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"Pictures From An Execution ..."
From: Miodrag le "Bien-Aimé"
Date: Thu, July 20, 2006 10:37 am
To: euro-queer@groups.queernet.org
So the 13 year old Iranian boy, when discovered (by
parents/authorities/whoever) to have had sex with 18 year old men
claims rape. Is it really so much different from many states of the US
where there is a "statutory rape", i.e. ANY sexual relationship with a
minor is automatically considered rape?
OK, the child allegedly "consented" to being sexually used. Does this
make the 18 year old -- an adult, that is -- free of responsibility?
No, I am NOT saying that the responsibility should mean death penalty
-- an unacceptable punishment that no civilised country practises
(China and the US do have some traces of civilisation, but coutnries
which practice death penalty today cannot be considered civilised).
But I do not understand why the fact that sex was apparently practiced
by these boys and men with a child (under 14) is dismissed off-handedly
by the GLBT activists, or to bemore precise: people who make a name and
often also an income by allegedely impersonating the voice of ALL gay
men, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered persons, queers... I wonder if
this is about the apparently permanent and ever-permeating ephebophobia
of gay male culture, obviously embraced by gay male activists of the
so-called West?
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The Express Gay News
Bush nominates gay man to lead global AIDS office
If confirmed, Dybul would be 3rd-ever gay appointee at ambassador level
WASHINGTON | Jul 19, 7:21 PM
President Bush nominated gay physician Mark R. Dybul July 17 to be United States Global AIDS Coordinator, a post at the State Department that has the rank of ambassador.
.
If the U.S. Senate ratifies his nomination, Dybul would replace pharmaceutical industry executive Randall Tobias as head of a $15 billion program initiated by Bush and approved by Congress to combat AIDS in developing countries, with a focus on Africa. Bush appointed Tobias to another administration post.
"[Dybul] is widely recognized as someone highly qualified for this position," said Carl Schmid, a gay Republican activist who serves as federal affairs director for the AIDS Institute, a national AIDS advocacy group.
Dybul currently serves as acting U.S. global AIDS coordinator and chief medical officer at the State Department.
He would become the third openly gay person to hold a U.S. ambassadorial position. President Clinton appointed businessman and philanthropist James Hormel as ambassador to Luxemburg. In his first term in office, Bush appointed gay career Foreign Service Officer Michael Guest as ambassador to Romania.
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http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid33981.asp
The Advocate
July 20, 2006
Alabama gets first openly gay state representative
Patricia Todd made history on Tuesday by becoming what the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund described as the first openly gay state representative in Alabama history. Voter's in Alabama's 54th legislative district voted to send the Democrat to the statehouse.
The Victory Fund endorsed Todd and helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for her campaign. Todd has no Republican opponent in the general election in November.
"The road to equality in Alabama is a mile shorter today," said Chuck Wolfe, president and CEO of the Victory Fund. "Gays and lesbians in Alabama will now have what all Americans deserve—a voice and a vote. Alabama knows well what a single voice can accomplish. We applaud Patricia's courage in stepping up to be heard."
"From big cities to small towns, from blue states to red states—equality is winning," said Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese. "We were proud to join the efforts of Equality Alabama and the Victory Fund in helping fair-minded voters get out to the ballot box. Representative Todd was supported by an intense ground effort that involved a broad group of supporters."
The Advocate
Dispatch from the Gay Games
In his first report from the Gay Games in Chicago, Jason Page attends the powerlifting competition and takes a trip to Chicago's infamous "boystown"
Jason Page, PlanetOut.com
An Advocate.com exclusive posted July 18, 2006
Day 2 at the Gay Games was exhausting -- lots of driving from site to site, as the Games are spread out over a wide area in and around Chicago. I've already learned the city streets quite well. Yesterday, I ogled some powerlifting, then made my way into Boystown for the first time since the Games began.
Powerlifting took place on the campus of Northwestern University (about 30 minutes north of Chicago), and they had some really big boys. These guys were strong, so I kept my jokes to a minimum. They could have squashed me like a grapefruit. Chris Morgan was outstanding. He grabbed four gold medals.
I also caught a guy by the name of Ellis Turner. His story was interesting. With his partner watching in the stands, Ellis dead-lifted 600.75 pounds -- just looking at that much weight made my back ache. It was his first competition in four years. He told me he had been struggling with injuries over the past several years. He took the top spots in his weight class for both the dead-lift and the bench press. Way to go!
