#gay marriage was only legal in a few us states at the time of the sims 3!

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

if there’s something I appreciate every sims game for its very much that they’re all extremely queer positive for the time they came out. some of the old ones seem a bit dated now, over a decade later, but they were genuinely ahead of the curve at the time. they had gay marriage well before it was fully legalised in america. hell they effectively had gay marriage in the sims 2 civil unions in that game are treated near identically to marriages just with some clunky terminology changes. and civil unions themselves were not fully legalised for gay couples in america at that time! the only place where gay marriage was actually legal was fucking massachusetts! it was not perfect but in 2004 it was Also ahead of the vast majority of the us!!! where the game was made!!!

[liberaljane]

Women's Not So Distant History

This #WomensHistoryMonth, let's not forget how many of our rights were only won in recent decades, and weren’t acquired by asking nicely and waiting. We need to fight for our rights. Here's are a few examples:

📍 Before 1974's Fair Credit Opportunity Act made it illegal for financial institutions to discriminate against applicants' gender, banks could refuse women a credit card. Women won the right to open a bank account in the 1960s, but many banks still refused without a husband’s signature. This allowed men to continue to have control over women’s bank accounts. Unmarried women were often refused service by financial institutions entirely.

📍 Before 1977, sexual harassment was not considered a legal offense. That changed when a woman brought her boss to court after she refused his sexual advances and was fired. The court stated that her termination violated the 1974 Civil Rights Act, which made employment discrimination illegal.⚖️

📍 In 1969, California became the first state to pass legislation to allow no-fault divorce. Before then, divorce could only be obtained if a woman could prove that her husband had committed serious faults such as adultery. 💍By 1977, nine states had adopted no-fault divorce laws, and by late 1983, every state had but two. The last, New York, adopted a law in 2010.

📍In 1967, Kathrine Switzer, entered the Boston Marathon under the name "K.V. Switzer." At the time, the Amateur Athletics Union didn't allow women. Once discovered, staff tried to remove Switzer from the race, but she finished. AAU did not formally accept women until fall 1971.

📍 In 1972, Lillian Garland, a receptionist at a California bank, went on unpaid leave to have a baby and when she returned, her position was filled. Her lawsuit led to 1978's Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which found that discriminating against pregnant people is unlawful

📍 It wasn’t until 2016 that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states. Previously, laws varied by state, and while many states allowed for civil unions for same-sex couples, it created a separate but equal standard. In 2008, California was the first state to achieve marriage equality, only to reverse that right following a ballot initiative later that year. 

📍In 2018, Utah and Idaho were the last two states that lacked clear legislation protecting chest or breast feeding parents from obscenity laws. At the time, an Idaho congressman complained women would, "whip it out and do it anywhere,"

📍 In 1973, the Supreme Court affirmed the right to safe legal abortion in Roe v. Wade. At the time of the decision, nearly all states outlawed abortion with few exceptions. In 1965, illegal abortions made up one-sixth of all pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths. Unfortunately after years of abortion restrictions and bans, the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022. Since then, 14 states have fully banned care, and another 7 severely restrict it – leaving most of the south and midwest without access. 

📍 Before 1973, women were not able to serve on a jury in all 50 states. However, this varied by state: Utah was the first state to allow women to serve jury duty in 1898. Though, by 1927, only 19 states allowed women to serve jury duty. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 gave women the right to serve on federal juries, though it wasn't until 1973 that all 50 states passed similar legislation

📍 Before 1988, women were unable to get a business loan on their own. The Women's Business Ownership Act of 1988 allowed women to get loans without a male co-signer and removed other barriers to women in business. The number of women-owned businesses increased by 31 times in the last four decades. 

Free download

📍 Before 1965, married women had no right to birth control. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that banning the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy.

📍 Before 1967, interracial couples didn’t have the right to marry. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court found that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. In 2000, Alabama was the last State to remove its anti-miscegenation laws from the books.

📍 Before 1972, unmarried women didn’t have the right to birth control. While married couples gained the right in 1967, it wasn’t until Eisenstadt v. Baird seven years later, that the Supreme Court affirmed the right to contraception for unmarried people.

📍 In 1974, the last “Ugly Laws” were repealed in Chicago. “Ugly Laws” allowed the police to arrest and jail people with visible disabilities for being seen in public. People charged with ugly laws were either charged a fine or held in jail. ‘Ugly Laws’ were a part of the late 19th century Victorian Era poor laws. 

📍 In 1976, Hawaii was the last state to lift requirements that a woman take her husband’s last name.  If a woman didn’t take her husband’s last name, employers could refuse to issue her payroll and she could be barred from voting. 

📍 It wasn’t until 1993 that marital assault became a crime in all 50 states. Historically, intercourse within marriage was regarded as a “right” of spouses. Before 1974, in all fifty U.S. states, men had legal immunity for assaults their wives. Oklahoma and North Carolina were the last to change the law in 1993.

📍  In 1990, the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) – most comprehensive disability rights legislation in U.S. history – was passed. The ADA protected disabled people from employment discrimination. Previously, an employer could refuse to hire someone just because of their disability.

📍 Before 1993, women weren’t allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor. That changed when Sen. Moseley Braun (D-IL), & Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) wore trousers - shocking the male-dominated Senate. Their fashion statement ultimately led to the dress code being clarified to allow women to wear pants. 

📍 Emergency contraception (Plan B) wasn't approved by the FDA until 1998. While many can get emergency contraception at their local drugstore, back then it required a prescription. In 2013, the FDA removed age limits & allowed retailers to stock it directly on the shelf (although many don’t).

📍  In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court ruled that anti-cohabitation laws were unconstitutional. Sometimes referred to as the ‘'Living in Sin' statute, anti-cohabitation laws criminalize living with a partner if the couple is unmarried. Today, Mississippi still has laws on its books against cohabitation. 

[batboyblog]

What Joe Biden has Done for LGBTQ+ People

I wanted to list out everything The Biden Administration has done for Queer people in the last 3 and a half years, but according to GLAAD it'd been 337 moves (and I noticed they missed a few things...) there was just no way to list every ground breaking first Queer person ever nominated to fill this or that job, every ally with a historic LGBT rights record nominated for a top job, every beautiful statement of support, every time he tried to get Congress to pass the Equality Act (support it!) So I've gone through and done my best to pick the ones I think were the most important, but everyone should check out the full list!

Day 1: Signs executive orders banning discrimination and ordering a full review of all federal agencies policies to better include and support LGBT people

Pete Buttigieg becomes the first openly gay person nominated and confirmed for a cabinet level post as Secretary of Transportation

Revokes Trump’s 2018 ban on transgender military personnel

Department of Housing and Urban Development implements LGBTQ protections in housing, becoming first federal agency to implement Pres. Biden’s executive order

First President to recognize and proclaim Trans Day of Visibility

Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issues an official memo that the Supreme Court's Bostock decision against LGBT workplace discrimination also applies to education through Title IX

HUD withdraws a Trump Administration proposed rule change, and reaffirms trans people's rights to seek shelters matching their gender identity

HHS announces the withdrawal of Trump Administration rules that allowed discrimination by healthcare organizations against LGBT people.

The State Department and later Homeland Security announce babies born to Queer couples overseas will be American citizens if one parent is American, in the past the child only qualified if they were genetically related to the American citizen parent.

The Justice Department files against a West Virginia law banning trans students from school athletics

Department of Veterans Affairs announces it will offer gender confirming surgery for transgender veterans. There are an estimated 134,000 transgender veterans in the U.S. and another 15,000 transgender people serving in the armed forces.

President Biden Signs a law making the Pulse Night Club a national memorial

The State Department creates an X gender marker for passports and other documents, allowing gender affirming identification for non-binary and intersex people for the first time.

