Jul. 17th, 2008
(no subject)
Jul. 17th, 2008 02:32 amReaching Puberty Early
Why was I so alarmed about my Black daughter starting puberty at the age of 7? As a white mom who first menstruated at 13, I was afraid of the prospect of my child dealing with sexuality at such a young age. My fear increased as I found studies showing a litany of social risks for girls who mature early: poor self-esteem, increased depression, early sexual intercourse and increased drug and alcohol use and abuse. Most worrisome to me were the increased health risks associated with early puberty: breast cancer, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and polycystic ovarian syndrome. Early-maturing girls reach their adult height early, and if this occurs by age 12, they have a significant risk of getting a very aggressive form of breast cancer. I knew that I had to take action.
One of the first discoveries I made was that girls were having different experiences with puberty based on race. A 1997 study, conducted at pediatricians’ offices nationwide, found that girls were showing the first signs of puberty about a year earlier than was considered normal. Most striking was that Black girls were beginning puberty about a year earlier than white girls. Compared with 8-year-old white girls, about four times as many Black 8-year-olds grow pubic hair and develop breast buds. The age when girls get their first periods has also dropped (though less dramatically) over the past 30 years, and Black girls precede white girls by half a year in this regard.
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When I began looking into environmental causes, however, a clearer picture began forming. Dr. Sandra Steingraber, author of the Breast Cancer Fund’s comprehensive 2007 report “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls” considers early puberty to be “an ecological disorder” resulting from a complex web of environmental influences. Pollutants, plastics and chemicals may be the hidden causes of early puberty in girls, and Black girls seem to be more vulnerable.
When I discovered my daughter’s breast buds, I emptied my house of plastic water bottles and stopped letting her eat school lunches that are heated in plastic. I did this just on a hunch. With great relief, I watched her breast buds recede over the next month. In fact, by the time she saw the doctor two weeks later, her breast buds had shrunk to the point that he was unimpressed. A friend whose daughter sprouted pubic hair at the age of 6 and a half tossed out all of the plastic in her house and had the satisfaction of watching the pubic hair vanish.
These anecdotes are not backed by hard statistics, because studies in this area have yet to be prioritized, but they fit perfectly with what we’ve recently learned about plastics.
Polycarbonate plastics (imprinted with a number 7) are made hard and durable by bisphenol A, or BPA, one of the most abundant synthetic chemicals nowadays. More than six billion pounds of BPA are produced in the United States each year. It is in so many products that it is impossible to name them all, but they include dental sealants and fillings, some food containers, 80 percent of food can liners and many water bottles. BPA also leaches from landfills into groundwater and is found in indoor air. A 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control showed that 93 percent of people randomly tested had BPA in their urine, but the highest levels were found in Blacks, women, young children and poor people.
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She is a lawful permanent Resident in the US. She even entered legally. But now she is being deported to Russia, because she hit her child. Said 2 year old child is now in foster care. Her story is told in:
When An Immigrant Mom Gets Arrested
In 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), increasing the ease with which immigrants—including green card holders—could be deported, especially as a result of criminal convictions. “Criminal aliens” (as they are labeled by the government, especially those classified as “aggravated felons”) can now be summarily deported, even if they served jail time many years ago. In addition, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, can place detainers on immigrants in jails and prisons, even those still awaiting a hearing or trial. Upon completion of their sentence, these people face removal proceedings. In the wake of 9/11, a growing number of local governments have also begun collaborating with ICE informally and formally through 287(g) programs that deputize local police to enforce federal immigration laws. Without some degree of local collaboration, Mitrohina would never have faced deportation. According to the government, deportation is technically an administrative procedure, so it doesn’t fall under the aegis of double jeopardy. Yet deportation effectively sentences people to exile. “You would be hard-pressed to find a detained immigrant in the United States who did not constantly feel that they were being punished a second or third time for the same mistakes, solely due to their immigration status, including lawful permanent residents like Tatyana,” said Raha Jorjani, an attorney at the Immigrant Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis, who helped file an appeal on Mitrohina’s behalf.
