DREAM Act Passes House 216-198! Task Force Applauds

The DREAM Act has passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 216-198!

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is pleased at the result, via press release:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a longtime advocate for fair and humane comprehensive immigration reform, commends the U.S. House's passage tonight of the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act), which offers undocumented young people "conditional permanent residency" if they arrived in this country before they were 16 and attend college or serve in the military. Upon graduation or completion of their enlistment, they would receive permanent legal residency with an opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship. In addition to the DREAM Act, the Task Force is working in coalition with immigrant rights groups toward passage of comprehensive immigration reform and the Uniting American Families Act.

Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

"Many people like to say that youth are our future. We are now a step closer to ensuring brighter and more secure futures for our young people, including countless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, by providing them a path to citizenship. The United States is built on the belief that everyone get a fair shake to fully participate in civic life, and to be able to build a future in the country they love and call home. Passage of the DREAM Act does justice to this fundamental and humane principle. Tonight's House passage is an important first step toward fixing this nation's broken immigration system, but much remains to be done. We urge the Senate to pass the DREAM Act, and continue to call on federal lawmakers and the Obama administration to work toward fair and comprehensive immigration reform."

Here, here!

DREAM Act Up For Vote Today

The DREAM Act is going to be voted on today in the Senate. It needs 60 votes to survive a filibuster from Republicans. Call your Senators to tell them to vote YES on S. 3992 (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2010)

Obama Says "It Gets Better" Too

The viral nature of Dan Savage's It Gets Better project continues to amaze. President Barack Obama posted his official  video contribution to the anti-bullying project on the White House's official youtube channel at www.whitehouse.gov/itgetsbetter

Here's the video:



Here is the transcript:

  Like all of you, I was shocked and saddened by the deaths of several young people who were bullied and taunted for being gay, and who ultimately took their own lives.  As a parent of two daughters, it breaks my heart.  It’s something that just shouldn’t happen in this country. 

We’ve got to dispel the myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage – that it’s some inevitable part of growing up.  It’s not.  We have an obligation to ensure that our schools are safe forall of our kids.  And to every young person out there you need to know that if you’re in trouble, there are caring adults who can help. 

I don’t know what it’s like to be picked on for being gay.  But I do know what it’s like to grow up feeling that sometimes you don’t belong.  It’s tough.  And for a lot of kids, the sense of being alone or apart – I know can just wear on you.  And when you’re teased or bullied, it can seem like somehow you brought it on yourself – for being different, or for not fitting in with everybody else. 

But what I want to say is this.  You are not alone.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  You didn’t do anything to deserve being bullied.  And there is a whole world waiting for you, filled with possibilities. There are people out there who love you and care about you just the way you are. And so, if you ever feel like because of bullying, because of what people are saying, that you’re getting down on yourself, you’ve got to make sure to reach out to people you trust. Whether it’s your parents, teachers, folks that you know care about you just the way you are. You’ve got to reach out to them,  don’t feel like you’re in this by yourself.

The other thing you need to know is, things will get better.  And more than that, with time you’re going to see that your differences are a source of pride and a source of strength. You’ll look back on the struggles you’ve faced with compassion and wisdom. And that’s not just going to serve you, but it will help you get involved and make this country a better place. 

It will mean that you’ll be more likely to help fight discrimination – not just against LGBT Americans, but discrimination in all its forms. It means you’ll be more likely to understand personally and deeply why it’s so important that as adults we set an example in our own lives and that we treat everybody with respect. That we are able to see the world through other people’s eyes and stand in their shoes – that we never lose sight of what binds us together. 

As a nation we’re founded on the belief that all of us are equal and each of us deserves the freedom to pursue our own version of happiness; to make the most of our talents; to speak our minds; to not fit in; most of all, to be true to ourselves.  That’s the freedom that enriches all of us.  That’s what America is all about.  And every day, it gets better.

