Author: Brett

Scott Heggart, Gay Canadian Jock, Documented Coming Out Process In Poignant YouTube Series

Brett

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/18/scott-heggart-gay-canadian-jock-youtube-videos_n_1357292.html?ref=email_share

Coming out can be a difficult process for any teenager. According to Scott Heggart, it’s even harder when you’re an athlete.

The Canadian-born Heggart, now 21 and a first-year communications student at the University of Ottawa, told the Ottawa Citizen he began to understand his sexualityin 7th grade, but feared that he would have to stop playing football, basketball, softball and hockey if he came out. “I’d started to understand who I was, what it meant,” he recalled. “The worst thing, from my teammates’ perspective, was to be gay.”

Study of the Day: Women’s Use of Condoms Dwindles in College

Brett

PROBLEM: Unprotected sex puts women at greater risk for unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, yet there has been a gap in research involving condom use of women during their college years.

METHODOLOGY: Miriam Hospital researchers led by Jennifer Walsh recruited 279 first-year female college students and asked them to submit monthly reports on their use of condoms. To uncover possible predictors of unsafe behavior, they also included questions about participants’ high school GPA, religious beliefs, parents’ education levels, and whether they had smoked marijuana or engaged in binge drinking during the month before they entered college.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/study-of-the-day-womens-use-of-condoms-dwindles-in-college/253895/

Chlamydia Testing: Few U.S. Women Getting Tested For The STD, CDC Says

Brett

CHICAGO, March 13 (Reuters) – Only 38 percent of the 16 million American women aged 15 to 25 who are sexually active were screened for chlamydia in the prior year, putting them at risk for chronic pain, life-threatening pregnancies and infertility, U.S. health experts said on Tuesday.

Chlamydia is the most commonly reported sexually transmitted disease in the United States, with 1.3 million new cases reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010.

But because the infection often has no symptoms, the actual rate of new infections may be more than twice that, or nearly 2.8 million new infections each year, Dr. Gail Bolan, the CDC’s director of STD Prevention, told reporters in a conference call from the National STD Prevention Conference in Minneapolis.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/03/13/chlamydia-testing-women-rates_n_1343087.html

Three Parents as Good as Two for Boy With Lesbian Mothers and Gay Father

Brett

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9143717/Three-parents-as-good-as-two-for-boy-with-lesbian-mothers-and-gay-father-court-rules.html

In an “unusual if not unique” case, three Appeal Court judges ruled that the father should not be treated as a “secondary” parent because his son was living with two women. They found that three parents can be as good as two.

The case, which hinged on questions of “biology, human nature and the hand of fate”, highlighted the difficulty of determining the best interests of children born into “alternative” families.

It proved, according to one of the judges, Lady Justice Black, the impossibility of drawing up overarching legal guidance to deal with such families.

The court heard that the biological mother, known as MD, her lesbian partner, known as AR, and the father, DN, are all wealthy London professionals.

Op-Ed: Why I Stood Up to My School District

Brett

http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Oped_Why_I_Stood_Up_to_my_School_District/

Ebonie Richardson is a 16-year-old lesbian student who challenged the Anoka-Hennepin School District with a lawsuit that just ended with new protections designed to protect students like her from bullying.

“Mom, I like girls … .”

That’s what I wrote five years ago in my coming out letter to my mom. I was 11 at the time I wrote the letter, and I didn’t know that my mom would become my fiercest supporter, giving me the courage and strength to walk through the halls of my schools as a proud, out lesbian.

It’s that same courage and strength that made me hopeful that the day would come when I’d no longer face physical attacks or name calling by other students at my school in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District.

‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill On Hold After Lawmakers Realize Their Stupidity

Brett

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/dont-say-gay-bill-on-hold-after-lawmakers-realize-their-stupidity/politics/2012/03/14/36405

Tennessee’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill yesterday was placed on hold after lawmakers realized that the bill was not only unnecessary from their own standpoint, but counterproductive as well. In grades K -8, the bill would have made it illegal to discuss homosexuality in any manner at all, and allow only the discussion of heterosexual reproduction.

Lawmakers put a hold on the bill upon learning — after more than two years of debate — that Tennessee does not have sex education classes in grades K – 8.

“We found out there really is not sex education curriculum in K-8 right now,” GOP Rep. Bill Dunn, one of the bill’s sponsors said yesterday.

Gender-Neutral Housing: No Excuses for UNC-Chapel Hill

Brett

Safety for transgender college students needs to be a priority. According to Campus Pride’s 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People, less than 7 percent of institutions of higher education have inclusive nondiscrimination polices with regard to gender identity and expression of transgender students, faculty, and staff. More than a third of all transgender students, faculty, and staff fear for their physical safety, and over half attempt to hide their transgender identity to avoid intimidation and harassment on campus.

 

http://collegeprowler.com/rankings/campus-housing/top-best-dorm-atmosphere/

Carla Gugino Joins USA’s ‘Political Animals’

Brett

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/carla-gugino-political-animals-usa-network-296639

Carla Gugino is heading to Washington D.C.

The actress has closed a deal to join USA Network’s six-hour politics-driven drama series, Political Animals, from executive producers Greg Berlanti and Laurence Mark, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Set for a summer launch, Political Animals centers on Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver), a divorced former First Lady and current Secretary of State, who is struggling to keep her family together while simultaneously dealing with the crises of the State Department. She finds an unlikely ally in a famous D.C. journalist who has spent her career tearing Elaine down.

How Anoka-Hennepin Failed Its Bullied LGBT Students

Brett

As ThinkProgress reported earlier, the Department of Justice found through its investigation that Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin School District did not properly intervene when its students were harassed for their gender non-conforming identities. In the report, the DOJ profiled 10 current and former students, all of whom experienced verbal and often physical threats because of their perceived gender or sexual orientation and faced mental health and/or educational consequences when the district failed to mitigate the bullying. In most of the cases, the district placed burdens on the bullied student rather than take steps to interrupt the harassment, and in every case, the district had evidence that the harassment continued but did not take further action.

 

Gay and Transgender Women by the Numbers

Brett

Over the past century, women have made tremendous advancements in politics, family life, and culture both in the United States and throughout the world. People are celebrating these monumental achievements and pushing for further changes to level the playing field for women worldwide on the 103rd International Women’s Day on March 8. Those changes can’t come fast enough for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender women in our nation.

 

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/03/lgbt_IWD.html