Christian leaders issue ‘call of conscience’
(Washington) More than 150 Christian leaders, most of them conservative evangelicals and traditionalist Roman Catholics, issued a joint declaration Friday reaffirming their opposition to abortion and gay marriage and pledging to protect religious freedoms.
The 4,700-word document, called “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience,” sounds familiar themes from political …
Tags: Abortion, Christian Conscience, Christian Leaders, Christian Themes, Conservative Evangelicals, gay marriage, Manhattan, marriage, Opposition, Religious Freedoms, Roman Catholics, Sounds, Traditionalist, Word DocumentAfter the break-up, what about the lake house?
IT was a perfect party — vodka lemonade on a dock overlooking a lake, dozens of close friends, a cool misty night in the country a couple of hours north of New York.
Inside, the house spoke of a passionate interest in style, and of a committed relationship. Silhouettes of the couple who owned the house hung on a wall in the master bedroom; the couple’s nickname — Benford — was spelled out in large letters leaning against a wall in the kitchen.
But the couple, Benjamin Dixon, 31, and Bradford Shellhammer, 33, who had planned the evening as a commitment ceremony, had broken up three months earlier. Still, with airplane tickets purchased by some of the guests, a catering deposit paid and a house they haven’t been able to sell, they figured it made sense to go ahead and have a party anyway.
Their tale of lost love has a familiar arc — love sparks, then blooms; lives intertwine; moments are lost and misunderstandings creep in; eventually the two begin to live as strangers — and an epilogue that has become increasingly familiar as well, as unwanted houses become prisons rather than cocoons.
Rather than being a glossy testament to their taste and their partnership, their house in Stanfordville, in Dutchess County, is now a dead weight that entangles them and makes it impossible to move on. Having bought it and an apartment in Manhattan at the height of the real estate boom (and having made an agreement with a third partner in their lake house property not to sell it until December 2009), they are left with joint custody of two large mortgages. They are also left with two carefully decorated homes filled with one-of-a-kind accessories found on eBay and quirky furnishings by high-end designers like the Dutch collective Droog that are reminders of what came before and, Mr. Dixon said, “big reminders of what was supposed to be.”
See After the break-up, what about the lake house?
New York Times
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The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck Takes Manhattan
Doug Quint is the Queen behind the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, which is spreading a rainbow of sprinkles across New York this summer. Quint knew that plenty of people would have something snide to say about a middle-aged gay ice cream man, but he stopped those would-be critics in their tracks by transforming his Mr. Softee into a fabulous traveling dessert emporium.
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The Gay Movement, After Marriage New York Observer -
On the night of June 26, two days before the gay pride parade would overtake Manhattan in honor of the 40th birthday of the Stonewall riots that are popularly imagined as the birth of the gay rights movement, a group numbering a couple of dozen mostly gay men and women found themselves crammed into the parlor floor of the West Village townhouse of John Connor, a former banker who lives with his companion, the designer Steven Gambrel.
It raged and stormed outside, while inside, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the first openly gay person to win that office, thanked the group for coming.
They’d been summoned either because they had money or because they had influence in the “gay movement,” such as it is today, and the organizers of this affair needed their money and influence to stage a large national march for gay rights in Washington, D.C., this October.
The mood was intense, and hardly celebratory, despite the tremendous progress toward legalizing gay marriage in New York State that many of the attendees had been involved in.
“We want results,” Ms. Quinn said. “We want them now. We don’t want to be told any longer that we have to wait. ‘Cause look, in Albany? They said they couldn’t do marriage at the beginning of the session—that they had to get other business done first. And now it’s exploded in Albany. If they kept their promise from Day 1, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
See The Gay Movement, After Marriage
New York Observer -
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Gay rights mean different things to different generations of community
Before there were domestic-partnership registries and commitment ceremonies, before same-sex marriages and civil unions — before the gay-rights movement, even — John McCluskey and Rudy Henry met, fell in love and harbored the notion that they could spend their lives making one another happy.