Openly Gay UM Student Prez Talks About Being Cyber-Stalked By Psycho

Education Sec'y Arne Duncan Releases Statement on Bullying

U.S. Department of Education
Office of Communications & Outreach, Press Office 400 Maryland Ave., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20202

FOR RELEASE
Oct. 1, 2010
Contact: Press Office
(202) 401-1576 or press@ed.gov


STATEMENT BY U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION ARNE DUNCAN On the Recent Deaths of Two Young Men

        U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today released the following statement:

        "This week, we sadly lost two young men who took their own lives for one unacceptable reason: they were being bullied and harassed because they were openly gay or believed to be gay. These unnecessary tragedies come on the heels of at least three other young people taking their own lives because the trauma of being bullied and harassed for their actual or perceived sexual orientation was too much to bear.

        "This is a moment where every one of us - parents, teachers, students, elected officials, and all people of conscience - needs to stand up and speak out against intolerance in all its forms. Whether it's students harassing other students because of ethnicity, disability or religion; or an adult, public official harassing the President of the University of Michigan student body because he is gay, it is time we as a country said enough. No more. This must stop."


###

WATCH: Psycho Heterosexual Supremacist Harassing Gay College Student

This is one of the most bizarre stories you will ever see. A public official, a Michigan Assistant Attorney General Tom Shirvell, has been electronically harassing the 21-year-old student body president Chris Armstrong. CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewed Shirvell. Watch what happens.

Eye Candy: Tristen Escolastico

Thanks again to David Dust who snagged these pictures of Tristen Elastico, a 20(!)-year-old body builder. These shots were taken by celebrated photographer Joe Ticknow.

Iranian Gay Immigration Activist Risks Deportation And Execution

Meet Mohammed Abdollahi, a 24-year-old gay man of Iranian descent who is also an undocumented immigrant who has been advocating for quick passage of the DREAM act (which would legalize the status of undocumented young people who either enlist in the military or attend college), and now faces deportation to Iran, where openly gay men are often executed.

Now, that is what I call putting your life on the line for a cause.

LA Youth Protest Against Uganda Anti-Gay Bill

Celebrity Friday: Evan Low (26-year-old Gay, Asian Mayor)

More history for LGBT people of color was made on Tuesday night in the Bay Area when openly gay, Chinese-American Evan Low, 26, a member of the Campbell, California City Council was elected the nation's youngest, openly gay Mayor by his fellow colleagues.

Low grew up in San Jose but eight years ago moved to Campbell, where his father, Dr. Arthur Low, is an optometrist and sits on the Chamber of Commerce. Low said he became interested in politics because he felt young people's interests, such as affordable housing and the future of Social Security, were not being addressed.

He first ran for City Council in 2004 and lost, but won when he tried again in 2006. His term ends in 2010.

Campbell seems to be an unlikely city for a young, gay, Asian American politician to gain a foothold in public service. The San Jose suburb is 70 percent white and 11 percent Asian, with a small, quiet gay community.

Low said he received hate mail when he announced his opposition to Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, as well as threats of a recall.

But he never considered moving to San Francisco or San Jose, which have larger gay communities, he said.

"For me, it's about making a difference in the community I live in," he said. "Campbell is my home."

Go ahead, boyee!

MOVIE REVIEW: Where The Wild Things Are

The Other Half and MadProfessah decided to go see Where The Wild Things Are in the theaters last weekend before it disappears to a television, computer screen or DVD. The film is directed by Spike Jonze well-known for his trippy, unique filmic vision song apparent in Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002) and several genre-defining music videos (Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," Björk's "It's So Quiet" to name a few).

Both Being John Malkovich and Adaptation were written by the even trippier Charlie Kaufman but the adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved children book was written by Jonze and Dave Eggers (who wrote the screenplay for Away We Go released earlier this summer directed by Mr. Kate Winslet, Sam Mendes--see MadProfessah's B/B+ review).

The movie got both rave reviews and indifferent responses but there was general consensus (rottentomatoes.com score of 70%) that it was a visually arresting, if emotionally harrowing and dark vision of the imaginary world of an 8-year-old named Max.

The Other Half liked the movie more than I did. I enjoyed trying to figure out who was playing the voices of the Wild Things. "Hey, is that Claire from Six Feet Under? I really think KW is the red-headed actress from HBO." I was correct that KW is voiced by Lauren Ambrose but did not figure out that James Gandolfini played the lead Wild Thing named Carol and Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine), Chris Cooper, Forrest Whitaker and Catherine O'Hara are in the amazing cast.

