Daniel's Coming Out Video

Trigger Warning:  homophobia, asshole parents

Recently, I wrote about the details of my coming out.  It wasn’t easy, and the response from my parents was far from ideal.  One thing they didn’t do though-they never kicked me out of the house.  They never beat me.  They never emotionally abused me.  They never disowned me.  Their reactions, homophobic though they were, never rose to the level of treating me as if they didn’t love me.  Would that that were the case for other LGB people.  By now, the Internet is abuzz with the story of Daniel Ashley Pierce, a young gay man who recently came out to his family (and recorded it), only to face the kind of rejection that fills me with sorrow for his plight, and near blinding rage at the homophobia and utter lack of compassion demonstrated by his family.   Here is some of what was said by his family:

“You can deny it all you want to,” the woman continues, “but I believe in the word of God, and God creates nobody that way,” Daniel’s mother tells him. “It’s a path that you have chosen to choose.”

Daniel, who is 20, talks about his biology and psychology classes. He tells his family he believes that “scientific proof trumps the word of God.”

“You go by all the scientific stuff you want to,” she responds. “I’m going by the word of God.”

The woman then says, “we will not support you any longer.”

“You will need to move out, and find wherever you can to live,” she adds. “Because I will not let people believe that I condone what you do.”

As the exchange heats up, there sounds like a slap, the camera is jarred, and Daniel says, “You’re not going to fucking hit me.”

Someone else says, “Son of a bitch,” and it sounds like a physical altercation is underway.

Daniel is called “a damn queer,” “a disgrace,” and “a little piece of shit.”

Someone, likely a woman, says, “I’ll beat you…” 

Religion poisons everything.  I believe it was the late Christopher Hitchens who coined that phrase, and it is so true.  When you strip away the blind, unthinking, unquestioning obeisance given to religion and religious beliefs…when you look at the effects religious beliefs have on people around the world…that smack in the face should be enough for people to reject religion asap.  Religious belief poisons the discourse on the rights of women. Religious belief poisons the treatment of rape victims.  Religious belief poisons the attempts to seek justice for the victims of the priestly sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.  Religious belief poisons the discourse on gun control in the US.  Religious beliefs poison the discourse on corporal punishment as well as capital punishment.  I could go on at length, but I’ll add one more:  religious beliefs are one of the biggest obstacles to equality for LGB individuals across the planet.

Religious beliefs teach that we’re immoral.  They teach that we’re bound for hell. They teach that we’re in defiance of god’s rules.  They teach that we’re sinful.  They teach that we’re to be killed.  They teach that LGB people are no better than thieves, rapists, or murderers.  These beliefs can be found in religious texts in many cases.  In other cases, they’re beliefs instilled in people by their preachers, pastors, and ministers, regardless of their presence (or lack thereof) in religious texts.

These beliefs lead far too many people to reject us  for being LGB.   We are still rejected by our families and friends.  We are still kicked out of our homes.  We still live in fear of our parents or friends finding out and disowning us, or worse, killing us.  All for the “crime” of being gay.   All because someone’s religious text is interpreted as saying “the gays are icky, immoral, bestiality-loving, child molesters“.   I’ve written before that there is no moral component to being LGB, and there isn’t.  This isn’t an issue of morality, yet so many people view homosexuality in that light because they’ve been taught that in church.  There is no connection between being LGB and bestiality.  What intolerant, hate-filled bigots cannot seem to realize is that being LGB is about finding ourselves attracted-physically, psychologically, and emotionally-to people of the same sex.   When we seek relationship, we seek consensual relationships with other human beings.  When we fight for marriage equality, we’re seeking to marry another consenting adult.  We’re not seeking to fuck animals. We’re not trying to molest children.  Every. Single. Time. I’ve heard these lies, they’ve been spewed by fundamentalist religious assholes (of the Santorum, Bachmann, Dobson, or Coulter vein), with not a shred of proof to back their assertions up.  But when you’re talking about religious beliefs, proof is rarely in the picture.  Which is one of my many problems with religious beliefs.  People have them, and far too often, they don’t care whether there is evidence to support their belief.  All that matters is that this is what their deity believes, and that’s what they have to follow.

The family of Daniel Pierce chose to adhere to the antiquated, barbaric rules of their religious text rather than love their child.  They put their affection and love of a fucking book, and an imaginary man in the sky above their own child.  I cannot stress how much I despise shit like that, especially since I’m an atheist.  I see no saving grace in religion.  All the good stuff can be had in secular form.  All the bad stuff needs to be consigned to the dustbins of history.  I believe that people ought to ditch their religious beliefs and form opinions and beliefs based on the real world.  One of the things you’ll find if you pay attention to empirical evidence is that homosexuality is a normal and positive expression of human sexuality (so says the American Psychological Association).

But even IF one is religious, one need not be so narrow minded and bigoted.  I know plenty of people who are religious and who love their LGB friends and family.  They manage to rationalize their beliefs-and let’s face it, most believers rationalize their beliefs, bc I don’t know a damn person who follows all the tenets of their religious belief system-such that they don’t reject their friends and family if they come out of the closet.  They choose to continue loving that person, because to them, that is more important. They choose love.  The parents of Daniel, sadly, chose hate and fear.  I hope for their sake (and, depending on what he wishes, Daniels’ sake) that they realize at some point in the future how wrong they were and grovel before him and beg forgiveness. 

There is a bright spot to Daniel’s story.  A lot of people have become aware of it.  

Daniel’s boyfriend 
posted the video to Reddit. A friend of Daniel’s posted it to YouTube, and Dan Savage posted it on his blog, followed by Joe.My.God. and The New Civil Rights Movement. Soon after other sites, including the Backlot and The Advocate, had published it as well.

As a result, when Daniel’s boyfriend set up a GoFundMe Page, the money came pouring in.  As of this writing, more than $90,000 has been donated to Daniel.  Despite being kicked out of his home, at least he’ll have money to find a place to live on his own.  I don’t know what his feelings on his family are, so I won’t speculate if even that amount of money is worth what he’s endured (my gut says no), but at least it makes things a little less difficult for him.  


If you’re the parent of gay, lesbian, or bisexual child, I implore you:  don’t kick them out.  Do not physically or emotionally abuse them.  Being LGB in society is hard enough as it is.  We need the love and support that every child should have from their parents.  Being LGB is not immoral, I don’t care what your archaic religious text-written at a time before people even had the word ‘sexuality’ (let alone understood its meaning)-has to say.  If you’re going to place your religious beliefs above the love for your child, you’re an abominable human being.  You’ve utterly failed at being a baseline decent human being.

Please remember, if you are an LGBT child or teen in need of help, the National Runaway Switchboard at 1-800-RUNAWAY can help you. The Ali Forney Center has a local and national LGBT youth online resource guide. In the Atlanta, Georgia area Lost-n-Found Youth serves LGBT homeless youth. They’re also on Facebook.

(via TheNewCivilRightsMovement

Daniel's Coming Out Video
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Donald Glover gets to be Spider-Man…sort of

Once upon a time, actor Donald Glover wanted to be Spider-Man

In May 2010, a fan suggested Glover for the role of Peter Parker in the then-upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man film, encouraging his supporters to retweet the hashtag “#donald4spiderman”. The campaign, originally started to see how far social networking could carry a message, quickly gained a large following. The call for Glover to be allowed to audition for the role was supported by Spider-Man creator Stan Lee.  Comics writer Brian Michael Bendis, who announced an African-American version of Spider-Man a year later, said he had conceived of the character before Glover’s campaign went viral.  Bendis gave credit to Glover for influencing the new hero’s looks; on seeing him dressed as Spider-Man on Community (a nod to the campaign) Bendis said, “I saw him in the costume and thought, ‘I would like to read that book.’

 

People.

Lost.

Their.

Shit.

Of course, Glover didn’t get the role (it went to Andrew Garfield).  The thing is:  there’s nothing wrong with the idea of Spider-Man being a black man.  The core of who Spidey is:  extremely smart, socially awkward kid from a lower socioeconomic background, raised by his aunt and uncle, learns, after a personal tragedy that “with great power comes great responsibility”.  There’s nothing in the core of who Spidey is that says “gotta be a white guy”.  He was created white because it was the 1960s (well that, plus the pervasive racism in society that says white is the default).  Today, however (or 2010), people have become more aware of our multicultural society.  People from various ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, sexual, gender, and racial backgrounds have spoken up and want to be represented in all walks of life, including comic books (and comic book movies).  The readership of comics and the viewership of movies is made up of more than white people.  Comic book companies and movie studios have started to realize this and market accordingly, but there’s a lot of ignoring of minorities to overcome before things are more equal (personally I can’t wait to see Michael B Jordan as the Human Torch in next years Fantastic Four).