The Census Bureau for the first time issues a Survey with questions about sexual orientation and gender identity

On the 10th anniversary of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Veterans Administration announces that soldiers discharged for homosexual conduct, gender identity or HIV status qualify for veterans' benefits

Dr. Rachel Levine becomes the first trans person confirmed by the US Senate when she was nominated to be Assistant Secretary for Health, she also became the first trans flag rank officer when she was sworn in as a 4 star Admiral for her job as head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, his makes her the highest ranked trans person in government

Holds the first ever vigil in the White House for Transgender Day of Remembrance

HHS announces rule change to reinstate and expand protections against discrimination in the Affordable Care Act, including denying coverage for gender-affirming care.

Social Security Administration reverses a Trump Administration policy and allows benefits claims by surviving partners in same-sex relationships, whose partner died before marriage equality was legal

President Biden signs the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (a bill he helped originally craft in the Senate) which for the first time has grant programs dedicated to expanding and developing initiatives specifically for LGBTQ survivors of domestic violence

The TSA announces new technology and policy shifts to improve the customer experience of transgender travelers who have previously been required to undergo additional screening due to alarms in sensitive areas.

The Social Security Administration allows people to edit their gender and name on records for the first time without legal and medical documentation

The US Air Force announces it'll offer medical and legal aid to any personnel families affected by state level anti-trans youth bills.

Karine Jean-Pierre becomes the first Lesbian to serve as White House Press Secretary

on 50th anniversary of Title IX The Department of Ed strengthens protections for Students against sexual harassment and discrimination

Veterans Affairs announces survivor benefits now extended to partners from relationships before marriage equality was legalized in 2015

President Biden signs the Respect for Marriage Act into law enshrining protections for marriage equality for same-sex and interracial couples

The Department of Ed announces new rules around athletic eligibility under Title IX, declaring blanket bans on trans students violate the law and setting up strike standards for schools

The White House announced a suit of new protections for LGBTQ people, including a new job at the Department of Ed to combat book bans, a joint DoJ Homeland Security effort to combat violence and threats and HHS evidence-based guidance to mental health providers for care of transgender kids

President Biden signs an Executive Order directing HHS to protect LGBTQI+ youth in the foster care system, a rule they later passed requiring Queer foster children to be placed in affirming homes

The Biden administration joins families of transgender youth in Tennessee and Kentucky in petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse a circuit court ruling allowing a ban on mainstream health care to be enforced

President Biden Signs a EO expanding on past EO on equality and helping underserved communities

The Department of Education's Civil Rights office opens an investigation into the death of Nex Benedict. President Biden in his statement said: "Every young person deserves to have the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are, and feel safe and supported at school and in their communities. Nex Benedict, a kid who just wanted to be accepted, should still be here with us today. Nonbinary and transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know. But nobody should have to be brave just to be themselves. In memory of Nex, we must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children.”

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Same anon that's something the supreme Court question. Why do you say it like they are defending it when I have seen multiple people say they don't care about the Constitution either? Like aren't they the ones that overturning roe v wade and there's a possibility they will make same-sex marriages illegal again with all this project 2025 stuff that's going up?

speaking about that, is Biden actually accomplishing those goals? And please make this very clear with facts. This may require you to write up a longer post about this but I think I really want to understand if that is a fear monitoring thing or if this is another "Dems are bad, gop good" shit

First of all, Roe v Wade was always bad law. The idea that the right to privacy means a right to legal abortions never made sense, morally or constitutionally, and it never should have been in place at all, let alone for as long as it was. The Supreme Court overturning unconstitutional laws and reversing unconstitutional decisions is literally why it exists. The Constitution empowers the court for that very reason. If you want other examples of the court protecting the constitution, just look at the Heller decision, or any of the other decisions rolling back unconstitutional gun laws in the past few years. Look also at Matal v Tam, in which the court unanimously ruled that the government can't ban speech just because it's offensive. Which means that there can be no laws against so-called hate speech in the US, and the Orwellian tyranny you see all over Europe under the guise of combating "hate speech" can never legally happen here. Which is a massive win for free speech and the entire reason the 1st Amendment was written.

As for gay marriage getting overturned, it's incredibly unlikely, since there are zero court cases about gay marriage going on right now and the Supreme Court can't just make rulings out of nothing (much to the frustration of more than a few people, I'm sure) it's basically a non-issue. If you're referring to what Clarence Thomas said about gay marriage in his majority opinion overturning Roe, he specifically said that this ruling shouldn't be used as justification to overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges decision on its own, though he did say that those decisions deserve another look. And he's right. Obergefell is another case of an activist court inventing rights out of thin air. There is no such thing as the right to marriage, for gay or straight people. It should be overturned, and the issue of defining legal marriage should be left up to individual states, as the Constitution intended (see the 10th Amendment).

I've been asked about Project 2025 before, and I'll tell you what I told the last anon, as far as I can tell, it's a pile of nothing. It's a group of policy proposals made by a bunch of conservative political commenters I've never heard of, who, as far as I know, have no connection to any Republican political campaign or the RNC. No one on the right is talking about the project. No politicians have come out in support of it. No campaigns have said they're going to implement those policies. Project 2025 is a left-wing boogeyman, and not even one that's getting a lot of traction in left wing circles since the only time I've ever seen anyone talking about it has been in my ask box and a few fringe far left conspiracy sites that came up when I originally tried to figure out what it was. It's the left attempt to have their own Agenda 2030 to be scared and angry about, except there aren't any international organizations trying to get the governments of the world to adopt their policies.

speaking about that, is Biden actually accomplishing those goals?

So, I really don't know what you mean by this. What goals?

[madsworld15]

Why Queer as Folk (2000) Was Seemingly Forgotten

An analysis by a professional TV Critic

Let me start off by saying the initial run of Queer as Folk and its current resurgence can be represented by this mantra by Brian Kinney: There are two kinds of straight people. The ones who hate you to your back and the ones who hate you to your face.

The initial run of QAF coincides with the first half of the statement: hate behind your back.

So, recently I started thinking about how in the early 2000s, Queer as Folk seemed to be on a trajectory of going down in TV history. Then, seemingly just as quickly, people stopped talking about it. So much so that by the time I finished watching it in 2009, I only got a few good months of chatter on social media platforms (Twitter mostly) with other fans before it just stopped being talked about in a wide-reaching manner.

I will even admit that I stopped thinking about the show not long after that and wasn't reminded of its full impact on my psyche until late last year when it was back on easy-access streaming due to Showtime's merge with Paramount+.

But why is it that this show is only just now starting to pick up speed again? (I'm talking fan cams on TikTok, memes, etc.)

I have some theories about all of this, so buckle in.

To really get a grasp of what Queer as Folk was working against when it aired on Showtime -- a paid subscription channel back before the days of an overabundance of streaming services, you have to look at the climate we were living in. Also, how inaccessible a paid TV channel was for most people.

So, in the early 2000s, life in the United States, and probably the world, but I'm not fully educated enough to comment on that, wasn't the greatest for those in the LGBT+ community. It would be years before the President of the United States would pass legislation that Gay Marriage be legal nationwide.

Employers were able to fire people for being gay, and the employees couldn't fight it. Gay parents had very little in terms of rights to their own children; in fact, some couldn't even adopt the kids they wanted to because there were no laws against discrimination.

All of these things are depicted left and right throughout Queer as Folk, with Ted getting fired from his job, Michael being extremely closeted at his job, and Melanie not being afforded rights to Gus because of adoption regulations during that time.

So, for our community to receive a show that was by us for us, we were overjoyed. There was something so resolutely refreshing about the unapologetic manner in which these characters were allowed to present themselves and live their lives. And while the show gets dinged today for its lack of racial diversity, we were glad to see queer people represented in a variety of ways -- we got to see the Emmett's and Justin's of the world being friends with the Ted's and Michael's and Brian's.