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Mitrohina was born in 1978 in Russia with deformities on her hands and feet that she says her parents could not accept. “They considered me inadequate and worthless, and told me so all the time,” she said. After shuttling in and out of public institutions as a child, her parents put her up for adoption when she was 14. She was adopted by a couple in Sonoma County, California, soon after, but did not have an easy transition to life in the United States. And although her parents applied for her to receive citizenship, a combination of bureaucratic delays and legal missteps left Mitrohina without it. At the age of 21, she moved out of her parents’ home and has not been in contact with them since. Although years have passed, Mitrohina speaks about her childhood with an anger and confusion that is immediate.
In 2005, the prenatal clinic where she’d been receiving care made house visits and diagnosed Mitrohina with postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of her deeply troubled childhood. “I really thought I could deal with my problems on my own,” she said. “They offered counseling, and even when CPS [Child Protective Services] got involved, I never accepted it because I was afraid they would take my baby away.” She acknowledges now that the enduring trauma of being cast out of her own family compounded her struggle to cope with the stresses of new parenthood and joblessness.
Things were looking up, though, Mitrohina insists. Before her arrest, she had found a job for the first time in two years and had completed two semesters at the Santa Rosa Junior College. But the strains of being a single mom on public assistance were too much for her, and she was arrested in June 2007 for abusing her son. Her child was temporarily put in foster care, and the Family Court in Sonoma County agreed that it would be in the child’s best interest to return home if Mitrohina completed a short jail sentence and six-month probation. The terms of her probation required that she enroll in parenting and anger-management classes, seek counseling and begin a course of medications to manage her depression.
Two days after Mitrohina’s sentencing, however, she found that ICE had put a hold on her record. She had been added to the long and steadily growing queue of non-citizens slated for deportation. Mitrohina was sure the ICE detainer would amount to little and felt confident that her legal entry into the country and green card would clear up the minor glitch in her case.
But it was a race against time: every day she remained in ICE custody was another day she violated the terms of her probation and risked losing her son permanently to the foster care system. She fought for a Cancellation of Removal but was denied. She then appealed that judge’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals but was also denied.
“The goals of that [family] court conflicted with the goals of the immigration court, which were to determine whether or not someone in Tatyana’s position deserved a second chance in the United States,” Jorjani explained. Mitrohina was stuck between two legal systems that do not communicate.
Searching for escape from this catch-22, Mitrohina still visits the law library and carries around a sheaf of notes of applicable cases and laws she wants to explore to push her case further.
Deportation, though, is now a near certainty, but not one she can accept.
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In which the Military is NOT all fun and games for women of colour.
Home from the Military
There are about 200,000 active-duty military women today, some 14 percent of the total force, according to federal data. About half of them are women of color. Women of color also now make up around a third of former service members. Of a little more than 1.7 million women veterans nationwide, about 19 percent are Black and 7 percent are Latina. Asian American, Pacific Islander, American Indian and mixed-race women each comprise up to 2 percent or less. Proportionally, people of color comprise a greater share of female veterans than of male veterans.
Women of color, like others, are drawn into the armed forces by both needs and ideals. Some are spurred by patriotism or a desire for adventure; others just want a stable job or money for college. Whatever their economic or social motives, the recruitment rhetoric pushed to youth across the country markets the military as a way out of their current circumstances and on toward where they need to go.
But the soldier’s path leads many women of color back to where they started—to the turbulence and entrenched discrimination besetting their home communities. And for some, the journey veers unexpectedly toward a new political consciousness.
Maricela Guzman, a Latina Navy veteran who now works as a counter-recruitment activist in California, urges youth of color to look past the sales pitch of economic opportunity.
“You’re going to this environment thinking you’re going to make all this money,” she warned, “but you’re going back to a system that is going to keep you down.”
For many young people, spending a 21st birthday in boot camp would be a sobering experience. But Eli PaintedCrow had grown up early; passing a birthday in the Army was one way to ensure her children would spend theirs under better circumstances.
She joined the Army to get off welfare and support her young sons. She also sought a kind of camaraderie she never had growing up in the barrios of San Jose, estranged from her ancestral community, the indigenous Yaqui Nation.