Donald Glover did get his wish…after a fashion.  He’s going to be voicing Ultimate Spider-Man on the animated Disney XD series Ultimate Spider-Man:

Donald Glover, the “Community” veteran who inspired Brian Michael Bendis in 2011 to introduce Miles Morales as the new Spider-Man of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, is finally getting his chance to play the superhero.

USA Today reports the actor will voice the character next year in an episode of Disney XD’s animated “Ultimate Spider-Man,” which in its upcoming third season carries the subtitle “Web Warriors.” In the “Spider-Verse” story arc, a dimension-hopping Peter Parker (voiced by Drake Bell) tries to prevent the Green Goblin from collecting the DNA of Spider-Men from parallel universes, including Iron Spider, Spider-Man 2099, the Amazing Spider-Girl and Miles Morales.

While this is only a version of Spidey on an animated tv series, it should be noted that 30 years ago, the thought of seeing any version of Spidey who was not white would have been darn near unthinkable. 

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Donald Glover gets to be Spider-Man…sort of

Police Brutality

The news media may have slowed it’s reporting on the events out of Ferguson, but that doesn’t mean everything is 5 by 5.  It turns out that Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown (a young, unarmed African American male who had his funeral on Monday), may have fired 11 times:

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has obtained an audio recording that allegedly captures 18-year-old Michael Brown’s fatal shooting at the hends of Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, CNN reported on Monday.

CNN mentioned that it has not independently verified the recording, which was given to the bureau by a Ferguson resident. In the audio, the unidentified man can be heard telling someone, “You’re so pretty” while 11 gunshots are heard in the distance — seven in one burst, then a pause, followed by four more shots.

“He was in his apartment, talking to a friend on a video chat,” the man’s attorney, Lopa Blumenthal, told CNN. “He heard loud noises and at the time, he didn’t ven realize the import of what he was hearing until afterwards, and it just happened to have captured 12 seconds of what transpired outside of his building.”

(Raw Story)

 


 

 

Officer Justin Cosma, of the Ferguson Police Department (one of the officers who arrested a journalist earlier this month) is being sued for tying up and choking a 12-year old boy:

According to the Post‘s Ashley Alman and Ryan J. Reilly, the lawsuit, filed in September 2012 in a Missouri federal court, accuses Officer Justin Cosma of choking the boy around the neck and throwing him to the ground during a June 2010 encounter.

At the time, Cosma was working as a deputy for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. The lawsuit states that he and his partner, identified as Richard Carter, approached the boy while he was checking his mail outside his home and asked if the boy, identified as “DB” in the suit, was playing on a nearby highway.

When DB replied “no,” the suit states, they threw him to the ground and “hog-tied” him, causing him to suffer “bruising, choke marks, scrapes and cuts across his body.” He later required treatment at a local hospital.

The suit stated that Carter and Cosma subsequently charged the boy with resisting arrest and assaulting a law enforcement officer, but local prosecutors did not pursue a case against him.

 

(Raw Story)

(for more on this story, see the Huffington Post)

 


 

 

Unarmed teen shot 16 times even as family begs police to stop

Family members of a teen who was shot at least 16 times by police in Ottawa, Kansas said this week that the 18-year-old was unarmed and suicidal when he was gunned down.

Brandy Smith told KCTV that police were there when her nephew, 18-year-old Joseph Jennings, had tried to kill himself with pills last week.

“Tonight is the night goodbye everyone!!!!! It was truly a good ride! And I’m sorry for who I might of hurted (sic) and people that I may of offended, But I love all my family and I hope you don’t hold this against me,” he reportedly wrote on Facebook before trying to overdose.

About 10 minutes later, Jennings swallowed 60 pills. And Smith said two officers took him to Ransom Memorial Hospital.

Jennings survived, and was released from the hospital two days later. But only three hours after that, he was on a “suicide mission” when he walked to Orscheln Farm and Home, according to his aunt.

Smith recalled that around six officers responded, and two of them had helped save Jennings’ life by taking him to the hospital after his overdose just days before.

“It was like six — six officers, and one cop yelled, ‘Bag him!’ And they bagged him,” she said. “And he kind of puffed up a little bit, and then they bagged him two more times, and then like 16 shots rang out, and they shot him. And he fell to the ground.”

Jennings was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital

 

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One would have to be delusional to not see that the police have become extremely brutal.  As a society we’ve put up with this.  Now we’re at the point where officers are injuring and killing people with impunity.  In many cases, they face no consequences (I doubt Darren Wilson will face any jail time for killing Michael Brown), and even get to keep their jobs.  It’s a fucking shame that this is going on in the ostensibly free, democratic country of the United States.

 

 

Police Brutality

Anti-gay bigotry

The World Congress of Families, an anti-equality group, is mad that Australian venues keep cancelling on them:

The World Congress of Families is a purveyor of ideologies so right-wing they weren’t even popular a century ago. A certified anti-gay hate group,  the WCF exists to “affirm that the natural human family is established by the Creator and essential to good society.” They say their “purpose” is to “defend the family and to guide public policy and cultural norms” on all of these issues: “divorce, devaluation of parenting, declining family time, morally relativistic public education, confusions over sexual identity, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, poverty, human trafficking, violence against women, child abuse, isolation of the elderly, excessive taxation and below-replacement fertility.”

Clearly, they’re very busy people.

In short, they’re an Illinois based anti-gay, anti-women hate group that recently has applauded Vladimir Putin’s war on gay people.

One of their international conferences starts this weekend, and the WCF’s leaders are even busier than usual. 

On top of finding solutions to “confusions over sexual identity” and other “problems,” they are now scrambling to find a venue in Australia that won’t cancel on them. 

Three already have.

“After two venue changes so far, the Conference is now scheduled to happen at Brunswick’s Aurora Receptions,” Same Same reports.

And, unfortunately for the World Congress of Families, Brunswick’s Aurora Receptions just canceled on them too.

Oh dear, the World Congress of Families-an Illinois based misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, anti-education, reality challenged organization-is mad that venues in Australia don’t want their bigoted asses around. Whatever shall I do?

Oh I know.

Woo Hoo!

Jumping for joy.

Applause!

I mean, that’s the response *I* have when bigots are denied a venue to spout their bigotry. They’re not happy with the cancellations.  In an open letter to the people of Australia, they state:

In the name of fairness, and in response to unremitting and grossly misleading attacks
on an August 30 conference in Melbourne, the undersigned pro-family leaders
worldwide wish to bring the following to your attention:

 The Life, Family and Freedom Conference is sponsored by Endeavour Forum, an
Australian organization supporting life and the natural family, and has been
designated a World Congress of Families Regional Event.

 Since 1997, World Congress of Families has held seven Congresses, in Prague,
Geneva, Mexico City, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Madrid and our last in Sydney in
2013. These Congresses are gatherings of distinguished scholars, elected officials,
prominent religious figures and leaders and activists concerned with the health of
the natural family.

 Sexual radicals have launched a smear campaign to discredit the Melbourne
conference, which misrepresents the international pro-family movement and the
positions of the World Congress of Families.

 Specifically, it is alleged that advocacy of the natural (or normative) family is
somehow unfair to other families and that we “shame” single-parent families,
homosexual “couples” and the divorced.

 Yet social science data shows clearly and unequivocally that children do best in
families with a mother and father.

 It’s equally true that divorce harms children and society. This is not to say that we
shouldn’t have compassion for divorcees or children growing up in single-parent
households.

 Similarly, the observation that marriage is a social good is not meant to stigmatize
or shame unmarried adults.

 The natural-family philosophy was set forth in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, which observes that “men
and women of full age… have the right to marry and found a family” and that the
family is “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” and, as such, is
“entitled to protection by society and the state.” This language is repeated in the
constitutions of more than 100 nations.

 Despite the repeated attempts of certain misguided governments, the definition of
“family” contained in the UDHR has never been changed.