Not only that, these characters got to love who they wanted, however, they wanted, and whenever they wanted. Characters like Michael and Emmett could go from wanting to freely fuck whoever to finding that special person and settling down. We got to see Ted find the right guy at the wrong time over and over and over again until it was finally the right guy at the right time.

But most of all, we got to see a character like Brian, who, in the hands of a straight person, might've actually gone "soft" and "domestic" just by being with Justin. Instead, we got to see him never change his opinion about what he wanted, but still finding love in his own way.

However, not long after the show ended (like around 2008), the climate in the United States started to shift more towards open acceptance of the queer community. So, people stopped needing an escape from the hardships of real life because things seemed to be on an upward trend toward love and equality. Therefore, Queer as Folk sort of fell off the radar of viewers because we didn't want more of the gritty, complicated, messy queer stories. We wanted our stories to be happy and lighthearted.

(Keep in mind I am speaking in terms of general viewers. There are always exceptions to the rule)

Then, in 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and suddenly, it was totally okay for people to openly mock us and hate us.

This is where the resurgence of QAF falls into the second half of Brian's mantra: hate us to our face.

Around 2016/2017, people started talking about this show again. And the love and fervor for it has only increased exponentially over the last few years, especially with the onset of COVID-19 and the merging of Showtime/Paramount+. Both events made the public more aware and able to access the show.

Now more than ever, we need something that isn't afraid to show queer people as we are, not as the media and those outside our community paint us. We need to feel like there is a media format that understands what we are like when we are with our closest friends. We say things that, in today's world, would probably get us canceled, and we judge those around us and have very biased opinions about certain people.

Brian Kinney's unapologetic "I am who I am and fuck anyone who tries to change me" attitude is the exact level of strength and courage we wished more people right now had. His biased, but not illogical, opinion of non-queers needs to be loud. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops because we now live in a world where we are hated just for existing as we are.

Even our rights that had been given to us just a decade ago are being stripped away from us once more. So, the fight for love and equality continues, and the hope that Queer as Folk gives us is important now more than ever.

So, people are seeking this story out and are begging others in the world to watch it and understand that we have always been here. We've always been these flawed but loving characters. We deserve to be heard.

In 2022, Peacock tried its best to create a redo of the series but failed miserably. But why? If we are desperately looking for queer media that is gritty, unapologetic, and real, then why didn't we latch onto this latest iteration?

The answer is simple. This new version was great at creating a more diverse image of the characters created for the Showtime series but failed to understand that recreating things almost note for note with entirely new characters isn't what we want.

It would've been better if the show stuck to broad-stroke themes and made these characters and their experiences their own. Queer today is different than queer in the early 2000s, just like queer in the 2000s was different than queer in the 1980s. Trying to put queer 2000s stories into a queer 2020s world isn't going to work.

We need to embrace this resurgence of Queer as Folk (2000) and give it the love and attention it should've always had. Perhaps finally giving its rightful due in the eyes of the history of queer media. Does it have its issues as the world changes? Absolutely, but we also can't sit here and deny the insane level of impact this show had on the queer media we now know and love.

We wouldn't have casually queer shows like Schitt's Creek, Heartstopper, and Our Flag Means Death if Queer as Folk hadn't broken down our walls and made us realize that we can demand stories for queer people by queer people.

[eva-knits12]

The Hate and Death Threats Are Uncalled For

Trigger warning: Mentions of suicide. If you are feeling suicidal, please dial 988 or 911 immediately!

DISCLAIMER: If you believe that Chris Evan's "marriage" is PR, then fine. I know it's PR, it's fake, there's a contract involved. If you believe it's real, then fine. I have nothing against you if you believe it's real. I disagree. I think we can find some common ground here.

PR contracts aren't a new thing in Hollywood. They've been around since the beginning of Hollywood, and they'll keep coming out with PR contracts. PR contracts were a way to cover up a star's sexual orientation, which is where fake marriages come into play here. They were legal up until 1965. Liberace was gay. So was Rock Hudson. Katherine Hepburn was a closeted lesbian. All of them were in PR marriages, and under PR contracts. So, this isn't the first time we've had a PR contract, and it's not going to be the last PR contract. They'll still exist even after Chris and the porn troll break up.

A few bloggers on here have been getting hate asks, and death threats. I refuse to name this person, and I refuse to give her the space on my blog. She doesn't deserve the space on my blog, and she doesn't deserve to live in my head rent-free.

There are bloggers wishing death upon Chris. Wishing that he'd drown, kill himself, etc. That's uncalled for! If I didn't like Chris, I wouldn't wish death upon him. That speaks volumes about your character.

These same bloggers have sent hate asks to several people, and have even accused certain bloggers of switching sides. I'm #Team Chris. I haven't changed my stance that this is PR. I was team PR until all of this hate, all of these DM's and all of the bullying started to intensify. Like I said, if you believe that this marriage is real, then fine. As I have stated before, I disagree. I'm still adult enough to let you have your beliefs, and guess what? That's okay! All I want is for Chris to be happy.

Chris looks miserable right now. There's no life in his soul, no life or light in his eyes, he's lost so much weight due to stress. There is little holding him together at this point. This is beyond guilt. He's in this contract, and it's deeper than we think.

This PR stunt will end when it's supposed to end. Chris and the porn troll will break up at some point, and it's not up to us to put out articles because it's not going on OUR timeline. Only two people know when this will end.

Telling someone to off themselves, wish they'd unalive themselves, and even making death threats is uncalled for. There are kids that have committed suicide because they were told to off themselves. There are people sitting in jail on murder charges because they have told a person to do this. You can be arrested for this!

The police can build a case easily because posts on IG, tumblr, facebook, e-mails and texts are time stamped. So, it doesn't take a detective to build a case.

I have lost two people in my life to suicide, and it never gets any easier.

All this hate right now is just uncalled for. I don't care what side you're on, I think both team PR and team real are unhinged. Both sides keep attacking each other over their own personal beliefs, and when someone walks away, or even interacts with someone from the other side, we're accused of switching sides. If you switch sides, fine. I have nothing against you if you do.

I'm Team Chris. There's still good in the man, and we just want to see him happy. He is still a decent human being underneath all this.

"Be excellent to each other."-Bill and Ted

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[gutsfics]

can you give specific examples of what happened to help people understand what happened

this is non-extensive, just the ones i think are the most egregious of what shes done and said

i'm not sure how much of this is stuff she's deleted, as these are all from screenshots i already had on hand, but i would like to say that deleting a post doesn't necessarily mean you no longer agree with what was said in it, especially if you double down on what was said when you're called out for it. which she has done Plenty of times

and for the record, this is not something i enjoy doing. part of the reason this took me a few days to post is because this is stressing me the fuck out and ive been trying to spend as little brainpower on this as possible

First point: queerphobia in the form of homophobic jokes, sharing panphobic rhetoric, and talking for transgender people on a topic she (as far as i am aware) has no

the pelicansexual "joke" was told at the expense of Ethan and Tobias during the "Ethan Bisexuality Canonity" argument she & i got into in June (which btw i would like to apologize for starting that up, i was frustrated w pb's coddling of the cishet part of the fandom & i was having difficulty phrasing it bc of how upset i was w it. i did not mean to attack the fandom specifically but intent doesn't cover for outcome)

the pelicansexual joke was a since-deleted tag on one of her posts which went something along the lines of "my Ethan and Tobias are now pelicansexuals, which means they have to break up with [her characters] as they are not pelicans". i dont have a screenshot of this unfortunately, but i do have a screenshot of her response to an anon calling her out on it.

in case you don't understand why her "joke" was homophobic, before gay marriage was legalized in the US in 2015, a common anti-homosexuality talking point was "homosexuality being legalized is a slippery slope to bestiality being legalized". while it is good she deleted her "joke", its frankly worrying to me that when called out on it she doubled down on how she was joking when she said it, instead of listening and learning. her bisexuality and queer activism do not mean that she is incapable of saying and doing homophobic things.

the panphobic rhetoric & her talking for transgender people are, if i remember correctly, both part of the same incident wherein she reblogged something panphobic and then, when called out for it, said something that something that most trans people consider transphobic isn't actually transphobic at all

screenshot 1: bisexuality and pansexuality are two very similar sexualities, with the main difference between the two coming down to personal preference for what term you feel like best. while bisexuality does mean "sexual attraction to two or more genders", some people prefer a term that focuses on the "or more" part. neither sexuality excludes transgender people. pitting queer people against each other because theyre not the "right" kind of queer does nothing but damage the queer community as a whole

screenshot 2: agreeing to delete the post, but doubling down on what she said and refusing to listen to anon simply because they're anonymous

screenshot 3: the highlighted part is what we're focusing on here. "We don't consider cis gay men who only date the same to be anti-trans". hi, I'm a trans gay man. Yes We Fucking Do. i don't understand why she thinks she has the authority to speak on this. what "we" is she referring to here?

