Equality of marriage and love

Absolam

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Right. So apart from the nutty politics, rampant racism, endemic sexism, big spiders and skin cancer, what have the Australians ever done for us?

Crocodile Dundee? And the Wiggles.

Shrap

Bannasidhe wrote: »

By my third day Downunder I had learned that the phrase 'I'm not a racist but...' preceded an anti-Asian statement that required a glossary of Vietnam film terminology to be fully appreciated in all it's 'glory' .
When it came to Native Australians there was no warning - just BAM! Out with it sans shame.

This. Was exactly the same as my own experience only 3 years ago. I was horrified. And spent the entire holiday arguing with people.

The sexism wasn't so obvious, and was certainly no worse than you generally get here from people of the older generation. But I wasn't working there, so that could be a very different experience to here...

Links234

Well, this is pretty disgusting. Cartoon Depicts Transgender Rights as a Threat to Women and Children. The article does a pretty good takedown of the cartoon itself, but this is just indicative of how hard the far right religious conservatives in the US as going after trans people.

Nodin

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Right. So apart from the nutty politics, rampant racism, endemic sexism, big spiders and skin cancer, what have the Australians ever done for us?

Snakes, visas, feckin flies, this thing that just itches the nadgers off ye, cute marsupials...........

Links234

Well here's some good news for a change. Daugaard vetoes South Dakota anti-trans bathroom bill.

In his veto message, Daugaard said the measure, HB 1008, “does not address any pressing issue” affecting schools or students in South Dakota.

A victory for sanity.

magicbastarder

https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/705670807440248832

The Black Oil

volchitsa

magicbastarder wrote: »

https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/705670807440248832

Isn't choice a wonderful thing, David? You don't have to celebrate Mothers Day if you think it hypocritical to do so.

Now maybe you can see why the rest of us want choices over our lives too.

PopePalpatine

magicbastarder wrote: »

https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/705670807440248832

Courtesy of oceanclub on Twitter:

MrPudding

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Courtesy of oceanclub on Twitter:

Is that a Quinn quote? If it is, LOL at him asking for a discussion. I suspect it is like the post on the other forum that said something along the lines of "we can't have a discussion cos all these bad atheist keep disagreeing."

MrP

PopePalpatine

MrPudding wrote: »

Is that a Quinn quote? If it is, LOL at him asking for a discussion. I suspect it is like the post on the other forum that said something along the lines of "we can't have a discussion cos all these bad atheist keep disagreeing."

MrP

I can't tell, he's either blocked me or set his tweets to private.

Delirium

MrPudding wrote: »

Is that a Quinn quote? If it is, LOL at him asking for a discussion. I suspect it is like the post on the other forum that said something along the lines of "we can't have a discussion cos all these bad atheist keep disagreeing."

MrP

Yep. He did actually tweet it.

https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/705713173261893632

MrPudding

Delirium wrote: »

Yep. He did actually tweet it.

https://twitter.com/DavQuinn/status/705713173261893632

That's fcuking hilarious.

MrP

The Black Oil

He knows what he's doing with those tweets. He's like a child at the back of the class desperate for attention.

Cabaal

The Black Oil wrote: »

He knows what he's doing with those tweets. He's like a child at the back of the class desperate for attention.

I'd agree with this,
The best thing people can do is ignore him and stop commenting on tweets and his "articles".

Less attention he gets the less media profile he has and the media won't bother with him as much,

He's attention whoring, nothing more

Nodin

The Black Oil wrote: »

He knows what he's doing with those tweets. He's like a child at the back of the class desperate for attention.

.....well I'd like to play my "Brother Bernardicus with the leather strap" card then so.

Cabaal

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/03/10/bent-as-an-s-hook/

From the Waterford Mail apparently

jobbridge4life

'Ask Lolly'...

lol(ly)

The Black Oil

Sounds like someone mistook a wedding invite for a letter to a newspaper.

#sincerelyheldbiscuits

https://twitter.com/SwearyLady/status/711188431385337857

Shrap

The Black Oil wrote: »

Sounds like someone mistook a wedding invite for a letter to a newspaper.

#sincerelyheldbiscuits

https://twitter.com/SwearyLady/status/711188431385337857

Wow. Most inappropriate use of a smiley face I've ever seen. What a sh1thead.

PopePalpatine

North Carolina has passed a law banning cities and towns from passing their own anti-discrimination laws on gender identity and sexual orientation, in response to the city of Charlotte doing so.

Links234

I think you need to fix your link, PP

But yeah. It's pretty terrifying some of the anti-LGBT backlash that's happening in the US, what's being proposed in Georgia for example, yet we aren't hearing half as much talk about these sorts of things as we used to, and that's worrying. What a lot of people are afraid of is that the majority assumes that LGBT rights is 'done with' because of marriage equality, instead of realizing that it's but one (very significant) milestone on a path to equality. LGBT people still face discrimination, still face serious levels of youth homelessness, only a handful of places have banned so-called "conversion therapy" for minors, not to mention the severe issues trans people in particular face. It's still an uphill struggle for many people.

Relevant TED talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAcARiiK5uY

Cabaal

The land of the "free" is at it again, its now ok to refuse services to black couples gay couples in Mississippi.

http://www.thejournal.ie/mississippi-passes-anti-lgbt-tlaw-2700025-Apr2016/

THE GOVERNOR OF Mississippi Phil Bryant has signed into law a bill which makes it legal for businesses to refuse service to gay couples.

Bryant said that House Bill 1523 would protect “sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals” from the government. He said that the bill reinforced America’s first amendment, which protects freedom of religious expression.

