Gay professor Simon Karlinsky dies
Simon Karlinsky, an openly gay distinguished professor in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on the history of homosexuality in Russia, died July 5 due to congestive heart failure. He was 84.
Mr. Karlinsky’s death was announced by his husband, Peter Carleton. The couple lived in Kensignton.
For more than 30 years Mr. Karlinsky taught at UC Berkeley. He was an author and editor of books on Gogol, Nabokov and Chekov, and an internationally known expert on the history of homosexuality in Russia.
He was born on September 22, 1924 in the city of Harbin, a Russian cultural outpost in Manchuria (now China).
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Gay rights advocate questions pick for state civil rights chief in NJ
TRENTON — One of New Jersey’s leading gay rights advocates is raising questions about Attorney General Anne Milgram’s pick for state civil rights chief, a day after two state senators also criticized the choice.
Garden State Equality Chairman Steven Goldstein said Milgram’s nominee to lead the Division on Civil Rights, Chinh Le, is “someone completely unknown” to the state’s gay community, unlike former director Frank Vespa-Papaleo.
“The burden is on the attorney general to further demonstrate that her nominee will continue Frank Vespa-Papaleo’s record of outstanding advocacy for every community, including ours,” Goldstein said.
The state Commission on Civil Rights is expected to vote on Le’s nomination today.
“Chinh Le has an extraordinary background and commitment to justice and civil rights,” Milgram said in a statement. “His experience and involvement in the important social and civil issues facing our state make him well-qualified to lead the division.”
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What will parents do to avoid having a gay son?
In the early 1990s, when genetic research was far less advanced than today, Jonathan Tolins posed the question: If a woman knew in advance that her male baby would be born gay, would she still go through with the pregnancy?
That’s the premise of his 1992 drama “The Twilight of the Golds,” which was filmed for cable television in 1997 and which receives an emotionally gripping staging courtesy of Theatre Out.
Through her husband’s medical research firm, which has devised genetic testing of fetuses, the pregnant Suzanne Gold-Stein (Jennifer Pearce) has discovered that her baby boy has the genetic markers of homosexuality.
The question of whether to keep the baby is, in fact, illuminated by the family’s firsthand experience: Suzanne’s brother David (Tim Woods) is gay, a factor that has, despite their denials, always affected his bond with her and with their parents.
The play is told from the opera-loving David’s point of view, its title a pun drawn from “The Twilight of the Gods,” the fourth opera in Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle. He frames the play’s focal issue when he asks, “What difference does being gay make?” As the story progresses, its ethical complications are magnified, even as Tolins takes time out to assail the materialism of the 1980s.
Complicating the ethical dilemma posed by Tolins is the way it splits the family. For David, who is, ironically, pro-choice, aborting the baby is tantamount to killing him. As much as she dotes on David, mom Phyllis (Karen Harris) has to admit that “it hurts to see your child become something different.”
Seeing genetic testing as a boon to mankind, Suzanne’s husband Rob (Eric James) insists that he and Suzanne “don’t need David to tell us how to live our lives,” while patriarch Walter Gold (Rick Kopps) maintains that “it’s Rob and Suzanne’s decision.”
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BLACK GOLD: A New Film by Nick Francis and Marc Francis
THE SYNOPSIS
As westerners revel in designer lattes and cappuccinos, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. In this eye-opening expose of the multi-billion dollar coffee industry, Black Gold traces one man’s fight for a fair price.
THE STORY
Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.
But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields.
Nowhere is this paradox more evident than in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. Tadesse Meskela is one man on a mission to save his 74,000 struggling coffee farmers from bankruptcy. As his farmers strive to harvest some of the highest quality coffee beans on the international market, Tadesse travels the world in an attempt to find buyers willing to pay a fair price.
Against the backdrop of Tadesse’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players that dominate the world’s coffee trade becomes apparent. New York commodity traders, the international coffee exchanges, and the double dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation reveal the many challenges Tadesse faces in his quest for a long term solution for his farmers.
