It’s Sunday Funday once again! This is our first Sunday together in December, and the holigays are around the corner. So what do you need in the middle of shopping, holiday video marathons, and card signing? Well, the kind of gift only I can bring you: tons and tons of good news!
So go put your ugliest sweater on, light up the fire, and curl up with your electric blanket. ‘Tis the season for gay people to get married, break the rules, and look at pictures of Kate Moss looking like David Bowie.
When We Were Outlaws Sounds Like the Best Thing Ever
The Advocate’s review of When We Were Outlaws by Jeanne Cordova reminds you why you like being a lesbian in the first place. And also why sometimes girls in aviator glasses are just the best kind of all:
I knew the book would be good. I was wrong. When We Were Outlaws is not a good book. It is a great book. Cordova has a literary gift that mixes a journalist’s bold style with smart sociological overview. And the author’s lesbian butch perspective carries a rare voice.
Outlaws is a riveting fast paced piece of literature that takes place in the early to mid 1970s. This true story weaves in and out of a lighting fast radical time. It goes from Angela Davis to Patty Hearst to radical lesbians to the Weather Underground to a neo-Nazi party hell-bent on blowing up any progressive group within its sight. And Cordova was right in the middle of everything.
Gay People Like Marriage, Australia
via soyoureengayged.com
There are so many gay marriage updates this week that I couldn’t even fit them in the biggest box at the store.
+ Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico, announced Thursday that he supports marriage equality:
“As I have examined this issue, consulted with folks on all sides, and viewed it through the lens of individual freedom and equal rights, it has become clear to me that denying those rights and benefits to gay couples is discrimination, plain and simple,” Johnson said. “For a very long time, society has viewed gay marriage as a moral and, yes, religious issue. Today, I believe we have arrived at a point in history where more and more Americans are viewing it as a question of liberty and freedom.”
+ Lawyers for the Church of England say that weddings will be open to same-sex couples “under any scheme” to make the institution open to gay and lesbian couples.
And meanwhile, in Australia…
+ 5,000 people marched to the Labor Party’s convention in Sydney to express support for legal recognition of gay marriages, and it worked. The party’s frontbencher, Mark Butler, announced Saturday that the party would be introducing legislation to make it happen:
“I announce today that when we return to parliament in the new year a Labor member of parliament, Stephen Jones, who is here today, will move a bill to make that policy a reality,” Mr Butler said.
“I and dozens of my Labor colleagues will proudly cast our vote in favour of that bill.”
+ Finalists in the City of Sydney Business Awards this year came out in support of marriage equality.
A DADT Love Story
Navy Lt. Gary Ross and Gary Swezy remember the days of DADT all too well – because they couldn’t end soon enough. The two men were the first to marry after DADT’s days came to a close:
Gary said the ceremony began 15 minutes before midnight.
The officiating justice of peace kept an eye on a clock, not wanting to declare them married until Sept. 20 was official.
He watched the clock and at 12:01 a.m. he said “I declare you married,” Gary said, making him and Dan the first same-sex couple, with one of them a serving member of the military, to be wed.
Gone was DADT.
Money Sculptures
Slate has gathered a collection of money sculptures for you to gaze at mindlessly:
Heather Matarazzo is a Total Lesbo and Has a New Film
Heather Matarazzo talked about her career and her love life with The Advocate for an interview published Saturday:
ADVOCATE: You were always attracted to girls but said you didn’t really have a name for it until you became aware of gay people when you did Welcome to the Dollhouse when you were 11. Did that experience frighten you?
HEATHER: No, it was exhilarating. To be able to finally put a name to something is always exciting, it’s always exhilarating, and that was my experience. I’d rather know than not know … as human beings, we’re always trying to figure things out and get to, like, the root and put a name on it. Being able to find out that I wasn’t terminally unique and I wasn’t some weird freak, I was like, Oh, this has a name. It has a name.
Kate Moss Goes Bowie
Oh French Vogue, you have completed me. Check Kate Moss’ David Bowie on the cover:
Therapy Dogs Doing The Nutcracker
The DADT story is so sweet.
And I know this isn’t the point of the post, but if you happen to be the woman with the rainbow dog tags in the 5th picture, give me a call.