 For the past 3,000 years, in every culture, this definition of the family (a man and
women united by faith and tradition, raising their children in a loving
environment) has been considered beyond dispute. Only in the past few decades
have competing “models” of the family been offered as the new norm. The
natural family is also affirmed by every major religion.

 Attacks on the Melbourne conference and the international pro-family movement
generally are an attempt at intimidation – a weapon used to stigmatize family
advocates, stifle dissent and foreclose a debate.

 The goal of sexual radicals is to deconstruct marriage and marginalize the family,
and thus to transform society into something unrecognizable to generations past.
Like all social experiments that attempt to create a “new man,” these are doomed
to failure.

 Rather than accepting the charges against us at face value, we hope you’ll take the
time to learn about the international pro-family movement at
www.worldcongress.org, or on the websites of any of the signers

 

I really don’t need to check out that website to dislike this organization.  This letter contains all that’s needed to condemn this group.  They tell outright lies and spread misinformation, just like all anti-equality groups.  Oh, and they support Putin’s actions with regard to homosexuality in Russia.  That’s all I need to know.  Of course, they got a few of Americas greatest bigots to sign their open letter, including:

Former GOP Governor of Arkansas and Fox News host Mike Huckabee.

Also, National Organization For Marriage President Brian Brown.

Barbwire founder Matt Barber.

Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman, of the anti-gay hate group, Liberty Counsel.

Tom Delay, former Republican Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives. 

 

(for more on this story, see BuzzFeed)


I love that this group has received such a backlash to their presence.  Their views are harmful and abhorrent, and it’s a sign of the times changing that they’re having a hard time finding a place that will host their conference.  The latest venue to cancel on the World Congress of Families is Brunswick’s Aurora Rec
eptions
.  They were scheduled to host their conference on Saturday, August 30.  A series of protests was scheduled for that day*:

A protest by the Coalition to Beat Back The Right will begin at 8am on Saturday morning (find details here), the marriage equality crusaders ofEqual Love will take over at 11am, and a light-hearted rainbow family-friendly event called the Block Party Against Hate will happen outside the Conference venue from 12:30pm.

 

*this awesome image can be found at the link:


Does the US governments Common Core program “turn students gay”?  According to the Tea Party of Louisiana, the answer is yes, but that’s because they took a satirical article on the website brokenworldnews.com for really realz.  

Florida State Rep. Charles Van Zant (R) is beginning to look like an oracle, as his warnings about Common Core standardized testing are proving to be true.  Thousands of children across the nation who participated in Common Core during the past school year are coming out as bright young homosexuals.

Earlier this year, Van Zant told the Operation Education Conference in Orlando that Common Core was promoting a gay lifestyle to the nation’s children.  But nobody listened.

“People said I was a quack,” Van Zant says, “They called me a right wing nut job.  Who’s laughing now?  Hollywood and Barney Frank, that’s who.”

Initial estimates suggest that as many as 60% of students who participated in Common Core have gone gay, many overnight.  But experts fear that some are just transitioning a little slower.

“Some kids are a little more decisive than others,” says Raymond Johnson of Biblical Concepts Ministries, “Choosing one’s sexual orientation can be a difficult decision.  I know it was for me.  But the materials in Common Core are coercing students in the direction of homosexuality.”

Johnson says the difficulty of the Common Core tests is the primary culprit in promoting the gay agenda, calling it “common knowledge that the smartest kids in school are usually the gay kids.”  Johnson believes the increased studying time students must devote in order to pass the Common Core standards is leading them down a lifelong path of debauchery.

“The Common Core standards are tough,” says Johnson, “Tough enough to turn a straight kid gay.  The next thing you know, we’re going to see gay kids playing football.”

 

Yeah, I can completely see how a right wing group of fuckwits would look at the above and think it was serious.   We already know they don’t understand sexuality (hint:  schools aren’t trying to turn people gay, and you can’t “teach people to be gay”, but you can teach people how to be understanding of gay people-bet they oppose that), so it’s no surprise they would be freaked out by this.  Seriously though, do they not know how to vet information before they go on to make hair-brained statements like this:

(via thenewcivilrightsmovement)

The image is from Google cache because when Louisiana Tea Party found out their “source” was a satirical website, they were understandably embarrassed and had to scrub their original article.  Hey, I’ve been there. I was once fooled by an article from the Onion about a right wing group doing something horrible.  Of course, right wing groups actually DO a lot of horrible things, which is why it wasn’t a stretch to believe the article. Contrast that with the purpose of the Common Core:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an educational initiative in the United States that details what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and seeks to establish consistent educational standards across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or to enter the workforce.

Anyone who takes the time to Google ‘Common Core’ will find that it has no goal of turning heterosexuals into homosexuals.  I guess educating themselves on the topic they’re going to discuss is a bit too much for the Louisiana Tea Party. 



10 years hard labor for being gay?

That’s the proposed constitutional amendment from the conservative Christian Pastor Michael V. Williams.  David Edward of Raw Story reports:

“Whereas homosexuality used to be a felony in every state — referred to as sodomy — it has now been decriminalized, and homosexuality is allowed to be openly expressed in public,” he notes. “While Christians are becoming increasingly tolerant of homosexuals, homosexuals are becoming increasingly intolerant of us.”

“It’s time for Christians to resume obeying God and his word, and to re-criminalize homosexuality, outlaw it again,” the pastor continues. “The only way to do this and keep it beyond the reach of activist judges and unaccountable bureaucrats is to create a constitutional amendment.”

Once again, a douchebag right wing Christian fundamentalist wants the United States to become a Christian theocracy where all citizens are bound by biblical rules (I’m sure no ‘picking & choosing’ of the laws would occur).  This is one of the things that makes me so sad about religious belief.  It can make a mess of one’s ability to use logic and reason to reach an informed opinion.  Aside from the ridiculousness of using the Bible as a justification for morality (kill your child, rape all the virgins, drown the planet–that’s a deity to admire), there also the teensy, tiny fact that as I’ve said before there is no moral component to homosexuality.  Morals enter the picture when we’re discussing the interactions between people.  Homosexuality is about the sexual orientation of an individual and has nothing to do with interacting with others.  There is no “is this good” or “is this bad” to being lesbian, bisexual, or gay*. It’s about who one is sexually, psychologically, and emotionally attracted to.

* while the reaction of others with regard to those who are LGB can have a moral component, the act of being gay, lesbian, or bisexual does not impact others and is
not, in itself, an issue of morality.  


Northern Territory* politician Dave Tollner has resigned after using anti-gay slurs:

The senior Northern Territory MP under fire after calling the gay son of fellow Country Liberals Party politician a “pillow biter” and “shirt lifter”, has resigned his position and now heads to his party’s backbench.

Deputy Chief Minister Dave Tollner had apologised to Gary Higgins’ son for the comments, which were condemned by Chief Minister Adam Giles as “inappropriate” and “not acceptable.” He later defended himself saying he had no problem with gay people, adding that his own mother had come out as gay.

The NT News now reports that Giles has accepted Tollner’s resignation.

“This issue got at levels where public confidence was being eroded in this area,” Giles explained in a press conference yesterday.

“Perceptions become reality in politics and I want to make sure that Territorians know they have a Government who stands for all, and will provide leadership on what those community expectations are.”

 

Can we please import this attitude to the states?  Far too many politicians revel in their homophobia (and that’s not the only issue they piss all over), and still keep their jobs.  


 

 


 

 

Coming out after 40

(excerpt)

Coming out later in life has its consequences. All those years of rejecting and hiding mean that the psyche may not accept, deep down, the person they are now presenting as. This can lead to a degree of self-loathing and the formation of an adaptive self rather than the authentic self. Knowing who you are and accepting it is a much safer place to be in your psyche.

I don’t think the 40+ guys are alone with this damaged psyche stuff and many of us who have been out for so many years that we can’t remember anything else, are still a little damaged and lack about total acceptance, if we are truly honest.

So what can be done to improve your acceptance of yourself? Start with a bit of self-appreciation in accepting the man inside who has been struggling to come out for years. Give him a big hug and congratulate him for finally making the move to come out. Writing it all down will do wonders for the psyche.

