I spend a lot of time dealing with people in my life.  At work, I come into contact sometimes with thousands of different people a week, ALL of whom may or may not share my own viewpoints on the world we all live in.  In retail I see it all and more often than not, I hear EVERYONE’S life story whether I want to or not.  It’s easy to be disillusioned about the world by some of the people who I see…from the wife beater disparaging his wife in public to the creepy skinhead showing off a white pride tattoo…do I think any of them should continue breathing?  No.  But am I going to advocate for their death?  Absolutely not.  Many of us can go through life and disagree with others and we can do so without resorting to violence to make or achieve our point.  It is not necessary for me to threaten people with their lives.  What is important however is that I can and do express myself without ramping up the rhetoric of violence.

I’m going to let Keith Oberman speak for me on this because he does it so eloquently and with so much passion and conviction.  The violence has to stop.  It has no place in our democracy or in our country.  Things must change in significant ways.  We are reaching a tipping point in this country, I can only hope that enough people have enough compassion for their neighbors that we can run the cup over with forward thinking progress rather than draining the cup with a bullet through the skull.

Gettysburg Address

Back in the day, I could have told you right away that I was different.  I had no concept of my sexuality in any significant way before age 13 or 14 but I knew I was not like the other boys my age.  I could not really comfortably label myself as gay before I was 15 or 16 and by age 17 I had simply accepted it for myself even though I didn’t really come out until a year or so after that.  The month of September has been a deadly month for gay kids this year.  In just 30 days, there have been 3 suicides and boy with a broken arm that is continuing to be harassed.

• Seth Walsh, the Bakersfield, CA 13-year-old who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied, died Tuesday afternoon after nine days on life support. Police investigators interviewed some of the young people who taunted Seth the day he hanged himself. “Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears,” Police Chief Jeff Kermode said. “They had never expected an outcome such as this.”
• Asher Brown, 13, an eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District in Houston Texas. Brown, his family said, was “bullied to death” – picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class, his mother and stepfather said.
• Billy (William) Lucas, 15, a student at Greensburg Community High School in Greensburg, IN, was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home Thursday evening – he had hanged himself. Friends say that he had been tormented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation.
• An Ohio mom is disappointed that her son’s school didn’t do more to stop at least two boys who allegedly picked on her 11-year-old cheerleader son until the bullies beat him so bad they broke his arm.  She says the beating didn’t break his spirit however. Tyler Wilson has vowed to continue cheering with hopes it helps him get into college some day.  ”I’m going to keep going. I’m going to make a lifestyle out of it,” Tyler told ABC News affiliate WTVG.

All 4 of these stories have been getting airtime on the national network news channels.  This sort of thing is nothing new for gay youth.  Every day gay kids are beaten up, harassed, called names and generally tormented because they have identified as gay or others PERCEIVE them to be so.  It’s easy now as an adult to simply ignore all of this and that’s why I’m writing this post.  It shouldn’t be ignored.  I get really angry when I hear that another kid killed himself because he was fed up with being bullied over his sexual orientation.  That kid might have been me.

The memories I have left of grade school and middle school (with certain exceptions for my time at ABS) are not good ones for me.  We are again talking about a different time and a different era but I was routinely picked on at school by certain kids.  My involvement in music was a constant source of ridicule and teasing even into high school.  I was a sissy for being able to sing or play the piano, or I was just a dumbass for not getting into playing football on the playground.  I was fortunate that despite the daily combative atmosphere I had teachers and more importantly parents that I knew supported me and to whom I knew I could turn if things ever got to a point where I could not deal with it on my own.  It also helped that the kids I hung out with at home were different kids than those I went to school with.  The neighborhood was much different for me than my school life.  I was a pretty independent kid.  I didn’t really care all that much what my peers thought of me and even today, I’m not really all that concerned about what others think of me.  I’m not on this planet to please them or to make them happy.  I’m here for ME and to live MY life.

