Transsexual novel censored in Turkey
Transsexual novel censored in Turkey
Tags: Novel, Transsexual, TurkeyE. Lynn Harris Made Sexuality A Bestseller
Author E. Lynn Harris, best known for his novels portraying black male characters conflicted with their sexuality, died Friday in Los Angeles at age 54. Host Michel Martin offers a remembrance of the bestselling author, who talked about his writing as a guest on Tell Me More. See E. Lynn Harris Made Sexuality A Bestseller
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Author E. Lynn Harris dies at age 54
The openly gay, best-selling author E. Lynn Harris died earlier this morning while on a book tour along the West Coast. The tour was in promotion of his eleventh novel, “Basketball Jones“, the story of a player in the NBA and his gay lover. While the cause of death is still unknown, his personal assistant did say that the Harris’s health had recently declined. Further questions, however, went unanswered. The celebrated author, known best for his books centered on life as a gay, black man, was 54 at the time of his death.
Born in Flint, Michigan, E. Lynn Harris moved around a lot, finally finding his home and settling down in the South. As a student at the University of Arkansas, he become the school’s first male cheerleader and was, till his dying breath, a giant Razorbacks fan. Later in life, Harris returned as a visiting professor in the school’s English department.
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Best-selling author E. Lynn Harris has died Entertainment Weekly - -
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Online blogs report Atlanta author E. Lynn Harris has died Atlanta Journal Constitution
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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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Judge favors trial soon on Calif. gay marriage ban
A federal judge wants a trial on California’s same-sex marriage ban to proceed quickly but says he likely won’t suspend the voter-approved ban in the meantime.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker said holding a speedy trial on the merits of a lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 would avoid novel issues that might be raised if he issued a temporary injunction.
See Judge favors trial soon on Calif. gay marriage ban
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Kathy Griffin’s Confession of Wild Lesbian Sex with Padma Lakshmi
From getting in bed with avowed Lesbian Lily Tomlin to confessing to a Lesbian affair with Padma Lakshmi, Kathy Griffin is surely having a gay week!
On Thursday night, comedian Kathy Griffin appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Show to promote the new Season of her Emmy winning Bravo reality series My Life on D List and publicly announced she had sex with Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi. The confession came while Griffin was promoting the upcoming My Life on the D List guest appearance of novelist Salman Rushdie, Lakshmi’s former husband, and revealed that the two actually shared a lot more in common than authoring a book.
“I’ve had a night of wild sex with Padma,” Griffin told Kimmel, “It’s a connection …it’s a true story.”
“I’m not saying that at all to get publicity for My Life on the D List,” declared the comedian. See
Kathy Griffin’s Confession of Wild Lesbian Sex with Padma Lakshmi
SheWired
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The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?
Last November, Jay Pimentel began hearing that people in his neighborhood were receiving letters about him. Pimentel lives in Alameda, Calif., a small, liberal-leaning community hanging off Oakland into the San Francisco Bay. Pimentel, who is a Mormon, had supported Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. And that made him a target. “Dear Neighbor,” the letter began, “Our neighbors, Colleen and Jay Pimentel” — and it gave their address — “contributed $1,500.00 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. NEIGHBORS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THEIR NEIGHBORS’ CHOICES.” The note accused the Pimentels of “obsessing about same-sex marriage.” It listed a variety of local causes that recipients should support — “unlike the Pimentels.”
Pimentel, a lawyer and a lay leader in the small Mormon congregation in Alameda, is markedly even-keeled. Yet the poison-pen note still steams him, even though in May the California Supreme Court validated Prop 8 as constitutional. He is bothered less by the revelation of his monetary contribution, which he stands by, than the fact that the letter’s author didn’t bother to find out that every other Saturday for 15 years, he or someone else from Alameda’s 184-member Mormon ward has delivered a truckload of hot meals to the Midway Shelter for Abused and Homeless Women and Children — one of the organizations the Pimentels allegedly wouldn’t support. “The church does a lot of things in the community we don’t issue press releases about,” he says. “And when people criticize us, we often just take it on the chin. I guess you could say I’m not satisfied with the way we’re seen.”
Across the country, that’s the dilemma facing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With 13 million members worldwide (by its own count), the LDS is the fourth largest church in the country, the richest per capita and one of the fastest-growing abroad. The body has become a mainstream force, counting among its flock political heavyweights like former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, businesspeople like the Marriotts and entertainers like Glenn Beck and Twilight novelist Stephenie Meyer. The passage of Prop 8 was the church’s latest display of its power: individual Mormons contributed half of the proposition’s $40 million war chest despite constituting only 2% of California’s population. LDS spokesman Michael Otterson says, “This is a moment of emergence.”
See The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?