The next stage is telling people you can trust. By not telling anyone, the psyche is still in denial. The more people you tell who accept your sexuality, the more likely you too will accept it as normal as well. Self-stigmatisation by not telling people or still denying your true sexuality is very damaging. You will be surprised how many people always knew and were waiting for you to say something… and then there are the others who are so busy with their lives that they don’t care in the least.

 

Coming out of the closet-telling people around you-can often be a scary thing.  Whether it’s socio-cultural pushback, religious pushback, adherence to tradition, or straight up homophobia borne of having not met a gay person (or, more accurately, thinking you’ve never met a gay person-we’re everywhere), LGB individuals wrestle with the decision to reveal to the world their sexuality.  It’s a difficult decision for many of us (my hat is off to those for whom it is not so hard), and some people never choose to exist the closet (which is their choice, and it pisses me off when anyone make demands of others to come out of the closet-not your life, not your choice).  The decision to come out of the closet was rough for me.  The first time I realized I had gay thoughts was in 1987.  I came out gradually over the course of my high school years, telling my heterosexual best friend Sean (I wish I knew how to contact him), my GM at my first job, Wendy, and later on my parents (they were last).  I held off telling my parents until last because they were the ones I was most horrified of telling.  

 

See that last sentence there?  No child should fear rejection from their parents for revealing an important facet of who they are.

It’s not like I said “Hi mom/dad. I like to dissect cats and dogs while they’re still alive”

or

“Hey, parental units, I just wanted to tell you I was planning to embark on a career as a bank robber.”

But the reaction they both gave was pretty much what I dreaded. I felt rejected, and unloved.  Here I was baring my soul, and telling them something that was so fundamental to me…something I never chose…something I didn’t want, but couldn’t deny any longer.  It was simply who I was.  Being gay is not about having sex.  You can still have children if you’re gay.  Being gay-for me-is about having a psychological, sexual, and emotional attraction to members of the same sex.  I just don’t have the same attraction to women (but I love me some women; most of my best friends have been and continue to be women).  That’s nothing to be sorry about.  That’s nothing to regret.  That’s not something to make me feel guilty of.  Following my parents rejection (I’d already told my sister, and she was loving and accepting), for a very short period of time I was suicidal.  I remember driving my truck and thinking I could just end my pain by driving straight into a telephone poll.  I was hurting that much.  I pulled myself out of that by thinking of how my death would affect others around me, especially my sister (to this day, I credit her with saving my life).  

I don’t say any of this because I’m angry at my parents. In fact, I’m not.  Yes, I was hurt.  For years. Relations between my mother and I warmed in the years after I came out, but it took longer for my father and I to patch things up.  It also took time for me to realize that my parents, like all other people in our culture, were raised in a society that’s swimming in homophobia (along with sexism, transphobia, misogyny, and so many other social problems).  It took time for them to get past the prejudices and biases one develops as a result of being raised in a culture such as the US, but the point is-they did overcome those biases and prejudices.  I forgave them long ago (and I hope they forgave themselves). Today, my parents love me and I love them*.  They accept who I am.  They realize this is my life and the decisions I make with regard to whom I choose to be in a relationship with are borne out of uncontrollable attractions that are part of who I am.  To deny that I’m gay would be like trying to deny that I’m black.  It is that fundamental. 

I can’t imagine what it would be like to come out of the closet after 40.  Especially if I had a wife and kids.  It’s likely a different sort of difficult than what I had to deal with.  I only hope that for those who choose to come out, whether it is someone in their 40s, or a 19 year old kid just out of high school, that they’ll be accepted and loved by their family and friends.  

*these days, in my opinion, my relationship with my parents is the best it has been in my adult life, and quite possibly even most of my teen years.  That’s in no small part due to me growing up and maturing and coming to understand many of the lessons they tried to impart on me (that I was far too pig headed to listen to when I was younger).  I feel that even though they’re my parents, I can interact with them as near equals-peers if you will (not literally, as there will always be a parent-chi
ld dynamic there, but overall my point should be clear).


 

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In case anyone is wondering, just because I live in the United States doesn’t mean everything I talk about will be US-centric. There are other countries in the world where important stuff happens too

Anti-gay bigotry

This country needs to talk about Ferguson and more

From The Good Men Project, an article about a school district that banned the discussion of the events in Ferguson.

On Thursday, August 21, the following message was released to parents of students in Edwardsville School District 7–a district roughly 30 miles outside Ferguson, MO.

Subject: Discussion of the Ferguson/Florissant Incident

On Friday, August 15, 2014, and Monday, August 18, 2014, Dennis Cramsey, EHS Principal, and I were inundated with calls from parents complaining that some EHS teachers were biased and injecting their own opinion regarding the shooting of Michael Brown, an 18 year-old African American student, by a Caucasian police officer in the Ferguson/Florissant community. The general consensus of parents who called was that if the administration did not get a handle on this situation, there might be violence among students occurring at EHS.

As Superintendent, I will take full responsibility for not preparing administrators and staff members how to deal with this volatile situation. As a result, on Monday afternoon, the decision was made to cease discussion of the event because of the tension, emotion, and anger surrounding the Ferguson/Florissant events.

It was not our intent to ignore the educational relevance of these events. However, we felt it was important to take the time to calm a potential situation at the high school and to prepare administrators and teachers to approach this critical issue in an objective, fact-based manner. Everyone has an opinion – the sharing of which can be polarizing. Far too many facts remain unknown, and without these facts, none of us is in the best position to moderate between opposing views.

 


 

 

20 Powerful Protest Signs That Prove America Stands with Ferguson

Here are a few:

 

 

I’m not “there”, but I’d still be pissed off and blogging about it.

It’s nice when white people understand their privilege.  Now if only more of them did.

 


 

7 Things Worth More Than a Black Person’s Life in America

This will make you madder than you probably already are, because of how true it is.

 


 

 

6 reasons America must stop ignoring its black youth.

 


 

 

What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’

 

Our notion of what constitutes “white” and what constitutes “black” is a product of social context. It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a “Southern race” and not see the Civil War, the creation of an “Irish race” and not think of Cromwell’s ethnic cleansing, the creation of a “Jewish race” and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of “whiteness” or “blackness,” not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn’t really “black” but “half-white.” One wonders if they would say this if Barack Obama were a notorious drug-lord.

When the liberal says “race is a social construct,” he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the “Irish race” for intelligence or the “Southern race” for “hot-headedness.” These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask “Is the black race dumber than then white race?” than it is to ask “Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?”

The strongest argument for “race” is that people who trace their ancestry back to Europe, and people who trace most of their ancestry back to sub-Saharan Africa, and people who trace most of their ancestry back to Asia, and people who trace their ancestry back to the early Americas, lived isolated from each other for long periods and have evolved different physical traits (curly hair, lighter skin, etc.)

But this theoretical definition (already fuzzy) wilts under human agency, in a real world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census. (Same deal for “Hispanic.”) The reasons for that take us right back to fact of race as a social construct. And an American-centered social construct. Are the Ainu of Japan a race? Should we delineate darker South Asians from lighter South Asians on the basis of race? Did the Japanese who invaded China consider the Chinese the same “race?”

Andrew writes that liberals should stop saying “truly stupid things like race has no biological element.” I agree. Race clearly has a biological element — because we have awarded it one. Race is no more dependent on skin color today than it was on “Frankishness” in Emerson’s day. Over history of race has taken geography, language, and vague impressions as its basis.

“Race,” writes the great historian Nell Irvin Painter, “is an idea, not a fact.” Indeed. Race does not need biology. Race only requires some good guys with big guns looking for a reason.

 


 

 

The complicity cost of racial inclusion

 


 

Ferguson fallout: Black Americans grapple with victim-blaming

 

When pol
ice in Ferguson, Missouri, released a video showing Michael Brown allegedly robbing a store and shoving around a clerk shortly before the unarmed teen was shot dead in a seemingly unrelated confrontation with an officer, many accused the department of engaging in deliberate character assassination — a tactic that some rights advocates say is commonly used against African-American victims of excessive force in an attempt to shift blame from perpetrators to victims.

Hassane A. Muhammad, chief operating officer for Black Lawyers for Justice, called the decision to go public with the footage an act of “visual provocation” that played into old stereotypes of black men as violent.