I don’t really know the demographics of the people who read my blog but I know there are more people reading this than just my parents.  Some of you might be gay kids, some of you might be gay adults, some of you might be straight conservative Christians.  I don’t know.  What I do want to say though is that I would be lying if I did not admit that during my youth I contemplated the idea of suicide.  Growing up is not an easy thing to do and I’d be hiding the truth if I could not admit that I disliked 2/3 of my childhood experiences outside of my house.  It’s that other 1/3 though that has made me into the adult I am today.  Those experiences I had as a kid, especially the experiences that made me feel good about myself and about my life, shaped me into who I am today: someone that tries very hard whenever I’m given the chance to give a shit about the lives of other people.  My life got better and better as I grew up and as I got out of school and started living my own life.  And even today, each day is a new challenge and a new adventure and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s very hard for adult gay males to be involved with kids in any significant way.  It’s easier now than it used to be but straight society STILL sees us (especially men) as sex obsessed predators.  That’s a HUGE reason for why I got out of education and why I gave up my work with the boychoir.  It doesn’t matter how good a person I present myself to be, the assumption always is that it’s just not a good idea for me (gay men) to be around kids.  Even if I had the support of 99% of the parents of the kids I worked with, the 1% who couldn’t deal with it could potentially destroy a career over no other reason than their own bigotry and ignorance.  I wanted nothing more to do with that atmosphere.  Why was I continuing to try and live my own life by their standards for so long?

One of the things that I was missing in my childhood and the childhood of these kids who have killed themselves this past month was a healthy gay adult role model that was visible.  There was nobody I could look at and say “he turned out OK, maybe I can too” during those times when I was getting picked on for whatever reason.  I had the support of my parents and all these kids may well have had the support of their parents, but all of us left behind stories of being different and singled out.  The difference was that people intervened in my life at different times as I grew up and kept me going in the right direction, those boys were never given the chance to develop an idea that their lives might just get better if they just stuck it out a little longer.  Nobody helped those kids or their parents deal with what they were going through, nobody recognized the problem because homophobia and ignorance are still the rule, not the exception.  This has to change in our society.  Gay kids are not going to just go away and neither are gay adults.  This fear and ignorance has to be dealt with if we are ever to see a slow down in suicide rates.  If you didn’t already know, gay and questioning kids are 4 times more likely than their straight peers to commit suicide and 9 out of 10 gay kids report regular harassment in their schools for being gay or from others perceiving them to be gay.  I’ve posted these statistics before.  They are very reviling and very disturbing.

So I’m going to end this post with a video of a new project that has been started online.  Much like the internet, this sort of thing never existed when I was growing up and after spending some time watching these videos of people my age re-telling their stories of growing up gay, I wish something like this had been around for me.  It might have made things easier for me to deal with.  This project won’t bring back the 3 boys that took their own lives this past month but it’s a step in the right direction and maybe a small bit of hope for all those gay kids who have no support system and nobody to talk to.

If you are a kid or young adult reading this blog, there is a link on the sidebar to the Trevor Project.  Visit that web site and know that there is someone available for you 24/7 every day of the year.  Watch the intro vid for the “It Get’s Better Project” below and then click the video to go watch more on YouTube.  I won’t ever do a video cast of myself, this blog post will serve as my entry.

It Gets Better Project

There were 3 possible outcomes for this trial (from the Prop8 Trial Tracker Blog)

1. LOSE – Prop 8 is a permissible act of the people acting legislatively.
   Well, I’m not sure how much I need to explain this one, but it’s the worst case scenario for us.  In this situation, Judge Walker would be saying that the people, acting as the state’s legislature, had a “legitimate” interest (any interest really) in regulating against marriage equality, and that Prop 8 was rationally related to that interest.  This is the so-called “rational basis” test.  Now, the Defense of Marriage Act recently failed that test, but that doesn’t mean Prop 8 couldn’t pass.
   Of course, this doesn’t mean the case is over, just that we are on hold as we move forward through the system
2. Win – The implementation of Prop 8 is unconstitutional.
   This is how we win, without getting everything we really want. This would clearly be a win for our community in the state of California, but would provide relatively little precedent value for other states. The basic rationale here would be that by allowing the 18,000 couples to be married, and not future couples, the state has violated the equal protection of those couples who were not able to wed. This rationale was suggested in a couple of the amicus briefs filed on behalf of the plaintiffs. It could be seen as something of a middle ground, but let’s be honest, it will not satisfy anybody who opposes marriage equality. And it further muddies the underlying issues when what we really need is clarity. Could it happen? Yes, it very well might. But this rationale would be a lame attempt at Solomonic baby-splitting that would present more questions to be answered by other courts.
3. WIN – Prop 8 is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and/or the Due Process Clause
   This would be our ultimate victory, and really, what Olson and Boies are going for in this case. As I presented above, there are two possible rationales, and I’ll discuss those below. But skipping over the logic, the net result would likely be the complete nullification of Prop 8. However, Judge Walker is likely to issue a stay pending appeal, especially if he overturns Prop 8. In other words, don’t make wedding plans just yet.

