Je pense a toi, toujours.
Many years ago when I was young and almost beautiful; I spent a summer in Europe meandering through small towns and bigger cities. I went shoe shopping in Florence; I found this tiny café in Paris that served the most delicious chocolate croissants. I visited the oldest synagogue in Rome where I sat quietly feeling the prayers of the thousands who had come before me. Eventually, I landed in Monte Carlo where I was to meet up with my mother. My mother liked to go out clubbing and so after a late night dinner, off we went to Jimmy’z, a local open air discotheque, to dance all night. I loved dancing so long and hard that sweat would pour off my body like water, and that night was no exception.

Later that evening, my sweaty self spotted a handsome hippie-ish looking fellow across the dance floor. He was wearing a pair of faded Levi’s paired with a camel suede fringe vest, and had the most beautiful pale blue eyes. I was intrigued and boogied over to introduce myself. The hippie turned out to be a Russian magnate named Harry. Harry then proceeded to wine and dine my mother and me throughout the week we were in Monaco. Harry owned a conglomerate of hotels all over Europe and was in Monte Carlo to scout out new locations for his growing empire. I liked him well enough; and certainly appreciated the flowers and gifts he would bring me each night; but I did not think living in Europe was for me, (plus there was the small matter of me being a lesbian, but that is a longer story for a different blog) and so bid him adieu.

Months later, ensconced safely in my apartment, a postcard came in the mail. It is interesting to me still , that I remember this moment so well when so much of my life has been forgotten. Featured on the front of the postcard were two white Persian kittens, on the back was written a single sentence, ‘Je pense a toi, toujours’ (I think of you, always). There was no name, and no return address. I had a feeling the postcard might have come from Harry as the postmark was stamped from St.Petersburg, but those were the eighties, before the iPhone had come into existence, and I had misplaced my address book with Harry’s number in it, so the owner of the postcard remains a mystery.

Flash forward many many years later, September 20th is the birthday of someone I once loved very much, and although we do not speak anymore and she will more than likely not see this posting ‘JC, je pense a toi toujours. Joyeux Anniversaire.’

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Lesbian teacher fired by Catholic school invited to White House to help welcome Pope Francis

Margie Winters will be among those welcoming Pope Francis to The White House at a reception on Wednesday (23 September).

If she gets the ear of the Pope during the event on the South Lawn, she will have plenty to say about discrimination against LGBTI Catholics by the church in the US.

Winters, 50, was fired in June from Waldron Mercy Academy outside Philadelphia because she is married to a woman. She was the Catholic school’s director of religious education and had worked at the school for eight years.

Winters had been upfront with school administrators at the time of her hiring and was advised to keep a low profile which she says she did.

The firing happened because a parent complained directly to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia which later spoke out in favor of the firing.

Winters has been married to wife Andrea since 2007. After the firing, she began to speak out not to win her job back but to raise awareness of the discrimination.

‘This decision to fire me is in contradiction with who we are as a church,’ Winters says in a video produced by the Human Rights Campaign in advance of the Pope’s visit. ‘We need to stand up for what we believe in.

‘How doi we make these injustices right in our church and in our society as well?’

Winters was invited to the White House event by the HRC the largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in the US.

The post Lesbian teacher fired by Catholic school invited to White House to help welcome Pope Francis appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/lesbian-teacher-fired-by-catholic-school-invited-to-white-house-to-help-welcome-pope-francis/

Unreal: Governor Herbert To Welcome Hate Into State With Open Arms

HRC slams decision by Utah Governor to participate in the World Congress of Families’ gathering in Salt Lake City this October. 
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/unreal-governor-herbert-to-welcome-hate-into-state-with-open-arms?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Price-Gouging Pharma CEO Can’t Seem To Handle The Entire Internet Hating Him After All

Martin Shkreli claims he’s happy to “play to part” of greedy CEO/America’s most hated man. But after less than 48 hours, it seems the pressure is getting to him.

The ex-hedge-funder-turned-pharmaceutical-price-gouger made headlines this week when he raised the price Daraprim, a drug that treats life-threatening parasitic infections in AIDS patients, from $13.50 to $750 a tablet. (For the record: Each tablet only costs about $1 to produce.)

