Existential Punk

Anti-Social Behaviour Order

Becky Garrison turned me onto this cute and hilarious blog from the UK called The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus. Watch out as you might find that you pee yourself from laughing so hard! This is what the author/illustrator says:

"i make my living out of the things i did in the margins of my school books.

i thought i’d use this space to show work that no one would be daft enough to pay for!
hope you enjoy!
jon

btw. for the non british among you… an ‘asbo’ is an ‘anti-social behaviour order’… the courts here award them to people who are deemed to be constant trouble in their neighbourhoods… presumably according to their neighbours!"

 

 

18,000 Marriages in Jeopardy!

Waymon Hudson writes over at Pam's House Blend about his California marriage to his partner and how it might be dissolved. i mention it because he says some heartfelt things that i can really relate to with regards to my marriage in California on October 30, 2008 to Katryna. It is so sad to me that certain individuals are so concerned about my marriage when they ought to be taking care of their own marriages and families! Here are some excerpts that touched me:

"My "homosexual agenda" is pretty much the same everyday.  Wake-up, give my husband a kiss on the cheek, give one of our dogs his allergy medicine and make sure there is food in their bowls, decide if I can skip another day of going for a jog as I munch on leftover holiday cookies, eventually make my way over to the computer to check my email and start my work day.  Pretty sinister, right? . . .

I often wonder if the people fighting to strip away our marriage really stop to think of the individuals involved, to really put a face on the news story and the nameless numbers.  They are great about putting out press releases, commercials, and emails talking about the dangerous homosexual agenda, but I wonder if they think about the people they are working so hard to take things from.

I wonder how they would feel waking up one day to read a headline in a newspaper that their marriage is not valid and is over.  Talk about being breaking news- the two people who are directly affected, whose marriage is being dissolved, have no real say in i . . .

So for now I sit next to my husband, the man I love, and wonder how someone else gets the right to decide if our marriage is valid.  I know they can never change how we feel for one another, but it doesn't stop it from stinging as you read a headline about how your marriage is getting dissolved."

Is Controlling Anti-LGBTQ Sentiment One Of Our Primary Jobs?

As a Christian queer woman i often find myself angry and frustrated with the Religious Right and their often vile reactions to the LGBTQ community. i write here often that we must agree to disagree with regard to LGBTQ issues and the Religious Right. The same circular arguments take place with a Stepford Wife-like mantra and no real conversations take place where we really listen to one another. i believe those who are on the fence, who are open to learning about our community or are open-minded enough to say they might be wrong, are those who we can have REAL conversations with. It is with these people, i believe, that we can effect change in mindsets and opinions. We do need to get thicker skins and realize we do not have to have everyone love us. We just want to be treated equal under what the Constitution affords ALL CITIZENS AND HUMAN BEINGS OF THE USA and that INCLUDES EQUALITY!

HT and thanks to Autumn Sandeen at Pam's House Blend for this informative piece:

"When discussing civil rights for LGBT people, I'm more than occasionally found referencing Bayard Rustin's take on what "our job" is as LGBT people and/or civil rights activists:

 "[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment."
--Bayard Rustin; From Montgomery to Stonewall (1986)

In other words, for those of us who define ourselves as LGBT people and/or civil rights activists, our job in large part not to change the minds of people such as James Dobson (Focus On The Family), Donald E. Wildmon (American Family Association) or even Peter LaBarbera (Americans For Truth About Homosexuality) regarding LGBT people. It is instead to make sure that those who express anti-LGBT sentiments in public feel a sorrow-for-getting-caught expressing their homophobic and/or transphobic feelings, or an unwanted price for expressing those feelings.

At least, that's how Bayard Rustin seemed to be describing "our job."

The grassroots LGBT Civil Rights movement seems to instictively do just that regarding perceived anti-LGBT sentiments. Look at what happened to Tim Hardaway a couple of years ago, and more recently to the Manhunt Chairman, the non-profit theater director from Sacramento, the L.A. Film Festival director from Los Angeles, and now the recent news of how the manager of the El Coyote restaurant has resigned -- sentiment perceived to be anti-LGBT has been getting harder and harder to publicly express without significant consequence.

This quote seems an interesting quote by an African American and gay civil rights leader on one of the goals of civil rights movements -- I know it's a thought I more than occasionally push into the marketplace of LGBT, civil rights ideas.

So, do you think controlling anti-LGBT sentiment is one of our primary jobs as LGBT people and/or civil rights activists? Do you think that the ways by which it's being done by LGBT people now is what Bayard Rustin had in mind?"