We got the 3rd which is the best of the 3 and now sets the stage for the eventual appeal to the 9th circuit court of appeals.  This win, going int0 an appeal is far better than going in with a loss.  As I’ve said before, this fight is long from being over but this is a huge step in the right direction.  You can expect to see over the next several weeks cries of judicial activism on the right (never mind that this judge was appointed by a Republican president) and hollering about the “will of the people”.  This very decision however expels the idea that any majority has any right to VOTE FOR discrimination against a minority.  If the decision is affirmed, it may easily nullify every state Constitutional ban on gay marriage that exists today (Michigan’s included).

The appeal process is expected to take up to 2 years to reach SCOUTS.  By that time however, it is likely that additional states will have acted to affirm same sex marriage or begin work on repealing bans.  It is sometimes tough to say but as California does, the rest of the country tends to follow.  It is the largest state with the largest economy with some of the heaviest hitting political clout you can get.  It’s not going to be all roses and rainbows but the trajectory is clear.  Marriage will be an option for me in my lifetime if I wish to choose it and that, ultimately, is what it’s about.  My right to choose my mate, to choose the person I love.

So I’ve got one thing I want to bitch about tonight and I’ve written about it before.  Michigan is really a fucked up state.  The reason I’ve been working 60 hours a week for the past 3 weeks is because of an archaic law called the Michigan Consumer Protection Act which was passed with very little explanation some years ago to “protect” consumers from companies who might try to rip them off, primarily retailers.  Michigan is the ONLY state in my company’s region that has to deal with this law, no other states have (or will ever) even consider it.  It consists of 2 parts.  The first part deals with price discrepancies.  If a consumer exits the store and then identifies a price sticker that disagrees with the price rung up on his receipt, he is entitled to return to the store to receive back the difference times 10.  That means, if you buy a candy bar and that candy bar has a price sticker for $1.00 but the cash register rings it up for $1.10, you are entitled to come in and the store must pay you 10 times the difference up to $5.00.  In this case you would receive back $0.10 x 10 = $1.00.  The rule is that before that is paid out, the transaction must be complete and you must have left the store and returned with your receipt and the item in question showing the incorrect price sticker.  People routinely take advantage of this law and as a result, stores pay out.  The second part of this law has to do with price stickers themselves.  In Michigan, EVERYTHING that is for sale in a retail establishment (with some exceptions) must have a price sticker affixed to the product in addition to signs indicating what the price is on the shelf.  We are the ONLY state that requires this of retailers and really, it does nothing other than prove that consumers are incapable of basic observation.  If a shelf sticker below a can of soup says that can of soup of whatever flavor is $1.00, than that can of soup is $1.00!  Really quite simple to look at the tag, look at the soup, and reach a logical conclusion that it is in fact that price.  If you are paying attention at the cash register and find a problem, no retailer is going to ignore you, they are going to fix it and adjust the price right there to match the tag on the shelf.  MOST stores in the country price sticker their products.  This is a GOOD BUSINESS PRACTICE and I don’t disagree with doing it.  HOWEVER, I  must inform you that this practice is extremely expensive to the retailer which in turns makes YOUR products more expensive.  EVERY DAY when I go into work, I spend the first 2 hours of my day doing price changes.  These changes are necessary because the price of EVERYTHING is fluid.  Need I remind you that you do NOT pay the same for gas today as you did 10 years ago!  Because we price sticker items, and because prices can and do change very often, I spend a great deal of money paying my employees to remove old price stickers, put new ones on and then make new signs.  I’m not talking about 1 or 2 changes a day.  I can have over 200 a day depending on the products that change when the market changes.  THIS is the concept that consumers do not understand and this RESULTS in the payouts described in part one.  Things get missed, signs don’t get updated quick enough etc. etc.