And for 50 years, the Tacoma men went about doing just that, all the while longing for social acceptance.
Even in gay-friendly San Francisco where they first lived together, they found it necessary to hide their relationship from prospective landlords, and on job applications they would sometimes lie about their marital status to avoid raising suspicion.
Decades later in 2006, at a coffee-shop concert on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, Amy Balliett and Jessica Trejo met and they, too, eventually fell in love.
In their 20s, the two had come out as lesbians at a time when young people could find support in groups on high school and college campuses, when they had gay role models in politics and on television, and when their parents probably knew people who were openly gay. By the time the two married in California last October, legal bonds between gays and lesbians were possible in several states.
Balliett and Trejo, Henry and McCluskey are like generational bookends to this modern gay-rights movement, launched 40 years ago this week after a group of activists at a small Manhattan bar called the Stonewall Inn stood up in violent protest to ongoing police harassment.
While older gays and younger ones share much the same agenda of equality, their needs within the movement are also divergent.
Young people, who have at times referred to their own post-gay movement, seek the protections of marriage equality as they form relationships and start families, while gays of their grandparents’ generation are more concerned about issues of aging — like survivor benefits and long-term care.
See Gay rights mean different things to different generations of community
Seattle Times -
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Obama To Consider Gay Pentagon Appointment
President Obama is considering nominating an openly gay man to a top civilian Pentagon post, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The president, under pressure from gay activists to live up to campaign promises he made to help secure greater rights for gay men and lesbians, is considering nominating William White to a high-ranking civilian Pentagon post. The paper did not disclose the post being considered, but White, chief operating officer of Manhattan’s Intrepid Museum Foundation, was once touted by top retired military leaders and some Democrats in Congress to be the next Secretary of the Navy. While heading the Intrepid, White has accumulated extensive contacts in the armed forces, and in 1996, he was awarded the Meritorious Public Service Award for his work with the Navy.
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NY exhibit on gay rights hits amid marriage debate
As exhibitions go, the New York Public Library’s “1969: The Year of Gay Liberation” could hardly have chosen better timing.
With debate raging over same-sex marriage across the United States, the library in midtown Manhattan opened the exhibit on Monday to mark the 40th anniversary of the so-called Stonewall riots that triggered the modern U.S. gay rights movement.
Photos, documents, clippings from the gay media and other artifacts illustrate what was a shocking development at the time: homosexual men and women coming out of the closet to demonstrate for their civil rights, often at great risk.
The free exhibit will run at the main branch all of June.
“We tend to forget how radical these activists were. They risked their lives and safety for this cause. That’s what this exhibition is about,” said Jason Baumann, the curator.
Starting around June 28, 1969, the Stonewall riots refer to a week of violent clashes on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village between patrons of a gay bar called the Stonewall and police who had periodically raided the bar, arresting gays under morals laws of the era. See NY exhibit on gay rights hits amid marriage debate
Reuters
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Levi’s Adopts a Tie-In With a Gay Marriage Symbol
LEVI’S is getting in the spirit of the season by dressing its storefront mannequins in white. In Levi’s-owned stores in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, that means more than just marking the passing of Memorial Day, the traditional date to begin wearing white: in 20 stores, the mannequins’ white Levi’s jeans and shirts are adorned with White Knots, a symbol of solidarity with the same-sex marriage movement.
The symbol was made more timely by the California Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state. Developed by Frank Voci, a digital media consultant, as a response to Proposition 8’s passage last November, the White Knot for Equality is a white ribbon tied in a knot.