TIME
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Christian group sues for right to burn gay teen novel
n a scene which appears to have been lifted straight out of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a group of Christians in Wisconsin has launched a legal claim demanding the right to publicly burn a copy of a book for teenagers which they deem to be “explicitly vulgar, racial [sic], and anti-Christian”.
The offending book is Francesca Lia Block’s Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang. The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union.
Their suit says that “the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library,” and that it contains derogatory language that could “put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.”
“The word ‘faggot’ is very derogatory and slanderous to all males,” the suit continues. “Using the word ‘Nigger’ is dangerously offensive, disrespectful to all people. These words can permeate violence.” The suit also claims that the book “constitutes a hate crime, and that it degrades the community”.
“They’ve filed a claim against the city of West Bend and the city has to decide if it is valid,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom. “Their insurance company is evaluating the claim, but I would be very surprised if they found any merit in it … Should they find any merit in this claim, we would certainly support the library in fighting it.”
The legal challenge follows a lengthy campaign by some West Bend residents to restrict access to teenage books they deemed sexually explicit from library shelves, which was eventually thrown out at the start of June.
“Obviously we were really pleased with the outcome to that – there was a unanimous vote to keep the books in the library and we thought the matter should be over,” said Larry Siems, director of the Freedom to Write programme at PEN America.
Siems said there was clearly “a bit of theatre” in the lawsuit which followed. “They’ve filed a lawsuit which has little possibility of going forward legally, and they’re asking for damages which include the right to burn a book. It does seem more to gain publicity than a real serious challenge.” But, he said, PEN remained very concerned about the impulse behind the claim. “This is a group of people trying aggressively to rid the library of these books and that’s very serious - it needs to be fought.”
The claimants, he said, “have a right to continue to express their views, and this in a way is a creative attempt to express those views”. But it’s “also a dangerous game when you’re talking about something like book burning, calling on the law to burn books. It’s certainly completely un-American, and if they paused, I think they would agree.”
It was not possible to reach the Christian Civil Liberties Union for comment.
See Christian group sues for right to burn gay teen novel guardian.co.uk
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Creative Society Theater Company: A Male Mencius’s Mother Educate His Son and Moves House Three Times
“He is my Wife, He is my Mother”
Li Yu, the talented and pioneering writer in the 17th Century created this social realistic “Silent Opera” with his avant-garde ideology and audacious writing style. A Male Mencius’s Mother Educate His Son and Moves House Three Times depicted a genuine homosexual love affair. For this work, Li Yu choose to write in the style called Nihuaben, which means the works that was written in spoken language and structured as a novel. Even in the 21st Century, when homosexual relationship is no longer a taboo, this love affair spectacle can still overwhelm your mind for sure.
Katherine Hui-ling Chou, the playwright and director of Creative Society has been focusing on the gender and sexuality topics for a long time. For this production, she selected one of the short stories from the once dispersed collection of Li Yu and staged with subtle cross-casting choice to display this romance between the young beauties. It is a homosexual affair that covered by the illusion of the heterosexual love, the mother-son relationship that turns out to be the father-son connection and the false marriage between sister and brother. This heterosexual and homosexual ensemble in the 17th century can help viewers to re-discover the queer genealogy in the Chinese society.
From May 14 to 17, Creative Society Theater Company will present their 18th production, He is my Wife, He is my Mother at the Metropolitan Hall. This production assembled the best-welcomed theatre actors, Yen-ling Hsu and Hua-chien Hsu, the prominent performers, Shou-yuo Liu, Yi-hsiu Lee and Wei-wei Wu with the theater new blood, Ting-yi Chu and Alan Yang to bring audience this unique piece. For more ticket information, please visit the NCTH ticketing service website: http://www.artsticket.com.tw, or contact Creative Society via hotline: 02-23397528 See Creative Society Theater Company 創作社劇團
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‘Kite Runner’ and gay penguins
Not everybody loves “The Kite Runner.”
Khaled Hosseini’s million-selling novel about friendship and betrayal between two Afghan boys, a book club favorite that became a feature film, was among the releases most likely to inspire complaints last year from parents, educators and others, the American Library Association announced Thursday.
“The Kite Runner,” which includes a rape scene, has been criticized for offensive language and sexual content. A parent in Champaign, Ill., and a school board official in Morganton, N.C., were among those who challenged “The Kite Runner” last year.
The association listed 513 challenges last year, an increase of 93 from 2007, but well below the levels of 700 and higher in the 1990s. The ALA defines a challenge as a “formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”
For every challenge tallied, about four or five end up unreported, according to the association.
For the third year in a row, the most challenged book was “And Tango Makes Three,” Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s award-winning picture story about two male penguins that become parents. “Tango” was cited for being anti-family, pro-gay and anti-religion. See ‘Kite Runner’ and gay penguins @ Barre Montpelier Times Argus
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