So what am I getting at.  This law sucks for retailers and does very little to enhance or benefit the consumer.  REALLY, what are you planning to do with that extra 5 cents?  When you sell 6 million items in a store, humans miss things and there are really very few retailers interested in taking advantage of consumers.  Whats in it for the retailer to do so?  Why would we want to willingly piss off a potential customer?  I’m sorry folks but THINGS COST MONEY.  I’m sorry that you have to pay for your goods and services and I’m sorry that prices go up and down on a regular basis but thats how life works.  Why not do YOUR part and simply pay attention when you are shopping?  Why is it that EVERY OTHER STATE is permitted to simply use proper signs and shelf tags to sell their products and you don’t hear about issues with pricing in those states?  Why are we paying out money to someone who happened to pick up one product in a bucket of 50 items where the price sticker has fallen off, and how is it that we must pay out because of DISHONEST customers who ROUTINELY peel off price stickers and replace them with stickers for a lesser price?  Think this doesn’t happen?  Think again.  I see people do it on a regular basis, they will sit there in the aisle, remove price stickers and drop them on the floor and then go find a cheaper product and put that sticker on the item they want.  Who’s being taken advantage of here?

OK, thats enough.  In the end folks, this is a law I can’t change but just like you can bitch about stuff not being priced, I can bitch about those of you who find it perfectly acceptable to take advantage of the law and I can bitch about those you too simply to lazy or incapable of being and observant shopper.

Sometime this summer I will write a bit more about some different subjects if I can every get my ass out of work for any length of time.  I WANT THIS SIGN for my store.  Get OFF your fucking phone if you want my attention.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted an update on this blog.  Life is crazy for me right now.  Work, Work, Work, sleep, sleep, sleep.  It’s a redundant cycle that won’t end until late August it seems.  All things considered, this is turning out to be a pretty decent summer.  The weather has been SO much better than last year, temperatures have remained fairly consistent in the upper 70′s to 80′s.  Right where it should be.  The boat is in the water at the cottage and the folks are keeping very busy building fences, making cookies, and keeping up with the neighbors (as much as they can stand it anyhow).  Looks like sister Sarah and nephew Christopher are going to be making a trip up to the northwoods as soon as this next week.  Sounds like Sarah might need a break even before their road trip in August.  Looking forward to seeing them, especially Christopher.  I’ve only seen pictures since last Christmas, I’m sure he’s growing fast and will eventually be in shock to discover a new sibling draining some of the attention away from him.  First born’s tend to get the best and the worst of things.  They are of course always FIRST, but the loss of devoted attention when a new family member arrives is a big step for any child to deal with.  Most do just fine and I’m sure Christopher will too.  He’s got great parents.

Things have been fairly busy on the national news front lately.  Of course the BP oil spill is the consuming story.  It has been interesting to follow things as they have developed.  It sickens me that our government as well as BP seem to think that an escrow account with 20 billion dollars in it is going to help solve this massive environmental disaster.  It doesn’t even matter any more when they eventually cap the flow of oil out of the hole in the ocean floor.  The damage has already been done.  Millions of gallons of oil and thousands of tons of methane now displacing what once was crystal clear waters in the Gulf will be killing us slowly for decades.  News came out today that oil and gas is now seeping up through the ocean floor near the well which is presenting another issue.  Could it be creating a sink hole due to pressure?  Nobody knows but if that is occurring, the worst of this disaster is not even close to being over yet.  We’ll see what happens.

In other news, the Prop 8 trial held closing arguments this past Wednesday.  Once again, proponents of the ban on gay marriage in California sputtered and shouted but in the end produced absolutely NO evidence to support their position.  This is a hugely significant case that will eventually make it to the supreme court.  A decision is expected in a few weeks and then it’s off to the appeals process.  I don’t have the energy to recap the whole thing, if you want to know about it more than visit the Prop 8 Trial Tracker web site for a full re-cap of all the arguments.  It really has been a pleasure watching one of the most successful lawyers in this country defend my right to exist and it amazes me that in a courtroom, where politics is NOT the key element, all those who are so intent on upholding discrimination against the GLBT community simply fall flat on their faces.  It’s been amazing to watch.