Related: Ex-Hedge Funder Buys Rights To AIDS Drug, Raises Price 5,455 Percent

“It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this,” Shkreli told the New York Times. “This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients. It is us trying to stay in business.”

Related: Can We Blame Wall Street For All the AIDS Patients Now On Waiting Lists?

Over the past day or so, Shkreli seems to have been glued to his Twitter page, spewing off childish and snarky remarks at internet trolls and generally being an unapologetic little bitch.

But despite his overconfidence, it seems Shkreli may not be cut out for the long term role of supervillian, after all. He announced earlier today that he will be “flipping my Twitter to private” after receiving an endless string of nasty comments. Evidently, he can’t take the heat as well as he dishes it, though he claims it’s because he is “busy” with his “important job” coming up with the next group of patients to price gouge.

After abandoning Twitter, here’s to hoping he abandons his evil business practices as well. We are not holding our breath.

Scroll down to read some of what he’s been saying on Twitter, which we screen grabbed. (Seriously, someone needs to get this dude a publicist ASAP!)…

Graham Gremore

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/QHepL420j_I/price-gouging-pharma-ceo-cant-seem-to-handle-the-entire-internet-hating-him-after-all-20150922

The Straight Guys Summon the Ghost of Liberace in #NoHomo Episode 4: WATCH

Last time we checked in with Tyler and Skyler (played by models Christian Plauche and Matthew Egan), the two straight guys were in the midst of a gay makeover from “The Gayru.” In episode four of the new webseries #NoHomo by Nelson Moses Lassiter, Liberace’s ghost is summoned to transform the two horndogs into gay men in the hopes that they can finally get in close with the ladies.

Will Tyler and Skyler unlock their inner gay? Find out below.

Missed any of the earlier episodes of #NoHomo? You can catch them HERE.

Related, Michael Douglas Shares Liberace Emmy with Matt Damon: ‘Do You Want the Bottom or the Top?’

The post The Straight Guys Summon the Ghost of Liberace in #NoHomo Episode 4: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Kyler Geoffroy

The Straight Guys Summon the Ghost of Liberace in #NoHomo Episode 4: WATCH

Mike Huckabee: Inviting LGBT Guests to Meet Pope Like Offering Alcoholics an Open Bar

Mike Huckabee has made a strange comparison between gays and alcoholics.

In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, the Republican presidential hopeful criticized the White House’s decision to include LGBT activists at a Wednesday reception to meet Pope Francis.

He illustrated his criticism with a recipe-for-disaster comparison: Inviting LGBT people to meet head of the Catholic Church is equivalent to serving booze to a group of recovering alcoholics.

“If I were hosting a group of Alcoholics Anonymous, I wouldn’t set up an open bar. If you’re going to host the pope, for heaven’s sakes, bring the best and the most faithful Catholics you can,” he said, implying some of the guests don’t fit that description. They include former Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man to hold that position; an activist nun, Sister Simone Campbell, who is executive director of Network, a self-described “Catholic social justice lobby”; and Mateo Williamson, a former co-head of the transgender caucus of DignityUSA, a group for LGBT Catholics that advocates for equality within the church.

“I’m not sure that inviting people who are openly at odds with the Vatican, who have criticized the pope for his positions and the church’s positions, the doctrinal positions on abortion and on euthanasia — why do you put them in the very likely position where they would be photographed with him and make it a very embarrassing moment?” Huckabee said.

The Vatican itself has also reportedly “taken offense” at the Obama administration’s guest list. A senior Vatican official told the The Wall Street Journal the Holy See is worried that having those guests at the White House welcoming ceremony puts the pope at risk of having his photograph taken with those activists, and that, Vatican officials fear, could be misconstrued as the Francis’s endorsement of them, the groups they lead, or their sexual and gender orientations. 

However, Kelly proposed another purpose. She asked Huckabee if the invitations might be “an opportunity to expose the pope and those who surround him with another point of view.”

In response, Huckabee said such an intent would be inappropriate for the reception, and he found it audacious that a president who would presume to edify the pope on Catholic teachings.