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Familiarity breeds compassion and respect
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI, July 19, 2006
Familiarity breeds compassion and respect By MAUREEN CONNORS BADDING
There's a new teenage boy on our street this summer, courtesy of Ulster
Project International.
If you've never heard of it, the Ulster Project is an exchange program that
promotes "reconciliation between Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants by
fostering tolerance, understanding and friendship among teenage future
leaders."
While the mission statement is a mouthful, the concept is brilliant in its
simplicity.
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http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2006/07/19/nyregion/19EDUCATION.html&tntemail0=y
July 19, 2006
There's a new teenage boy on our street this summer, courtesy of Ulster
Project International.
If you've never heard of it, the Ulster Project is an exchange program that
promotes "reconciliation between Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants by
fostering tolerance, understanding and friendship among teenage future
leaders."
While the mission statement is a mouthful, the concept is brilliant in its
simplicity.
=
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2006/07/19/nyregion/19EDUCATION.html&tntemail0=y
July 19, 2006
On Education
Muzzling Sex Education on Anything but Abstinence
Muzzling Sex Education on Anything but Abstinence
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
FOR much of this spring, a sex education bill called the Healthy Teens Act
was sailing through the New York State Legislature. It passed the Assembly
in April by a vote of 126 to 15. The Senate's Health Committee approved it
the next month by a vote of 15 to 2. It had bipartisan support, with a
Republican as sponsor in the Senate, and endorsements from groups as safely
mainstream as the League of Women Voters and the Y.W.C.A. of Greater New
York.
Those credentials were no coincidence. The bill had been written with an eye
toward achieving a moderate consensus on a chronically divisive issue. If
passed into law, the measure would not have mandated sex education in public
schools, only made it possible for districts that chose to offer such a
curriculum to apply for financial aid from the state. The bill did not even
allocate any money for the grants.
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Time Blogs, The Daily Dish, July 16, 2006
FOR much of this spring, a sex education bill called the Healthy Teens Act
was sailing through the New York State Legislature. It passed the Assembly
in April by a vote of 126 to 15. The Senate's Health Committee approved it
the next month by a vote of 15 to 2. It had bipartisan support, with a
Republican as sponsor in the Senate, and endorsements from groups as safely
mainstream as the League of Women Voters and the Y.W.C.A. of Greater New
York.
Those credentials were no coincidence. The bill had been written with an eye
toward achieving a moderate consensus on a chronically divisive issue. If
passed into law, the measure would not have mandated sex education in public
schools, only made it possible for districts that chose to offer such a
curriculum to apply for financial aid from the state. The bill did not even
allocate any money for the grants.
=
Time Blogs, The Daily Dish, July 16, 2006
Gay Marriage, Again
Andrew Sullivan
Glenn Reynolds airs many [http://instapundit.com/archives/031451.php]
of the important points and calmly keeps asking the right questions, it
seems to me. His responses are among the sanest I have read on the topic. I
agree with him that this issue emerged before many people were ready to deal
with it. But, having watched this close up from the beginning, I know this
was not a decision made by the leading gay groups. At the beginning and
throughout the 1990s, the gay establishment fought marriage rights
passionately and treated marriage advocates as cranks. HRC did all it could
to prevent this issue from dominating the discourse. They did the polling,
like all principled Democrats, and wanted to play to their strengths. No gay
group agreed to take the first real marriage suit in Hawaii. It took a
straight guy from the ACLU to handle it. The Human Rights Campaign's
leadership refused to speak of the matter for years, and only included the
m-word in their literature in the last few years. Major Democratic donors
also refused - and Bill Clinton talked them out of it, when necessary.
The trouble was: gay spouses found themselves barred from each others'
hospital rooms in the 1980s and 1990s during the AIDS crisis, lesbian
mothers had their children taken away from them, long-standing de facto
marriages had family members rescind their inheritance rights, and gay
consciousness evolved to the point where such scond class status rankled
deeper and deeper.
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MO: State eases policy on gay parents;Under new rules, gays will no longer
be banned from foster program.