Second point: lack of respect or understanding of boundaries in fandom spaces, including both blocks and simply not wanting to interact with someone

i'll be honest, i'm a bit unsure if the above paragraph is the right way of describing what i mean, but she has a bit of a history of being.... openly weird about people who have blocked her for "no reason", and not only that has stated she thinks that not wanting to take place in an event run by someone you are uncomfortable with is childish

i believe the first one is about my friend Jay, who has her blocked for similar reasons that i do. while it is perfectly fine for her to assume whatever she wants about the reasoning for a block, her phrasing of "all i ever did was be supportive" in a public post about it allows her to victimize herself over a boundary being placed. speaking of Jay, Elsa has, knowing full well that she's been blocked by xim on the "peonyblossom" blog- which, again, is a boundary that has been placed- decided to message xim on the choicespride blog xe runs

the second one is specifically about a tumblr user who i do not know personally and do not wish to drag them into this as they have left the open heart fandom. she was sent an anon about this user blocking her which, yeah, is really weird and suspicious. but this isn't about that, this is about her response to learning she's been blocked. she refers to herself as this users "biggest fan" and says that it "isn't normal" to block your biggest fan. once again she is victimizing herself over a boundary someone else has placed, only this time she has done it in a post talking about a person with their username in it. when you have a blog as big as hers, people are bound to go after someone in the name of defending the person they feel was slighted

& here's her essentially calling people childish bc they might not want to interact with someone who causes them harm. iirc this was either about certain event blogs in the fandom not disclosing who's running them bc they know full well that some people might not be comfortable interacting with them (hiding ur identity will not help with that) or about people choosing not to participate because they know that the person running the event is someone they don't want to interact with. this ones just bizarre to me. no one has to interact with anyone ever, and calling them childish for it is, frankly, childish

Third point: her callout post for Jeremy and her non-apology

to get it out of the way: i'm friends with Jeremy. i'll try to keep this as unbiased as possible, but i am deeply deeply upset and frustrated with everything thats happened to rain. also, just so yall know, Jeremy gave me permission to talk about this. i'm not just dredging up old drama for drama's sake here.

first- the callout post

the thing that started this was a post to the playchoicesconfessions blog where an anonymous user said- and i'm copy/pasting it here- "Ethan said he and Tobias were like brothers. Weird how many people in the fandom want to get with their brothers.’" essentially, this anonymous user accused people who ship Ethias as being into irl incest which..... we will not be getting into all the ways thats problematic here.

(as an aside, Elsa did at some point reblog and then delete this post, but her commentary was focused squarely on "ship and let ship" which is a sentiment i agree with but she completely ignored the blatant homophobia in this post. here's a version someone reblogged from her in case you're curious as to what she said)

Jeremy reblogged this confession post and added "i genuinely hope this person and others who think like this eat a fucking bullet holy shit" specifically in reference to the anon insinuating incest. in turn, anons on rain's blog assumed rai was referring to people who don't ship Ethais and sent rain nasty messages, which rai would respond to and get more anons who saw the latest response and again assume rai was talking about not shipping a ship they ship and not the actual genuine fucking homophobia from the original confession post.

one of these anons sent screenshots of rain's posts to Elsa, without the context, and told her rai was talking about her. rai was not. not until the post where rai (rightfully, ihmo) called both Elsa and another blogger (this one who also got a similar ask about being blocked by the user i mentioned earlier but who decided to put it in the open heart tags instead of keep it on their blog the way Elsa did. that's the only props i'll give to her in regards of that- yes it was shitty she posted it in the first place but at least she didn't tag it) for complaining about and villainizing someone who blocked them.

tldr version is- Jeremy was venting about anons that were being homophobic to rain, another anon sent screenshots of those posts to Elsa without the context who who rai was talking about and said they were about her, and Elsa, without bothering to verify in any way, decided the best course of action would be to publicly call rai out, painting rain as a bully who has been targeting her specifically and once again victimizing herself. on her blog with a bunch of followers. many of whom also chose not to verify, and instead just heaped more hatred onto Jeremy's blog.

this went on until September, when they talked to each other at first with a third party go-between, and eventually person-to-person. Jeremy explained the context of the vent posts, Elsa explained that she was getting the screenshots with no context from an anon and admitted she should have verified them herself instead of going full nuclear, and they both agreed to apologize publicly

all good, end of story, right?

no.

while in Jeremy's post, rai took accountability for their side of what happened in this awful game of telephone and apologized for rains part in the whole thing. if you want to read it, here is a version of it.

Elsa, on the other hand.... well she apologized, but to be honest I'm not quite sure what for.

she says there's been misunderstandings on both parts led on by one or more anonymous sources (no arguments here), says she understands that the posts that were sent to her were not actually about her (okay good) and says that its a tough world and that she's deleted her posts.

okay.... but that doesn't specify what she did at all to need the apology. which was publicly call out Jeremy on her blog with.... well, i'm not sure how many followers she has, but i do know that she's got the most well known blog in the choices fandom. by publicly calling out Jeremy in the way that she did, she (whether intentional or not) set her followers out to attack rains blog. she did not apologize for this. asking people to stop sending hate to rains blog is not the same as taking accountability for sending those people to rains blog in the first place

so. yeah.

again, non-extensive list, but i dont wanna mention things she's done without having screenshots or links to show proof that she did it, and i dont feel like finding more of her bullshit bc this just. really fucking stressed me out.

also this isn't me saying "shes a terrible person forever and i hate her and nobody should like her ever" this is me saying "hey, shes done/said some hurtful things in the past and it sure would be cool if she acknowledged any of it" but i think coolsville sucks or whatever.

also also most importantly: its possible for queer people to say and do things that are queerphobic. being queer yourself does not give you a shield from people calling you out for that. neither does real life activism. its great that she's done real life activism! but pointing back to things you've done in the past, or for a different group of people than the one youre in does not exempt you from the harm youre causing today, to the people you're interacting with.

i dont have a proper ending to this

thanks for reading i guess

[lazaruspiss]

DC Pride 2022

wee! i don't remember liking this one as much, but we'll see.

the foreword is very sweet, i'm endeared by it. The first story though... not so much.

"Pride's been a party for decades" - Jon Kent

Gay marriage in the United States was legalized in 2015. This story came out only 7 years after same-sex couples were legally recognized nationwide. We have also been actively dealing with anti-lgbtq legislation for a while now. It's some head in the sand bullshit.

