California Releasing Donor List for $83 Million Marriage Vote

SAN FRANCISCO — Nearly 14,000 donors — including homemakers, priests and a former member of the Los Angeles Dodgers — poured millions of dollars into the last two weeks of the campaign to pass Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California. According to a campaign finance report made public on Monday, in all, both sides spent more than $83 million.

The report came just days after supporters of the ballot measure lost a suit in Federal District Court in Sacramento that sought to prevent the names of donors from being revealed. The suit argued that past disclosures had led to donors’ receiving harassing e-mail, death threats and boycotts of businesses. The court said the release of the names was particularly important in such expensive campaigns.

Frank Schubert, campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind Proposition 8, said he had received no reports of harassment on Monday.

A summary report of opponents’ donations, meanwhile, showed the losing side spent $43.1 million. A more detailed report of those names — which ran some 7,600 pages — was still being formatted by the office of the California secretary of state.

The report on the ban’s supporters, which covered the closing days of the campaign, shows a wide variety of backers. They include Jeff Kent, the recently retired second baseman who donated $15,000, and a janitor from Cupertino, Calif., who donated $99.

A Call for Same-Sex Marriage Rights

Carrying signs with slogans like “Just NOT Married” and red heart-shaped balloons, more than 100 people held a rally outside the Manhattan Marriage Bureau on Thursday morning to demand that New York State extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The protest coincided with, but was not formally part of, the 12th annual Freedom to Marry Week, a series of events throughout the United States intended to draw attention to marriage laws.

The protest was organized by two groups, Marriage Equality New York, part of Marriage Equality USA, and Join the Impact.

The protesters gathered outside the new Manhattan Marriage Bureau, at 141 Worth Street, near Centre Street, but their ire was really more directed at the state government than at the city government. New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, supports same-sex marriage rights, as does the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, who is openly gay. But in Albany, even though the Democrats seized control of the State Legislature last fall and also control the governor’s mansion, the movement for same-sex marriage has stalled.

Malcolm A. Smith, the leader of the Senate’s new Democratic majority, recently suggested that a vote on same-sex marriage this year was unlikely; the Democrats are fearful of losing their new — and razor-thin — majority by tackling controversial social issues.

Teen sex in ‘Secret Life’ births debate over ABC Family values

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/01/business/fi-abcfamily1

Disney executives say the drama and similar shows are in sync with the realities facing many American families. Critics say such programs don’t belong on a channel with the word ‘family’ in its name.

February 01, 2009|Meg James and Dawn C. Chmielewski
The TV series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” opens with a 15-year-old girl coming home from band practice, reaching into her French horn case and pulling out a home pregnancy test. Her horrified look confirms the results.

No less startled are some parents whose children watch the ABC Family cable program that revolves around the sex lives of high school students. The titillating themes, in their view, are out of place on a channel with the word “family” in its name — especially given the chaste image of its owner, Walt Disney Co.

But “Secret Life” has become ABC Family’s biggest hit and one of the most popular shows on cable, drawing an average 3.8 million viewers an episode. With depictions of teens rolling out of bed, a father peppering his daughters with questions about their sex lives at the dinner table, and a troubled boy revealing that he had been molested by his father, “Secret Life” represents a coming of age for a channel founded by evangelist Pat Robertson to spread the Gospel.

Welcome to Disney’s new take on the American family.

Along with shows such as “Greek,” set in the belly-shots-and-wet-T-shirts world of college fraternities and sororities, and “Lincoln Heights,” a drama about growing up fast in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood, Disney says it has reshaped ABC Family into a channel more in sync with the realities and anxieties facing many American families and teenagers.

Gay Democrats Push “Don’t Ask, Don’t Give”

http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=12508

Unmotivated to shovel another cent into the Democratic National Committee’s money pit, Americablog founders John Aravosis and Joe Sudbay want Democrats to withhold their donations until gay rights improve.

The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Give” campaign, organized by Americablog.com, also singles out Organizing for America and the Obama administration itself for giving LGBT Americans lip service about their civil rights.

“A year ago, the LGBT community, our families, friends and allies across the country were elated by the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. We poured our hearts and wallets out to elect a Democratic president and Congress,” the pledge reads. “Over the past year our joy has turned to frustration as President Obama and the Democratic Party have moved away from their campaign commitments to gay and lesbian Americans.”

Cosponsored by activists Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile and David Mixner – among others – the pledge at Gay.Americablog.com features a 25-point list comparing candidate Obama’s “fierce” advocacy for gay rights to his relative inaction.

Besides his administration’s mismanagement of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the Defense of Marriage Act, the list also takes Obama to task for his refusal to reestablish the White House Office of LGBT Outreach and implying he will not repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over.

King of Prussia Mall denies sex-positive store

http://www.examiner.com/sex-advice-in-philadelphia/king-of-prussia-mall-denies-sex-positive-store

Last week, Dan Savage posted a blog about a local entrepreneur who has been denied a store at King of Prussia Mall (KOP). Jill McDevitt, who is known in the West Chester area as the owner of Feminique Boutique, applied to the KOP mall to open a new branch of her sex-positive, female-friendly lingerie and sex toy store. They denied her, citing the sale of sex toys as their reason. Dan Savage’s blog sums it up pretty well: “Some Vibrators are More Equal Than Others”.

McDevitt’s store has an array of lingerie in all sizes, t-shirts with quirky and positive messages (“Real men beat their meat. Not their wives and children”), condoms, phthalate-free sex toys and offers informative classes (even one about how to please a woman). All of the employees have been formally educated in human sexuality and believe in their slogan, “Women are sexual subjects, not objects.”