“It’s a common playbook used by police to criminalize black victims of excessive force,” said Muhammad, whose group has been active in the local protests that erupted — and at times turned violent — after the killing of 18-year-old Brown on Aug. 9 by police officer Darren Wilson. 

“Instead of giving us an ounce of justice, they would rather send in troops and spend taxpayer money to defend one white man,” Muhammad said. “It shows you how much value they place on his life versus Brown.”

Rights advocates say such character assassination operates on a broad level, through public discourse that lends credence to the victim-blaming theory of poverty or in the idea that lower-income communities are responsible for their conditions because of poor decision-making.

What connects the Brown shooting with cases such as that of Trayvon Martin — an unarmed black teen shot dead by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman in Florida in 2012 — is that both shooters perceived a risk, said Yohuru Williams, a professor of history at Fairfield University

 


 

 

Why the Feds are investigating Ferguson

 

This country needs to talk about Ferguson and more

More Ferguson Links

Ferguson’s black community must not be given the same ‘justice’ as Trayvon Martin


 

The real looting of Ferguson: its black citizens never had a chance to get by


 

‘We need to communicate. That’s key. But we need justice for Michael Brown’

Ardester Williams is writing to Barack Obama the old-fashioned way, with paper and a postage stamp, to tell the president about the day in June when he shot a man.

“He was swinging at me, and he was much bigger than I was,” said the 73-year-old security guard at a Ferguson clothing store. “I had to draw my gun and shoot him. But I shot him in the foot. I’m writing to the president to tell him that the whole concept of police training is backwards. They should train them to shoot people dead as a last resort, not the first.”

All law enforcement should be trained how to defuse a situation, and lethal force should be a last resort.  Also, if police aren’t skilled enough to shoot to injure, they ought to receive better training.

A little further down West Florissant Avenue, Shiron Hagens is staffing a tent on a part of the street that just a few nights ago was clouded by tear gas and smoke from a burning convenience store, as protesters and the police clashed over the killing of Michael Brown. She is registering local residents to vote, in part to raise support for a petition to recall Ferguson mayor James Knowles, a white Republican, after he said that the upheaval of the past two weeks was not about race.

“There’s a mistrust right now,” she said. “The way to overcome mistrust is to talk. But there’s no way to have a conversation when you have a mayor who says there’s no race issue here. Michael Brown died because he was black.”

This is why it is important for the citizens of Ferguson to exercise their constitutional right to vote.  They need a mayor who represents them, not one that dismisses their concerns.

(read the rest here)

 

‘Would Michael Brown still be here if we voted for the right people?’

The group of Ferguson residents clumped around the makeshift memorial at the spot where a police officer shot Michael Brown readily admitted that two weeks ago they had little idea who ran their city.

They paid no attention to the fact that, while two-thirds of Ferguson’s residents are African American, all but one of the members of the city council is white. Or that the mayor is a Republican. Or who the police chief is.

Brown’s death has changed all that. People who are frequently alienated, largely devoid of leadership and have not bothered to vote, often because they did not believe elections would change anything, are suddenly paying attention to who controls the levers of power in Ferguson.

“I didn’t know the council was white until Mike happened,” said Major Terrell, 29. “There’s a lot of people talking about it now.”


Police Departments Shouldn’t Become Dumping Grounds for Weapons Makers

In a brilliant August 17 segment of Last Week Tonight, HBO host John Oliver ripped into small towns that have equipped their police with war-like military equipment. One town was Keene, New Hampshire, where their military-grade armored personnel truck was acquired to protect critical targets –– like the annual Pumpkin Festival. Another was Doraville, Georgia. Oliver showed a wild video clip from the Doraville Police Department’s website, with a Ninja-dressed SWAT team going for a joyride in a souped-up armored personnel carrier, all set to a heavy metal song called “Die MotherF***er Die.”

In a visit to Doraville last week, I asked Officer Gene Callaway why his sleepy town of 8,000, which hasn’t had a murder since 2009, needed an armored personnel carrier (APC). “The vehicle provides Doraville with a scalable response and ensures the safety of police officers,” he answered. Scalable response? Safety of police officers? Doraville has never been a crime-ridden town. “We at Doraville are proud to be ranked 39th in safest cities in Georgia,” Callaway himself bragged. It seems the most useful task the APC performed was pulling 18-wheelers back onto the salted lanes of Route 285 during snowstorms. Oh, and let’s not forget that “the kids love playing on it” when it rolls up to the county fair, Callaway told me.

Doraville’s armored vehicle is a gift from Uncle Sam, as part of the billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment now flowing from the federal government to state and local police departments. Not only is it an incredible waste of taxpayer money, but it gets people–including children–accustomed to seeing military vehicles on their streets. Worst of all, it is causing police to act like soldiers, especially since one of the stipulations of getting this equipment is that it must be used within one year of receipt.

The Doraville Police, embarrassed by the negative publicity from their video, took it down (they insist that the theme music was unauthorized). Now on their website you can see much more benevolent images, such as three smiling police officers, one dressed as Santa Claus, with two young girls who are the recipients of the “Santa Pop Program” that pairs police with “less-fortunate children.”

But let’s face it. Military toys, constantly dangled before the police at law enforcement exhibits and fairs, are hard to resist. And with the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security giving out this stuff for free, why not get some hand-me-downs? Doraville and Keene are just two of thousands of cities and towns throughout the nation that have successfully applied for surplus equipment from a federal government agency.


What Military Gear Your Local Police Department Bought

Since President Obama took office, the Pentagon has transferred to police departments tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.

In May, The New York Times requested and received from the Pentagon its database of transfers since 2006. The data underpinned anarticle in June and helped inform coverage of the police response this month in Ferguson, Mo., after an officer shot Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager.

The Times is now posting the raw data to GitHub here. With this data, which is being posted as it was received, people can see what gear is being used in their communities. The equipment is as varied as guns, computers and socks.

The Pentagon-to-police transfer program is not new. Congress created it during the drug war, as a way to increase police firepower in the fight against drug gangs. But since 9/11, as the Pentagon geared up to fight two wars, then drew down as those wars ended, the amount of available military surplus has ballooned.

Now, after a week of confrontation between protesters in Ferguson and heavily armed police, members of Congress are criticizing the trickle down of military gear.


The New Authoritarianism in an Age of Manufactured Crises

What is missing in the recurring debates that dominate Washington politics is the recognition that the real issue at stake is neither the debt ceiling nor the state of the economy, but a powerful form of authoritarianism that poses a threat to the very idea of democracy and the institutions, public values, formative cultures, and public spheres that nourish it. The United States nears a critical juncture in its history, one in which the rising forces of market extremism – left unchecked – will recalibrate modes of governance, ideology, and policy to provide fantastic wealth and legal immunity to an untouchable elite. The politics of disconnection is just one of a series of strategies designed to conceal this deeper order of authoritarian politics. In a society that revels in bouts of historical and social amnesia, it has become much easier for the language of politics and community to be appropriated and distorted so as to deplete words such as “democracy,” “freedom,” “justice,” and the “social state” of any viable meaning.


What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings

A few days ago, Deadspin’s Kyle Wagner began to compile a list of all police-involved shootings in the U.S. He’s not the only one to undertake such a project: D. Brian Burghart, editor of the Reno News & Review, has been attempting a crowdsourced national database of deadly police violence. We asked Brian to write about what he’s learned from his project.

It began simply enough. Commuting home from my work at Reno’s alt-weekly newspaper, theNews & Review, on May 18, 2012, I drove past the aftermath of a police shooting—in this case,that of a man named Jace Herndon. It was a chaotic scene, and I couldn’t help but wonder how often it happened.

I went home and grabbed my laptop and a glass of wine and tried to find out. I found nothing—a failure I simply chalked up to incompetent local media.

A few months later I read about the Dec. 6, 2012, killing of a naked and unarmed 18-year-old college student, Gil Collar, by University of South Alabama police. The killing had attracted national coverage—The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN—but there was still no context being provided—no figures examining how many people are killed by police.

I started to search in earnest. Nowhere could I find out how many people died during interactions with police in the United States. Try as I might, I just couldn’t wrap my head around that idea. How was it that, in the 21st century, this data wasn’t being tracked, compiled, and made available to the public? How could journalists know if police were killing too many people in their town if they didn’t have a way to compare to other cities? Hell, how could citizens or police? How could cops possibly know “best practices” for dealing with any fluid situation? They couldn’t.