I have strong and complicated feelings about this story. First off, I wonder how much say authors get in which character they're in charge of? Could they just not find any queer writers who knew who Jon was? This is probably the worst story I've ever seen from Devin Grayson, it's just so weirdly and blatantly tone deaf. I saw some people critique her portrayal of Damian on a racial basis when this first came out, but honestly I think it could be chalked up to that he was raised by assassins, I don't think it's an immediate racism-red flag if he's characterized a little too violently. He also very quickly shifts gears to telling Jon his dad would be proud of him, and caring about him in his own Damian way. I'm more hung up on how it's... Some of these stories are lighthearted and don't touch on oppression, but this story actively dismisses the idea of oppression. It almost feels sarcastic, a part of me yells that it's mocking Jon's shallow worldview, but that doesn't really make sense. It's weird. Damian is written off as strange and paranoid, and Jon is meant to be the main character, but it's Damian's perspective that I'm able to most relate to it through. This is also just a weird story for Devin Grayson to be writing. She thrives the most in angst/tragedy/drama, not... whatever that was.

Second of all, I can never get past Jon/Jay. Jay seems to be a queer asian character that was introduced by, as far as I'm aware, a white cishet author, and was introduced through a three page school shooting which was used solely as a plot device to make Jon look #badass. Every time Jay comes up, all I can think about is Tom Taylor's hack work and that damn school shooter introduction. Congrats to anyone who can get over that, but I cannot.

i'm too unfamiliar with the characters to properly enjoy it, but i do love the recognition for the absolute gayness that is wrestling.

i do have a soft spot for the queer stories that touch on the complexity of parent-child relationships. hawke's not really hostile but incredibly uncomfortable relationship with ollie hits a specific nerve. a few of the stories in '21 were like that too, where they build onto some specific yet relatable struggles that children and their parents run into. the letter, the metaphors, everything about this one is so sweet. another tear-jerker for me tbh. seeing damian and hawke interact at the end is so cute, and i do kinda wish that the gang from lazarus island could've stuck around and been damian's "ensemble cast" so to speak. ah well. they'll have a groupchat in my heart.

not to be a downer again, but the stories that reference the very real struggles that queer people still face really serve to make the first story feel worse and worse. anyways, god i love alysia. yeah i don't have anything interesting to say, this comic was more action focused which isn't my strong suit, but it's a fun read.

it's nice to see a light-hearted meeting the family scene every once in a while. i'd say this story does a better job than the last one of making me feel for jackson, and gives a bit about his backstory. i don't know how it lines up with the rest of his comics, but it stands alone nicely. it also ventures into feelings of displacement, home, family. i like it.

are noir wlw a thing now. they should be a thing. i think as far as stories that're in direct reference to a different series go, this one manages to not be too confusing when going in blind. the cannibalism could very well be a metaphor, and the story touches on what is pretty specifically a biphobia thing, which is all pretty interesting. im also a sucker for "monochromatic comic gains color at the very end to portray a change for the better" ngl.

they act like ray shunned his bf but like. he gently blocked a kiss and whispered that he didn't want to in front of the team. i get that the message is about internalized shame and all that, but what they call "freak out" i call "gently setting a boundary".

simple, to the point, made me tear up. again.

tim story :/ i like him i swear, he's just been so boring recently. it's simple fluff. there's just none of the insanity or weirdness that made me like tim and bernard in the first place is all.

i absolutely adore the art in this one. are they play fighting to figure out who gets to top? it sounds like they're play fight to see who gets to top. harlivy canon prey roleplay and/or CNC kink? very cute end, if not a bit corny. we now know they're top4top.

both jesse's stories end up feeling more "flash" than "pride", but they're still fun. also holy shit earth-11 dami and jon are SO cute what the hell??? dami w the buns and the sleeveless top and the belt, jon w the headband and the ripped leggings under her shorts, ohhh im so in love. fem klarion is also super cute. i wasnt expecting the masc donnaraven but ill take it.

you know that thing in shows where the single tear rolls down? yeah. it's a must read, really. devastating and healing all the same.

[adultswim2021]

Moral Orel: “Abstinence” | January 18, 2009 | Unaired Special

Abstinence, “the nearly lost episode of Moral Orel”, or “episode 14 of 13” was an episode of the show that was left in an incomplete state thanks to Adult Swim cutting down the episode order. The audio for the episode was recorded, at least mostly (some characters might be scratch tracks, but I’m not certain), but the animation hadn’t been done. So, some people who worked on the show took it upon themselves to animate the radio play using “Orel’s Movie Premiere” style claymation. 

I’m glad they did it, because this is a worthy episode to have exist, even if it’s not 100% a “real” episode. This actually comes pretty damn close to being as satisfying as watching a normal episode. I wish we lived in the alternate universe where Dino manages to talk Adult Swim into letting him animate the show this cheaply in exchange for more episodes.  

This episode takes place during season two (with a post-Nature scene at the end). Doughy has long been neglected by his parents, who simply give Doughy a few bucks and ask him to stay out all day so they can neck with each other. They are now requesting Doughy stay out overnight. Not used to non-daytime activities, Orel encourages Doughy to just do what he does and walk around trying to help people. Doughy keeps encountering people trying to have sex with each other and manages to cockblock them all.

This leads to Doughy getting a job cockblocking actual roosters from impregnating the farmer’s chickens. He loses this job because Ms. Censordoll’s campaign to illegalize succeeds. Doughy winds up working for Ms. Censordoll as a masked superhero that goes around breaking up congress everywhere. 

This one has a very funny joke at the beginning, where Doughy and Orel are waving goodbye to a busload of gay men, and remarking how it was a big mistake bussing them into Moralton. Do you think the show was cleverly going to show the gay dudes in another episode to explain the beginning of this one? And, don’t you think it’s sad they left on the bus and we didn’t get to watch them walk away (hubba hubba). I also laughed at the farmer’s extremely dumb and convoluted reason for not caging his roosters (it’s basically so he can say a dumb thing when asked why he’s not caging his roosters). 

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Moral Orel: The Unproduced Scripts

A couple of scripts for episodes have been shared online. I remember Dino posting one on his Myspace page. The episodes are: 

Raped: This episode was going to be a late season three episode. The original arc for the season was meant to include Arthur Puppington, Clay’s father, moving into Orel’s bedroom while he waits to die of some painful life-ending disease.

Miss Sculptham finds that she is still pregnant post-abortion. That’s because she had twins, and only managed to kill one of them. So she arranges a visit to the prison to talk to Cecil Creepler’s (the guy what raped her) cell-mate to find out what his whole deal was (you know, being naturally curious about the father of her future child). This leads to her deciding to marry this man, even though he’s spending the rest of his life in prison. Orel is being a bitch about it, and celebrates when the guy backs down. The end of the episode is Sculptham falls in love with a woman and is denied for a marriage license, because “this is America”. She can get married to an actual convicted rapist, but not to another woman. 

I was about to comment on the time and place in which this episode was produced, but then realized: I have no idea how legal gay marriage actually is these days. Weird guys have been fighting over the stuff a lot lately. It took a weirdly long time for gay marriage to become any kind of legal here, and it’s still contentious. I just have a vague sense of reading it in 2009 and it feeling very pointed and topical. Pretty weird that it still sorta might be.

This episode was sorta billboarded in Alone, where we learn about Scultham’s rape and her abortion. There also a reference to this in “Abstinence”, where one of the encounters Doughy puts a stop to is one between Creepler and Scultham. 

Narcissism is the other “lost” episode. I never actually read this script before tonight, and I don’t know what the origin of this one’s leakage is or if it’s liberation was acrimonious or not. This one is another Putty-centric episode and is basically a follow-up on the events of Sundays. Putty becomes so obsessed with Florence and uninterested in other women that it makes him attractive. He unceremoniously beds all the hotties of Moralton and doesn’t feel a thing the entire time. His obsession with Florence is simply because she’s disappeared, and Putty doesn’t know where she went. When he finally finds her, she’s lost weight and is generally happier. It appears they get together by the end of the episode. 

I think Arthur is also in this episode, but I forget. I remember Oral mentioning him in a funny bit where he says he would do unto others with his Grandpa, who is currently dying in his bed. Orel says his Grandpa would probably let Orel die in his bed if things were the other way around. 

