Phelps family storms Brooklyn
Protests against gays, Jews are said to be not “anti-Jewish or anti-gay” by hateful church.
Tags: Brooklyn, Gays, Jews, Phelps Family, Protests, StormsPhelps family storms Brooklyn
Protests against gays, Jews are said to be not “anti-Jewish or anti-gay” by hateful church.
Tags: Brooklyn, Gays, Jews, Phelps Family, Protests, StormsOur Genders, Our Rights
NEW YORK, NY - - - The Issues Magazine launched “Our Genders, Our Rights,” its Summer 2009 edition. A unique combination of articles, poetry, art and videos focus on a topic that is both utterly fundamental and wildly revolutionary: gender norms and gender identity.
Top writers discuss sex-selection abortion, gender expression, “Intersex” self-identification and a first-hand account of forced sex roles inside a polygamist compound in Texas.
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Merle Hoffman’s editorial, “Selecting The Same Sex,” provides philosophical and personal insights into the issue of sex-selection abortion.
“There is one place where the definition of gender remains binary — in the womb. When it comes to sonograms, amniocentesis and standard pre-natal testing, there are no nuances. Here, the pronouncement, ‘It’s a girl,’ can translate into fierce and instant parental rejection. The fact is that when the issue is ’sex selection abortion,’ the same sex is always being selected — female.” For Hoffman, this issue highlights questions of ethics, human rights and the moral autonomy of women.
“It’s about separating the chooser from the choice,” writes Hoffman.
In “Busting Bogus Biology and Beliefs” Mahin Hassibi notes: “For centuries, social constructs held that women owed allegiance and obedience to their husbands; children were the property of their fathers, who owned the children’s mothers.” Today, Hassibi says, discoveries in biology and reproductive technology may soon trump historical and cultural restrictions that wrongly limited women’s lives.
“My children would have undoubtedly been among the 439 seized in the raid,” writes Carolyn Jessop of the sweep through the polygamist compound. In, “American Taliban: Sect Controls Women’s Destinies,” Jessop gives an inside view of the abuse, misogyny and control of women’s bodies that continues today.
Writers also plunge into transgender concerns. “Asylum Pitfalls May Await the Transgender Applicant” by Victoria Neilson discusses the difficult process for trans applicants in the U.S. Eleanor Bader’s “Trans Health Care Is a Life and Death Matter” describes a pioneering feminist health program for trans patients in the South.
Photographic performer Tammy Rae Carland visualizes gender fluidity as the featured artist, and art editor Linda Stein conducts an interview with Elizabeth Sackler, whose passion for feminist art resulted in a new center at the Brooklyn Museum.
ABOUT US
On The Issues Magazine (www.ontheissuesmagazine.com) is a progressive, feminist, quarterly online magazine. Read more at the site — free and with archives from 1983. Merle Hoffman is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.
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Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row
A plan to memorialize gay male victims of Nazism amid a collection of memorial stones for Holocaust victims in a quiet half-acre patch of Brooklyn has provoked an outcry.
New York State Assembly Member Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat whose many Orthodox constituents include numerous Holocaust survivors, has decried the planned addition as a distortion of the Holocaust’s meaning with regard to Jews.
“It’s easy to say, let’s include everybody, let’s be universal, diversity is great,” he said. But he added, “It just isn’t fair. It diminishes and really dilutes what the Holocaust is.”
Hikind and the Holocaust Memorial Committee, steward of the tiny Holocaust Memorial Park in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, are calling for the park’s memorial stones to be restricted to Jewish victims of Hitler. But the plan, approved by the city’s parks department, to commemorate non-Jewish victims of the Nazi regime there is proceeding thus far.
On June 9, representatives of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors, which proposed the addition, could be found combing the bayside memorial to measure unmarked stone pillars and determine if memorial text could be carved on them, association co-chair Rick Landman said.
The altercation raises a question that Jews have faced with increasing frequency: Whose Holocaust is it, anyway? Roma Gypsies, the disabled and gay men were among those also especially targeted by the Nazis. According to historians, though, only Jews and Roma were targeted for annihilation. Altogether, the Nazis are estimated to have murdered some 11 million from their coming to power in 1933 until their downfall in 1945.
Flanked by Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard, at the easternmost end of Sheepshead Bay, the memorial, built in 1997, consists of a tall eternal flame sculpture — engraved with a short statement on the Holocaust and the nations affected by the genocide — surrounded by two adjacent gardens of stone markers, each of which features either a paragraph or two of history or a list of victims’ names.
For $360 per engraved line, donors to the non-profit Holocaust Memorial Committee can pay to have a victim’s name printed on one of the stone markers. The registration form for this service, found on the committee’s Web site, asks donors to provide the victim’s name and a brief history of his or her Holocaust experience. The committee then meets to verify the authenticity of the proposed inscription, committee treasurer and past president Alfred Gollomp said.
Gollomp complained that in signing on to the IALGCHS proposal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the city’s parks department were ignoring a memorandum that gives the Brooklyn-based group control over the park markers.
See Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row
Forward
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Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide Begins Guthrie Run May 15 Playbill.com -
The Guthrie Theater’s production of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures begins previews at the Minnesota venue May 15 on the McGuire Proscenium Stage.