“I’m not sure President Obama needs to school and lecture Pope Francis on Catholic doctrine and why he’s wrong. Last time I check, it’s the pope’s who’s supposed to lecture Christians, not the other way around,” he said. “For a long time, we thought Obama had a really high opinion of himself, but this would really, really take it to a whole new level

Watch Huckabee’s remarks below.

Daniel Reynolds

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/9/22/mike-huckabee-popes-lgbt-guests-are-alcoholics-open-bar

My Transgender Life: No Bang, No Whimper, Just a Small Smile
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change” – Carl Rogers, On Becoming A Person

I think it occurred during sometime during the summer, but honestly I cannot be sure.

It really wasn’t something that I thought about very much. Now that I think about it, it was more like a thought that used to be in my dreams, but never a goal that I was actively pursuing.

I transitioned four years ago, and never ever had a thought of hiding the fact I am transgender. Gosh, I have written a book, been interviewed in various media outlets and now write these blogs that announce “My Transgender Life” for the world to read. My logic has been that I hid who I was for almost 60 years. I have no intent of spending any more time hiding who I am or any energy on re-writing my personal history of who I used to be.

With this logic, as part of my core sense of myself, I wrote a few weeks ago that I could hold both the fact that I am a transgender woman and a woman in a comfortable balance. Also having a public identity as being transgender, I felt that part of introducing myself to new people would include the fact that I was transgender, and possibly use this as a teaching moment. Perhaps there is a part of me that has believed that the best defense is a good offense, so I would generally put this fact out fairly early in meeting new people.

I did not even realize when this all changed.

Somewhere deep inside me there was a shift of my internal tectonic plates as my frame of reference of how I saw myself changed. The shift occurred so deeply inside of me I never noticed it even though its impact was great.

Perhaps it was due to external forces. There was certainly the earthquake of the entire Jenner story back in April. Perhaps it was due to being interviewed on what my thoughts were about this. Perhaps it was the appearance of so many transgender TV reality shows.

Or perhaps it was the realization and self acceptance this summer that I was OK after swimming or showering to just let my hair air dry, without needing to have it look straight and “perfect” in order to face the world each day. Perhaps it is just the right time, as I am now four years post transition, and this is just a pretty standard step on these types of journeys.

I suspect I will not really know the reasons but the change did happen.

It seems that I am now able to interact with a variety of people with absolutely no mention that I am trans. My identity has not changed — at least I do not think so, but my internal frame of reference definitely has. Although some people question my bio, when I state I am a father of three, when I look in a mirror I see a woman looking back at me and have difficulty remembering the man I used to be. I know, who I was, I own that part of my journey, and I hope that I will never deny anything that is part of my story. However, in these present moments when just meeting and chatting with strangers, or new acquaintances, I no longer feel defensive or feel the need to be the one to introduce the fact that I am trans. They may question, they may suspect, they may even know, but I have crossed an internal and even an external threshold that this information is no longer important in defining me.

I am aware this has created a new paradox for me. I write describing my various journeys as a transgender person, yet I am starting to live as if this is not that big of a deal. For a while this was making my head spin but I am beginning to understand what Carl Rogers means by the curious paradox, and each day I am becoming more and more OK with this.

I interact with people in stores, at the town pool and even my women friends and colleagues who know that I am trans, some of whom even knew me before I transitioned that tell me they do not see a trans woman, they just see and think of me as a woman, and interact with me as a close and supportive friend. It has taken me a while to let this sink in, but I think it has. It seems it has taken me longer to reach this point than many of them. Curious indeed!

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper” -T. S. Eliot

For many trans people the act of transition is the culmination of an internal battle that represents the end of a world that they felt they did not belong in. Some can do this quietly but for most there is a large BANG, as it impacts so many people around them. However that battle really is never the end of the internal war. If you have not experienced this and are not trans you may not understand that the war in not over.

Your old world may or may not end, although your new world may well be beginning. Your new world of self discovery, self understanding and self acceptance can take you on roads and adventures never dreamed of. There is no specific time period or map for this journey

I did not even notice when one of my worlds ended. There was no bang, no whimper, just a small smile forming on my face.

You too may even find, curiously as it may be, that you are not even aware of how you are changing as day by day you are just living your true life. Enjoy the journey!