I have been able to keep up a little bit on my photography.  I’ve uploaded a few new galleries to leelanauphotography.com since my last entry.  Please be sure to check them out.  I’m looking forward to eventually having some time off this summer to really do some exploring with my camera, perhaps in places I’ve not been.  So, until my next entry which might be tomorrow, or several weeks from now, enjoy this picture of early summer in Leelanau.

From the Huffington Post today (as well as in many newspapers around the country):

A recent New York Times/CBS poll confirmed the obvious: Tea Party activists are overwhelmingly white, male, conservative, lower-income, and GOP-leaning. Nearly all passionately believe that President Obama is shoving the country to socialism. All lambaste the federal government for giving the company store away to the poor. The poor in this case are blacks. That race lurks perilously just beneath the surface with Tea Party activists is beyond dispute. To many the equation is government programs equal hand outs to undeserving blacks and the poor and that in turn equals money snatched from the pockets of hard working whites.

Read the Rest of the scathing poll here and learn many of the rest of the reasons that you should abstain from teabagging.

HERE is the actual Poll the was conducted.

And HERE is the New York Times article.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes…

Here is the rest.

Sometimes we don’t notice our victories until long after a battle has been won.  Over the last couple of years, gay marriage has secured territory most people didn’t even realize was contested, and its loss will be far more devastating to gay marriage opponents than their victories in all the court cases and all the elections in the world.

I’m talking about sweetness.

Our opponents demonize us — sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly, but viciously and relentlessly.  Their chief weapon is sex – ours, not theirs — overlaid with a self-righteous piety that is funny when Dana Carvey does it, and wrongheaded no matter whose pursed lips it leaks out of.  But while everyone from the Pope on down has been focused on the inherent disorders and immorality of homosexual sex, another front in the gay rights battle opened up: Gay teenagers in love.

Read the rest here.

I came across this little tidbit on the web tonight and wanted to share it.  Americans LOVE their entitlements!  Good lord where would we be without Medicare and Social Security, and soon Healthcare.  We love things that are handed to us on a silver platter but god forbid we be fucking rational about it.  Let’s talk about taxes and how exactly the Federal Government (the provider of Entitlements) gets money.  The primary revenue stream comes from us.  We are tax payers, we dump a certain amount of our income into the Federal Pot so to speak throughout our working lives.  This is supposed to pay (among other things) for the entitlement programs that exist and that people just can’t live without!  We all know that today, our Federal Government is in a tight spot.  The budget needs to be balanced so what happens?  We cut things that are “unnecessary” out of the budget so funds can be allocated appropriately.  Trouble is, NOBODY (or at least only a very few people) is willing to cut things out of the budget.  Take a look at the graphic below.

Take a look at those numbers.  These are all things the Government spends money on, yet hardly anyone feels they should receive lower federal funding than they are already currently getting!   In the areas above, the biggest percentages only account for 3% of the Federal Budget according to the survey!  So you could cut them out entirely, and gain nearly nothing!  So, we want our cake and we want to eat it too!  Sounds like America.

So, how do we balance the budget?  As much as I hate to tell you this, the ONLY way to balance the budget is to increase revenue and that means YOU HAVE TO RAISE TAXES.  Yes, I know, shoot me now, I get raped every week by the government taking large chunks of money from what I willingly earned by busting my ass at work for 12 hours a day.  But guess what, I am one of the few that would be willing to increase my tax contributions in order to live in a country that is actually solvent and actually spends appropriate dollars on appropriate programs for it’s citizens.  Trouble is, there aren’t very many people like me.  Only 5% of the people polled in this survey said that taxes needed to be raised.  The Chairman of the Fed knows what is necessary, even President Obama knows that taxes have to be raised but NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR THAT.  I can only hope that someday, the people of my generation will come to understand reality a little better than the boomers have over the past 30 years while we grew up.  We must either reduce the size and scope of the federal government OR we must raise taxes to pay for the things that we so badly want.  It is right there in black and white.  What are you willing to do?

According to a Harris survey to be released tomorrow, 24% of polled Republicans say they believe the president is the anti-Christ.

Are you shocked?  I hope not.  This is coming from the party that has officially fallen off it’s rocker.  In the last 2 days, they’ve called Barney Frank a faggot to his face, they’ve yelled BABY KILLER to rep Stupak, and they have obstructed anything and everything they possibility could over the past several weeks to try and prevent the passage of Health Care Reform.  Which passed anyway.

