NEWS: George Walks, TED Talks, Scott Lively Freaks Out, And Goodbye Ernest Borgnine

Ernest Borgnine has died.

A lesbian mum responds to Jane Pitt, Brad Pitt's anti-gay mother.

Scott Lively pleads with a Missouri city to get serious about the rainbow menace:

Framed as an “anti-discrimination” measure it is in reality a “Gay Fascism” Bill that will make disapproval of homosexuality illegal in the City of Springfield and grant gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders (GLBTs) legal standing to sue their opponents, primarily Christians.

Starting in the 1980s in cities like San Francisco, homosexuals have forced many U.S. cities and numerous states to adopt similar “Gay Fascism” laws with disastrous effects on Christian landlords and businesses. Empowered by recent successes, they are now pushing into conservative cities.

... in a strategic political sense ... an “anti-discrimination policy” based on “sexual orientation” is the seed that contains the entire homosexual agenda with all of its poisonous fruit, including “gay” marriage, “gay” adoption, and heavy taxpayer funding of “gay” programs and projects. Wherever the seed takes root, “gay” power and control just keeps growing until it supplants traditional family values with San Francisco-style sexual anarchy in every social and political sphere.

Conversations about homosexuality and the Bible in Africa.

Gayfolk and Rick Perry have something in common.

George Zimmerman is out of jail.

On the cheap thrill of looking at other people's mug shots:

A mug shot doesn’t simply provide information, it lures us into a drama in which we are given an intimate, Leviathan’s-eye view of the state asserting dominance over an individual. In the old days, this spectacle took place live, on the scaffold of the pillory. Today, it happens in the creation and online circulation of the mug shot. In the faces of these photographic subjects we behold an alarming look of knowledge without consent, and the formal elements associated with this type of portrait—the rigid, head-on stare, the non-professional lighting and institutional accouterment—are charged with the candid photo’s shock of spontaneous revelation.

On the art and science of TED talks.

Fleeing from Scientology's "Land Flag Base," in Clearwater. The architecture's cool, but the sales pitch is creepy.

Three-hundred homeless folks take the stage at the Royal Opera House.

Fifty years of Bond on display in London:

... a bullet-shaped entry way leads through to the Gold Room, which features a life-sized recreation of character Jill Masterson's death by gold paint from the 1964 film "Goldfinger."

"Shirley Eaton's golden body is one of the most iconic Bond images, and we went to great lengths to cast a form -- not just a mannequin -- to painstakingly make a body that resembled her nubile proportions from Goldfinger ... "

Google Goes Gay, Globally

Yesterday, at the Global LGBT Workplace Summit in London, Google announced its new "Legalize Love" campaign, which intends to work with pro-gay grassroots organizations and small businesses in those countries where anti-gay laws are still on the books, and in which Google has a business interest.

Fron DOT429:

The "Legalize Love" campaign officially launches in Poland and Singapore on Saturday, July 7th. Google intends to eventually expand the initiative to every country where the company has an office, and will focus on places with homophobic cultures, where anti-gay laws exist. 

Google's Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe outlined the initiative at a Global LGBT Workplace Summit in London earlier today. "We want our employees who are gay or lesbian or transgender to have the same experience outside the office as they do in the office. It is obviously a very ambitious piece of work.

Google acknowledges that the Legalize Love campaign isn't entirely altruistic. Google's Mark Palmer-Edgcumbe notes that the company has, on several occasions, wished to place a highly skilled gay employee in a particular country, but couldn't because of that country's anti-gay policies. Palmer-Edgcumbe singled out Singapore for special criticism:

Singapore wants to be a global financial center and world leader and we can push them on the fact that being a global center and a world leader means you have to treat all people the same, irrespective of their sexual orientation.

It Is Dangerous To Allow Men To Provide 'Oral Suction' To Freshly Circumcized Infants

[NOTE: This post was briefly removed from the website due to a technical issue with one of Towleroad's ad networks. Sorry for the confusion.]

There is a growing sentiment in New York City that it is not, in fact, advisable to mutilate an infant's privates and then suck the blood from the wound with one's mouth.