So he argues it protects freedom of religious expression but it removes rights from people, yeah that makes perfect sense
:rolleyes:

Should America go back to making sure black people sit at the back of the bus as well....you know, in the name of religious freedoms or something

CptMackey

They really are gone down the rabbit hole. These laws wouldn't be out of place in Saudi Arabia.

The religious right seems to be getting stronger in the states. Legal discrimination. Land of the free my ass. Theocracy here we come

robindch

CptMackey wrote: »

The religious right seems to be getting stronger in the states.

Hard to say for sure. What I believe is happening is what appears to have happened here in Ireland any many other countries - the religions are losing the moderates who used to make up the larger part of their membership. That's leaving the floor open to smaller numbers of extremists of one kind or another.

In one sense, it's good that the religions are dying, and noticeably dying. What's less good is that they seem more interested in taking as much as they can with them, rather than dying with the whimper that most of us would prefer to see.

Cabaal

robindch wrote: »

Hard to say for sure. What I believe is happening is what appears to have happened here in Ireland any many other countries - the religions are losing the moderates who used to make up the larger part of their membership. That's leaving the floor open to smaller numbers of extremists of one kind or another.

In one sense, it's good that the religions are dying, and noticeably dying. What's less good is that they seem more interested in taking as much as they can with them, rather than dying with the whimper that most of us would prefer to see.

I'd tend to agree with this,
The religious people they are left with are more extreme then they would have been in the past, so when they do get a position of power they bring in more extreme moves.

PopePalpatine

Cabaal wrote: »

I'd tend to agree with this,
The religious people they are left with are more extreme then they would have been in the past, so when they do get a position of power they bring in more extreme moves.

I'm dreading the hardliners that will emerge from seminaries in the coming years, and their inevitable attempts to control school BOMs.

Cabaal

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I'm dreading the hardliners that will emerge from seminaries in the coming years, and their inevitable attempts to control school BOMs.

You'll likely find they'll be imported too,
They don't have enough replacement priests for the coming years so their only options are to import priests or allow "holy joe's" to take the positions.

robindch

A sad article on how to read Russian obituaries.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/opinion/the-art-of-reading-russian-obituaries.html

NY Times wrote:

A journalist was killed in St. Petersburg last week, but no one called for an immediate and full investigation. No one seemed to suspect that he was killed because of his work. In a country of frequent and varied violence, this was a different kind of crime, a murder that dare not speak its name. There is a fine art to reading obituaries, as anyone who lived through the AIDS epidemic in the West and paid attention knows. Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, if an American newspaper reported that a young man had died and mentioned no cause of death (or attributed the death to “respiratory failure”), it was a safe assumption that the man had died of AIDS. If the obituary also referred to a surviving “longtime companion,” this seemed to provide confirmation.

The equivalent in contemporary Russia is an obituary that says that a man was found slain in his own apartment and there was no sign of forced entry. When this happens to someone well-known enough to warrant numerous written remembrances, the writers usually refer not to a killing but to a “tragic death” — as though it were not a criminal but a personal trait that caused the person’s demise. What they mean is that the deceased was gay and apparently died at the hands of someone he brought home. No one can say how often this happens, but it happens enough to form a recognizable pattern. Many, if not most, LGBT people in Russia knew someone who died in this manner. When Alexander Smirnov, an official with the Moscow city government, decided to come out in a magazine interview three years ago, he chose to talk about this, too. “Two years ago someone I knew died,” said Mr. Smirnov. “He was found in his apartment, naked, stabbed to death. He was gay. You know how this happens? Gays often meet one another online. And there are whole gangs that come to gay men’s houses, then kill them and rob the apartment. Their families conceal the stories, of course.”

A female friend of Mr. Smirnov’s had implored him to be careful, not to invite home anyone he had met online. But what was he supposed to do? He was a closeted gay man who feared going to the few existing public gay venues to meet people and who feared even using public spaces to see in person someone he had met online. So it happened to Mr. Smirnov, too: A man he had met online came to his apartment with someone else, and they tried to kill him. “I was bleeding out, feeling that I was about to lose consciousness,” he said. “I begged to be allowed to live. You cannot imagine how ashamed I feel. They are the ones who barged into my home and nearly killed me. They took everything I had, including even my phone. They are the ones who committed the crime, and I’m the one who is ashamed. I was shaking, but I couldn’t call an ambulance, because I would have had to explain what had happened. “And, of course, I couldn’t say anything at work,” he continued. “I had my friends call my office and say that I’d been attacked at a bus stop. I didn’t go to the police. It would have been easy to find my attackers, but I didn’t have the strength to talk to the people in uniform. Now I blame myself for being weak, because those two can go on to kill someone else.”

Soon after going public with his story, Mr. Smirnov left the country. He is now living in New York, and he has applied for asylum in the United States.

When a man is found stabbed to death in his apartment, with no sign of forced entry, a double stigma kicks in, because the victim is presumed to have been gay, and it is assumed he was killed by someone he brought home for anonymous or casual sex. Exposure will further disgrace his family. This happened in one of the rare cases when an investigation was pursued. Ten years ago, Ilya Zimin, a prominent television journalist, was found dead in his Moscow apartment. A few days later, the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article titled “Rumors of his nontraditional orientation haunted Zimin back when he was a student.”

So when the St. Petersburg journalist was killed last week, his friends wrote things like, “There can’t be that many versions of what happened, but I will not explore them,” or, “There are details, but I will not go into them.” People wrote similarly tactful phrases after the deaths of the well-known actors Vyacheslav Titov (found strangled in his apartment in Moscow in December 2011) and Alexei Devotchenko (found in a pool of his own blood at home in Moscow in November 2014).

What no one has written in response to any of these deaths is that the Kremlin’s antigay campaign, which simultaneously pushes people underground and communicates to the public that homophobic violence will go unpunished, ensures that these shameful killings continue.