LGBTQ

No doubt you’ve heard about the boycott of Dolce and Gabbana proposed by Elton John as a result of Domenic Dolce saying that In Vitro Fertilization (IFV) children, such as John’s, are “synthetic.”
The row created a great deal of discussion on social media and talk shows with parents who had utilized reproductive technologies defending IVF children with a knee jerk reaction from the left defending LGBTIQ rights without considering the rights of the children.

It’s been a year of fervent activism on police accountability, living wages, climate change, personal freedoms, immigrant rights, an open internet and diplomacy over war. The electoral beating the Democrats received has prompted both the Administration and some spineless congresspeople to realize that support for progressive issues could reinvigorate their base —a realization that has already led to Obama’s executive action on immigration and the opening to Cuba.
So here are some of the 2014 highlights.

We are biological creatures, part of an ecosphere, living in communities. Like any other organism, our genetic code sets parameters within which we live. The ecosphere is governed by laws of physics and chemistry that set the parameters within which all organisms exist. And we encounter the world not as isolated, independent individuals but through social systems that affect how we understand ourselves and the possibilities for our lives.

Sunday, June 29th was a warm sunny day which is never to be taken for granted in San Francisco, a perfect day for the annual Pride Parade. I got there at about 11 a.m. and made my way up Spear Street to the staging area of our unit, there to march in honor of our heroic WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
There were about 200 of us assembled for the Chelsea Manning contingent, including people from Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans, and other groups and individuals. Daniel Ellsberg was also there.

The recent article by Robert Jensen, “Some Basic Propositions about Sex, Gender, and Patriarchy,” espouses concepts that both reflect and perpetuate cissexism and transphobia. Jensen correctly anticipates that readers will recognize much of his article as unabashedly transphobic.

Within feminism there has been for decades an often divisive debate about transgenderism. With increasing mainstream news media and pop culture attention focused on the issue, understanding that feminist debate is more important than ever.

Kelly Cogswell is a columnist for New York’s Gay City News and the author of Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger. “Eating fire” refers to an initiation performed in front of spectators in which the Avengers lit torches and swallowed fire.

A black musician friend told me a funny story the other day. Among his sins he regularly attends black comedy nights here in London. On these nights the comedians are black and the audience predominantly so. But the other night a big white young woman settled in the front row. It didn’t take long before one of the female stand up artists picked on her.
“What are you doing here, on a black comedy night?”
“I am black,” the big white woman answered.
“Surely you are not, you are very white.”
“But I am Jewish,” the woman replied
“So you are a white Jew.”

Not two months into the reign of Pope Francis did the media begin its musings over the possibility that the Pontiff would revitalize a church in decline—and it’s clear now that transformation of a kind is on the agenda.

Tax day in America — My Ass!
I’ve been meaning to fix up the bio-sketch below. Certainly, fix the age 56, since I hit 57 two months ago. Born in 1957, now 57 witnessing another lunar eclipse, and the great eclipsing of humanity by algorithmic putzes and their masters: too-big-to-fail multinationals and transfinancials and a media that are so whore-fied, that, well, the new Black is Orange.