Judge Accepts S.C.'s First Marriage Application From Same-Sex Couple
Colleen Condon and Nichols Bleckley may become the first same-sex couple to legally wed in South Carolina.
Daniel Reynolds
Domestic Violence in the LGBT Community: It's Time for a Change!
Domestic Violence in the LGBT Community: It's Time for a Change!
Co-Author: Susan Holt, PsyD, LMFT
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the United States and, as the Ray Rice situation so well portrays, intimate partner violence (more commonly known as domestic violence) remains a very significant problem. In Rice’s apologies to his wife he said, “Violence of any kind, especially man-on-woman, is just not right…shouldn’t be tolerated.” For the majority of us, this statement rings true — or should ring true. In reality violence against women is an epidemic and one that has recently received a glimmer of attention in the wake of the Rice scandal and the continuing growing list of implicated abusers in professional sports. However, this national conversation, while long overdue, is almost always framed as one in which men are the abusers and women are the victims, which leaves many survivors of domestic violence unrepresented. Unfortunately, intimate partner violence will continue long after the Rice story fades from the media. And this is, perhaps, particularly true of intimate partner violence among LGBT couples.
In 2013 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that lesbians, gay and bisexual men and women reported intimate partner violence and sexual violence over their lifetimes at levels equal to or higher than those of heterosexuals. Eight months later, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs documented 21 LGBT intimate partner violence homicides across the country in its annual report. This number is just the tip of the iceberg, representing only the reported homicides, with many homicides remaining classified as “roommate” or “non-intimate” disputes. Despite the fact that intimate partner violence in the LGBT community happens at rates comparable to or greater than in the non-LGBT heterosexual community — nearly 1 in 3 members of the LGBT community experience intimate partner violence at some point in his or her life — there still remain only a handful of services specifically targeted towards LGBT survivors. In fact, according to a recently published study, only 1 in 5 LGBT survivors receives victim services.
A review published earlier this month in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy stressed that multiple factors related to minority stress, including the fear of being “outed,” may explain high prevalence rates in the LGBT community. Increased risk may also result from same-sex partners unconsciously responding to internalized homophobia they developed while being raised in a heterosexual society. So, as our nation takes these moments to examine the problem of intimate partner violence in all communities and across sexual orientations, let us make sure that we are not only inclusive in that examination, but we also take into account the role that institutionalized and systemic homophobia play in the perpetration of violence within and from outside the LGBT community.
Simply put: Whether you are a colleague from work, a family member or a friend, chances are you will know an LGBT person who, at some point in his or her life, has been or is in an abusive relationship. When this happens, ensuring that you can provide support in a non-judgmental way can literally mean the difference to that survivor receiving the assistance they need to find safety.
As a country, we need to educate ourselves, learn the signs and develop effective community-based resources. After all, addressing this epidemic is going to take more than a public moment. It will take — and deserves — a national commitment from all of us.
To find out more information about the domestic violence services at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, visit lalgbtcenter.org/domestic_violence_services.
www.huffingtonpost.com/terra-slavin/post_8431_b_5953664.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices
God’s Children Include our LGBT Sisters and Brothers
God’s Children Include our LGBT Sisters and Brothers
Mississippi faith Organizer Denise Donnell talks about the importance of joining hands with the LGBT community.
HRC.org
Lock It Up: The Surprising Reality Of Gay Virgins Who Wait For Marriage
Lock It Up: The Surprising Reality Of Gay Virgins Who Wait For Marriage
So let’s get this straight — in the following clip wherein gay virgins who choose to be chaste until marriage answer questions about their beliefs, the following exchange occurs:
A self-identifying Christian gay man is asked, “What if it doesn’t work out and you wind up ‘saving yourself’ for the complete wrong person?”
And he responds, “That’s why people like me save sex for marriage and not for ‘I kinda like you.’ The process of marriage goes a long way towards making sure we enter into a sexual commitment with a sound mind. OK, but what if it still doesn’t work out? Sure, that happens. Well then we’re really getting into the moral question of divorce…suffice it to say, there are some situations where I would probably seek remarriage.”
Like, oh, say building up sex as this weird virtuous rose petal only to have absolutely no sexual chemistry with your new husband?
The two interviewees seem like perfectly nice people, but whoa.