The bottom line was that I found the absence of such a library of police killings offensive. And so I decided to build it. I’m still building it. But I could use some help. You can find my growing database of deadly police violence here, at Fatal Encounters, and I invite you to go here, research one of the listed shootings, fill out the row, and change its background color. It’ll take you about 25 minutes. There are thousands to choose from, and another 2,000 or so on my cloud drive that I haven’t even added yet. After I fact-check and fill in the cracks, your contribution will be added to largest database about police violence in the country. Feel free to check out what has been collected about your locale’s information here.


 

Why the People of Ferguson Can’t Trust the Cops

Several African-American men share with Truthout their stories of abuse at the hands of police, and after 12 days of continuous demonstrations against the shooting of an unarmed teen, Michael Brown, it appears that the community is in it for the long haul.


Four Things You Probably Don’t Know About the Ferguson Protests

 

 


WATCH: TX police draw guns on mother and young children they mistook for gun-waving males

Police were responding to a 911 call about a tan-colored Toyota carrying four black males, one of whom was waving a handgun out the window — which is why Kametra Barbour is confused as to why she and her four young children in a burgundy red Nissan Maxima were pulled over.


 Fox host kicks off two black lawyers after they accuse her of ‘distracting’ from Brown’s death

I’m surprised they were brought on in the first place.  This is FOX News we’re talking about.  They’re not exactly friendly to black people.


More Ferguson Links

Voting in Ferguson, a televangelist lies, and more

GOP Calls Ferguson Voter Registration Drive ‘Disgusting’; Terrified Community Will Start Voting

The executive director of Missouri’s Republican party could barely contain his rage when he learned that one of the facets of recent protests in Ferguson has been a voter registration drive. His reaction betrays a sense of entitlement that comes from living in an age of political apathy: citizens shouldn’t be allowed to vote for change when they see injustice in the world, that isn’t “fair.” Have we gone mad? That’s exactly what voters are supposed to do.
Like many economically distressed communities around the country, Ferguson’s voter turnout for the last few elections has been dismal. Just 12% of residents bothered to vote one way or the other in the last election. It may explain why Ferguson’s politicians are mostly white and mostly out-of-touch with the residents.


 

Right-Wing Media Continue To Decry Ferguson Residents Registering To Vote

Breitbart: “Liberal Activists” Are Promoting Voter Registration Drives That Local GOP Calls “Disgusting.” On August 18, Breitbart quoted the Missouri Republican National Committee executive director who attacked the registration effort as “completely inappropriate” and characterized voting rights advocates’ calls for Ferguson residents to “get on the juries, choose your leaders” as “liberal activism”

[…]

Fox News: Voter Registration Booths In Ferguson Show That “Protestors Aren’t Out There For Free Speech.” On the August 21 edition of Fox & Friends, host Anna Kooiman complained that Ferguson residents protesting the fatal shooting “aren’t out there for freedom of speech. They’re out there to push their side.” Co-host Clayton Morris responded, “Setting up a voter registration booth? Yeah, you think?”

[…]

Rush Limbaugh: Registering Voters In The Wake Of Michael Brown’s Death “Encompasses Everything That The Democratic Party Is.” On his August 19 radio show, Limbaugh also criticized the Ferguson voter registration drive, and condemned Democrats for “try[ing] to ramp up black turnout” by exploiting Brown’s death


Hey Look! Pat Robertson told a lie!

Televangelist Pat Robertson on his “700 Club” show today decided that repeating many right-wing lies about what happened in Ferguson during the shooting death of 18-year old Michael Brown would be a good idea.

Robertson called the unarmed college-bound teen a “giant” and surmised that he must have been on a “hallucegenic” [sic] or “PCP” because he “acted like someone who was crazy” who “beats the daylights out of” officer Darren Wilson. The octogenarian also wondered aloud why the police didn’t “do a blood test on that guy, on the dead man,” whom Robertson couldn’t bother to mention by name.

Robertson also repeated the lie that officer Darren Wilson’s “occipital bone was crushed.”

And he chastised Attorney General Eric Holder for standing up for the oppressed — which is in part his job.

“It just looks bad,” Robertson lamented — not once ever offering one word of sympathy for the death of Michael Brown.

I’m shocked, I tell you! SHOCKED that Pat Robertson displays not compassion for the death of a young unarmed black man.


 

Missouri Councilman Excuses His Racism As Being ‘A Very Active Republican’

 

Says it’s a feature not a bug.




 

okay but when you have holocaust survivors and people who were activists during the civil rights movement supporting mike brown and then KKK members and neo nazis supporting the officer you should be able to figure out which side is the right one.

(via blastortortoise)

 

 

(source: sand&glass, via angrynativefeminists)

 


Houston Gay, a 103 year old who marched with MLK 50 years ago, at a peaceful demonstration in Ferguson.

(source: zubat; via angrynativefeminists)


 

Voting in Ferguson, a televangelist lies, and more

Talking about Ferguson & Race

Ferguson: Why atheists should care — and what they can do 

This guest column is written by Dr. Anthony B. Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University and a leading scholar of black nontheism.

I’m troubled by the taking of yet another black life, but I’m also baffled: Why are some people, including many atheists, so surprised by the tragedies of racial violence—as if the United States hasn’t had a steady diet of discrimination? And why aren’t more humanists and atheists speaking out?

As Cornel West and W. E. B. Du Bois before him noted, race matters. It is a matter of willful ignorance to think otherwise; to deny the continued existence of racial hostility is a marker that one is out of touch with life in the U.S.

Sure, there are ways in which theological arguments can distract people from the harsh realities of life and blind some to the dynamics of racial discrimination. But theists aren’t the only ones who sometimes fail to grapple seriously with the consequences of racial dynamics in the U.S. Too many atheists and humanists assume their appeals to reason and logic are a prophylactic against racism.

This is a mistake—a bad mistake. Behind the humanist hero Thomas Jefferson was a host of dehumanized, enslaved Africans.

Humanists often claim to be informed, frequent readers, and more intelligent than theists—so the common mantra of  “I just don’t know much about African Americans” doesn’t work. Those who make this claim in a society marked by easy access to information should be embarrassed by such intellectual laziness.

It’s just as easy to find a copy of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk as it is to find a copy of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, okay?

I sympathize with Dr. Pinn. He thinks atheists should be more informed and better educated about the realities of racism in the United States.  I’m inclined to agree with him, but there is a slight problem. If you read the entire post, you’ll note that he uses ‘atheists’ and ‘humanists’ interchangeably. This is problematic.  Atheism is defined as ‘a lack of belief in a higher power or powers’.  It is not a set of beliefs. It is NOT believing. Humanism is a set of beliefs. Specifically,

Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith (fideism).

Atheists are often Humanists-I’m one for instance.  I do not believe in any higher power or powers, and I *do* believe in the value and agency of human beings, and I think that since there is no deity to assist humanity, it is our responsibility to use critical and rational thinking to solve the problems of humanity.  I think that since we share this planet, and we as a species are social creatures, that we ought to do our best to minimize harm and maximize happiness, not just for ourselves, but for other humans, and animals as well.  I’ve encountered and interacted with many wonderful atheists and humanists who feel the same way I do, and many of them are involved in the Atheist movement and seek to make it more inclusive for a broad range of people, especially those who belong to marginalized groups.

Not every atheist feels this way.  As I’ve seen in the last 4-5 years, there are atheists who are concerned with making the world better, only insofar as it relates to the existence of religion and religious beliefs. Among this group are atheists who are actively opposed to efforts at making the Atheist movement a safer space for those who belong to oppressed groups.  Some atheists dislike the idea of those in the movement advocating for social justice for women, LGBT individuals, People of Color, and other marginalized groups. In my experiences, these atheists are dictionary atheists who adhere to a limited definition of atheism-a dictionary definition. Their concerns are largely focused on eliminating the direct effects of religious belief in society, such as opposing creationism in the classroom or ensuring the continued separation of church and state (in democratic countries like-ostensibly-the US).  They don’t want to go any further though.  They think that atheism should end there.