Hey,
Just so you know the original source of the picture under Gay people like marriage, Australia is from So You’re Engayged: http://www.soyoureengayged.com/2011/real-gay-wedding-bellingham-wa-tricia-and-jordan/
Those dogs are terrible dancers.
Just to clarify: same-sex marriage is still not legal in Australia and is very unlikely to be in the near future. The Prime Minister has called for a conscience vote on the issue, which is likely to result in the opposition voting as a bloc against same-sex marriage. Yes, the ALP (the party currently in power) has changed its platform to support same-sex marriage, but they are still a long way from actually legalising it.
Yeah, this. Okay I will explain for non-Australian audiences and then anyone who cares about the issue can read on :)
The Labor Party is the party in government in Australia. Every three years, they have a big National Conference where people from within the Party set its broad policy principles. The issue of equal marriage came up at the National Conference last week. There were two issues the Party voted on. One was whether to change the Labor Party’s policy platform from marriage being heterosexual-only to supporting same-sex marriage. This vote was overwhelmingly successful, and so the Labor Party now has equal marriage in its long-term policy agenda. Hooray, right?! Well, yes, but…
The second vote was about how the Labor Party should pursue the issue of same-sex marriage in the immediate future. Should the Government introduce equal marriage legislation into Parliament and vote as a bloc so that it becomes law? OR should there be a ‘conscience vote’, where each Labor person in Parliament can vote accordingly to what they think about the issue? The Labor Party chose a conscience vote.
The problem with this is that, when everyone in Parliament votes on the proposed equal marriage law, if the conservative party (nearly 50% of Parliament) votes against the law, and then only SOME people in the Labor Party vote for equal marriage, then the proposed law won’t get the 50% of the votes it needs to become actual law. So basically the conscience vote looks doomed from the outset. There is going to be a conscience vote because the Labor Party overwhelmingly supports gay marriage but the Prime Minister has said she doesn’t believe in it. The conscience vote is Labor’s way of doing something about gay marriage but not embarrassing the anti-equality Prime Minister.
Fyi, a frontbencher is just a term for someone who sits on the front benches of Parliament. It means they probably occupy a position of power in the party, and they might be a Minister (US equivalent Secretary) or something like that, if they sit with the party in government at the time. It’s not an official position or a spokesperson role or anything like that.
In conclusion, an important battle has been won, but the fight for equality is far from over :)
Very well said!
Well said indeed.
What a cop out really. Gillard doesn’t support it and declaring a conscience vote was the easy way out.
As Labor minister John Faulkner said on the day, ”A conscience vote on human rights is not conscionable. I don’t believe it is appropriate for those opposed to this change to hide behind arithmetic.”
yeah john faulkner’s speech was the bomb diggity.
if only politicians actually went with the tide of public opinion on this one! according to http://bit.ly/s3KMgO even 76% of coalition voters want abbott to allow a conscience vote for the opposition. one can dream right? my hopes are below groundlevel though.
p.s. i don’t know what the hell is wrong with julia gillard!! come on woman.
https://twitter.com/#!/samesame/status/142485287799496706/photo/1
Wow – ‘women’s rights, anti-nuclear policy and homosexual rights’. How times change.
John Faulkner for PM <3 I'm so sad he won't be contesting the next Federal election.
Penny Wong's speech was awesome too! But Joe de Bruyn and that Tasmanian lady who said that she was not a 'homophobic'… lol.
Yep, this is what I came here to say. The change in party platform is definitely progress, but given how split the party is over the issue a conscience vote is basically a compromise doomed to fail, as the Opposition is unlikely to allow a conscience vote or support the bill.
can i just say, that is a beautiful tie!
That Kate Moss picture just short circuited my brain.
Wow! It doesn’t seem so good to me, but at least they had one season to do anything they wanna do.
Some countries are not allowed to have same-sex marriage, but in my opinion, they should had a chance, as the human being.
Kate Moss as David Bowie! OHMYGOD. As a David Bowie fan and a queer girl, this is just what I needed. :D AND Bryan Ferry, Boy George, and Lou Reed? Was this a glam rock issue? WANT. o_o