Other stores that are currently in King of Prussia Mall selling similar items as McDevitt’s, include Victoria’s Secret, Frederick’s of Hollywood and Spencer’s. To take action and support a new Feminique Boutique, sign the petition here

Date set for hearing in lesbian’s suit over senior prom

http://www.dallasvoice.com/date-set-for-hearing-in-lesbians-suit-over-senior-prom-1012786.html

Constance McMillen will get her day in court. And that day will be Monday, March 22.

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Constance, a senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Miss., after IAHS officials canceled the senior prom rather than let Constance wear a tuxedo and take her girlfriend as a date to the prom. The judge has set the first hearing in the case for next Monday.

The prom was originally set for April 2.

In a recent interview with Dan Savage, Constance said that she has had a hard time in her hometown since th prom was cancelled. She told Savage:

“The locals don’t like me, but I can’t help it. And things were really hostile in school last week after they cancelled prom. People were rude, and if people talked to me at all it was real short answers. There are a few people who are with me, my real friends, people who are intelligent enough to realize what’s really going on here. But the majority are not on my side.”

She also asked that supporters who want to write letters to IAHS officials “please be respectful. No one hears if you’re screaming and mad and cussing and stuff. Tell them exactly how you feel, but in a respectful way.”

A Facebook page in support of Constance already has more than 320,000 fans.

Advice Columnist and Author Dan Savage Here Tuesday

http://www.depauw.edu/news/index.asp?id=24979

March 11, 2010, Greencastle, Ind. — Dan Savage, an author whose weekly “Savage Love” advice column appears in more than 70 newspapers worldwide, will visit the campus of DePauw University on Tuesday, March 16. Savage, a regular contributor to the public radio program This American Life and to HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, will appear in Meharry Hall of historic East College for a 7 p.m. program, which is free and open to the public.

Savage is the author of Savage Love: Straight Answers from America’s Most Popular Sex Columnist, a collection of his advice columns; Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America; The Commitment: Love, savage love dan savage.jpgSex, Marriage, and My Family; and The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant, an award-winning memoir about adoption which is the inspiration for a new musical from the producers of Avenue Q.

“Probably the most read sex columnist in the United States, Savage is also widely regarded as one of the great humorists of our time,” noted Library Journal. ” Anyone who reads his nationally syndicated ‘Savage Love’ column weekly well knows his power to burst the bubble of the pompous.”

Columnist gives UND a real lesson in sexual education

http://www.dakotastudent.com/2.5855/columnist-gives-und-a-real-lesson-in-sexual-education-1.1348756

Graphic and incredibly honest west coast relationship advice columnist Dan Savage took questions from a UND audience on March 3rd. Attendees’ questions ranged from wondering why they had gotten dumped to a discussion on monogamy.

Savage has a widely popular blog, “Savage Love,” and a podcast under the same name.

For anyone unfamiliar with Savage, he is about as far from your mother’s advice columnist as you can get. Savage didn’t arrive at UND with anything in mind to speak about; his format is completely crowd-sourced. He began by saying, “I have no agenda. We are going to talk about what you want to talk about. Wherever we go, you took us there.”

Audience members wrote their questions down on index cards and had them collected by members of the Multicultural Awareness Committee, who sponsored the discussion.

Savage took the first question, “My boyfriend dumped me for school but a month later he’s dating someone else?” Sitting there, I thought it was going to be a sugarcoated reply, sparing her feeling; it certainly was not.

Savage answered every question without hesitation, honestly and intelligently, in ways most UND students have never heard.

Sometimes they were obvious truths you never hear: “Nobody is ever shy about being heterosexual.” Sometimes, and this is where Savage really shines, they were status quo-challenging suggestions: “We should treat monogamy like sobriety. I’m monogamous right now, but I did fall off the wagon a while ago.” Savage had more to say about the m word. “Monogamy is something we, as primates, didn’t evolve for and socially are not good at. We need to be realistic. Look at the odds. You need to decide when it happens, are you going to be Hilary Clinton or Jenny Sanford about it?”

Interesting point, however as a male I had to assume I was automatically biased toward crowing him the Sex Ed Messiah, so I decided to get the fairer perspective. A female UND student said this about the event: “I liked his ideas of not looking at sex, as just sex, but as all the possibilities. I also really liked when he talked about how he wished females could ejaculate. I thought that was really funny.”

When Mom Wants Sex Advice

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/bangtown/2010/03/29/when-mom-wants-sex-advice/

Over the weekend, I decided to spend time with my mom.

We were having a good time, until she asked me a strange question.

“What can I do to spice up my love life?”

Really? My first thought was to ignore her question. I mean, this is mother and father. I don’t even want to think about them having sex. (Shivering at the mental image)

Then I thought, what would Dan Savage do? He’d answer the question. Granted, I’m no Dan Savage. But Mom knows that I spend a good part of my day writing and thinking about sex. So, I decided to offer her some advice.

All long term relationships lose that luster some times. So, in order to keep things exciting, you have to think out of the box.

Coweta passes tighter obscenity ordinance

http://www.times-herald.com/local/coweta-passes-tighter-obscenity-ordinance-646015

The sale of sex toys, and perhaps even the sale of some condoms and lubricants, is now prohibited in Coweta County.

The Coweta County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to approve a new obscenity ordinance and a new ordinance regulating sexually-oriented businesses at a specially-called meeting Monday afternoon.

The obscenity ordinance prohibits sale or distribution of obscenity, and prohibits anyone from “knowingly” selling, or possessing with the intent to sell, “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

The county’s old ordinance specifically exempted condoms from being considered as a stimulation device. The new ordinance makes no such distinction, and would appear to apply to items such as ribbed condoms and various lubricants marketed as having a “warming” or “tingling” sensation. Such products are commonly available at most drug and grocery stores.