As a result of this disagreement between dictionary atheists and social justice atheists, there have been a series of rifts in the Atheist community with Social Justice Atheists on one side of an ever growing chasm, and Dictionary Atheists on the other (my interactions with the DAs has made me despise a great many of them, and I’m more than happy for the chasm to grow wider).  The lack of concern on the part of many Dictionary Atheists for their fellow humans disgusts me.  I’ve seen them engage in sexism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism.  I’ve seen them engage in an ongoing campaign of cyber harassment of female bloggers (to the point that some have withdrawn from online participation in the Atheist movement).  I’m aware of one group of them that has set up an entire website dedicated to haranguing and opposing those atheists who also are interested in advocating for social justice.    I am unsure if Dr. Pinn is aware of this group of atheists, but they definitely are not Humanists.  It may be that these are the types of atheists he is criticizing for not speaking up about racism in the US.

There are atheists, however,  that have spoken up.  I’ve interacted with these people, and they are passionate about improving the quality of life for all people, including-obviously-black people.  I’ve watched these dedicated individuals working to signal boost the events of Ferguson over the last few weeks. Many of these people have tirelessly dedicated their time to helping spread the word of the horrible actions of the Ferguson PD, the death of Michael Brown, the militarization of the police in the US, gun violence, racism in our culture and more. Most of the updates on Ferguson that I’ve blogged about are the direct result of efforts of many atheists to get this information out to people.  I’m very grateful to these people, and I’m proud to call many of them my friends.  These are the type of people embodying exactly what Dr. Pinn advocates.


DIFFERENT RULES APPLY

The boy asked his mother, “So I should just put my hands in the air?”

“Yes,” his mother said. “Just put your hands in the air.”

“If I put my hands in the air, will the police not shoot?” he asked.

“Probably not, but you can’t be sure. Some people say you should just kneel or lie down, don’t ask questions, just get down on the ground.”

“If I lie down on the ground, they won’t shoot?”

“Probably,” she said.

I recognized the exhaustion in that “probably”—a parent trying to explain a fundamentally unfair fact of life in the most neutral terms possible, so as not to make a child prematurely paranoid or cynical or bitter, and realizing that there are no words with which to do such a thing. After my son and I left the restaurant, though, I was disturbed by a mental image of this small boy dropping face-down on the ground at the sound of a cop’s voice—thinking just
maybe he wouldn’t get shot. I thought of Oscar Grant, who was detained by police on a BART platform on New Years Day, 2009, and got shot in the back anyway. To death.

“Is that what you’re supposed to do? Get down on the ground?” my son asked.

He’d heard about Ferguson. It was everywhere.

I said, “Not necessarily. Some police want you to put your hands up. Some don’t ask you to do that. It depends. I guess the main thing is to just do what the police officer tells you to do. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

“Can the police just shoot people?” he asked. He seemed genuinely worried.

“They’re not supposed to just shoot people,” I said. “There are supposed to be rules about when you can and can’t shoot a person. Sometimes mistakes happen and people who shouldn’t get shot do get shot. And there are other times when…”

And I trailed off because I realized I was evading the real issue.

“It happens, and it’s horrible,” I told my son,” and in a lot of cases the reasons why some people get shot and others don’t get shot are unfair, or they don’t make sense, but you….” I trailed off again.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“White people just aren’t as likely to get shot by police,” I told him.

“Why is that?”

“There are a lot of reasons why that’s true, and we’ll talk about them later, but that’s the bottom line,” I said. “It’s not right, but it’s the truth. That’s what that woman was telling her son about.”

My mind added: …in a conversation that most white dads would not be having with their white elementary school-age sons. 

Why didn’t I say this out loud to my son? I don’t know. Something was holding me back.

Maybe it was the fact that my son has friends of different races and ethnicities, and I didn’t want to burst what I thought was an idyllic bubble, if indeed he lived in one, which he probably doesn’t.

No, that wasn’t it.

I wasn’t protecting my son from anything. I was protecting my son’s image of his father, or what I imagined that image to be.

And I was protecting myself from myself. I was lying to myself about myself.

I was reminded of something my best friend, a skinny Irish guy from Bay Ridge, told me. He was hanging out with his dad one afternoon. Out of the blue his dad told he should always be grateful for the greatest gift his dad and mom ever gave him.

“What gift is that?” my friend asked.

“Your white skin,” he said. “If you’re white in this country, you’re ahead of the game. You get more chances. You get more second chances. That’s the gift your mother and I gave you—and we didn’t have a damn thing to do with it!”

My friend’s dad was being bitterly sarcastic. But he was also being honest about white privilege.

I believe that there’s a difference between knowing something and understanding it. You know how you’ll try to communicate something very important to you to another person and sometimes they’ll wave you off with an impatient, “I know, I know”? That’s knowing: I got the gist, filed it away, I don’t need to think about it again. Knowing is comprehension; understanding is deeper because it comes from empathy or identification.

All of which is a wind-up to say: having grown up in a mostly black neighborhood near Love Field airport in Dallas, and having been a diligent liberal for most of my adult life, I already knew there was such a thing as white privilege, and was properly horrified by it, but I didn’t truly understand what it meant, on a deep level, until one summer night in 2006, when I was spared arrest or worse thanks to the color of my skin.

(read the rest here)

 

BEYOND FERGUSON: POP CULTURE THROUGH THE LENS OF RACE


HANDS UP: LOS ANGELES PROTEST AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE


 Their buddy, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown, and somehow *they’re* the victims?!


 

Blame poverty, not race, say Ferguson’s white minority

For the love of all the nonexistent gods in the heavens, white people saying this, please shut up and listen.

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Talking about Ferguson & Race

Talking about Ferguson & Race

Ferguson: Why atheists should care — and what they can do 

This guest column is written by Dr. Anthony B. Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University and a leading scholar of black nontheism.

I’m troubled by the taking of yet another black life, but I’m also baffled: Why are some people, including many atheists, so surprised by the tragedies of racial violence—as if the United States hasn’t had a steady diet of discrimination? And why aren’t more humanists and atheists speaking out?

As Cornel West and W. E. B. Du Bois before him noted, race matters. It is a matter of willful ignorance to think otherwise; to deny the continued existence of racial hostility is a marker that one is out of touch with life in the U.S.

Sure, there are ways in which theological arguments can distract people from the harsh realities of life and blind some to the dynamics of racial discrimination. But theists aren’t the only ones who sometimes fail to grapple seriously with the consequences of racial dynamics in the U.S. Too many atheists and humanists assume their appeals to reason and logic are a prophylactic against racism.

This is a mistake—a bad mistake. Behind the humanist hero Thomas Jefferson was a host of dehumanized, enslaved Africans.

Humanists often claim to be informed, frequent readers, and more intelligent than theists—so the common mantra of  “I just don’t know much about African Americans” doesn’t work. Those who make this claim in a society marked by easy access to information should be embarrassed by such intellectual laziness.

It’s just as easy to find a copy of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk as it is to find a copy of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, okay?

I sympathize with Dr. Pinn. He thinks atheists should be more informed and better educated about the realities of racism in the United States.  I’m inclined to agree with him, but there is a slight problem. If you read the entire post, you’ll note that he uses ‘atheists’ and ‘humanists’ interchangeably. This is problematic.  Atheism is defined as ‘a lack of belief in a higher power or powers’.  It is not a set of beliefs. It is NOT believing. Humanism is a set of beliefs. Specifically,

Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith (fideism).

Atheists are often Humanists-I’m one for instance.  I do not believe in any higher power or powers, and I *do* believe in the value and agency of human beings, and I think that since there is no deity to assist humanity, it is our responsibility to use critical and rational thinking to solve the problems of humanity.  I think that since we share this planet, and we as a species are social creatures, that we ought to do our best to minimize harm and maximize happiness, not just for ourselves, but for other humans, and animals as well.  I’ve encountered and interacted with many wonderful atheists and humanists who feel the same way I do, and many of them are involved in the Atheist movement and seek to make it more inclusive for a broad range of people, especially those who belong to marginalized groups.

Not every atheist feels this way.  As I’ve seen in the last 4-5 years, there are atheists who are concerned with making the world better, only insofar as it relates to the existence of religion and religious beliefs. Among this group are atheists who are actively opposed to efforts at making the Atheist movement a safer space for those who belong to oppressed groups.  Some atheists dislike the idea of those in the movement advocating for social justice for women, LGBT individuals, People of Color, and other marginalized groups. In my experiences, these atheists are dictionary atheists who adhere to a limited definition of atheism-a dictionary definition. Their concerns are largely focused on eliminating the direct effects of religious belief in society, such as opposing creationism in the classroom or ensuring the continued separation of church and state (in democratic countries like-ostensibly-the US).  They don’t want to go any further though.  They think that atheism should end there.

