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LGBT Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 01, 2016 14 Comments
Alabama was at the center of much national discussion concerning same-sex "marriage," and at the center of much of that was Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.  Moore first came to national attention regarding a Ten Commandments monument and was removed from office as a result.  He ran for and won reelection and now has again been suspended for the entirety of his remaining term.  This time, however, he will be unable to run for reelection because he is over the Alabama state age requirement. AL.com reports:
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has been suspended from the bench for telling probate judges to defy federal orders regarding gay marriage. It's the second time Moore has been removed from the chief justice job for defiance of federal courts - the first time in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. The Alabama Court of the Judiciary (COJ) issued the order Friday suspending Moore from the bench for the remainder of his term after an unanimous vote of the nine-member court.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 25, 2016 21 Comments
I recently noted that President Obama's recent order is forcing our military to focus on climate change in its strategic planning. This is a latest in a long-string of policies that are clearly full of holes, as shown by the fact that the U.S. Navy's much-heralded, futuristic stealth destroyer sprung a leak on its maiden voyage. Navy officials state that this situation is completely normal for new ships:
Crew members have detected a leak on the Zumwalt, the new destroyer built at Bath Iron Works, but the Navy and defense experts say such errors are typical for a first-in-class ship. The destroyer is docked at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, and local news organizations reported it was scheduled for training at sea. The Zumwalt instead will be delayed in Norfolk for repairs, which are expected to take 10 days to two weeks.

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 13, 2016 22 Comments
North Carolina's Public Facilities Privacy and Security Bill have drawn another major boycott. The NCAA recently announced its decision to remove seven previously scheduled championship events from the state, including the first and second round games of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. In July, the NBA decided to move its All Star Game from Charlotte to New Orleans over the bill.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 10, 2016 7 Comments
Vanderbilt University has picked up the idea of preferred gender pronouns and run away with it. There are charts on campus to explain the proper usage of gender pronouns and name plates are providing individual pronoun preferences. KLEW TV News reports:
Pronoun chart at Vanderbilt to 'provide education, awareness about gender identity' A pronoun chart at Vanderbilt University is to "provide awareness and education about gender identity," according to the school. Fox 17 inquired about the above poster reportedly at Vanderbilt. The school said the poster is part of a grassroots, student-led partnership with the faculty. The school said it's there to provide education and awareness, "rather than establish a formal university policy," the school said in a statement to Fox 17. Vanderbilt said the poster was made in response to a student interest in "promoting inclusivity on campus."

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 22, 2016 29 Comments
The NBA has decided to move their February 19 All-Star Game out of North Carolina due to the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Bill. The league stated:
"Since March, when North Carolina enacted HB2 and the issue of legal protections for the LGBT community in Charlotte became prominent, the NBA and the Charlotte Hornets have been working diligently to foster constructive dialogue and try to effect positive change. We have been guided in these discussions by the long-standing core values of our league. These include not only diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect for others but also the willingness to listen and consider opposing points of view.

Posted by Mike LaChance on July 05, 2016 34 Comments
The Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter was recently invited to participate in the city's gay pride parade. At one point, the Black Lives Matter members stopped and sat down on the street halting the entire procession. Then they started issuing demands. Global News reports:
Black Lives Matter gets police kicked out of future Pride parades say co-founders Sunday’s Pride parade was historic for the city in many ways. It was the first time a sitting Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, marched alongside thousands of members of the LGBTQ community and its allies. It was also the first time Black Lives Matter Toronto did the same, leading a passionate procession down Bloor and Yonge Streets.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on June 17, 2016 7 Comments
Shiloh Gun Range in Houston, Texas has opened their doors to members of the LGBTQ community who want to learn how to defend themselves. What started as an idea to hold a concealed carry class or two for members of the gay community rapidly ballooned into close to 300 class registrants and more emails and phone calls than the range can keep up with. Houston local news reported:
One look at his hole-filled paper target and you can see Ryan Thomas is a great shot. He has had his concealed handgun license for two years. Thomas also happens to be gay.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 12, 2016 16 Comments
California's Santa Monica police may have prevented West Coast mass shooting today, by arresting a armed man with explosives heading to the areas's gay pride parade.
Authorities in Santa Monica found possible explosives as well as a cache of weapons and ammunition Sunday in the car of a man who told them he planned to look for a friend at the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood, a law enforcement source said. Federal and local law enforcement decided against canceling the annual parade, which went forward Sunday morning under tightened security. Investigators are now trying to piece together what happened but said they don’t believe there is any connection between the incident and the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that killed at least 50 people overnight. Early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call about a suspected prowler near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. Patrol officers responded and encountered an individual who told officers he was waiting for a friend, according to a law enforcement source familiar with details of the arrest. That led officers to inspect the car and find several weapons – including three rifles, one of them an “assault rifle” -- and a lot of ammunition as well as tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb, said the source. The car had Indiana plates.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 12, 2016 22 Comments
Details continue to emerge about Omar Mateen, the man who murdered 50 people and injured over 50 more at Pulse, a popular gay club in Orlando, FL. NBC News has reported that Mateen called 911 right before he committed the massacre. Officials told reporter Pete Williams that Mateen told the operators he "pledged allegiance to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi." One law enforcement agent told CNN that the FBI opened "two cases on Mateen in the past," but they could not find "evidence to charge him with anything." They placed him on their radar as a possible Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) sympathizer:
In response to a question to whether the shooter may have had a connection to radical Islamic terrorism, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper said investigators are "looking into all angles right now." "We do have suggestions that that individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology but we can't say definitively," Hopper said.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on June 12, 2016 72 Comments
An Islamic terrorist shot up an Orlando nightclub, killing 50 people and injuring at least 53 further people are hospitalized. CNN reports:

Approximately 20 people are dead inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said Sunday morning, just hours after a shooter opened fire in the club. At least 42 people have been transported for medical treatment, he said.