The film does look amazing, and there are some very fun visually uplifting sequences, but in the end the overall impact of the experience is somewhat emotionally draining because it is basically a depiction of the many ways adults use speech and emotional non-verbal communication to attempt to hurt and manipulate others. There is a lot of talking in this movie, and a lot of unrepressed rage displayed by little creatures and big creatures alike.

Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes. MPAA Rating: Rated PG for mild thematic elements, some adventure action and brief language.

Plot: C-.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: A-.
Impact: B-.

Overall Grade: B/B-.

Check out the Black Youth Project!

Checkout this new innovative new website to increase the diversity of voices in the blogosphere and online: The Black Youth Project.

From the website's about us page:

The Black Youth Project’s website is a cyber-resource center for black youth
and all those who are committed to enriching the lives of black youth. Within
the pages of this website, visitors can access research summaries, read blogs
about and by black youth, search an extensive rap database, access black youth
social justice organizations, and download social justice curricula to teach.
Arguably more than any other subgroup of Americans, African American youth
reflect the challenges of inclusion and empowerment in the post–civil rights
period as well as the challenges of web access and digital spaces to call their
own. Therefore, the intended purpose of this website is to generate new media
information, blogs, art, conversations, webinars, and data that will expand the
human and social capital of young African Americans, facilitating their geneal
empowerment through highlighting their voices and experiences.

The project is funded by the Ford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Chicago.

VIDEO: First TV Ads by Protect Maine Marriage Equality

Here are the first television ads in the ongoing fight to protect marriage equality in Maine this fall.


Encouragingly, Protect Maine Equality/ No On 1 has decided to take a different tack from the failed No on 8 campaign last year. Although the second ad with Bill Whitten also uses a straight parent as a surrogate for the campaign message to vote no to protect equality, it is different in two aspects from the Thorons ad last year (which was the first ad run in the Proposition 8 fight last year). 1) This time the parent's masculine bonafides are reinforced through his military and football past and 2) his body language clearly communicates that he was uncomfortable with homosexuality and marriage equality, but now he has changed his mind to embrace full equal rights for the child he loves.

The other ad with Sam and his lesbian moms is completely different from anything that No on 8 aired. It shows the impact of denying equality on straight kids who are growing up with LGBT parents. This is an important innoculation against the inevitable attack from the heterosexual supremacists who will claim that marriage equality somehow confuses abd endangers children. Sam is clearly neither of these. This is an excellent ad.

Both ads appeal to different segments of the Maine voting public but still send the same message: to protect the Maine value that everyone should be treated equally they need to vote NO on Question 1 in November.

BOOK REVIEW: Neil Gaiman's GRAVEYARD BOOK

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book is one of the most celebrated books of 2009, having won the most prestigious award in juvenile fiction, the John Newbery Medal, earlier in the year.

Gaiman is the celebrated author of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning American Gods (MadProfessah is still working on a review after reading the book in May 2008--see my earlier post on the relationship between the excellence of a book and the longer it takes me to review it).

Gaiman's book was also recently awarded the Hugo Award, beating out the expected winner, Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Bod, the toddler who should have died when his parents and a sibling were all brutally murdered by a knife-wielding assassin and the child was protected by the inhabitants of a graveyard.

Bod is short for Nobody Owens, Owens being the family name of his adopted parents, Mr. & Mrs. Owens who were unable to have children when they were alive, and are ghosts who inhabit the graveyard in which Bod lives.

That Bod is a baby who grows up in a graveyard and thus can interact equally with ghosts and non-ghosts equivalently is a bit of a macabre, but interesting concept. The cast of characters in the graveyard a quirky, but generally uninteresting group. The most interesting of the bunch is Silas, the person(?) who rescued Bod and to an adult reader appears to have all the characteristics of a vampire (although he is never described as such--he also is never placed in either the living or non-living category definitively by the Omniscient Narrator.)