Kansas City Star, MO, July 19, 2006
Glenn Reynolds airs many [http://instapundit.com/archives/031451.php]
of the important points and calmly keeps asking the right questions, it
seems to me. His responses are among the sanest I have read on the topic. I
agree with him that this issue emerged before many people were ready to deal
with it. But, having watched this close up from the beginning, I know this
was not a decision made by the leading gay groups. At the beginning and
throughout the 1990s, the gay establishment fought marriage rights
passionately and treated marriage advocates as cranks. HRC did all it could
to prevent this issue from dominating the discourse. They did the polling,
like all principled Democrats, and wanted to play to their strengths. No gay
group agreed to take the first real marriage suit in Hawaii. It took a
straight guy from the ACLU to handle it. The Human Rights Campaign's
leadership refused to speak of the matter for years, and only included the
m-word in their literature in the last few years. Major Democratic donors
also refused - and Bill Clinton talked them out of it, when necessary.
The trouble was: gay spouses found themselves barred from each others'
hospital rooms in the 1980s and 1990s during the AIDS crisis, lesbian
mothers had their children taken away from them, long-standing de facto
marriages had family members rescind their inheritance rights, and gay
consciousness evolved to the point where such scond class status rankled
deeper and deeper.
=
MO: State eases policy on gay parents;Under new rules, gays will no longer
be banned from foster program.
Kansas City Star, MO, July 19, 2006
State eases policy on gay parents
Under new rules, gays will no longer be banned from foster program.
By TIM HOOVER, The Star's Jefferson City correspondent
JEFFERSON CITY - Missouri no longer will block efforts by Kansas City
lesbian Lisa Johnston - or other gays - to become licensed as foster
parents, state officials said Tuesday.
However, the Missouri Department of Social Services cautioned that just
because gays may get licensed doesn't automatically mean they will become
foster parents.
"We're considering the biological parents' preferences, and we're also
considering the abuse and neglect that occurred to the child and whether or
not an alternative lifestyle environment would be confusing or add trauma to
an already abused or neglected child," said Deborah Scott, spokeswoman for
the department.
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http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/07/071906focus.htm
Focus Fights Gay Charges
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
July 20, 2006 - 12:01 am ET
(Denver, Colorado) The conservative Focus on the Family struck back
Wednesday at allegations it "twisted" research on gays for
its own political agenda.
On Monday New York University professor Dr. Judith Stacey accused FOF of
misleading the public in statements about a study in which she was involved
on youth suicide. (story)
The study found that LGBT teens were more apt to attempt suicide than other
students.
Following the release of the study FOF distributed statements claiming the
study showed the increased rate of suicide attempts on "pro-gay advocates''
who tell gays and lesbians they were born gay and must "embrace
homosexuality.''
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071902061_pf.html
Pictures From An Execution Come Into Focus
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
July 20, 2006 - 12:01 am ET
(Denver, Colorado) The conservative Focus on the Family struck back
Wednesday at allegations it "twisted" research on gays for
its own political agenda.
On Monday New York University professor Dr. Judith Stacey accused FOF of
misleading the public in statements about a study in which she was involved
on youth suicide. (story)
The study found that LGBT teens were more apt to attempt suicide than other
students.
Following the release of the study FOF distributed statements claiming the
study showed the increased rate of suicide attempts on "pro-gay advocates''
who tell gays and lesbians they were born gay and must "embrace
homosexuality.''
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071902061_pf.html
Pictures From An Execution Come Into Focus
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20, 2006; C01
Not since they confronted snapshots of a slightly built young man named
Matthew Shepard and the fence where he was left for dead in 1998 by two
drug-addled no-hopers in Laramie, Wyo., have gay people been so agitated by
a set of photographic images.
Protesters brought black-and-white reproductions of the pictures -- which
show the public execution last year of two teenage boys in Iran -- to a
rally in Dupont Circle yesterday afternoon. The images were also used in
other protests, at least 26 in countries around the world, according to
bloggers involved in organizing them, and the images are displayed in the
windows of Lambda Rising bookstore, near Dupont Circle.
The pictures show a dismally sad drama: Two young men, identified by the
Associated Press as aged 16 and 18, are seen shackled in a prison van,
sobbing; one of them is then seen being led to a scaffold; other shots show
the boys together with dark-hooded men placing nooses around the boys'
necks; and two final images show their bodies hanging from ropes, in a large
public square, as a crowd watches from a distance.
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Boston Radio Host Suspended For 'Fag' Remark
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
July 19, 2006 - 5:00 pm ET
(Boston,. Massachusetts) A Boston radio station moved quickly to censure one
of its talk show hosts after he referred to the head of the Massachusetts
Turnpike Authority as a "fag".