Police have shot and killed the gunman, Mina told reporters.
"It's appears he was organized and well-prepared," the chief said, adding that the shooter had an assault-type weapon, a handgun and "some type of (other) device on him." Law enforcement sources told CNN that the device, which was strapped to the suspect, was possibly explosive, but authorities don't know if it was real or not.
A canine unit indicated there were explosives inside the suspect's car as well, the sources said.
The most recent information released by police in Orlando is that 50 people have been killed and a further 53 are hospitalized.

Posted by Miriam Elman on May 29, 2016 3 Comments
Scheduled from May 25th through June 3rd, Tel Aviv Pride is a week-long series of events that celebrate gay life. For over nearly two decades, it’s become one of the city’s most popular annual festivals. Tens of thousands of gay Israelis and LGBTQ tourists from around the world enjoy the extravaganza, which seems to get bigger and better each year with new events added and more people taking part. But for anti-Israel gay activists, Tel Aviv Pride is a means for discrediting the one state in the Middle East which actually treats its gay community with dignity and respect. Below I highlight the latest campaign to put Tel Aviv Pride Week into service for BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions).

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 22, 2016 15 Comments
While Americans squabble over which bathroom stall to use, a block of fifty-one Muslim countries blocked eleven gay and transgendered groups from attending an upcoming AIDS meeting at the United Nations, scheduled for June. Western countries are not happy.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 16, 2016 5 Comments
At least 50 LGBT activists staged a protest outside the Hbeish police station in Beirut, Lebanon, to protest anti-homosexual law. The activists from the Helem Association demanded the government repeal article 534 of the penal code and release four transgender women. From The Jewish Press:
Helem leader Genwa Samhat told AFP that the sit-in, which took place two days before the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, “calls for the abolition of this section of law dating from the (1920-1943) French mandate in Lebanon.” She added: “Most people arrested under this law aren’t detained in the act but in the street because of their appearance.” Also, she said, people “continue to be fired if their boss finds out they’re gay. They’re made to say they quit voluntarily for fear of being outed.” According to Naharnet, Lebanese police are known to raid nightclubs serving homosexual patrons, and homosexuality is a frequent subject of ridicule on television.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 18, 2016 39 Comments
Between the anti-Israel activity on campus that has generated enormous media attention, and the protest against a feminist Professor who allegedly used improper transgender pronouns, there is plenty of turmoil on the Vassar College campus. Now there is another point of conflict, a demand by students that all bathrooms be converted to "all-gender." Vassar College already has undertaken a Gender Neutral Bathroom Initiative:
The Gender Neutral Bathrooms Initiative is a project to address the lack of gender neutral bathrooms in Vassar’s academic and administrative buildings. In order to ensure that all students have a place where they feel safe using the bathroom, we want to make sure that there is at least one accessible gender neutral bathroom in each academic and administrative building. Currently, there are 13 buildings on campus have no gender neutral bathroom option. The goal is not to turn every bathroom gender neutral, but make sure that everybody has a choice in each building.
This effort, however, is inadequate to a student group identifying as the Vassar Queer Health Initiative, which has opened a drive to compel that all bathrooms on campus be "all-gender." The effort was announced in Boilerplate magazine, Taking Vassar's “LGBT Friendliness” To Task: The Case for All Gender Bathrooms:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 14, 2016 23 Comments
"Social justice" activism at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, is becoming self-parody, and not in a good way. We have covered extensively the anti-Israel activism that has led to anti-Semitic incidents in 2014 and 2016. Among other things, in 2014 Jewish students who stood up at a campus-wide forum were mocked and jeered by a raucous crowd of students and faculty, a class was picketed and a professor forced to cross a picket line of ululating students because the course involved a trip to Israel (and the West Bank), Students for Justice in Palestine posted a Nazi cartoon on social media, and pro-Israel displays were vandalized. Just recently, a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution campaign kick-off by SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace, followed by a faculty-sponsored event at which Israel was accused of engaging in an experiment to "stunt" Palestinian bodies, led to anti-Semitic messages on campus Yik-Yak. As if that were not bad enough, the social justice warriors at Vassar now have turned their sights on a feminist professor who allegedly did not use proper pronouns for transgender students.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 29, 2016 11 Comments
Columnist Jonathan Capehart at The Washington Post has a rather extraordinary column on the "anti-pinkwashing" near-riot at the Creating Change conference in Chicago on Friday night, January 22. The column is extraordinary in that it reflects a growing realization even in the mainstream media that the thin line between rabid anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has been crossed in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We covered the situation in our post, Jewish Voice for Peace helps disrupt Israeli LGBTQ group Sabbath event, which has video and images, and explains the tactic:
The pinkwashing charge is essential for BDS on U.S. college campuses because BDS has trouble squaring its support for regimes (including Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, not to mention most Arab countries) which abuse and persecute gays with BDS’s attempt to co-opt the progressive movement. Hence, the pinkwashing claim that Israel’s promotion of its gay-friendly policies is actually a greater evil than the abuse heaped on gays in areas controlled by Israel’s enemies.
If you want to get a sense of how threatening the anti-Israel crowd was, view this video from a group that appears to support the protest. Imagine yourself in the conference room with hundreds of people screaming just outside the doors and trying to push their way past security. Also note the chants of "mic check" -- a phrase made famous during the Occupy Wall Street protests:
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