“It really did make me feel like I belonged somewhere and that I could be good at something,” she said.
As a fresh Navy recruit a few weeks into basic training, Maricela Guzman shouldn’t have been surprised to find herself facedown on the floor, frantically doing push-ups. She had not followed proper procedure for addressing a commander in his office—knocking before entering and asking permission to speak. Accordingly, he told her to “drop” as punishment.
But while the penalty was routine, the circumstances were not: she had come to tell him she had been raped.
Before she could say anything, though, she had to repeat the drill to her commander’s satisfaction. “I think it was 20 minutes later after I was able to do it right,” she said. “And I was so numb afterwards that I couldn’t even say anything.”
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LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Jul. 17th, 2008 12:15 pm![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
In which White Supremacist buys $69 tshirt that says "Obama is my slave", walks around in New York, gets beaten up by 4 black teens, and THEN tries to sue the DESIGNER
Cause the designer forced the non-too-bright asshole to go into his shop and pay $69 for a racist tshirt. He also forced her to wear it in a town CHOCK FULL OF BLACK PEOPLE!
Oh and the Israeli-born designer? He ain't racist.
“I can’t stand Obama,” Braun says, adding that it’s not because the Illinois senator is black. “That’s the only thing I like about him. He opens the door for other minorities.”
“He reminds me of Adolf Hitler,” Braun explained, adding he does not like Obama because “he is a Muslim” — a thoroughly debunked myth.
Riiiggghhhtttttt!
But seriously, WHO THA HELL buys a $69 TSHIRT???
BOSTON (AP) _ Gay couples from across the country are one step closer to a Massachusetts wedding.The state Senate voted Tuesday to repeal a 1913 law used to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying in the state. The law, driven in part by California's recent embrace of same-sex marriage, prohibits couples from obtaining marriage licenses if they couldn't legally wed in their home states.
The House is expected to vote on the repeal later this week. Gov. Deval Patrick, whose 18-year-old daughter announced publicly last month that she is a lesbian, would have 10 days to sign it.
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Patrick, a Democrat and the state's first black governor, said the 95-year-old statute also carries a racist taint.
The law dates to a time when the majority of states outlawed interracial marriages. Critics said the law was designed to smooth relations with those states. Massachusetts has allowed interracial marriages since 1843.
Dianne Wilkerson, the Massachusetts Senate's lone black member, said the vote was long overdue. She called the law "evil."
"This is one of the most pernicious statutes on our books," said Wilkerson, a Democrat. "This bill puts the final nail in the coffin of those dark days."
Las Vegas Envy
After four years, same-sex marriage has also begun to feel normal in Massachusetts. It’s not something that comes up in conversation much anymore. There is no greater force against bigotry than the moment when something becomes so routine that you stop noticing it.
One state lawmaker who had originally supported a constitutional amendment against gay marriage changed her mind and voted against it when the measure went down to a final defeat in 2007. She told Pam Belluck of The Times about one of her older constituents who had nagged her to get rid of same-sex unions then turned around and lobbied her to keep them. A gay couple, she said, had moved into her neighborhood: “They help me with my lawn, and if there can’t be marriage in Massachusetts, they’ll leave.”
My 83-year-old mother, who I have always thought of as conservative on matters like sex, has a home helper, Joe Wallace, who is gay. To say they hit it off would be a deep, deep understatement. It gradually became clear to my siblings and me that there were any number of activities that my mother would rather do with Joe than with us. Shopping, for sure. Having late-night telephone discussions about taking pills was another. Also preparing for bridge parties.
“Joe made menus,” my sister informed me.
My mother has begun to make inquiries about whether anybody is interested in taking her to the next Cincinnati Pride Alive Parade.
(no subject)
Jul. 17th, 2008 02:29 pmBecause to me, those who claim to get this image are the unsophisticates who lack the cultural and artistic literacy to understand the proper meaning of the word "satire". It's not the same as "sarcasm". That's why we have two different words. (Hint: that last line was sarcastic, not satirical. And I won't even get into the massive popular abuse of the word "ironic".)