Originally scheduled to begin performances May 9 with an official opening scheduled for May 15, the production was delayed by a week. “As planned,” a Guthrie spokesperson recently told Playbill.com, “the technical rehearsals [began] May 5, but after discussions with Tony Kushner and [director] Michael Greif, [Guthrie artistic director] Joe Dowling decided to give the actors additional rehearsal time on the stage.”
Opening night will now be May 22.
The title of Kushner’s new play, according to the Guthrie, is inspired by two 19th-century thinkers and their works — George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and Mary Baker Eddie’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
The play, according to press notes, “looks at the life of a 20th-century thinker, retired longshoreman Gus Marcantonio (filmmaker, actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael Cristofer), who’s feeling confused and defeated by the 21st century. In summer 2007, he invites his sister and his three children (who in turn bring along spouses, ex-spouses, lovers and more) to a most unusual family reunion in their Brooklyn brownstone.”
Photo: The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide… stars Kathleen Chalfant and Michael Cristofer
photo by Michal Daniel
See Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide Begins Guthrie Run May 15 Playbill.com -* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Teen Claims Self Defense In Gay Newsman’s Killing
(New York City) A New York teenager charged with the brutal slaying of veteran radio reporter George Weber claims he was acting in self defense.
John Katehis, 16, was ordered held without bail at an arraignment hearing in Brooklyn.
Weber’s body was found in his apartment in March. His ankles were bound, …
Tags: Acting, Ankles, Apartment, Arraignment Hearing, Brooklyn, Brutal Slaying, George Weber, New York City, Radio Reporter, Self Defense, Teen Gay, Teenager, Veteran RadioIn Military, New Debate Over Policy Toward Gays
WEST POINT, N.Y. — Here at the military academy that is nearly as old as the nation itself, two cadets recently engaged in a modern debate: whether they agreed with President Obama’s pledge to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly.
“From what I’ve heard from my classmates, people are kind of against it,” said Daniel Szatkowski, a senior from Edmond, Okla. But Adrienne Rolle, a senior from Brooklyn, said she had no problem with lifting the ban, although she said that some of her male classmates did.
“People are more comfortable with ignorance,” Cadet Rolle said of the reality that gay men and lesbians already serve in the military.
West Point is not a perfect microcosm of the armed forces, but recent conversations with the cadets who will become the Army’s next generation of leaders reflect uncertainty about what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has characterized as a “complex and difficult problem.”
While Mr. Obama has promised to get rid of the 16-year-old policy that allows gay men and lesbians to serve only if they keep their sexual orientation secret, Mr. Gates has said that both he and the president want to push the issue “down the road a bit.”
Advocacy groups have stepped into the vacuum. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which represents some of the 13,000 gay men and lesbians discharged from the military since the policy took effect, is intensifying lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill — changing the policy requires legislation — and calling on the president to make good on his word.
“If he doesn’t speak up, he’s going to end up O.K.’ing the firing of service members for being gay,” said Aubrey Sarvis, the group’s executive director.
In recent years, prominent retired generals and admirals have also urged repeal, among them Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the policy was adopted after a blowup over the issue in the early days of the Clinton administration.
On the other side, some 1,000 retired officers supported by the conservative Center for Military Readiness sent an “open letter” to Mr. Obama saying they were “greatly concerned” about the impact of repeal on recruitment, morale and unit cohesion.
“How would women in the military feel if they were required to accommodate men in their private quarters?” said Elaine Donnelly, the center’s president.
Col. Thomas A. Kolditz, the chairman of West Point’s department of behavioral sciences and leadership who discusses “don’t ask, don’t tell” in his classes, said that cadets were roughly split for and against openly gay service but that most did not feel strongly about their views.
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Suspect in NY reporter’s stabbing pleads not guilty
(New York) A 16-year-old has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and weapons charges in the stabbing death of a New York City newsman.
John Katehis (KAY’-tis) is being held without bail. He was arraigned Wednesday night in Brooklyn.
Police say Katehis told them he was answering an online ad offering $60 …
Tags: Brooklyn, Kay, New York City, Second Degree Murder, Tis, Weapons, Wednesday NightBrothers plead not guilty in NY hate-crime killing
(New York City) Two men have pleaded not guilty in the hate-crime killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant on a Brooklyn street.
Hakim Scott and Keith Phoenix were arraigned on an indictment that includes second-degree murder as a hate crime. They could face 78 years in prison if convicted.
Jose Sucuzhanay (Suh-KOO’-chen-eye) and …
Tags: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Street, Face, Hakim, Hate Crime, Immigrant, Indictment, Koo, New York City, Phoenix, Second Degree Murder, Suh, Two MenMurderer of gay man not to be charged with hate crime
(New York City) A 19-year-old Brooklyn man has been convicted of murder in the stabbing of a gay man he claimed had flirted with him, but the jury was not allowed to consider whether the killing was a hate crime.
Omar Willock had been charged with murder as a hate crime …
Tags: Brooklyn, Gay Man, Hate Crime, Murderer, New York City, Omar Willock