Watch the clip here:
Dan Tracer
Federal Judge Lifts Stay On Two Same-Sex Marriage Cases In North Carolina, Expected To Issue Ruling Soon
Federal Judge Lifts Stay On Two Same-Sex Marriage Cases In North Carolina, Expected To Issue Ruling Soon
Federal Judge William Osteen has lifted stays on two lawsuits brought against the state of North Carolina by the ACLU arguing that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage (passed in 2012) is unconstitutional. Representatives from the ACLU said they expect Judge Osteen to rule on those case swiftly. WNCN reports:
Mike Meno, a spokesman for the ACLU of North Carolina, told WNCN that Osteen asked for a motion from the ACLU on the gay marriage issue. Meno said the ACLU expects Osteen to rule that gay North Carolinians may marry as soon as late Wednesday afternoon or Thursday.
Federal courts generally close at 5 p.m., so Meno said the ACLU lawyers were working urgently to get a motion to the court in Greensboro.
The Wake County Register of Deeds’ office said the county will not be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Wednesday.
On Monday the ACLU asked Judge Osteen to quickly strike down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage after the Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging the 4th Circuit’s ruling which found the ban to be discriminatory and unconstitutional.
Sean Mandell
Travesti manda recado para movimento LGBT e causa polêmica
Travesti manda recado para movimento LGBT e causa polêmica
Supreme Court: Marriage Equality Back On in Nevada
Supreme Court: Marriage Equality Back On in Nevada
Because state officials will not appeal Tuesday’s ruling striking down Nevada’s ban on same-sex marriage, couples in that state can soon begin to marry, the Supreme Court announced.
Sunnivie Brydum
www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/10/08/supreme-court-marriage-equality-back-nevada
<em>Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy</em>: A Modern Transgender Hero
<em>Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy</em>: A Modern Transgender Hero
There is one Jewish short story (later made into a play and a film) to which I can very intimately relate. It’s Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy. I had the pleasure of attending an updated, klezmer/pop version of the play, directed by Shirley Serotsky, with music by Jill Sobule, last week at Theatre J in downtown Washington, D.C.
As a young trans girl growing up as a yeshiva boy in Queens, New York, I found that this play resonated deeply within me. The eponymous Yentl, who goes by the name Anshel as a yeshiva boy, challenges the gender norms of that extinct European world of the Jewish Pale and its predominantly Orthodox Jewish communities. Yentl, the daughter of a rabbi, studies with her father as if she were his son. Her father says, “Yentl — you have the soul of a man.” She asks, “So why was I born a woman?” He replies, “Even Heaven makes mistakes.”
Jewish men and boys, in their morning prayers, have said this “blessing” for generations: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman.” I said that every morning until I was 14, feeling like I was swallowing crushed glass, believing there was no escape.
Singer rooted this story in Yentl’s recognition, and her father’s perception, of her soul as male. “Soul,” in this case, is just a more elegant term for the sexual attribute of the incorporeal essence we call “gender identity” today. “Transgender” didn’t exist in 19th-century Europe as a medical condition or concept, though Singer probably knew of the modern phenomenon when he wrote the play in the 1950s, as Christine Jorgensen was in all the New York tabloids when she returned home in late 1952. He certainly knew of the rabbis’ understanding of physical intersex conditions, and of the variable manifestation of those conditions in a spectrum of gender roles. He wrote, in the words of Avigdor, Yentl’s male study partner, “She [Yentl] had the soul of a man and the body of a woman.”
Singer had Yentl deal with her ongoing gender dysphoria by creating conditions where she can live as a man, not only by wearing men’s clothing but by taking the male role in its most respected form: as a scholar. Even though Yentl is in love with Avigdor, and he with her, the language of the story implies not only that is the couple perceived as a same-sex couple but that they feel that way as well. Interestingly, the contemporary production I recently saw uses the musical lyrics to make evident the deeply queer nature of the situation. Whereas Singer had the two study partners describe their bond as similar to that of the patriarch, Jacob, and his beloved son, Benjamin, the lyrics switch to the David-and-Jonathan story from the Book of Samuel, David and Jonathan being two men widely seen today as having been in love with one another.
