Bloggers For Good Happy Hour

Posted on February 18, 2009 by David

So, one of my Facebook friends, to great comic effect, thought that BFG Happy Hour meant something else. Here’s what it really is. Thursday night at O’Faolain’s – won’t you join us?

What is BFG?

Bloggers For Good (BFG) is a new, grass-roots group that sponsors local meetups for people to meet, greet, and give back to their communities. Meetups and other events provide a chance to gather in a fun, social setting with a common interest and a bigger purpose.

BFG meetups are designed to be low-key and fun. You don’t have to be a blogger yourself. Maybe you’re a fan of an attending blogger. Maybe you’re interested in starting a blog. Maybe you just like to hang out with interesting people.

BFG events benefit local charities through various means, such as canned food drives, donation of restaurant proceeds, and raffle sales. 100% of funds raised by BFG go directly to the involved charities. We’re being literal here – you couldn’t write a check to us if you tried!

BFG events are primarily publicized through “word of blog.” Supportive blogs post our logo graphic on their blogs, write about the event, and (hopefully!) attend the event. We aim to be viral in the best possible way!

The first BFG meetup event will take place on February 19 from 6-8 p.m. at O’Faolain’s Irish Restaurant in Sterling, VA. Proceeds will benefit Loudoun Interfaith Relief, the county’s largest food pantry.

With your help, we’ll be coming soon to a place near you!

To get our graphic, be listed as an attendee, get added to our email list or blogroll, or to get more info, contact Erin@BloggersforGood.org

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AFA sees the light!

Posted on February 14, 2009 by David

We have wonderful news: The American Family Association now opposes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In an astonishing change of heart, the formerly pro-discrimination advocacy group has expressed outrage over the treatment of a college basketball player.

“Brooke Heike was a high school basketball star who was aggressively sought after by several colleges that wanted the league MVP from Washington Township, Michigan, to continue her record-breaking rebounding and shot-blocking skills on their campus,” the AFA organ OneNewsNow tells us. “After leading her team to its first conference title in 18 years as a high school senior, the 6-foot-2 forward decided to attend Central Michigan University, which offered her a full scholarship.”

But according to Heike, she “fell out of favor” with the new coach, who disapproved of her gender expression and openness about her sexual orientation. The coach, she says, made comments about her appearance and presumed sexual behavior, and she was eventually dropped from the team and lost her scholarship. Heike has retained an attorney.

We are delighted to finally see the AFA become outraged by this sort of discrimination, and we look forward to their support of legislative and policy changes that address it. The full story appears below the fold.

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Situational ethics

Posted on January 30, 2009 by David

You gotta love the chutzpah of the special rights crowd.

It seems that the anti-gay organizers behind Prop 8 in California wanted to prevent public disclosure of donors to their campaign, and filed a lawsuit to overturn a state campaign finance law – a law that was enacted by voter referendum in 1974. They just lost that case. Sorry, there’s no special right to make secret donations to a controversial campaign.

Not that this comes as any surprise, but now we know: When we hear from anti-gay activists about their great reverence for “the will of the people,” and when they gravely intone that “the people have spoken,” they don’t really mean it. Like their faux reverence for “families,” it’s purely situational and amoral. It doesn’t apply when “the people” have inconvenienced their agenda.

As an old headline from The Onion once warned, Bottom Of Barrel Dangerously Overscraped.

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Eat more soup

Posted on January 29, 2009 by David

Yes, friends and neighbors, the increasingly wacky “American Family Association” has done it again. This time, they are discombobulated by the fact that Campbell’s Soup ran an ad in the Advocate that includes a family headed by two women. See for yourself how Campbell’s has, by merely inhabiting the reality-based world, “failed to remain neutral in the culture war.”

Given the very real ongoing meltdown of our economy, this sort of thing is simply unforgivably silly.

The AFA said to “feel free to edit this letter, or send it as it is.” I felt free to edit it:

Dear President Conant:

I am delighted that Campbell’s Soup has decided to recognize that real families come in many different flavors.

The “American Family Association” is confused, not to mention misleadingly named. They do not seem to understand that loving couples who commit to taking care of each other and any children they may be raising are “clean, wholesome and All-American,” regardless of gender. Any loving, stable family is “good for our country,” and anyone who doesn’t get that obviously hasn’t been eating enough soup. I personally recommend the Cream of Chicken. It would do them a world of good.

Thank you, and have a blessed day 🙂

If you prefer to bypass the “AFA Action Alert” system, here is the pertinent information:

Douglas R. Conant, President
Campbell Soup Company
Campbell Place
Camden, NJ 08103
Phone: 1-800-442-7684
or: 1-800-257-8443
E-Mail: douglas_r_conant(at)cambellsoup.com

Other “American Family Association” anti-business antics:
Why do anti-gay activists hate capitalism?
I’m lovin’ it
When you care enough to send the very best
First they came for McDonalds, then they came for Pepsico…another AFA boycott

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Prayers for Bobby

Posted on January 25, 2009 by David

This film will air on Lifetime tonight at 9:00 pm ET, and again Sunday Jan. 25 at 8:00 pm and Tuesday Jan. 27 at 9:00 pm.

Based on the true story told in the 1995 book by Leroy Aarons:

“His mother was an extreme fundamentalist Christian who felt God was going to cure her son of homosexuality and badgered the boy for four years to cure himself through prayer,” says Aarons, who is the former executive editor of the Oakland Tribune, and both the founder and current president of the National Lesbian Gay Journalists Association.

“She had made a terrible, terrible mistake,” Aarons says. “The wonderful thing is, tragically, after his death she began to discover the error of her ways and she’s now a crusader for gay kids.”

Mary Griffith, 60, of Walnut Creek, Calif. says that she was only doing what she thought was right for her son.