So suggests this story, published yesterday at CNN.com:

New York City health officials are pushing a proposed regulation that would require parents to sign a consent waiver before they take part in a circumcision ritual called "metzitzah b'peh," typically practiced by ultra-Orthodox Jews. The ritual potentially poses a fatal risk to newborns, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The legislation was proposed at a Board of Health meeting last month by Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control for New York City's health department, after 11 infants contracted neonatal herpes between November 2000 and December 2011, after the circumcision ritual. Two of the infants died.

Jews regularly practice circumcision as part of their religion, but mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews practice metzitzah b'peh, during which the mohel, or person performing the procedure, orally sucks the blood from the infant's newly circumcised [member].

A statement issued last month by the New York City Health Department notes that ten of the children who contracted herpes after the metzitzah b'peh were hospitalized. Of the eight who survived, two suffer from permanent brain damage. Approximately 2,000 infants per year undergo the metzitzah b'peh in New York City.

From CNN.com:

The Department of Health is accepting public comments on the proposed regulation until a public hearing July 23. At the hearing, there will be a public forum where the board will consider all comments and make a final vote September 13.

Ana Matronic On Gay Families: VIDEO

 

AFTER THE JUMP, see a quick vid of the Scissor Sisters' Ana Matronic talking about what it means to be a family. Please note: the language is a little coarse. Recorded Friday night at Terminal 5, in Hell's Kitchen, NYC ...

(Thanks to Matt Rettenmund for the link. See much, much more of the show at his website, Boy Culture.)

Taiwan's First Gay, Buddhist Wedding

What will reportedly be Taiwan's first gay Buddhist wedding shall be held in Taoyuan County next month, according to the Taipei Times:

“We are not only doing it for ourselves, but also for other gays and lesbians,” Fish Huang said in a telephone interview.

The 30-year-old ... said that marriage never crossed her mind until she saw a movie last year.

The film portrayed two lesbians whose ill-fated relationship concluded after one died and the other was left heartbroken over the denial of spousal benefits.

“It’s so sad,” Huang said, who plans to wed her partner of seven years on Aug. 11 at a Buddhist altar ...

There shall be blessings, chants, and lectures from Buddhist masters on marriage. The ceremony won't be legally binding.

Despite the profound Buddhist-ish-ness of the marriage ceremony, Fish Huang tells the Taipei Times that many of her Buddhist friends were initially wary of attending the event, worrying that doing so might conflict with their vows. She wrote to a Buddhist master, asking for the party line on homosexuality, and the master not only told her that Buddhism, as she knew it, was a-okay with lesbian weddings -- the master offered to perform Fish Huang's lesbian wedding. From the Taipei Times:

“It is meaningful to us that our wedding can give hope to other homosexuals and help heterosexuals understand how Buddhism views sexuality,” Huang said.

The Buddhist master Shih Chao-hwei (釋昭慧), who is also a professor at Hsuan Chuang University, said Buddhist teachings do not prohibit homosexual behavior.

... “It’s difficult enough to maintain a relationship ... how could you be so stingy as to begrudge a couple for wanting to get married, regardless of their sexual orientation,” she said in a telephone interview.

Shih Chao-hwei acknowledged that her views were not universally shared among her co-religionists.

Louisiana Legislator Was For School Vouchers, Until She Remembered That Muslims Exist

As part of the ongoing, post-Katrina libertarianization of Louisiana, thousands of students will begin the 2012/13 schoolyear in private schools, their tuitions paid by government voucher. Louisiana's finest schools won't offer many spots to voucher kids; most students will be attending obscure institutions, nearly all of them religious. In June, Reuters described some of those schools:

The school willing to accept the most voucher students -- 314 -- is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

... At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

"We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children," Carrier said.

Other schools approved for state-funded vouchers use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity ...

This is a-okay, according to Republican State Rep. Valarie Hodges. Or would be. Last month, she came to a terrifying realization:

Rep. Valarie Hodges ... says she had no idea that Gov. Boddy Jindal's overhaul of the state's educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,” Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that “religious” meant “Christian.”

What tipped her off? Between the time that the school voucher law, known as "Act 2" (formerly HB976) was put to vote, and the time Louisiana officials set about figuring out how to fund the thing, a Muslim school asked to be made voucher eligible. From the Livingston Parish News:

“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said. “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

Now, Rep. Hodges is fighting against Act 2. The school board in her district, the Livingston Parish School Board, has joined with 19 other Louisianan boards in a lawsuit challenging Act 2's constitutionality.