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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American Bar Association honors lawyers involved in fight for same-sex marriage

Lawyers who were involved in helping to bring the fight for same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court are among those to be honored by the American Bar Association’s Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

The Commission will be recognizing each with a Stonewall Award, to be presented at a ceremony in February 2016.

The ABA’s Stonewall Awards recognize lawyers who have ‘considerably advanced lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the legal profession and successfully championed LGBT legal causes.’

They are named after the Stonewall Inn and the associated riots of 1969 – the event that sparked the modern day LGBT-rights movement.

The three recipients of awards are: Evan Wolfson, Abby Rubenfeld and Tom Fitzpatrick.

Wolfson is the founder of Freedom To Marry and previous to that, marriage project director with Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund.

Of his many career achievements, Evan has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, and is the author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality and Gay People’s Right to Marry.

‘If there were a Nobel Prize for LGBT advocacy, Evan Wolfson would surely be its first recipient,’ said Mark Johnson Roberts, chair of the ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, in a statement announcing the award. ‘His vision and tenacity are largely responsible for the realization of marriage equality in America.’

Speaking to Gay Star Business, Wolfson said: ‘It means a lot to be recognized by the American Bar Association alongside other friends and colleagues.

‘I believe in the law as an engine of change and a foundation of freedom, and am pleased that the ABA is honoring the work we have done together to hold the country to its promise. As lawyers, we know that the Constitution is not self-executing and that change doesn’t happen through law courts alone, but, rather, by engaging hearts and making the case in the court of public opinion.’

Abby Rubenfeld filed the Tennessee lawsuit in 2013 that led the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize gay marriage in June, has been an attorney and legal director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, serves on the board of the Human Rights Campaign, and has worked with many other advocacy groups.

‘Abby Rubenfeld is the unofficial dean of the national LGBT family law bar,’ said Johnson Roberts. ‘Her contributions to the legal protection of LGBT families are without parallel.’

Speaking to Gay Star Business, Rubenfeld said, ‘I am thrilled to receive this incredible honor from the American Bar Association, an organization with which I have been involved since the early 1980s. It is particularly rewarding given the history – when I got involved with the ABA, it did not even have a non-discrimination policy adopted by the house of delegates, and now, 35 years later, it has become an extremely LGBT supportive organization with numerous policies supporting equality for all and one that files amicus briefs in all major LGBT cases.’

The final recipient will be Tom Fitzpatrick, first openly gay person to be elected to the ABA Board of Governors.

‘Tom Fitzpatrick has been a powerful voice for LGBT inclusion within the Association from the earliest days of our movement. He literally helped change the LGBT policies of the Association to what they are today,’ said Johnson Roberts.

Fitzpatrick has worked to make the ABA a more inclusive and supportive place for LGBT people, including working to expand the association’s diversity goal to include sexual orientation and gender identity and to create the Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

‘I think when the history of the gay rights movement is written, one of the most significant things will be the change in culture in the legal profession on LGBT issues. I was happy to contribute to that, and am honored the award recognizes that,’ Fitzpatrick said.

The post American Bar Association honors lawyers involved in fight for same-sex marriage appeared first on Gay Star News.

David Hudson

www.gaystarnews.com/article/american-bar-association-honors-lawyers-involved-in-fight-for-same-sex-marriage/

HRC Calls For Full Investigation Into Treatment of Transgender Woman By TSA Agents at Airport

HRC President Chad Griffin urges immediate action to ensure transgender travelers are treated equally with full respect.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-calls-for-full-investigation-into-treatment-of-transgender-woman-by-tsa?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Michael Lucas Plans To Stay HIV-Negative Thanks To Daily PrEP Use

Michael Lucas is HIV-negative and plans to stay that way. To achieve this end, the gay adult film mogul is banking on his daily use of PrEP (pre-exposure prohylaxis) and, aware that condomless-sex happens all the time (even in the films he produces), he’s encouraging other sexually-active gay men to follow suit.

Related: Michael Lucas Explains His Controversial Decision To Make Condom-Free Adult Films

Hear what else Lucas has to say below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/3DDW72cJz3s/michael-lucas-plans-to-stay-hiv-negative-thanks-to-daily-prep-use-20150922