Category: LGBT rights

by Jared Quient / Two Cathedrals / July 18, 2011

Opponents of Marriage Equality are getting desperate. Between last month’s awe-inspiring leadership by Governor Andrew Cuomo that led to the state legislature legalizing same-sex marriage in New York and the latest court decisions here in California, the march towards marriage equality for all seems for the first time in our history, wonderfully inevitable.

Heck, even the San Diego Union Tribune’s editorial board (not exactly a bastion for progressive ideals) realizes that opponents of Marriage Equality are running out of options.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing/ July 17, 2011
San Diego Pride
San Diego’s Pride Parade was Saturday 16 July, and its images are telling.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing

You know that thing we used to have to do at the end of summer, the thing that whopped you upside the head with the brutal inevitability that vacation was over, that tar-bubble popping adventures and rhubarb-sucking loll-abouts were done, done and gone with the finality of a bee between your naked foot and the clover that enticed the insect to its death and you, to your hopping pain?

June 23, 2011 – 7pm – Joyce Beers Community Center

“The same cast of characters currently engaged in attacks on Planned Parenthood, other Family Planning Clinics and Title X in general, are also in the forefront throwing roadblocks in front of DADT repeal, fighting against marriage equality and fighting against employment protections – and even hate crimes protections – for LGBT people” according to Jacqueline Palmer, Membership Director for San Diego Democratic Club. She continued, “Women’s reproductive rights IS an LGBT issue.”

In our coverage of SlutWalk San Diego we’ve noted the number of young people involved in this event. I want to give a more formal introduction to two of the young women that were involved in organizing this the movement in San Diego.

I’ve attended many rallies and protests at downtown San Diego’s City Hall, but never have I attended one with so much sizzle. Sexuality was the issue– predominately, but not exclusively female sexuality. As Patty Jones has noted here the message was “yes means yes and no means no.” Participants were as unequivocal about everything that the “yes means yes” part implies as they were unequivocal about the “no means no” part. “Yes” put the sizzle in Slutwalk and it was a deeply sensual and life affirming “yes.” That is probably why Slutwalk was not only empowering and thought provoking but also a whole lotta fun.

Saturday, June 11 2011, SlutWalk San Diego held its first rally as a large group gathered in the middle of Civic Center Plaza. By 1:30 pm, there was a crowd of about 150. People were assembling in the shade of the large trees in the Plaza. According to Frank’s headcount, by 2:00 it was up to 350 with people still streaming into the plaza.

UPDATE: See coverage of the event HERE

San Diego event to be held Saturday, June 11 at City Hall

There is a movement storming the country, and the world, whose purpose is to end placing the blame of rape on the victim. This includes dispelling the myth that the way someone acts or dresses determines the likelihood that they will be raped, or that they somehow deserve what they get.

It was ignited in January by a comment made by Toronto policeman Constable Michael Sanguinetti while addressing students and staff at Osgoode Hall Law School, when he recommended that women not dress like “sluts” in order to avoid sexual assault.

By Matt Corrales

In the current edition of another community publication, a column ran attacking the LGBT Redistricting Task Force as a “mostly all white so-called LGBT Redistricting Committee … working on a new 3rd District that would be about 70 percent all white and would kick out our first gay person of color elected to the city council”.

This analysis of the Task Force and the proposed District 3 map it produced is plain wrong in a number of ways.

Excerpts from San Diego: 1st City of Empire, by Rocky Neptun, to be published in May, 2011 by the San…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

There is nothing like a midterm election to reveal our putrid political underbelly. It is a dark, stinky place where paranoia, distrust, disaffection and outright deceit are reduced to hatred in a cauldron fired by fear and boiling over in a miasmic wave of bigotry.

Gross, eh?

Throw in a recession and all its attendant terrors, and what do you get? “Double, double toil and trouble” …

I can’t shake the sadness I feel for Tyler Clementi, the 18 year old Rutgers University student who recently took his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after a classmate broadcast his intimate encounter with another man online.

My goodness, how many more gay people must die due to society’s hateful attitudes towards them? Tyler wasn’t the only gay youth to end his life in September. There were about seven ….