 Read it.

Feel the Love... Sister Glo sings

To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart,
and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.

~Unknown

Love is all you need with Sister Glo each Friday on LifeLube.

Friday is for Faeries

Who's That Queer? [Eric Alva]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva was the first American wounded, losing his leg in the war in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart and received a medical discharge from the military. After being honorably discharged, Alva came out as gay, and has been one of the most vocal veterans to speak out against the military's "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy.

Having survived a war injury, Alva felt he’d been given a second chance at life. He discovered a new calling. “I had to use my voice,” he says. “I had fought and nearly died to secure rights for others that I was not free to enjoy. I had proudly served a country that was not proud of me.”

In 2003, Alva received the Heroes and Heritage Award from La Raza. People magazine honored him with the Heroes Among Us Award (2004). He received the Patriot Award from the city of San Antonio (2004), and the Public Citizen Award from the National Association of Social Workers (2008).

Alva earned a Bachelor of Social Work in 2008, and is studying for a master’s degree in that field. He lives in San Antonio with his long-term partner, Darrell Parsons.

Gettin' to know booty

As a booty owner, 
take a few moments to get to know it a bit better...

The ins and outs of the arse
via SX (Sydney), by Dr. Darren Gold

There is far less information or resources available dealing with the rectum and anus as a sex organ than there are for heterosexuals on the penis and vagina. As a clinician who has seen many gay men with anorectal problems over the past few years it has become apparent as a result a little more education into the way things work and how to avoid any lifelong harm may be quite useful. 

Read the rest.



And then read Dr. Gold's "The complexities of the rectum" next

Here's a sample:

"Initial penetration should be gentle and gradual until the anus has had time to receptively relax to the stretching in order not to cause too much damage."

Woof Wednesday

Rep. Quigley, CDC HIV Director Fenton and Black AIDS Institute Head Wilson to Speak in Chicago November 8th

Going to be in Chicago on November 8th? Consider coming to From Vienna to Washington D.C., a free panel discussion on the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and other current events in the domestic AIDS battle featuring Congressman Mike Quigley, Kevin Fenton, MD PhD, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Phill Wilson, Black AIDS Institute. Read more about the event below and Register today!

Download the poster

Ahead of the 2010 International AIDS Conference held in Vienna, President Obama released the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, fulfilling a major campaign promise. Learn about the Strategy and other highlights from Vienna at this local community briefing session. In particular, panelists will discuss what the new Strategy means for Chicago and Illinois and how local stakeholders can give input into planning the 2012 International AIDS Conference taking place in Washington, DC.

Religious Leader Jim Wallis Urges Christians to Stand with Gays and Lesbians

The homophobic proselytizing done from pulpits each Sunday has directly contributed to the verbal, emotional, mental and physical abuse that LGBT youth face each day in school. At least some spiritual leaders are stepping up and defending these kids.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners Magazine and a Christian leader is among them:


I wore purple to commemorate "Spirit Day," in memory of the many young people who have taken their own lives as a result of harassment and bullying inflicted on them because they are gay. I wore purple because I am a follower of Christ.

A bully is a person who habitually intimidates, harasses, or commits violence against those who are smaller, weaker, or more vulnerable because of their "outsider" status. A bully stands in opposition to all of what Christ taught and lived. There is broad opposition within the Christian community to bullying, especially the sort that leads to the deaths we have seen as of late. This sort of harassment is indefensible. And the stories of young kids being so bullied that they take their own lives have been heartbreaking to hear.

Read the rest at HuffPo.

Monday Morning Perk-Up [When Did You Choose to be Straight?]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Obama Tells Teens: "It Gets Better"

Via Whitehouse.gov - Some words of hope by President Obama for Dan Savage's It Gets Better project. Now if we could only get him to strike down institutionalized discrimination with DADT and ENDA, then we'd be in business..

Chicago: Tunney Leads Efforts to End Gay Blood Ban

via EDGE Chicago, by Joseph Erbentraut

With their passage of a resolution calling for the reversal of the federal ban of gay and bisexual male blood donors, the Chicago City Council’s Health Committee last week joined a growing number of influential entities that have spoken out against the policy.

The policy, which has been on the books since 1985, bars any man who admits to having engaged in sexual activity with another man at any point since 1977 from donating blood for life. Gay Chicago alderman Tom Tunney and other pro-repeal advocates claim the ban perpetuates negative stereotypes of gay men as "public health threats" and could even threaten the nation’s blood supply in the not-so-distant future. Already this year, city councils in New York and Washington, D.C., have also called for an end to the ban, as did the California Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in 2009.

Read the rest.

Feel the Love... Sister Glo understands irony

The irony of love is that it guarantees some degree
of anger, fear, and criticism.

