As we gear up for yet another Super Bowl, anticipation is building for the creative, clever, multi-million dollar ads shown during CBS’s broadcast of the game. This year, as in others, there is controversy over an ad created by the conservative Christian anti-gay Focus On The Family which is expected to carry an anti-abortion message. At the same time an ad for a gay dating site was turned down by CBS. In all the fervor, LGBT activists and allies seem to have missed an ad that has barely popped up on the radar. The ever-popular E*Trade Baby are always a hit during Super Bowl. This time (more…)
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02
Feb
2010
E*Trade: Transphobia is Always Funny, Right?
23
Dec
2009
Blatant Bigotry?
Hand it to the folks at Best Value Plumbing to spread some holiday cheer. It seems that a fellow member of Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church contacted this plumbing company to help with a stopped drain at a rental home that he owns. You have to read his email: Friends, I wanted to take advantage of modern communication methods to tell you quick story – so please forgive the mass e-mail. I have a little rental house, currently occupied by a delightful couple who are courteous, responsible people Charles and Sandra. They’ve lived there for a year and a half, (more…)
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13
Dec
2009
Rep. Jimmy Matlock: Transphobe and Anti-Semite
As is their yearly custom, the president of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition, Dr. Marisa Richmond, sent out an email holiday greeting: As we celebrate the annual Holiday season, the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition reminds all that the fight for equal rights for all LGBT people is an ongoing one. The recent passage of Federal Hate Crimes legislation is an important step forward, but we still have to pass a fully inclusive Hate Crimes bill at the state level, along with the Employment Non Discrimination Act at the national level. These challenges should remind us all just how much we have to (more…)
Read moreRecently reported in The Middletown Press, the school board of Middletown, CT, passed a new policy dictating the terms on which a transgender student athlete may compete. The policy, taken from Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference rules, states that a student-athlete will compete in the sex of his or her birth certificate unless he or she has undergone sex reassignment. A student-athlete who has undergone sex reassignment may only compete if the reassignment was completed before puberty or, if reassignment was completed after puberty, surgical anatomical changes have been complete, Governmental agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles recognize the (more…)
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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Really?
The Senate Armed Services Committee has recently been holding hearings concerning a possible repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the military. This is currently a hot button issue and appears to be divided down party lines (again) with Democrats giving lip service for the repeal while many Republicans are issuing dire, apocalyptic warnings against it. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) recently expressed his concern that repealing the rule would pave the way for allowing “alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art” in the military — and that the army must “exclude persons whose presence in the armed forces would create (more…)
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