“I certainly believed with all my being that homosexuality was something God was going to cure and that it was a condition that had to be cured,” she says. “There were no if, ands or buts about it. That’s all I had ever known.

“We loved Bobby and thought we were doing the right thing,” she says.

It turns out that the Exodus folks are right when they say “people can change.” Mary Griffith did.

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‘Milk’ will be seen

Posted on January 24, 2009 by David

Now that the Oscar nominations have been announced, will we get to see Milk in one of our Loudoun County theaters?

Best Picture, Milk (Dan Jinks, Bruce Cohen)
Best Director, Gus Van Sant
Best Actor, Sean Penn
Best Supporting Actor, Josh Brolin
Best Original Screenplay, Dustin Lance Black
Best Costume Design, Danny Glicker
Best Editing, Elliot Graham
Best Original Score, Danny Elfman

I had a funny conversation with the manager of the Regal a few weeks ago – Milk was on the schedule, then suddenly it wasn’t, and our group ended up seeing it in Fairfax. According to this manager, there had been a mistake on the website and it was never scheduled to be shown at the Regal. (Since then I’ve learned that there had been a limited release – not just here, but nationwide – in anticipation of the Oscar nominations; now the major release should happen and folks should be able to see it locally.) The funny thing the manager said, by way of explanation, was that Fairfax “is more likely to show independent films.” I’m not sure in what sense she thought Milk was an independent film (which I read as “not mainstream”), with names like Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn; could it actually be that she thought that a film about a gay man is automatically “independent”? I didn’t explore this any further, and it could be that she just didn’t know anything about it. Anyway, look for Milk to now show up at local theaters. I’d definitely see it again.

Here is what nominee Dustin Lance Black had to say:

I won’t lie, I was up at 4:30 AM Pacific Time this morning. I couldn’t sleep. I took a shower, I started washing dishes, I did a load of laundry… I was completely losing my mind waiting for that local ABC telecast.

My heart jumped when Josh Brolin got nominated, but the tears started flowing when Gus got his. I couldn’t have asked for a better director for this project, a fiercer protector of this little spec script that meant so much to me. And that script would have been nothing without the dedicated talent of nominee Sean Penn, who truly inhabited Harvey’s soul, and Josh Brolin, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Diego Luna, Alison Pill, Joseph Cross, and on and on. This film was a real team effort.

By the time the nominations got to Best Picture, I was a wreck. Tears… lots of tears. I couldn’t breathe. My big hope had been that the Academy would recognize our film enough that Harvey’s story could get a wider release, but I could never have predicted 8 nominations including Best Picture. I’m still pinching myself.

When I first heard Harvey’s story at 13, I was a closeted kid living in a conservative Mormon, military home. It was a rough time for me. Hearing Harvey’s story not only gave me the hope he talked so often about, it very likely saved my life. What happened this morning means this film WILL win a wider audience, and maybe, just maybe Harvey’s message will reach some of those kids out there today who have been told they are “less than,” that they are sick, that God does not love them, and perhaps, from the grave, 30 years later, Harvey might give those kids the hope and love he gave me so long ago. It might sound overblown to some, but I firmly believe these nominations are life-saving. I can’t thank the Academy enough.

Thirty years later, there are still closeted kids like Black in homes like the one he grew up in. One of the most poignant moments in the film is when Harvey gets a phone call from a kid who realized that his life was worth living, and managed to get away from the family who was going to commit him to an anti-gay reeducation camp.

A lot of things have changed in thirty years; a good example is the reaction of our community to the Sam Adams sex scandal. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that gay kids are still being abused by groups like Exodus, who exploit the ignorance of their parents. That it’s ignorance and not malice is demonstrated by another astonishingly timely film airing tonight on Lifetime, Prayers for Bobby. I can understand why those who want to keep the parents ignorant and the kids shamed and hopeless would want to prevent them from seeing Milk. Thankfully, they will be much less successful now.

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Clueless

Posted on January 16, 2009 by David

This has got to break some sort of record for stupid.

Yesterday, I heard a man equate the sacrifices made by Thomas Beatie so that he and his wife could have children, with the crowd of idiots who trampled a man to death so they could get inside a Wal-Mart to go shopping. No kidding, this was on (OMG!) “Janet Parshall’s America” (see here for more on that). The man is named Wesley J. Smith, and he writes a blog about bioethics and “the importance of being human.” Bioethics is a big subject, and Wesley J. Smith may well have something insightful to say about some aspect of it, for all I know. But that possibility now seems remote to me, given that he knows so little and displays absolutely no inquisitiveness about something as central to being human as gender.

Here is the “reasoning” involved in his placing those two completely opposite events in the same category, something he calls “coup de culture“: He thinks they are both illustrations of “hedonistic people” who are self-centered and think they should get what they want when they want it, no matter what it takes. He may have a point with the Wal-Mart shoppers; as I recall, they refused to stop shopping even after learning that they had trampled a man to death. However, I’m having a hard time understanding how Mr. Beatie could possibly be viewed as “hedonistic” after not only experiencing the rather harrowing and difficult process of gender transition, but then reversing that process so that he and his wife could have a child together. That strikes me as a tremendously loving act of self-sacrifice, and quite the opposite of hedonism. Such a peculiar misreading is only explicable if Smith’s understanding of gender and of transsexual people is belligerently cartoonish.

I don’t wish to be unfair. Not understanding what gender identity is, not being familiar with the lives of any transsexual people, or with the science associated with that particular medical condition, is not something about which anyone needs to be ashamed. There are probably a lot of folks who don’t know anything about transsexual people – but most of them don’t write multiple blog entries on this subject about which they have no knowledge. Smith does, so he has invited this:

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