There was a time in my life, in the not to distant past, when I was able to agree and even support many of the things Republicans claim to be about.  Small Government, states rights, immigration reform…. I can say that in a lot of ways I still agree with those principals but there is one thing that all those are not:  They are NOT part of today’s Republican party.  This party has done so much damage to itself over the past year that it’s going to be a very long time before they can regain any sort of dominance in Washington.  The Republicans have been taken over by TEABAGGING fools, who have no agenda other than obstructionism, who wanted to put Sarah Palen in the White House, and who scream the fact that they are racists homophobes every time Fox News puts them on the TV.  Then there is Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, I can’t even go there because I don’t want to lose that much peace from my life.

If you’ve not read it, check out an editorial today in the New York Times – An Absence of Class, he hits the nail right on the head.

Today on the Huffington Post

Firing all the teachers may feel good – we’re Americans, kicking people when they’re down is what we do – but it’s not really their fault. Now, undeniably, there are some bad teachers out there. They don’t know the material, they don’t make things interesting, they have sex with the same kid every day instead of spreading the love around… But every school has crappy teachers. Yale has crappy teachers – they must, they gave us George Bush.

According to all the studies, it doesn’t matter what teachers do. Although everyone appreciates foreplay. What matters is what parents do. The number one predictor of a child’s academic success is parental involvement. It doesn’t even matter if your kid goes to private or public school. So save the twenty grand a year and treat yourself to a nice vacation away from the little bastards

Click on the link above to read the rest.

I get so sick of the bullshit in the papers and on line criticizing teachers for ‘failing kids’.  Bullshit.  The only teachers who are failing kids in this country ARE THE PARENTS.  Yes, there are bad teachers, AND bad doctors, lawyers, and scientists but come on if you are going to take the time to write in to the newspaper editor, at least show your kids that you know how to use a spell checker or that you can FINISH a fucking thought in a single sentence!  So, the next time you get an urge to criticize a teacher, stop and think for a minute about what you are doing.  Is little Jimmy’s failure to learn his times tables the fault of the teacher OR is it YOUR fault for failing to make sure little Jimmy got home after school to DO HIS HOMEWORK!  OR, is it YOUR fault for failing to drill them into his head like you were asked to help do by the note you got from the teacher BECUASE YOU YOU COULD NOT BE BOTHERED TO SHOW UP FOR PARENT / TEACHER CONFERENCES!

One reason, among many others that I got out of the Education thing for myself was that I had a very difficult time understanding the lack of involvement of parents in their kids lives because it was SO foreign to me. Growing up I couldn’t shit without one of my parents asking me about school and about my life and good Lord there were times when I absolutely HATED their incessant nagging, prodding, and scornful stares and I would slam my books on the table and leave for coffee at Denny’s just to piss them off more. My parents were doing their jobs, THEY were being teachers, never mind their own backgrounds.  THEY were demanding accountability from me and THEY were going to stand by me and help me even while frustrated with me to make sure that at the VERY least, I got my ass through High School with an education.  Yes, I know everyone has shit going on in their lives but come on, you do not have to be a scholar to be a teacher to your child, you only have to be there and show that to your child.  They will know your expectations, you don’t even have to explain what they are,  that’s the beauty of a parent / child relationship.  The kid WILL come to you for help even when they know you won’t be able to give them the answers.

Lack of parental involvement is the #1 reason that our education system in this country is shot.  It is not however broken and it is not un-fixable.  It is also not the sole responsibility of teachers in this country to raise YOUR CHILDREN.

Here: The closet door cannot be fixed once it’s kicked off of hinges. Virginia’s AG has just told the homophobes to get out the torches and pitchforks!

And Here: “Virginia is For Haters”

The idea here is certainly not to offend the better taste of my extended family living in Virginia but certainly they don’t live in a bubble.

Click THIS link to go to the Bill Moyers Journal web site to view the video.

Below is a YouTube preview of the broadcast.