It has been worn by the actress Anne Hathaway at President Obama’s Inauguration; Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter of “Milk,” at the Oscars; and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at a May 17 Manhattan rally supporting gay marriage. At the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles in April, the comedian Kathy Griffin wore a bikini with a strategically placed White Knot. See Levi’s Adopts a Tie-In With a Gay Marriage Symbol New York Times
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GLAAD Announces Launch of Advertising Media Program
Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo Honored at Launch Reception
New York, NY May 08, 2009 – The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) today announced the launch of an Advertising Media Program as part of its national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) media advocacy and anti-defamation work. The program will officially launch during a reception for LGBT advertising professionals and allies where GLAAD will honor Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo for their commitment to LGBT-inclusive advertising. The reception will be held Monday, May 18, 2009 at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio (405 West 55th St, New York, NY).
“Words and images matter and can shatter stereotypes. Fair, accurate and inclusive media images prove that we are connected through common, human experiences,” said Neil G. Giuliano, GLAAD President. “These are images that we – and advertisers - have a responsibility to share.”
Leveraging GLAAD’s media advocacy and anti-LGBT defamation resources, GLAAD’s Advertising Media Program will monitor all forms of advertising and work to ensure fair and accurate representations of the LGBT community or demand action when defamation occurs. Most recently, GLAAD successfully advocated that a Virginia used car company pull offensive ads that referred to same-sex flirting as “not smart” from the airwaves and their Web site. The Advertising Media Program will also proactively advance inclusion of the LGBT community in mainstream advertising through advocacy work at advertising agencies and corporate advertising departments. GLAAD will maintain the online library formerly owned by Commercial Closet Association of over 4,000 LGBT-inclusive ads.
“Advertising plays a vital role in how people view the world and our community,” said Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD. “We are thrilled to expand our media advocacy work on behalf of the LGBT community to call for fair, accurate and inclusive advertising and hold advertisers accountable for anti-gay defamation.”
To celebrate the launch of the program, GLAAD will honor Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo with Special Recognition Awards. GLAAD is also planning an Advertising Media Awards for later this year.
Levi’s Brand won the 2008 Images in Advertising Award for Outstanding Commercial for a commercial which depicts a young male pulling on a pair of Levi’s jeans as the street below him comes crashing through his floor, leaving him face-to-face with an attractive stranger in a nearby telephone booth. The two men walk off while holding hands. Levi’s has had a long involvement with the LGBT community as exemplified by the “Support of Gay Marriage” campaign, the “Inside Out” campaign and the recent “Logo Unbuttoned” campaign. Levi’s ads perpetuate the company’s history of LGBT inclusive business practices and marketing outreach. In 1992, Levi Strauss & Co. became the first Fortune 500 company to extend full benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of employees.
Wells Fargo has consistently supported the LGBT community by being one of the first financial institutions to reach out to the community with targeted advertising and sponsorship of LGBT causes and organizations. Wells Fargo has a long standing commitment to speak to our community through advertising for not only financial related products but also in company recruiting and fostering an inclusive workplace. As a result of its long standing support to LGBT causes, anti-gay activists initiated a boycott of Wells Fargo in 2005. In spite of anti-gay activists, the company remains a strong ally to our community.
Tickets for the reception are $25 and will be credited to tickets for the Fall 2009 Advertising Awards. They can be purchased at www.glaad.org/events. Sponsors of the event include ABSOLUT® VODKA, DRAFTFCB, Levi’s Brand and Wells Fargo. Media partners include Gay City News, Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, PinkBananaMedia.com and TheMenEvent.com.
About GLAAD
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. For more information, please visit www.glaad.org.
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Rudy a no-show at gay pals’ wedding
(New York City) When then-mayor Rudy Giuliani was forced to leave home during a nasty divorce in 2001, he was taken in by Howard Koeppel and his longtime partner Mark Hsaio.
He stayed for months with the couple in their $2.37 million dollar Manhattan home and invited the men to his …
Tags: Gay Pals, Gay Wedding, Howard Koeppel, Longtime Partner, Manhattan, Mayor Giuliani, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Nasty Divorce, New York City, Partner Mark, Rudy Giuliani