See, in my world, the purpose of satire is iconoclasm; by which I mean, the breaking of icons, the exploding of false power centers and false narratives which hold destructive sway over society. The New Yorker cover, despite its intention and despite being sarcastic, is not satire; rather, it is a visualization and manifestation of racist cliches and stereotypes, and thus a propagation and perpetuation of racism. It does not interrogate the validity of those racist stereotypes, but rather accepts and gleefully embraces their marginalizing and dehumanizing power, then implies that it's ludicrous for conservative yahoos to think that the Obamas are those kinds of blacks...
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You can't fight demeaning portrayals by actualizing them.
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The appropriate response is to undermine the entire set of underlying assumptions and beliefs...
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Perhaps most fundamentally, the piece does not connect with the social realities of blackness, but only with the fears of the white imagination. In so doing, it reaffirms and reanimates those fears and social divisions at a pre-intellectual level, which is where art primarily impacts the psyche.
There is more destruction of ironic hipster BS right here
Also, the diary links to actual examples of satire
AL Gore DC Environment Speech
Jul. 17th, 2008 05:17 pmLadies and gentlemen:
There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more - if more should be required - the future of human civilization is at stake.
I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.
The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse - much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland's largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.
Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world.
Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an "energy tsunami" that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse.
And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today.
Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that's been worrying me.
I'm convinced that one reason we've seemed paralyzed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately - without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective - they almost always make the other crises even worse.
Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.
We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change.
But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.
The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.
In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.
What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home?
We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.
And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America.
The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses.
In which truth is stranger than fiction.
Jul. 17th, 2008 05:46 pmWhite Supremacist Represents School for Poor Minority Kids
This spring, a high-society New York magazine called Quest ran a short feature about Emilia Fanjul, the wife of sugar baron Jose “Pepe” Fanjul, and her remarkable efforts to help black and migrant worker children out of poverty. The story described how Fanjul, a major philanthropist, was helping to finance and build a sparkling new campus for Glades Academy, a charter school in the town of Pahokee, Fla., which suffers with a 32% poverty rate. “I call them the forgotten children,” Fanjul said. “My greatest wish is that they gain dignity and hope.”
At the end of the article, Quest added a practical note: “For more information about Glades Academy, call Chloe Black.” A telephone number followed.

What the magazine didn’t say — and, doubtless, didn’t know — was that Chloe Hardin Black (above, with David Duke, in a 1976 photo from Tyler Bridges’ The Rise of David Duke) is a long-time white supremacist and the wife of a notorious former Klan leader. Black’s husband is Don Black, a former Alabama Klan chieftain who is famous among white supremacists for his creation of Stormfront, the largest white supremacist Web forum in the world. Prior to Black, Chloe Hardin was married to Black’s former boss, neo-Nazi David Duke, who was the national leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.
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Snapshot of America
Jul. 17th, 2008 07:31 pmFourteen percent of the population - some 30 million Americans - lacks the literacy skills to perform simple, everyday tasks like understanding newspaper articles and instruction manuals.
Twelve percent of Americans lack the literacy skills to fill in a job application or payroll form, read a map or bus schedule, or understand labels on food and drugs.
More than one in five Americans - 22 percent of the population - have “below basic” quantitative skills, making it impossible to balance a checkbook, calculate a tip, or figure out from an advertisement the amount of interest on a loan.
The richest 20 percent of all U.S. households earned more than half of the nation’s total income in 2006.
The top 1 percent of U.S. households possesses a full third of America’s wealth.
Households in the top 10 percent of the income distribution hold more than 71 percent of the country’s wealth, while those in the lowest 60 percent possess just 4 percent.
In 2004, median net worth was $140,800 for whites, and $24,900 for nonwhites.
The real value of the minimum wage has decreased by 40 percent in the past forty years.
Despite the fact that the US spends roughly $5.2bn (£2.6bn) every day on health care, more per capita than any other nation in the world, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of every western European and Nordic country, bar Denmark.
The U.S. infant mortality rate is on par with that of Croatia, Cuba, Estonia, and Poland; if the U.S. infant mortality rate were the same as that of top-ranked Sweden, 21,000 more American babies would live to celebrate their first birthdays every year.