“I have described myself as being ‘gently eccentric’ and slightly different as a person just because I’ve had a very different set of influences growing up than anybody else in my peer group did. I think it’s important for somebody from a big, commercial movie series like Harry Potter and particularly because I am not gay or bisexual or transgendered. The fact that I am straight makes not a difference, but it shows that straight people are incredibly interested and care a lot about this as well.” - Daniel Radcliffe, speaking from the NYC headquarters of the LGBT teen suicide prevention hot-line The Trevor Project, for whom he has just made a promotional film.

15 years ago when I was in high school, there were no major Hollywood celebrities willing to step up to the plate and go to bat for me.  Those who did were on the fringes.  For me personally, I’m not sure it would had much of an influence in my life, I was never a big celebrity follower but here we have Harry Potter, entirely straight with a HUGE following, and willing to put his money where his mouth is.  The Trevor Project was founded not long after I got out of high school and there is a link to it on my sidebar here on this blog.  It’s one of the few charities that I’d consider making a donation to.  Perhaps you might as well.

Four Christians on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the recently enacted Hate Crimes Prevention Act, arguing that it seeks to criminalize deeply held religious beliefs that are in opposition to homosexuality.

Read Box Turtle Bulletin’s take on this story here.  Find out exactly the only thing these Christians must want.

This shit get’s old, luckily so are the people espousing this bile.

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said it was his personal belief that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”

Now, I’m no army boy.  I have about as much interest in fighting a war as I do eating glass.  That said, with all my pacifist tendencies, I still will typically go out of my way to support those who are willing to risk their lives to defend the ideals of this country.  Granted, there are “just” wars and “unjust” wars but that is a political distinction not a practical one.  Regardless of the justification for wars in general, millions of individuals are called on by our government and by a deep sense of personal commitment to the ideals of this country to serve and protect that which we all cherish.  Freedom.  One of the great travesties of Bill Clinton’s time in office was the passage of “Don’t ask Don’t Tell”.  This, in effect, allowed openly gay men and women to serve in the armed forces as long as they were not “out” and did nothing to suggest that they were gay.  If it was discovered they were gay or if they were forced out of the closet by a third party, no matter the reason, they could be discharged…. dishonorably.  Since it’s implementation nearly 17 years ago, between 12,000 and 20,000 GLBT soldiers have been discharged at a cost to tax payers well into the 10′s of millions, many of those kicked out were critical players in the wars this country is fighting, NONE of whom did anything wrong…except be gay.

The implementation of this policy was a big deal.  I was a senior in high school and it was a campaign issue for Bill Clinton.  He would be the first president I actually got to vote for and this “compromise” was, in retrospect, forced on him by bigoted homophobes within the ranks of the military.  It has always been a bad policy, even other major military countries have proven over and over again that allowing gays to serve openly is not an issue.

Finally we are seeing some progress towards repealing this law with hearings that started today.  The big thing out of this is that Joint Chief’s are on board with a repeal.  The question is not IF the policy will be repealed, it is simply a question of HOW it will be repealed.  That’s huge because it means that a repeal is a fact, not a pipe dream.  That they are debating only HOW to repeal the law and not WHY is important.  Stay tuned over the next several months for updates.

Keep in mind the rank is on a scale of 1 -100.  1 being the worst, 100 being the best.

In 2008 (the most recent year published) Menards Ranked 43 – From my perspective this is pretty accurate.  Menards is a pretty quiet company when it comes to politics.  Their primary objective is to make money, end of discussion.  That said, they do have anti-discrimination policies and anti-harassment policies that well exceed other companies I’ve worked for in my lifetime.  It is nearly impossible to have a successful retail business and not be somewhat tolerant and supportive of diversity.  Menards does not go out of it’s way but they do not actively contribute to a hostile climate for it’s GLBT employees.

Below is a list of the bottom of the barrel.  You’ll notice that Meijer (a company that I worked for several years ago and the company that Jirar worked for) received only a score of 20.  2 of the worst 10 companies in the country are Michigan based.  Michigan isn’t all bad, in the top 20 where companies such as the big automakers (GM, Ford), and Dow Chemical ranked with in impressive 100 score.  You can say what you like about HRC (they are a politically movtied and very active group) however their rankings do have significant importance, particularly to those companies that value the contributions of their GLBT employees.  Most of the Fortune 500 companies in this country far exceed private companies when it comes to fairness, all Fortune 500 companies exceed our Federal government when it comes to fairness and equality.