I found a thing on the Moral Orel wiki where Dino apparently posted the synopsis for the some of the unproduced scripts. I’d been looking for this to quote and kept coming up dry, so now that i found it, I’m just gonna paste it here in this post. The links link to pages on the wiki, and the scripts I described are available on their respective pages:

1. Easter: "Orel's Grampa (Clay's father) comes to Moralton to tie up loose ends before he dies. He ends up sharing Orel's bed as his death bed for the last ten episodes, giving Orel good advice. (happens during the Sacrifice episode)." 2. Nurture: "Shapey and Block nurture each other and grow emotionally." 3. Narcissism: After cutting it off with Florence, Putty becomes disillusioned with all women. This makes him incredibly attractive to all the females in Moralton and he becomes the most available bachelor in town, f***ing tons of *****. This makes him even more bored with every lady out there. He starts picturing Florence as he's f***ing everyone. When he finally runs into Florence, she is dating someone else and is really really thin. Putty's disappointed in her appearance. He's been picturing fat Florence, and even though she's prettier on a shallow level, longs for her previous look. She explains that she got so depressed when he stopped seeing her that she didn't feel like eating. He happily tells her now that he's back and she can get fat again. She is insulted by his self-centered attitude and tells him to go away. In the end, I think he probably wins her back though by showing he really cares. 4. Untitled: "Bloberta and Officer Papermouth accidentally bump into each other late at night, both reaching into the garbage can outside Nurse Bendy's apt. and simultaneously grabbing the "Sonny" Teddy bear. Papermouth chivalrously let's Bloberta keep it, and this starts off an affair between the two of them. It ends up being very good for the both of them. Not sure how Clay reacts. Didn't get very far on this one." 5. Untitled: "I wanted to write the continuing saga of Orel and Christina, but never got to it. No solid ideas on this." 6. Raped: A script for this episode was briefly put on Stamatopoulos's MySpace blog. It expanded on Miss Sculptham's trauma over being raped. She would take the kids on a field trip to prison to meet the man's cellmate and strike up a brief relationship with him. 7. Death: "Orel's Grampa finally dies. Orel doesn't find too much solace from anyone and becomes a Goth kid, getting heavily into the Christian Death Metal band: Multiple Godgasm. Don't want to say much more about this, on the remote chance that there will be a Moral Orel movie, I'd like to use a lot of this story."

And that’s it for Moral Orel. Unless you count the special. Unless you count the Frankenhole Bumper where he cameos. Unless you count Australian DVD releases. But you can COUNT on me… blogging about it!!!!

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

this gave me a chuckle, so i thought i'd share.

the whole cousins marrying cousins trend in books from earlier eras was something that initially kinda made me feel gross.

(fun fact: you can still marry your first cousin in 18 states in america. before gay marriage became legal on a federal level, there were states where you were allowed to marry your cousin, but not get gay married. and that is fucking ludicrous.)

back on topic, I was reading jane austen at like age 8/9. bc the bbc pride and prejudice mini-series aired in the states in 1996. you know, the one with colin firth. my mom was a fan. (i think for colin firth) so i watched the series with her. (i think she used the vcr to record it and put in on vhs tapes to rewatch, but i might be confusing it with some other regency era movie/series. i was 9, i don't remember)

and of course i wanted to read the book after that. so my parents took me to the library and we got some jane austen books. bc they generally let me read whatever i wanted. (and honestly more parents should do that bc it's how i learned my own boundaries and how to self regulate, but that's a whole other post)

i only read a few. bc i was 9. and like, i was reading at a high enough grade level that i could read the book, but i didn't have any historical context bc we hadn't learned about that yet in school

y'all don't think i'm trying to like, brag about my reading at a higher grade level. i worked in education. the way we measure these things is flawed. i tested at a high reading level bc i was a lonely kid who spent all her time reading. and reading is like any other skill, the more practice you have the better you are it. so even though i had the ability to read the words used, and comprehend what they meant, i didn't have the prior knowledge needed to fully appreciate and understand everything

(this was supposed to be a haha look at his funny clip post, but it's somehow turned into me shitting on the education system. but the education system deserves it, so whatever)

anyway, maybe the vid will give you a laugh

[the-bi-writer-blog]

“Both sides are the same”

Where I grew up, kids were taking the bus 2 hours each way just to get to school. The state has a few well-off cities, but rural poverty remained.

When I was 18 a close friend’s mom pulled me off of her couch, handed me pamphlets, and showed me how to go door-to-door. She was running for local government after having been an educational advocate for over a decade.

As an educational advocate she had seen first hand how imbalanced our educational system was, and so she set out to change it.

She ran as a Democrat, because Republicans don’t give a single solitary shit about school funding, or equality, or protecting the rights and finances of the middle class.

Unfortunately, that same year there were what I call “gay scare laws” on the ballot and her opponent endorsed them.

Which is to say, the Republican that she was running against was specifically supporting a measure that would change the state constitution to forbid gay marriage. They wanted that in the fucking state constitution.

Meanwhile, my friend’s mom is over here advocating for financial and educational policies that will protect, ya know, regular people who aren’t super rich. She was endorsed by labor unions, nurses, pillars of the community.

And you know what?

Even though her platform was specifically aligned with the financial interests of 95% of the eligible voters in the state she lost. She fucking *lost*

In hindsight, there were likely more factors at play than I understood at 18.

But the fuck of it all (and the thing I will *never* forget) is how in that election cycle, Republicans specifically created a proposed gay marriage ban (that they knew would never pass) *just so that they could harness homophobia to their own ends.*

(And yes, I’m still mad about it.)

“Both sides are the same.”

When I was 19, I worked at a low-cost medical clinic that - very pointedly and intentionally - did *not* require documentation to prove citizenship/legal status.

It was hard (if not impossible) for undocumented folks to access Basic Fucking Healthcare so we just…didn’t fucking ask.

And then, George Bush. George goddamn fucking W. Bush came along and ***made it illegal to provide health care to undocumented people.***

To be clear, the government knows that these undocumented people are living in the US and picking our crops for low wages in bad conditions and the *least* we could do is offer citizenship and healthcare, **but they made it fucking illegal* -

And I cannot describe to you the shade of red I saw that day.

(FWIW, the clinic largely ignored this and carried on. Last time I checked, they were still caring for people in need and very pointedly not looking too closely at anyone’s IDs.)

“Both sides are the same.”

I mean, one of the sides was providing accessible healthcare to vulnerable populations, and the other was declaring it a federal crime.

And in the first example, one side was running on financial and educational equality, and the other was running on, to put it bluntly, the vast appeal of homophobia.

“Both sides are the same.”

When did you last talk with an advocate in real life? When was the last time you shut down social media and googled volunteer advocacy in your community instead? When was the last time you truly listened and considered the opinions of those who have been carrying this work on our backs for years???????

There are many, many more examples, these are just two personal ones off the top of my head. They are, however, *not* outliers.

It is reasonable to say that American foreign policy is reprehensible and needs an **immediate** overhaul.

But even if that’s the one (1) and only issue you care about: the next president will likely nominate up to 3 Supreme Court justices, which will serve for life.

(I cannot emphasize that last part enough. This election will also sway the direction of the Supreme Goddamn Court for decades???????)

Now back to foreign policy: which of our two (yes, there are ONLY 2) options will make it more likely for our foreign policy to change in a meaningful and lasting way?

Is it the one who openly plans to gut our rights??????? Or the one who - at the very least - will not make it fucking illegal to disagree with her??????

How will you protest without the basic fucking right to peaceful assembly?

How will you speak out when free speech protections are gutted?

Will it bother you - even a tiny bit - that Trump already has a high death toll due to his mishandling of the COVID crisis, and that he will immediately add to that if given a chance?

Will you sleep well at night when the criminalization of abortion gets worse?When women face ridiculous barriers to voting (google something like “trump ID voting law” for more info.)

What about when you disabled neighbors starve and die in their wheelchairs, alone in their apartments, because they did not have the resources or help they needed.