A baby born in Washington, D.C. is almost two-and-a-half times more likely to die before age one than a baby born in Vermont. African American babies are more than twice as likely to die before age one than either white or Latino babies.
The U.S. ranks #24 among the 30 most affluent countries in life expectancy - yet spends more on health care than any other nation.
More than half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are related to an inability to pay for illness or injury.
Where's this coming from? The First ever American Human Development Project.
What the heck is that?
Human development is defined as the process of enlarging people’s freedoms and opportunities and improving their well-being. Human development is about the real freedom ordinary people have to decide who to be, what to do, and how to live.
The human development concept was developed by economist Mahbub ul Haq. At the World Bank in the 1970s, and later as minister of finance in his own country, Pakistan, Dr. Haq argued that existing measures of human progress failed to account for the true purpose of development—to improve people’s lives. In particular, he believed that the commonly used measure of Gross Domestic Product failed to adequately measure well-being. Working with Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and other gifted economists, in 1990 Dr. Haq published the first Human Development Report, which was commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme.
Central to the human development approach is the concept of capabilities. Capabilities—what people can do and what they can become-are the equipment one has to pursue a life of value. Basic capabilities valued by virtually everyone include: good health, access to knowledge, and a decent material standard of living. Other capabilities central to a fulfilling life could include the ability to participate in the decisions that affect one’s life, to have control over one’s living environment, to enjoy freedom from violence, to have societal respect, and to relax and have fun.
Our capabilities are expanded (or constrained) by our own efforts and by the institutions and conditions of our society. People with extensive, well-developed capabilities have the tools they need to make their vision of “a good life” a reality. Those poor in capabilities are less able to chart their own course and to seize opportunities. Without basic capabilities, human potential remains unfulfilled.
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( Read more... )
We've seen a wave of news stories that Wall Street is scared of Obama, or the Obama will lead to a market crash or that Obama will kill the economy. First -- it's not like the Republicans have a lot to crow about here. We're currently dealing with the long term effects of Republican excesses and the results are terrible. Secondly - and more importantly, the historical record (those pesky facts again) indicate that Democrats are far better for the economy than Republicans.
The following charts are from the Liscio report blog.
The blog notes:
Democrats have a clear edge on GDP growth: 4.4% vs. 2.6%. Even if you start the clock with Truman in 1949 (eliminating the war boom and immediate postwar bust), the Dem advantage survives, with average growth of 4.5%. The partisan difference is widespread, too, not dependent on a few strong or weak readings: the blue bars stack towards the top of the graph, and the red bars towards the bottom. It might surprise some readers to learn that the Carter years weren’t quite as bad as some remember—though the inflation performance was miserable.But Republicans are the party of big business! They know the economy! Actually, the facts indicate the Democrats are simply put better at initiating policies that help the whole economy -- not just small segments of it.
Democrats also create more jobs than Republicans. However -- here is a very important caveat. Over the last three expansion we've seen an overall decrease in the total number of jobs created. That is, the total number of jobs created during Clinton were less than Reagan and the total number of jobs created under Bush were less than Clinton. The point here is there is an overall trend in business to continually hire fewer and fewer people. The primary reason for this is two fold. First, there has been a massive increase in productivity over the same time period which means a business needs fewer people to do more stuff. Secondly, business has become more and more cost conscious and employment is typically the most expensive part of a businesses expenses.
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Spread the word.
News on teh LGBT front
Jul. 17th, 2008 09:50 pmSo Westboro Baptist is Picketing TONY SNOW'S funeral. Why? Cause he somehow contributed to the Homosexual Agenda Yeah, I'm stumped too.
Pride London gets into trouble: Hired indepedent contractors refused to allow transgendered attendants into the bathrooms
Who is supporting california's Prop 8, a motion to ban same-sex marriage
The Empty Wig's {Elizabeth Dole} flipped: proposes naming AIDS bill after Jesse Helms Yeah, the Jesse Helms created the travel ban itself. And who said these lovely things to justify his opinions:
Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."
Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."
Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."
Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."
Quite.
At least it passed without this final insult being paid.