Monday, September 10, 2012
Pat Robertson's Advice: Beat Your Wife
On a tangential note, I'm sure there are same-sex couples that are far kinder to each other than this "traditionally" married couple.
DADT's Repeal NOT Apocalyptic
- Repealing DADT has had no overall negative impact on military readiness, including cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment, or morale.
- Greater openness and honesty post-repeal may have actually increased understanding, respect, and acceptance.
- Recruitment has remained robust.
- Retention was unaffected by repeal. Only two individuals’ departure can be tied to repeal, both military chaplains.
- There has been no increase in violence within units; in fact, many harassment disputes can now be resolved in ways that were not possible when servicemembers could not disclose their sexual orientation.
- Unit morale was not impacted, except on the individual level depending on a servicemember’s personal position on the issue of DADT.
- LGB servicemembers did not come out en masse.
Maryland Delegate Relents
Maryland politician Emmett C. Burns Jr. has taken a ton of criticism after he said the Baltimore Ravens should punish linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo for speaking out for same sex marriage. Burns, a Maryland House delegate opposed to a gay marriage bill awaiting voter OK this fall, has now changed his stance.“Upon reflection, he has his First Amendment rights,” Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Baltimore County Democrat, told the Baltimore Sun in a telephone interview. “And I have my First Amendment rights. … Each of us has the right to speak our opinions. The football player and I have a right to speak our minds.”Technically, Burns (and those who ripped the politician) are wrong when they say this is a First Amendment issue. That deals only with the government restricting speech. The Ravens, being a private business, could have theoretically punished Ayanbadejo for speaking out and it would not have violated his constitutional rights.~Ayanbadejo’s response to Burns has been low-key and the story did not get too much attention initially. Then, Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe (himself a same-sex marriage supporter) wrote an obscenity-laced tirade against Burns on Friday that went viral, generating 1.6 million page views on Deadspin, being linked from dozens of sites and generating a bunch of related stories in the mainstream media, including a front page sports story in Sunday’s New York Times.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
The "Homophobic" Perception of Football Players
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| Michael Strahan (center) |
From the New York Times:
“It was unexpected to a lot of gay people to have someone from the most masculine sports league in the country come to the defense of the gay community and attack this person,” said Cyd Zeigler, a founder of Outsports.com. “It was unexpected, and it was awesome. To see the clear passion for this topic, I think, was energizing.”~In the past week, [Brendon] Ayanbadejo has been contacted by supporters in Brazil, Norway, England, Australia, Colombia and Ireland. He has also been overwhelmed by the support of his Ravens teammates and other N.F.L. players. “I’d say the majority of players are siding with me, that all people have a right to live and love and be happy,” Ayanbadejo said in a telephone interview. “That’s really amazing. I’m very happy to see the tides changing in the positive.”Kluwe, whose brother-in-law is gay, said all but “four or five of about 6,000” messages he had received on Twitter in response to his letter were positive.“I think the culture in the N.F.L. has become a lot more tolerant in the last 10 years or so,” Kluwe said in a telephone interview. “There’s a younger generation coming in every year or two, and they make me hopeful of the future.”~
Scott Fujita (left) And, Ellner said, support for gay-rights issues is on the rise in the league. The current and former N.F.L. players Scott Fujita, Michael Strahan and Nic Harris are among those who have spoken out in support of same-sex marriage. The Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, who had a brother who was gay, appeared on the cover of Out magazine. Zeigler said he had interviewed 25 current players in the past year, all of whom said they would welcome a gay teammate.Perhaps most noteworthy, in August the San Francisco 49ers became the first N.F.L. team to join the It Gets Better campaign, creating an anti-bullying video in support of gay, lesbian and transgender youth.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Fox Flips on Health Care
From Examiner.com:
Fox News did something unthinkable during their coverage of the last day of the Democratic National Convention: They reported the truth about health care reform by stating it reduces the deficit.
After claiming for over two years that President Obama's signature legislation, The Affordable Care Act, was everything from a bloated Socialistic government program, to a Communist plot to overthrow the U.S. it was unusual and certainly unexpected to hear Fox News' James Rosen state the following:
In March 2010 after almost a year of fierce debate Mr. Obama signed into law a landmark overhaul of healthcare. With its individual mandate to purchase insurance and trillion dollar price tag The Affordable Care Act will, according to congressional auditors, bring health care coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans and reduce the deficit by $210 billion over a decade.
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