(Will you start caring if you know that I’m one of them? That I’m *exactly* that vulnerable, and could pass away too?)

Just to be clear, that last part isn’t hysteria or hyperbole. It is history. Recent history.

Several years ago England absolutely gutted their benefits & funding for disabled folks, pretty much overnight.

In the weeks after, disabled folks were dying by the hundreds in what I can only refer to as domestic genocide.

Would you care about the intentional eradication of a people group, if you didn’t get Social Media Points for it?

Would you be willing to pull up your sleeves and dive in to the complex, nuanced work of getting off your ass and taking care of your neighbors?

Or are you going to keep on trucking and keep on trusting that your moral compass will keep you warm and safe at night, as long as you never have to acknowledge the casualties of your own ignorance???

Anyway, I’m done. Fucking vote. That’s all I have the energy to say.

(Okay to screenshot and re-post, but please don’t tag me if you do. These are important conversations to have but I Do Not Have the spoons to interact about it, so feel free to take on that task if you want.)

[beardedmrbean]

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Russian lawmakers gave initial approval Wednesday to a bill that would outlaw gender transitioning procedures in yet another blow to the country's beleaguered LGBTQ+ community.

Senior lawmaker Pyotr Tolstoy, who is among the bill’s sponsors, has said it is intended to “protect Russia with its cultural and family values and traditions and to stop the infiltration of the Western anti-family ideology.”

Russia's LGBTQ+ community has been under growing pressure for a decade as President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church embarked on a campaign to preserve what they deem the country’s “traditional values.”

The bill bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records.

Russian transgender people and LGBTQ+ rights advocates contacted by The Associated Press described the measure as a grim development.

“We knew that they didn’t like us here, but to go absolutely against human rights, against the existing laws even," said Maxim, a 29-year-old transgender activist who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.

The only option for those seeking to transition through medical care or changing their gender in documents would be to leave the country, according to human rights lawyer Max Olenichev, who works with the Russian LGBTQ+ community. “Neither medical, nor legal transitioning will be possible without changing the country of residence.”

The bill must receive three readings by Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, but there is little doubt it will pass because about 400 members of the 450-seat house signed it, including the house speaker and the leaders of all political factions.

The independent Russian news outlet Meduza reported that such a massive show of unity has happened only three times before under Putin, most recently when 385 Duma members signed on to a bill last year to ban “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among adults.

That initiative was quickly rubber-stamped, and by December 2022, any positive or even neutral representation of LGBTQ+ people in movies, literature, or media was outlawed. The bill severely restricting trans rights came just a few months after that.

The crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community started well before last year, however. Maria Sjödin, executive director of the Outright international LGBTQ+ rights group, told AP in an interview that the situation in Russia has been deteriorating “over quite a long period of time, coming up on at least 10 years.”

In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law that banned any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through a constitutional reform that outlawed same-sex marriage.

But the Kremlin has ramped up its rhetoric about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West's “degrading” influence after sending its troops into Ukraine last year, in what rights advocates saw as an attempt to legitimize the war.

“Do we really want to have here, in our country, in Russia, ‘Parent No. 1, No. 2, No. 3’ instead of 'mom' and ‘dad?’" Putin said in September at a ceremony during which four Ukrainian regions were formally annexed by Moscow. "Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades?”

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, called gender transitioning “pure satanism" as he opened voting on the measure Wednesday.

“We do not want this to happen in our country. Let the diabolical policy be carried out in the U.S.," Volodin said.

But the clampdown on trans rights is actually a global trend that's happening in the U.S., too, Sjödin said, adding: “We know there have been over 500 state-level bills introduced in the U.S. attacking LGBTQ rights in different ways with specific focus on trans rights.”

The move targeting transgender people in Russia was not unexpected. Yana Kirey-Sitnikova, a transgender studies researcher, told AP that when anti-Western sentiments emerged last year, she realized that “the authorities would now take us on.” That's when she changed her gender marker in her documents, even though she wanted to postpone the process for some time.

Kirey-Sitnikova said the procedure under existing Russian law is simple. A person has to obtain a medical certificate stating that they have been diagnosed with “transsexualism.” Such certificates are issued by a panel of medical specialists, Kirey-Sitnikova said, and unlike in some other countries, hormonal therapy or gender-affirming surgery is not required to get this diagnosis.

With this medical certificate in hand, the next step is to go to a state registry office and get a new birth certificate, allowing for the issuance of a new passport and other documents. The whole process could take from several weeks to over two years, depending on the panel’s availability and procedures they do to issue a diagnosis.

Maxim, the activist with the Center T trans rights group who changed his gender marker three years ago, echoed Kirey-Sitnikova’s sentiment that Russia currently "is unique in a good way when it comes to gender transitioning.” He also praised the quality and availability of gender-affirming medical care in Russia, saying there are many good surgeons and endocrinologists advising on hormone therapy.

The new bill will take all of that away, according to Olenichev, the lawyer.

Doctors won’t be allowed to diagnose those seeking to transition, hormonal therapy and surgery will be outlawed for those who haven’t yet managed to change their gender in the documents. Those who have should be able to access necessary medical care, Olenichev saids, because the bill outlaws “changing the sex of a person,” but not medical care in accordance with the person’s official gender.

There’s no official data on how many people in Russia have changed gender in official documents, Olenichev said, but the number apparently has grown in recent years.

Independent news outlet Mediazona reported in February that the number of passports issued due to “gender change” has more than doubled in 2022 compared with two years earlier -– from 428 in 2020 to 936 last year, according to Russia's Interior Ministry.

In justifying the new bill, lawmakers cited concerns that men are using the relatively simple procedure of changing gender in official documents to dodge the military draft.

Maxim said that isn't true. The process “is lengthy, costly, and for transphobic people it is humiliating,” he said, adding that the spike in numbers could be linked to fears about the bill and people rushing to complete the procedures before it takes effect.

Among those hoping to have enough time to transition are transgender teenagers who are under 18 and can’t act on their aspirations even under existing legislation.

Lyubov, a therapist who works with such teenagers, told AP that “the vast majority of them lived on hope and anticipation of their 18th birthday,” and now they have a lot of anxiety. “I view the future as rather sad,” said Lyubov, the mother of a trans 17-year-old who asked that her last name not be used for safety reasons.

“Our children are between a rock and a hard place: On one hand, there’s social pressure, and on the other, lack of hope that when they turn 18, something will change,” she said.

“It is an impossible situation,” Lyubov said, because trans people will be hit with the ban on “changing your life in accordance with your gender identity,” while also having to deal with a society that paints them as “not healthy, not normal, not having the right to live.”

[pyreflydust]

The internet was never really kind, but it definitely felt less hostile 15ish years ago. I keep coming back to a single, ignorant question I asked someone I kind of new because we hung out in the same space, but we weren't really close or anything.

He was trans and gay. At the time, I was still convinced I was cis. I knew I was bi ("knew" is a strong word for someone who convinced himself he was a lesbian to try to stuff the dysphoria deeper not that long ago) but I was never really out to more than a few people in physical space. I asked him something that would've gotten a lot more hostile response from a lot of people now.

"Wouldn't it be easier to be a straight girl?"

He said something along the lines of, "But then I wouldn't be myself"

And this interaction stuck with me all those years later for two reasons. One is the aforementioned hostility. The other is realizing what words were really scratching at the inside of my brain:

"Aren't you scared?"

I live in the first state in the US to legalize marriage. They did it about a month after I turned 18. There's only a month where I was legally allowed to marry a man but not a woman. I live in a city that raises a pride flag most years and paints some of its crosswalks rainbow. But for whatever reason, I've never felt safe. There's a part of me that wanted to just live safely as a woman and marry a man. That part of me could not conceptualize that other people wouldn't stuff themselves down more.

