4/15/11

In a small win for the gay rights movement, a New Jersey school board has stopped blocking pro-gay websites on middle school and high school campus computers.  Two NJ high school students complained about the blocking of the sites to the American Civil Liberties Union, which I'm assuming is kind of a big deal to make a complaint to them.  The students argued that gay-bashing sites were not being blocked.  I can't believe that this kind of thing is still happening ins schools.  It seems so not with the times.  I mean, I also am dumbfounded as to why gay marriage is not legal, but at least that's a little more legitimate and has lots of con arguments that people are making.  But banning websites is just unacceptable.  Sometimes it takes this kind of story for me to realize that social movements really do take time to reach the entire country and across the globe.
(http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/12/new-jersey-school-stops-blocking-pro-gay-websites/)

Columnist Richard Socarides from the Huffington Post is arguing that the Census should count the number of gay people.  They count race, gender, and ethnicity, so why not sexual orientation?  He tried this argument for the 2000 Census, and they said no, because of timing issues.  It was too late.  But Socarides thinks it was more than this, and I think so too.  In his words, counting sexual orientation in the Census would "be an implicit acknowledgement that we were an integral--and out--part of the American family, an idea that was probably too provocative for some."  I completely agree with him; I think that a big part of the reason that people do not support gay marriage, despite the myriad of different reasons, is that people are afraid and homophobic, and this applies in this Census case as well.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-socarides/gay-power-strength-in-num_b_848281.html)

Maryland's gender identity anti-discrimination bill has died in the Maryland State Senate.  "Among the tactics used to defeat the bill was the Not My Shower website, which claimed that heterosexual men in dresses would invade public locker rooms to molest little girls."  I don't think there's really anything more to say about that.
(http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/04/maryland-gender-identity-bill-dies.html)