LGBTQ Blogger Summit Blog Roll

Here are some of the great bloggers i met this past weekend in D.C. at the LGBTQ Blogger Summit. Check them out as you might find some really interesting reading!

• BlogActive - Michael Rogers - http://www.pageoneq.com/ , http://www.blogactive.com/
• Boi From Troy - Scott Schmidt - http://www.boifromtroy.com
• Blabbeando - Andrés Duque - http://blabbeando.blogspot.com
• Burnt Orange Report - Karl-Thomas Muselman - http://www.burntorangereport.com
• Calitics - Brian Leubitz - http://calitics.com
• (en)gender - Helen Boyd - http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/
• GayAgenda - James Hipps - http://www.GayAgenda.com
• Gay Persons of Color - James Viloria - http://gay-persons-of-color.blogspot.com/
• Get Busy. Get Equal. - Sam Ritchie (ACLU LGBT Project) -http://gbge.aclu.org/content/blogsection/1/76/
• GoodAsYou - Jeremy Hooper - http://www.goodasyou.org
• Greta Christina's Blog - Greta Christina - http://gretachristina.typepad.com/
• hunter of justice - Nan Hunter - http://hunterforjustice.typepad.com/hunter_of_justice/
• InterstateQ.com - Matt Comer - http://www.interstateq.com/
• JoeMyGod - Joe Jervis - http://www.JoeMyGod.com/
• KnuckleCrack - Eric Leven - http://www.knucklecrack.blogspot.com
• Michael-in-Norfolk-Coming Out in Mid-Life - Michael Hamar - http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/
• Mombian - Dana Rudolph - http://www.mombian.com/
• Nathan Strang - Buffawhat - http://buffawhat.com
• Pam's House Blend - Pam Spaulding - http://www.pamshouseblend.com
• Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents - Sue Kerr - http://www.pghlesbian.com
• Project Q Atlanta - Matt Hennie - http://www.projectqatlanta.com/
• Rod 2.0 - Rod McCullom - http://www.rod20.com
• That Gay Girl Tamara - Tamara N. Boynton -http://thatgaygirltamara.blogspot.com
• The Bilerico Project - http://www.bilerico.com
• The Mad Professah Lectures - Ron Buckmire - http://buckmire.blogspot.com/
• The New Gay - Michael Eichler - http://www.thenewgay.net
• The New Gay - Zack Rosen - http://www.thenewgay.net
• UK Gay News - Andy Harley - http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk
• Working Films - Lynn Casper - http://workingfilms.org

Prop 8 - The Musical

HT Huffington Post for this HILARIOUS story:

"The hilarious people at "Funny of Die" have put out a new video, "Prop 8 - The Musical." The star-studded participants include Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, Margaret Cho, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph and many more familiar faces."

WATCH:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Sank*tuary

One of my online friends who lives in England, Mark Berry, who blogs at Way Out West, talks about an idea that emerged while sitting around with a group of friends talking and dreaming This is an incredible story. It certainly shows me to dream big! UPDATE: sank*tuary's site is up and running.

"A while back the safespace crew sat around our table chatting as usual... as we talked an idea emerged... the idea was for a chill-out/safe haven for night clubbers - nothing that new but there is nothing like this in Telford/Wellington.  Wellington Methodist Church has an excellent building right in the heart of the Clubbing area of Wellington so we approached the minister Peter Clarke.  His response was fantastic, "I've wanted to do something like that for 2 years" he said "but never really had the people."  So we began to talk and dream... the project we came up with is to be called Sank·tuary, it will run from around 12.30 to 3 am on Fridays and offer a chilled place, real coffee, fresh smoothies, Brownies and bakes etc. and people willing to listen..."

Read the rest of this amazing story here.

D.C. LGBTQ Blogger Initiative

Michael Rogers, Editor and publisher of Page One News Media, is leading a new blogger initiative "to help train gay bloggers and promote access to key political players and progressive organizations." HRC and Victory Fund along with philanthropist Jonathan Lewis are supporting the blogger initiative. i applied and was accepted. So, i will be heading to D.C. this Friday for the 3 day blogger initiative. i am VERY excited and honored to be a part of this.

 

"Rogers said the goal of the LGBT Bloggers & Citizen Journalist Initiative is to bring the online world together with traditional organizations that are sometimes lagging in the technology department.

Rogers said the initiative’s driving force is best encapsulated by a quote from Pam Spaulding, a lesbian blogger who writes at Pam’s House Blend: “You can ignore us, but we are journalists, we are activists, it’s all one now.”