I'm not a woman married to a man. I haven't so much as dated in fifteen years. My mental health has taken massive damage from years of isolation and its dragged my physical health down with it. I can't imagine a life where I'm content with being alive, let alone one where I feel safe being honest about myself. At least out in the world. I can be online. I can even be to some extent in therapy. But I'm also just sitting here letting my body rot more because I hate it and I hate myself because even interacting with people on a basic level scares the fuck out of me now. Whether or not I'm honest about who I am, I'm just so fucking scared of being perceived by anyone anywhere now. Regardless of whether I go out around people or stay home, I'm scared. Fear is fucking exhausting.

[tea-with-eleni]

I was in high school when my school got to learn about just how important voting is.

My high school was huge. Literally, my high school and college graduating classes were the same size. I stood in line behind the same person both times, coincidentally, and we hadn't met at either school until the second graduation. We'd just...always missed each other. Apparently.

My high school was also diverse. You could walk across campus and hear four or five different languages before class. A friend came out at prom and was actually disappointed, a little, by how little fanfare there was. (We were more concerned with the utter betrayal that one of the snacks was coffee flavored instead of chocolate flavored.)

In 2011, there wasn't anything about marriage in the North Carolina state constitution. But Amendment 1 was on the ballot -- an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman only. Not everyone in our school was old enough to vote, or even old enough to pre-register to vote, of course. But our school did our best. There were "Remember to vote about Amendment 1!" announcements on the school news. All the civics classes had a bit about registering to vote.

And we lost. Amendment 1 passed. North Carolina banned gay marriage.

I was in college when we got to learn how important one judge can be.

I went to university for two years in Alabama. A few months before gay marriage became law of the land, one Alabama judge ruled that it should be. For a matter of days, gay marriage was legal in Alabama. I was in a dunkin donuts at about 7 pm when I learned, I think, that all the gay couples in Alabama were eloping to the major cities -- the cities in the South are, on the whole, quite liberal. Birmingham was the closest place to us where you were likely to actually get a sympathetic courthouse person who would file your marriage, even though we knew that the ruling would get overturned at any second. The forms for filing marriage only had blanks for "husband" and "wife", they were inherently gendered. So strange, in retrospect. We never expected Alabama to briefly get gay marriage before North Carolina.

Heck, want to know how far things have come? Check out the 1997 movie "In & Out". It's aged like a fine milk, which is a wonderful thing in this case! I think I first saw it around 2010 and it was already a bit dated.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and remember that same-sex marriage has only been legal in America for ten years.

[pashterlengkap]

Gay animal couples have a lot to teach us about love, life, and grieving

Same-sex coupling is not the sole province of us homo sapiens. Neither is mourning the death of our partners.  When Magic the penguin recently died, its same-sex partner Sphen mourned by singing, and their rookery joined in.  Related These 31 openly gay pets will melt your cold, dark heart We scoured two animal-obsessed Insta reels for the most utterly heartwarming moments. “We’re not entirely sure exactly what was being said in these moments of singing, but it was definitely a beautiful moment to witness,” Renee Howell, the aquarium’s penguin keeper told Australia’s ABC. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today In 2018, their courtship became international when the two male gentoo penguins — a power couple at the aquarium — exhibited more than a mere bromance.  Their romance and inseparable bond amazed their caretakers at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.  Sphen and Magic’s six-year relationship is not unusual because same-sex penguin coupling is common, and gentoo penguins are for being romantic, monogamous, and equalitarian in their division of labor: especially in nest building, feeding, fostering, and raising chicks. Same-sex coupling is not a new phenomenon in the animal world. However, its disclosure and acceptance have grown in recent times, especially since, back in the day — just like LGBTQ+ love — it was closeted, pathologized, and erased. During the summer of 2005, more than a year after same-sex marriage became legal in the state, Boston’s beloved pair of swans in the Public Garden — named Romeo and Juliet — began a love affair that dared not speak its name. As Bay Staters bantered and bickered over whether the two should be allowed to stay together or be separated, these swans were being subjected to the same queries that have plagued same-sex couples in heterosexist societies for centuries. Assuming that the swans were heterosexual until one of their eggs went unfertilized, Boston’s Parks and Recreation Department decided to conduct a “detailed gender test” by examining the swans’ reproductive organs. The findings disclosed that Romeo and Juliet were really more like Juliet and Juliet. The city disclosed its findings, but very reluctantly, “for fear of destroying the image of a Shakespearean love story unfolding,” The Boston Globe reported. Some people, like Laura Elsheimer of Hudson, Massachusetts, told the Globe that the city zoo “should have a Romeo.” Spokeswoman Mary Hines of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department told the Globe, “Each year when the swans go in, the kids immediately come to us and say,’ Which one’s Romeo and which one’s Juliet?'” However, neither girl swan lamented, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” Why? Because on any given day at the Public Garden, you could see them swimming happily together in the lagoon. Moreover, the swans had been cohabiting for two years. Animal scientists have observed the monogamous nature of swans, whether they’re in opposite-sex or same-sex coupling — they stay with their mates until death, which can occur between 20 and 30 years. In 2024, sadly, the Christian Right still holds to its premise that homosexuality is an aberrant behavior and found only in those lost few. However,  Bruce Bagemihl’s “Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity” was cited by the American Psychiatric Association in a “friend of the court” brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Lawrence v. Texas case that led to state anti-sodomy laws being found unconstitutional. According to Bagemihl, homosexual activity occurs in more than 450 species of animals, both in the wild and in captivity, and same-sex couplings in animals can be as enduring and lifelong as they are in humans. For the religious fundamentalists, however, these findings are discarded on the premise that man can fight such “animal” same-sex… http://dlvr.it/TChKfb

[alsjeblieft-zeg]

533 of 2023

I carry an over-sized handbag. (backpack) ^I have the most random, but useful, things in there. I have graduated from college. My phone is a touch-screen, and it drives me absolutely crazy. ^I prefer to have a full keyboard on my phone. I take some sort of medication daily. I’m getting really tired of Lady Gaga. I have been in a car accident on the highway. ^I’ve totaled my car. I like to read what the person before me wrote when I’m taking surveys. I absolutely hate being cold. I adore deadmau5 and could listen to it all day. I prefer to be barefoot whenever possible. I love dancing when I’ve had a few drinks – it feels so free and crazy. I will die of excitement if the Bruins win the Stanley Cup. I will forever be a Mac (as opposed to a PC). I still own the original Nintendo. ^Along with the gun from “Duck Hunt”. (no sadly) One of the best shows of the 90’s was “Doug”. Needles don’t bother me one bit. My boyfriend gives the best hugs in the universe. My job involves working with children. ^Speaking of children, I absolutely love them. ^I’d like to have at least 2 of my own one day. I love the lace-trim hiphuggers from Victoria’s Secret – they’re comfy and sexy at the same time. I live in a state that has already decriminalized marijuana use. ^We’ve also legalized gay marriage. (long time ago lol) I think it’s gross and uncomfortable when people wear sneakers without socks. I’m in a need of a larger iPod. I have more than one loan out in my name right now. ^But I also have great credit. I am an aunt. I love the sensation of an airplane taking off. I could really go for soup, salad and breadsticks at the Olive Garden right now. There is very rarely a day that goes by in which I do not sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I’ve always wanted a dog, but my mom never let us have one. I sing at the top of my lungs in the car, especially when it’s nighttime on the highway. I have very few of the same friends that I did in high school. ^I actually have very few close friends at all; but I prefer it this way. I will be getting a tattoo fairly soon. I’m definitely an emotional person. I love looking at the Facebook pictures that get posted after a great night out. I’ve actually been in a screaming fight with someone from Bank of America. ^Needless to say, I switched banks. Despite what some people say, I think Uggs are adorable. ^But only when worn appropriately (like, not with a freaking skirt). I love Runts candy, especially the yellow banana-shaped ones. I don’t like to fall asleep in complete silence.