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Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people, same-sex couples could not enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships anywhere in the nation, much less get married. But as they seek to persuade a federal judge to strike down California’s ban on gay marriages, lawyers for two unmarried gay couples are using that 13-year-old decision as their road map — one they expect will eventually lead the high court to take up the marriage issue. In the Colorado case, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court majority held that voters’ dislike of gays and the laws that several cities had approved to shield them from bias motivated the state amendment. Such “animus,” it said, was incompatible with the section of the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to treat its citizens equally absent a compelling reason to do otherwise. The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason. “Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.” U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court. Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.” California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a defendant in the case, has sided with gay rights advocates and declined to defend the ban, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legalized same-sex marriages. The state Supreme Court five weeks ago upheld the measure, saying it represented a valid exercise of voters’ authority to amend the California Constitution. Proposition 8’s sponsors, a coalition of religious conservative groups called Protect Marriage, has been given permission to intervene in the federal case. In court papers, the group’s lawyers rejected the assertions that anti-gay attitudes fueled the November measure and that the 1996 Colorado case was applicable. “Nothing in California law, either Proposition 8 or otherwise, indicates that Californians harbor animus towards gay and lesbian individuals,” they wrote. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, attorneys for gay rights and Christian conservative groups have debated whether the Romer decision could be used to expand gay rights. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court determined that the Constitution’s equal rights guarantees extended to gays and lesbians. “The basic point of Romer is that government cannot ever act out of hostility toward a group of people, and whether that is in the context of marriage or anti-discrimination law, the point carries over,” said Suzanne Goldberg, who worked on the case and now directs Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Program. The ruling has been cited, though so far unsuccessfully, in past challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska and Florida. At the same time, gay rights groups mostly have shied away from pursuing federal marriage cases in favor of pursuing marriage rights in state courts. Legal observers on both sides of the debate agree, however, that California’s Proposition 8 presents novel questions that could make the issue ripe for federal action.
San Francisco Chronicle
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Father’s Day in a house with lesbian moms.
Perhaps you are wondering what Father’s Day is like in a family with lesbian moms. Me too. Over the 19 years we have been parents, there has been no pattern.
I don’t sense any sadness from our kids about the holiday. It’s not like Valentine’s Day when you don’t have a valentine. But I am not naive. I am sure our kids find themselves wishing for a father from time to time but it remains unspoken. And while I hold my head up very high about the kind of parenting my partner and I provide for our three kids, yes, sometimes on Father’s Day I feel a tiny twinge. I can’t really describe it. It’s just a twinge.
I think it was partially due to that twinge that I lobbied many years ago to get Father’s Day.
Let’s be clear. It was not a gender confusion thing. I just thought it was quite practical. Think about the more thoughtful school or camp forms that don’t ask for “Mother” and “Father” but now ask for “Parent 1″ and “Parent 2.” I’m not suggesting that Hallmark become quite this thoughtful with their holidays but you get the idea. Mother’s Day in a house with lesbian moms, as I wrote about last month, can be a challenge. It’s quite an awesome day on the one hand and yet at the same time, it is not a singularly special day for either of us.
Thus my idea to turn Father’s Day into Jojo Day.
You see, ,my kids call me Jojo. My kids’ friends. My kids’ teachers. My kids’ friends’ parents. Its origin is quite simple. Scout the Elder was Agent Zero.
When my partner Eileen was pregnant with Scout, we talked about the name thing. Eileen had a preference to be called Mom and as she was handling the hard labor (literally), that seemed just right. But what will this baby call you, she asked? I don’t know. Let’s see what she comes up with.
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Father’s Day in a house with lesbian moms.
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com
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Homosexual Football Referee’s Rights Restored, But…
Football referee Halil İbrahim Dinçdağ had declared his homosexuality in order to be exempt from military service.However, according to Article 25 of Turkey’s Football Federation’s Central Referees’ Board regulations, someone who is exempt from military service for health reasons cannot become a referee.Dinçdağ explained his situation to the board, but he was not given a post.The case was leaked to the media, and although his name was not used, the details given were enough to identify him.He then decided to speak about his experiences on Habertürk’s “Tele Gol” programme, hosted by Ahmet Çakar. His face was blurred and his initials were used.During the live programme, the referee asked for the blurring to be removed and for his full name to be given.In the programme he appealed to other referees to protest against injustices.Güner: He will still face discriminationSee Homosexual Football Referee’s Rights Restored, But…Bianet
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