~Harold H. Bloomfield

Love is all you need with Sister Glo each Friday on LifeLube.

Friday is for Faeries

LifeLuber Jim Pickett Downunder

Jim Pickett speaks to the huddled masses

On October 21, AFC Advocacy Director and LifeLuber Jim Pickett gave a plenary presentation at the Australasian HIV/AIDS Conference 2010 in Sydney, Australia. His talk, “Yes, There is a Gay Agenda: The need to re-conceptualize HIV prevention in the epidemic’s third decade” was part of the session titled “Re-Thinking Prevention.” Pickett discussed HIV prevention in the United States context and provided insights into the U.S. Gay Men’s Health Agenda, Chicago’s “How are you healthy?” campaign, the U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy, sexual health, and biomedical prevention. Click here to view his slide set!

Click here to view slide set in power point!

Click here to view slide set in PDF.

Who's That Queer? [Lynn Conway]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Lynn Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, trans woman, and activist for the transgender community.

Conway is notable for several technical achievements, including the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging electronic design automation industry. She worked at IBM in the 1960s and is credited with the invention of generalised dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance.

Conway was recruited by IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1964. She was soon selected to join the architecture team designing a multiple-issue out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling while working there. The Computer History Museum has stated that "the ACS machines appears to have been the first superscalar design, a computer architectural paradigm widely exploited in modern high-performance microprocessors.

After learning of the pioneering research of Dr. Harry Benjamin in transgender treatment and realizing that a full gender transition was now possible, Conway sought his help and became his patient. After suffering from severe depression over her situation, Conway contacted Dr. Benjamin, who agreed to counsel her and prescribe hormones. Under Dr. Benjamin's care, she began preparing for transition.

Although she hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed to them that she was transsexual, and was planning on transitioning to a female gender role.

Read the rest at Wikipedia.

Bullying Only One Part of Violence Against Gay Youth

The nation has been totally swept up in Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project, but Gender Just is skeptical about how much better it gets:

We have seen an overly simplistic and un-nuanced reaction to the recent violence; from Dan Savage telling young people to wait it out until "it gets better" and from Kathy Griffin declaring that passing Gay Marriage and overturning Don't Ask Don't Tell would somehow stop the violence in our lives, we have found this response to be as misguided, irrelevant, and offensive as the conservative LGBT Movement itself.

While youth violence is a very serious issue in our schools, the real bullies we face in our schools take the form of systemic violence perpetrated by the school system itself: a sex education that ignores queer youth and a curriculum that denies our history, a militarized school district with cops in our schools, a process of privatization which displaces us, increasing class sizes which undermine our education and safety. The national calls to end the violence against queer youth completely ignore the most violent nature of our educational experience.

Read the entire post at Gender Just.

Woof Wednesday

Mayor Daley's Final City Budget Avoids Cuts to HIV Services

Mayor Daley recommended that HIV funding remain level at $4.3 million. Last year, HIV funding was cut by $175,000. City funding is largely used for HIV prevention programs and supplies, housing services, and awareness activities.

Overall proposed city funding for CDPH was reduced by just 0.2%, from $33.87 million in 2010 to $33.80 million in 2011, and five positions will be eliminated. The AIDS Foundation of Chicago will lobby City Council members to appropriate the highest funding amounts possible for public health programs, including HIV services.

Read the rest at AIDSConnect.net.

Wear Purple Wednesday, October 20 to Fight Homophobia-related Suicides

Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people will be donning purple this coming Wednesday to honor those young lives that have been taken prematurely due to hate. October 20 has been designated Spirit Day, a day in which the color purple will be worn as a reminder of the string of recent young, gay suicides.

The idea has quickly grown into a movement that has spread across Canada, the United States and beyond. Purple is the LGBTQ color of spirit, Brittany said on her Tumblr account, where she first spread the news of the day. "And that's exactly what we'd like all of you to have with you: spirit." Read the rest...

Monday Morning Perk-Up [Wedding Expo]

Brought to you by Pistol Pete

Rabbi: Homophobia is the abomination

via HuffPo, by Rabbi Schmuley Boteach

Excerpt:

As an orthodox Rabbi who reveres the Bible I do not deny the Biblical prohibition on male same-sex relationships. Rather, I simply place it in context. There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is to refrain from gay sex. Another is for men and women to marry and have children. So when Jewish gay couples come to me for counselling and tell me they have never been attracted to members of the opposite sex in their entire lives and are desperately alone, I tell them, "You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home with a mezuzah scroll on the door. Turn off the TV on the Sabbath and share your challah with many guests. Pray to G-d the prescribed three times a day for you are His beloved children. He desires you and seeks you out."

Read all of it.