Author: Brett

Thomas Suarez, 12-Year-Old Wunderkid, Gives A TED Talk On His Apps

Brett

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/thomas-suarez-ted-12-year-old_n_1095004.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Thomas Suarez has two published apps, a startup company and a compelling TED talk under his belt — all at the tender age of 12.

In a compelling October 22 talk at a TED conference in Manhattan Beach, the Los Angeles student held forth on topics like tech integration in education, app access for all children, and how teachers could best use the classroom’s greatest resource — the students themselves. The video of Suarez’s speech was uploaded last week and already has over 400,000 views.

Oklahoma City Council Passes Sexual Orientation Discrimination Protection Measure

Brett

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-city-council-passes-sexual-orientation-discrimination-protection-measure/article/3623463

A measure proposed by Ward 2 Oklahoma City Councilman Ed Shadidthat extends employment discrimination protection in city offices to gay people passed Tuesday by a 7-2 vote.

The measure adds “sexual orientation” to the list of protected equal employment opportunity classes.

Gay employees and job applicants already had de facto protection from employment discrimination, city staff said.

In advocating for his measure, Shadid said his instinct as a businessman is to provide protection to everyone. He also said Scripture is too unclear and subjective to sway him.

Two Gay Swimmers Are Amongst Oldest Olympic Trial Qualifiers Ever

Brett

http://www.nightlifegay.com/2011/11/gay-swimmers-to-make-history-at-2012-us.html?m=1
A huge congratulations is owed to Brian Jacobsen (top photo) from Minnesota! The 37-year old openly gay administrator at the Univ of Minnesota just became the second-oldest male swimmer in history to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Trials. He eclipsed the qualifying standard of 23.49 in the 50-meter freestyle by two-hundredths of a second at last evening’s U.S. Grand Prix Swim Meet in Minneapolis. His time of 23.47 guarantees him a spot to swim at next summer’s U.S. Olympic Trials. He joins Jeff Commings (second photo) – who is also openly gay and also 37 years old (though a couple months younger than Brian) – as two of the three oldest male swimmers EVER to make the U.S. Olympic Trials.

21 Notable Comings Out

Brett

http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Features/21_Notable_Comings_Out/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvocatecomDailyNews+%28Advocate.com+Daily+News%29

Thousands of LGBT people no doubt came out in 2011, but the media had their eyes on a handful of folks who helped push visibility in their worlds by coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

US Catholic Bishops Declare War on Gay Marriage Despite US Catholic Views

Brett

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/us-catholic-bishops-declare-war-on-gay-marriage-despite-us-catholic-views/politics/2011/11/14/30166?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewCivilRightsMovement+%28The+New+Civil+Rights+Movement%29

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)  — the official group that represents the Catholic Church in America — is in the middle of a two-​day annual meeting and has decided to declare war on gay marriage, at the expense of all else. Despite a recent poll titled, “Catholics in America,” that found American Catholics see opposition to same-​sex marriage equality as low on their list of what the Church should be focusing on, the USCCB has spent a good portion of the day on its anti-​gay agenda, which included the introduction of a new anti-​gay website, “Marriage: Unique For A Reason.”

The new site says, “it is hoped that Marriage: Unique for a Reason can be of assistance to all people of good will who seek to understand the truth and beauty of marriage.” We agree. Marriage is unique, and beautiful, and should therefore not be declined to same-​sex couples.

 

Girl Talk: How Lesbian Sex Changed My Definition of Straight Sex

Brett

http://www.thefrisky.com/2011-11-14/girl-talk-how-lesbian-sex-changed-my-definition-of-straight-sex/

When I was a kid, I thought “sex” was two people peeing on each other. Like, I imagined you got in a bed naked and cuddled  for so long that inevitably you would have to pee. But instead of getting up to pee, you just “let go” and peed together, in the bed. This romantic notion just made sense in my eight-year-old brain.

By the time I hit middle school, I totally knew what sex was. Or at least I acted that way, ready to jump on my more naive peers with a “You mean you don’t know?!”

I thought I had gathered the correct information about the genitals, for the most part. I stared at the instructions that came with boxes of tampons, and tried to understand how one went about inserting them … or anything at all down there. I prayed no one would give me a pop quiz about how the logistics of it all worked.

So when I was 15, and my 14-year-old boyfriend and I decided to have sex, it won’t shock you to know that we couldn’t figure it out. We knew sex meant this one act, this penetration thing, but it just didn’t work for us. Later, when we broke up, I wrote, heartbroken in my diary, that I’d “practically had sex with him.”

21 Top News Stories of the Year

Brett

http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Cover_Stories/21_Top_News_Stories_of_the_Year/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvocatecomDailyNews+%28Advocate.com+Daily+News%29

All things gay were central to the 24/7 news cycle in 2011, and almost daily mainstream America saw stories about marriage equality, bullied kids, a dancing trans man, and heroic gays. Here are a few news flashes that topped our gaydar this year.

 

Chelsea Clinton Hired by NBC News

Brett

NBC is to announce on Monday morning that it has hired Chelsea Clinton to become a full-time special correspondent for NBC News.

The appointment is immediate. Ms. Clinton will show up at the news division offices oon Monday morning, said Steve Capus, president of NBC News, and will begin work on stories that NBC expects to use as part of its “Making a Difference” series, which runs on “NBC Nightly News.”

Ms. Clinton has been a national figure since her father won the presidency in 1992, but she has remained — first by her parents’ request and then by her own choice — largely out of the public eye.

New It Gets Better Videos

Brett

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/11/13/New_It_Gets_Better_Videos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdvocatecomDailyNews+%28Advocate.com+Daily+News%29

The It Gets Better Project keeps growing, with videos recently added by such diverse groups as Georgia Tech University, the Wabanaki Two-Spirit Alliance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and several individuals.

The project was created by Dan Savage and Terry Miller to send a message to LGBT youths who might be facing bullying and other discrimination that life does get better and they can realize their ambitions.

Watch some of the latest It Gets Better videos here and on the following pages.

Dear Christians: You Are Not Being Oppressed

Brett

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/dear-christians-you-are-not-being-oppressed/politics/2011/11/13/30036?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewCivilRightsMovement+%28The+New+Civil+Rights+Movement%29

One of the great things about the It Gets Better campaign, apart from the fact that it is an immensely valuable and unquestionably brilliant idea, is that it made anti-​gay bullying a national issue. The premise is simple. Tell your story of survival. Send that message. Things suck now, but they won’t forever. Genius. Stories flooded in, the message proved to be even more powerful than probably anyone expected, and the living hell that passes for the lives of many LGBT youth got some long overdue attention. I expect that straight people hadn’t thought much about what it was like to grow up gay until that point. A large chunk of them probably had never even considered the existence of gay youth.

Organizations like the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage, not to mention most of organized religion, have been fairly successful in painting LGBT people as mustache twirling villains. Once people started seeing countless pictures of fresh-​faced young people hounded to the breaking point, turning to suicide rather than endure the daily tortures their lives had become at the hands of their hate-​fueled abusers, only the most hard-​hearted ideologues on the planet could fail to empathize.