Given the opportunity to escape the dilemma of being in unwanted marriages (and Yentl does indeed love her wife, Hadass, though she has deceived her as to her physical embodiment), with Anshel reverting to living as Yentl and marrying Avigdor, they both agree that that is simply not an authentic solution. Yentl leaves the community and lives out her life as Anshel, and Avigdor returns to town, presents Anshel’s writ of divorce to Hadass and eventually marries Hadass. The story ends with the birth of their child, a boy they name Anshel.
Singer concludes the story with a deeply subversive understanding that the three protagonists — Yentl/Anshel, Avigdor and Hadass — are fully aware of all the gender bending in their lives. The Theatre J production could have been truer to its queer musical spin (other songs played up gay male and lesbian love) by having all three end up living polyamorously in some cosmopolitan European city, but instead it took a safe, heteronormative way out, with, once again, the trans person miserably on the margins while the ostensibly straight couple have their baby. Yet they do name their son Anshel, undoubtedly shocking their tightly knit religious community. And they play their roles cognizant of the fact that their romantic desires are both homosexual and heterosexual, whether or not they intend that to be the case.
Singer, winner of the Nobel Prize and National Book Award, and considered by many to be the greatest writer in the Yiddish language, was a modernist with his heart deeply rooted in his Orthodox Jewish culture. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Miami when my wife interviewed him, and I remember her asking him why he always wrote about the Orthodox Jewish world and never the Conservative, Reform or secular ones. His answer: “When those worlds have survived as long as the traditional one, then I’ll write about them.” But he wrote about the humanity of his characters in an insightful way that has rarely been matched in stories about that community.
Singer’s Yentl, written in the 1950s, brought forth a trans character before its time. Leah Napolin, who wrote the play with Singer, converted her into a feminist icon. Streisand then put her own iconic stamp on it (and Singer was not happy about it at all). Serotsky’s play, which at times feels like a take on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, remakes this Yentl as authentically Anshel, strongly rooting it as a queer statement in the manner of Singer. Jill Sobule, the composer, shares my interpretation. We stand in contrast to Ms. Napolin and Ms. Serotsky, who see this version as another variation of the feminist interpretation. This is not surprising, given that in 1975 Napolin dismissed viewing Yentl as “suffering from some hormonal predisposition to masculinity.” Too often some feminists of that era still refuse to acknowledge trans persons’ humanity, contributing to their continuing invisibility. Recognizing the reality of the trans experience in no way minimizes the feminist critique of society. Trans women are generally more inclined toward feminism than cisgender women, and trans men know existentially what it means to be oppressed as women. I hope further productions emphasize Ms. Sobule’s reading and make this a story that Jewish trans children and adolescents can absorb to help them make the archaic, sexist morning blessings a thing of the past.
National Coming Out Day: The Importance of Bi-Visibility
Here’s What A Right Wing Homophobe Being Epically Schooled Looks Like
Here’s What A Right Wing Homophobe Being Epically Schooled Looks Like
It’s safe to say Australian MP Bob Katter has a less-than-ideal record when it comes to gay issues. On second thought, his record is abysmal. In 1989 he made a comment that continues to surface that there are almost no gay people in North Queensland, and that if they represented more than .001 of the population, he’d walk backwards from Bourke (which we can only assume is far away).
He’s voted against anti-discrimination legislature to protect LGBT people, and in 2011 he said the prospect of same-sex marriage, “deserves to be laughed at and ridiculed.”
Which makes this clip of Josh Thomas taking him to task all the more satisfying. Rarely do you get to see a right-wing politician have to react in real time to a logical breakdown of the terrible things they’ve said. But watching Katter squirm as Thomas makes point after point is like seeing a car crash in slow motion. Katter can’t even get himself to look directly at Thomas — his eyes dart nervously around the room instead.
Thomas, who is a gay comedian with a well-respected queer-themed television show called Please Like Me, chimes in after an unsatisfactory answer by Katter to an audience member’s question about how a “reluctance to address homosexuals as well as their civil rights is quite detrimental to their mental health.”
Josh tells Katter:
“You say a lot of really important, powerful things…When I hear you talking about dairy farmers, and you say people in the cities should spend more than two dollars on milk I agree with you. But then when you go out and you deny the existence of homosexuals in North Queensland — they exist, there’s an app called Grindr, I’ll put it on your phone — you disenfranchise the community.”
Here’s the clip:
Dan Tracer