The initiative will begin with a December summit of 50 bloggers and representatives of gay rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which are sponsors.

“The Human Rights Campaign understands the importance of online organizing, commentary and activism,” said Joe Solmonese, HRC’s president, in a statement. “This venture will help create a synergy between organizations and new media never before seen in our movement, and we are proud to be a part of it.”

HRC donated $5,000 to the initiative, and the Victory Fund gave $2,500. The two groups will also co-host a networking party for bloggers and staffers the weekend of the summit. Rogers projects that with other individual donations, funding will reach $70,000 by the conference.

HRC and the Victory Fund each maintain their own blogs, HRC Back Story and GayPolitics.com.

Rogers, who writes online at BlogActive.com, said he’s now seeking 35 people to participate in the three-day summit, which begins Dec. 5. Participants receive round-trip flights to D.C., hotel accommodations and free meals. More information is available at bloggerinitiative.com.

Members of progressive organizations, Capitol Hill staff and community leaders will meet with bloggers to help establish personal relationships, Rogers said.

The goal of the meetings, Rogers said, will be to facilitate partnerships for future projects, such as live-blogging events that are coordinated by the organizations."

 

"I Love Abortion"

A good friend of mine, Peter Walker, who blogs at Emerging Christianity, wrote on the topic of  abortion and voting. It resonated with me and opened up a new way of thinking about and framing the debate. i am pro-choice, as i think a woman has the right to choose what to do with her body. Yet, i would like to think i would not seek an abortion if i got pregnant. Most likely, the only way i would get pregnant is through rape. Therefore, i want to have the right to choose whether to have an abortion or go through with the pregnancy.

In college i was staunchly pro-choice. Then i hit my born-again fundamentalist stage and became staunchly pro-life. i was never mean-spirited when i stood outside abortion clinics and never called pro-choice people pro-death as many of my fellow Christian pro-life friends did. i could never stand and hold up those horrible signs of aborted fetuses. They just grossed me out and i never wanted anyone else to experience that.

Now i have come full circle and am pro-choice. i do advocate for lessening abortions but reversing Roe v. Wade will not end abortions. There is more at the root level, like holistic sex education, dealing with poverty and having an all inclusive pro-life approach. For example, many pro-life Christians advocate for the unborn but are in favor of the death penalty. They do not advocate for ending unnecessary wars where there is much collateral damage. They often do nothing about the genocide and human trafficking that occurs around the world. So, reversing Roe v. Wade, in my opinion, is just putting a band aid on a wound or sweeping dirt under the rug. It does not fix anything.

Peter makes a great analogy with a meth addict when he wrote his mom about the subject:

". . . I love you Mom. I understand. Just remember that abortion #'s went down (for the first time since Roe-v-Wade) in the 90s during Clinton's 8 years in office. They began climbing again during both of George W's terms. If we aren't taking care of "the least of these" who are already born, we create a world where the unborn are not only unwanted, but where even those who might want them cannot care for them. The pro-life movement isn't trying to deal with The Problem, it's trying to stop the results of the problem. It's like trying to help a meth addict get healthy without taking away their meth. The problem is poverty, lack of resources, lack of empowerment and lack of hope. . ."

What do you think?

The Liberal Version

To counter the Conservative PAC ad thanking Sarah Palin, "We liberals feel it's high time that we too thanked Sarah Palin for running for vice- president." This IS HILARIOUS!

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

This Is GOLD!!!

HT to Finding Rhythm for the following from Richard Rohr:

When we lead with our judgments, love will seldom happen. If the mind that needs to make moral judgments about everything is the master instead of the servant, religion is almost always corrupted.

Some would think that is the whole meaning of Christianity, to be able to decide who’s going to heaven and who isn’t. This is much more a search for control than it is a seach for truth, love or God. It has to do with ego, which needs to pigeonhole everything to give itself that sense of “I know” and “I am in control of the data.”

I guess God knew that such would be the direction that religion would take. So God said, “Don’t do it. Don’t eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” What he’s trying to keep us from is a lust for certitude, an undue need for explanation, resolution and answers. Frankly, it makes biblical faith impossible.

—Richard Rohr, Things Hidden

i think what Rohr says here is GOLD! i think much of Christianity, as this is my tribe, IS CORRUPT because religion IS man-made. For many Christians it is about control and this control becomes a crutch rather than leaning onto and relying on GOD. Many Christians remind me of United States Foreign Policy, that is, they are the cops running around with the big stick ready to beat down those who disagree with their interpretations of what is right and wrong. If people don't change, they are going to render themselves and their formation of Christianity as irrelevant and obsolete.