As a result of this disagreement between dictionary atheists and social justice atheists, there have been a series of rifts in the Atheist community with Social Justice Atheists on one side of an ever growing chasm, and Dictionary Atheists on the other (my interactions with the DAs has made me despise a great many of them, and I’m more than happy for the chasm to grow wider).  The lack of concern on the part of many Dictionary Atheists for their fellow humans disgusts me.  I’ve seen them engage in sexism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and ableism.  I’ve seen them engage in an ongoing campaign of cyber harassment of female bloggers (to the point that some have withdrawn from online participation in the Atheist movement).  I’m aware of one group of them that has set up an entire website dedicated to haranguing and opposing those atheists who also are interested in advocating for social justice.    I am unsure if Dr. Pinn is aware of this group of atheists, but they definitely are not Humanists.  It may be that these are the types of atheists he is criticizing for not speaking up about racism in the US.

There are atheists, however,  that have spoken up.  I’ve interacted with these people, and they are passionate about improving the quality of life for all people, including-obviously-black people.  I’ve watched these dedicated individuals working to signal boost the events of Ferguson over the last few weeks. Many of these people have tirelessly dedicated their time to helping spread the word of the horrible actions of the Ferguson PD, the death of Michael Brown, the militarization of the police in the US, gun violence, racism in our culture and more. Most of the updates on Ferguson that I’ve blogged about are the direct result of efforts of many atheists to get this information out to people.  I’m very grateful to these people, and I’m proud to call many of them my friends.  These are the type of people embodying exactly what Dr. Pinn advocates.


DIFFERENT RULES APPLY

The boy asked his mother, “So I should just put my hands in the air?”

“Yes,” his mother said. “Just put your hands in the air.”

“If I put my hands in the air, will the police not shoot?” he asked.

“Probably not, but you can’t be sure. Some people say you should just kneel or lie down, don’t ask questions, just get down on the ground.”

“If I lie down on the ground, they won’t shoot?”

“Probably,” she said.

I recognized the exhaustion in that “probably”—a parent trying to explain a fundamentally unfair fact of life in the most neutral terms possible, so as not to make a child prematurely paranoid or cynical or bitter, and realizing that there are no words with which to do such a thing. After my son and I left the restaurant, though, I was disturbed by a mental image of this small boy dropping face-down on the ground at the sound of a cop’s voice—thinking just
maybe he wouldn’t get shot. I thought of Oscar Grant, who was detained by police on a BART platform on New Years Day, 2009, and got shot in the back anyway. To death.

“Is that what you’re supposed to do? Get down on the ground?” my son asked.

He’d heard about Ferguson. It was everywhere.

I said, “Not necessarily. Some police want you to put your hands up. Some don’t ask you to do that. It depends. I guess the main thing is to just do what the police officer tells you to do. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

“Can the police just shoot people?” he asked. He seemed genuinely worried.

“They’re not supposed to just shoot people,” I said. “There are supposed to be rules about when you can and can’t shoot a person. Sometimes mistakes happen and people who shouldn’t get shot do get shot. And there are other times when…”

And I trailed off because I realized I was evading the real issue.

“It happens, and it’s horrible,” I told my son,” and in a lot of cases the reasons why some people get shot and others don’t get shot are unfair, or they don’t make sense, but you….” I trailed off again.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“White people just aren’t as likely to get shot by police,” I told him.

“Why is that?”

“There are a lot of reasons why that’s true, and we’ll talk about them later, but that’s the bottom line,” I said. “It’s not right, but it’s the truth. That’s what that woman was telling her son about.”

My mind added: …in a conversation that most white dads would not be having with their white elementary school-age sons. 

Why didn’t I say this out loud to my son? I don’t know. Something was holding me back.

Maybe it was the fact that my son has friends of different races and ethnicities, and I didn’t want to burst what I thought was an idyllic bubble, if indeed he lived in one, which he probably doesn’t.

No, that wasn’t it.

I wasn’t protecting my son from anything. I was protecting my son’s image of his father, or what I imagined that image to be.

And I was protecting myself from myself. I was lying to myself about myself.

I was reminded of something my best friend, a skinny Irish guy from Bay Ridge, told me. He was hanging out with his dad one afternoon. Out of the blue his dad told he should always be grateful for the greatest gift his dad and mom ever gave him.

“What gift is that?” my friend asked.

“Your white skin,” he said. “If you’re white in this country, you’re ahead of the game. You get more chances. You get more second chances. That’s the gift your mother and I gave you—and we didn’t have a damn thing to do with it!”

My friend’s dad was being bitterly sarcastic. But he was also being honest about white privilege.

I believe that there’s a difference between knowing something and understanding it. You know how you’ll try to communicate something very important to you to another person and sometimes they’ll wave you off with an impatient, “I know, I know”? That’s knowing: I got the gist, filed it away, I don’t need to think about it again. Knowing is comprehension; understanding is deeper because it comes from empathy or identification.

All of which is a wind-up to say: having grown up in a mostly black neighborhood near Love Field airport in Dallas, and having been a diligent liberal for most of my adult life, I already knew there was such a thing as white privilege, and was properly horrified by it, but I didn’t truly understand what it meant, on a deep level, until one summer night in 2006, when I was spared arrest or worse thanks to the color of my skin.

(read the rest here)

 

BEYOND FERGUSON: POP CULTURE THROUGH THE LENS OF RACE


HANDS UP: LOS ANGELES PROTEST AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE


 Their buddy, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown, and somehow *they’re* the victims?!


 

Blame poverty, not race, say Ferguson’s white minority

For the love of all the nonexistent gods in the heavens, white people saying this, please shut up and listen.

<

p style=”text-align:center;”> 

Talking about Ferguson & Race

Facial Fun, Filipino Food and more in this link roundup

There isn’t really any thematic connective tissue to the following links.  They’re just stuff I’ve found around the net that I think are cool:

I’ve never had Filipino cuisine.  If these images are anything to judge by, I need to change that as soon as possible:

Cassava Cake
Pancit Palabok

 

Lumpia
Longgansia
Ukoy

These, and other Filipino dishes (along with links to recipes) can be found here.


 

The reason I became interested in Filipino cuisine is because I found images of this totally cool Filipino restaurant nestled at the foot of a waterfall:

From the link:

Asking to be seated at a table with a view is no problem at this Filipino restaurant. Located at the foot of the Labasin Falls in the Quezon Province, diners may enjoy authentic Filipino cuisine and the area’s natural splendor as fresh water streams through their toes. Nature and dining all in one? Now that’s my kind of travel.


Welp, The Ice Bucket Challenge Is Officially Over Thanks To Patrick Stewart


 

Gutter? What gutter?


 

99-Year-Old Woman Sews a Dress a Day for Children in Africa

(there are images at the link)

99-year-old Lillian Weber has a generous heart and sewing hands that just won’t stop. The Iowa-based woman spends hours every single day making a dress for small children who receive the clothing through the Christian nonprofit group Little Dresses for Africa.

For the past two years, Weber has made more than 840 dresses because, simply stated, she just wanted to help people. She uses a pattern to make the dress but she doesn’t stop there. She adds a few personal touches to each garment in order to make the items more unique and so that no two dresses are alike. Weber’s goal is to continue sewing 150 more dresses so that she can create her 1,000th dress by the time she turns 100 years old next May. “When I get to that thousand, if I’m able to, I won’t quit,” she recently said. “I’ll go at it again.” What an amazing story of generosity! You can learn a little more about Weber in the video below.


 

The world’s first zombie proof house

More images at the link

 

What does 200 calories look like?

What does 200 calories worth of food look like? The website Wisegeek conducted a study of 71 different edibles to find out. They proportioned things like peanut butter, canned beans, fruits, veggies, and even soda into 200 calorie quantities and photographed the results. It’s surprising to see what this actually looks like when on a plate.


 

Makeup Artist Paints Her Chin and Mouth to Look Like Cartoon Characters

Facial Fun, Filipino Food and more in this link roundup