WRKO-AM suspended John DePetro (pictured) and ordered him to apologize for
the remark made on Monday morning about Matt Amorello.
Amorello has been under fire since a concrete ceiling panel on a turnpike
tunnel fell on a car killing a woman.
On the program DePetro referred to Amorello as "Fag Matt."
"And I don't mean gay fag, I just mean the way when you're a sophomore,
juvenile, in grammar school and somebody would say you're like a sissy boy
fag," DePetro said.
"I don't mean gay fag. I mean like sissy boy. He's a little sissy boy. Wife
wears the pants."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4713323.stm
(Boston,. Massachusetts) A Boston radio station moved quickly to censure one
of its talk show hosts after he referred to the head of the Massachusetts
Turnpike Authority as a "fag".
WRKO-AM suspended John DePetro (pictured) and ordered him to apologize for
the remark made on Monday morning about Matt Amorello.
Amorello has been under fire since a concrete ceiling panel on a turnpike
tunnel fell on a car killing a woman.
On the program DePetro referred to Amorello as "Fag Matt."
"And I don't mean gay fag, I just mean the way when you're a sophomore,
juvenile, in grammar school and somebody would say you're like a sissy boy
fag," DePetro said.
"I don't mean gay fag. I mean like sissy boy. He's a little sissy boy. Wife
wears the pants."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4713323.stm
Ancient phallus unearthed in cave
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News science reporter
A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest
representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, researchers say.
The 20cm-long, 3cm-wide stone object, which is dated to be about 28,000
years old, was buried in the famous Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm in the Swabian
Jura.
The prehistoric "tool" was reassembled from 14 fragments of siltstone.
Its life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid by its Ice
Age makers, scientists report.
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At least two of the most controversial policies of, what the UK newspaper
'The Guardian" calls, the "paedophile party" are not in fact either
"paedophile" or especially remarkable in the context of Dutch sex laws.
Until a few years ago the age of consent in the Netherlands was 12 years --
subject to certain conditions. Between the ages of 12 and 16 years a young
person could consent to a sexual relationship, providing there was no
complaint from the parents, legal guardians, or social workers. (In fact,
when the Spartacus gay guide stated that the NL age of consent was 12 years
without mentioning these conditions, I sent the publishers a correction.)
Similarly, until very recently, persons aged 16 and over were permitted to
appear in erotic films and photographs.
Following the hysteria over Marc Dutroux in Belgium, and under pressure from
the feminist sex abuse lobby, the Dutch government abolished the right of 12
to 16 year-olds to make their own sexual choices and also raised the age for
appearing in sexually explicit films and other visual media to 18 years.
(The result of the latter change is the absurd legal anomaly that while a
16-18 year-old can consent to having sex with anyone he/she chooses,
if that act is recorded on film it becomes a criminal offence carrying up to
8 years imprisonment for anyone who possesses a copy of the image!)
[Full letter available upon request from rays.list@comcast.net]
N*Sync's Lance says 'Bye, Bye, Bye' to the closet
Lance Bass, of the mercifully defunct boy band N*Sync, hasn't scored this
much press since his odd and ill-fated attempt at space exploration.
Bass made the gay party rounds over the Fourth of July weekend in
Provincetown, Mass., appearing in public with a group of gay friends,
including supposed boyfriend Reichen Lehmkuhl of "Amazing Race" fame.
According to several gay bloggers who were in P-Town and saw the "alleged
couple," including Andy Towle and Cyd Zeigler, Bass tried lamely to disguise
himself with a hat. Unfortunately for Bass, it wasn't big enough to fool the
New York Post's Page Six, which also reported the sighting.
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http://www.waynebesen.com/
Anything But Straight
by Wayne Besen
July 19, 2006
Born Different
For too long, the gay movement has operated under the backward assumption
that we could pass legislation without simultaneously educating Americans.
This failed strategy wrongly dismissed all Americans who were not on our
side as rabid rubes.
In reality, many of our "opponents" are not discriminatory dogmatists. They
have simply gotten false information or they do not have fully formed
opinions because they don't know anyone who is openly gay. This allows the
opportunistic right wing to fill the vacuum and portray homosexuality as a
breezy lifestyle choice. Since we have clearly failed to define ourselves,
the extremists have done it for us.
The answer to such ignorance is clearly education. When mainstream Americans
are introduced to the GLBT community, attitudes inevitably change and
passing pro-gay legislation is made easier.