What truly limits The Graveyard Book, however, is its plot. The story follows the growing pains of a teenage boy who has an unusual family situation (he's the only living person among his family and his home is a graveyard!) but this is depicted in a completely predictable and surprisingly unimaginative fashion. The main tension in the story is that the assassin who killed Bod's family is still out there and looking to correct the one blemish on his perfect record of murders-for-hire. However, since this is juvenile fiction and Bod is the hero, this reader never really believed that Bod would be killed, although Gaiman does try his best to place Bod and some other characters the reader has invested time in learning about in real and extreme peril.

The final impression of The Graveyard Book is of a good idea that doesn't quite have enough meat on the bones of the plot to make a satisfying meal for the discerning (adult) reader, although someone less experienced (i.e. younger) may be more favorably impressed.

Published by HarperCollins. 320 pages.

PLOT: C.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B.
WRITING: B.

OVERALL GRADE: B-.

2009 Point Foundation Scholars

After attending an event in Hancock Park supporting the Point Foundation I am now on their mailing list. I was very excited to see the above picture of the 2009 Point Foundation Scholars. The Black guy on the top right, George Aumoithe, organized the talk "Gay Is Not The New Black" I gave at Bowdoin College in April.

Lawrence King's Killer Will Stand Trial

Rod 2.0 reported last week while I was in the middle of preparing for finals and not reading the paper that the teenaged killer of gay teen Lawrence King has been ruled competent for trial. 14-year-old Brandon McInerney (pictured here) fatally shot 15-year-old King at point blank range in the head during an 8am class at a middle school in Oxnard in February 2008.

The incident became a cause celebre and there was a controversial Newsweek magazine cover story on Lawrence King which portrayed the murdered boy as "confused" and even called him a bully for wearing make-up and high-heels to class. Clearly, both teens were troubled(Lawrence had been living at home for abused kids and Brandon's parents had multiple run-ins with the police and documented substance abuse problems) but the reason why the case became so famous (and why bloggers like MadProfessah, Joe.my.god and Rod 2.0 arefollowing it so closely) is the visuals of one fourteen-year-old boy shooting another boy in the head because one boy was ashamed that the murdered boy had said he had a crush on the other boy.

Protect Children: VOTE NO ON PROP 8!

Lawrence King's killer to be tried as adult

Brandon McInerney, the 14-year-old killer of openly-gay 15-year-old Lawrence King will be tried as an adult. The question of whether McInerney should be treated as an adult has divided the LGBT cmmunity, with the largest LGBT organizations sending a joint letter to the prosecutor arguing that the teenager should be tried as a juvenile. However, thanks to 2000's Proposition 21 (which MadProfessah opposed) juveniles as young as 14 can be tried as an adult in certain cases.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Maeve Fox, who is prosecuting the case, argued that McInerney’s age should not play a factor in him being charged as an adult in the murder of Lawrence King. In a statement to The Advocate, Fox said that McInerney’s ability to “premeditate and deliberate this kind of crime and pull it off in front of their entire class I think is cause for serious alarm… he should spend a good long time behind bars.”

“When you were 14, when you were 10, when you were 8, did you know it was wrong to kill someone?” Fox asked. “The answer inevitably is yes.” Because 14 and 15-year-olds cannot receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole in California, The Advocate notes, McInerney could still be released on parole in the future even if sentence to life in prison.

I must admit that I now agree with Fox that I do think that McInerney should be tried as an adult, with a parole hearing at 18 years old. He went home, found a gun, took it to an elementary school and in a class front of other students, shot Lawrence King (who apparently had started calling himself "Leticia") twice in the back of the head, and then walked out of the computer lab.

The facts described are not really contested. They appear in the controversial Newsweek cover story ("Young, Gay and Murdered in Junior High") from last week. The article, written by Ramin Setoodeh, presents a much more nuanced version of the interactions between Brandon and Lawrence before the shooting, but also appears to assign some of the blame on the fact that Lawrence wss openly gay at such an early age. It is that latter aspect which has led to controversy and which I find totally unacceptable. However, the article does also include useful information, such as "One study found that the average age when kids self-identify as gay has tumbled to 13.4; their parents usually find out a year later."

It is this aspect which terrifies the heterosexual supremacists and professional homophobes who attempt to deny equal rights to LGBT individuals: they know that their time and grasp on power is eroding with every passing day and as more kids come out.