Jared Polis guests on the Real World

Jared Polis guests on the Real World

Lesbians And Gays In Gaming

As gaming grows into a more mature artistic medium, elements of the “real world” that were once completely separate from games are creeping in, so make room for the gays and lesbians, everyone! Whether gamers like it or not, the issue of how to treat the gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered community in games is quickly becoming an area of controversy.
The influx of people who live non-traditional lives is forcing game companies to come up with more nuanced policies to deal with gays in games. For example, Bioware dealt with the issue by banning the words “gay” and “lesbian” from their forums, then unbanning them, and Microsoft and Sony have had their own methods of dealing with words and concepts that make some people uncomfortable.
A recent post on Ars Technica takes an in-depth look at the issue, specifically, the ad-hoc “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” policy many think is the answer to the problem. Basically, the argument goes like this: Games aren’t about your sexuality, so as long as you don’t identify yourself as gay or lesbian in an way, there won’t be a problem… which might make sense to you, but what if you substituted the word “Black” for gay?Censoring certain words from profiles is not only discriminatory, it also creates the idea that there’s something wrong with whatever the word is. The words “gay,” “lesbian” and “queer” present unique problems, however, as they are used as points of pride or as slurs, depending on how they’re being said and who is talking. All of which creates the kind of gray area that you can hardly expect the common Xbox Live citizen to either respect or understand.
While using “gay” and “fag” as insults has been around probably since the first online game was ever played, I imagine identifying yourself as homosexual on your profile would open you up to online harassment in a big way, but that’s exactly why gay people should be “allowed” to identify themselves online, if they choose to. I truly believe that if people hang out, game-with and otherwise co-exist with different kinds people, eventually the problem will settle itself. Because, in the end, it’s no big deal. See, gay people are just like you, and you’re just like them, and gay gamers just want to play games, so let’s all chill out and act like humans, eh? See Lesbians And Gays In Gaming
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Global video mashup for International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia 2009 hits the Internet

359 people from 48 countries take part in massive global web video project to mark the IDAHO 2009

A global project to create a public awareness video for the International Day Against Homophobia & Transphobia (IDAHO) on May 17 has attracted the participation of 359 people from 48 countries across six continents around the world. The groundbreaking project is a joint undertaking of the Paris-based IDAHO Committee and the social network Gays.com, attracting 50,000 people to its website within a month.

Said Louis-Georges Tin, founder of the IDAHO committee, “We are overwhelmed and, at the same time, humbled by this torrent of enthusiastic support that has poured in from all four corners of the world since we kickstarted the video project in April. People have made the effort to go to such places as the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Merlion, the Petronas Twin Towers and the Eiffel Tower to shoot their video, contributing to the spectacular visual feast you see in the mashup.”

In April, members of the global LGBT community were invited to step out in front of the camera and in their own language introduce themselves, state where they are from and how proud they are to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The result is a video that sends the powerful message that LGBT individuals are present in every country, every society and every corner of the world. Participants submitted videos in all of the world’s key languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Cantonese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil and even American Sign Language.

In addition to the groundswell of support from local communities from around the globe, renowned celebrities, activists, politicians and web personalities have also participated in the project. These include (in alphabetical order):

Ali Hili: Gay Iraqi activist now living in exile in London and founder of the Iraqi-LGBT group
ANT: Host of VH1 reality series Celebrity Fit Club and U.S. of ANT on MTV’s LOGO channel
Lizzy the Lezzy: Animated lesbian standup comedy character with a cult following on Youtube
Michael Buckley: Celebrity host of the entertainment show What the Buck, the 5th most subscribed comedy channel of all time on Youtube
Michael Kauch: German member of parliament and coordinator of the gay and lesbian policy for the Free Democratic Party
Stephen Williams: British Liberal Democrat member of parliament for Bristol West

Said Kenneth Tan, spokesperson for Gays.com, “Much has been said about Stonewall 2.0 and netroots activism since the Proposition 8 vote against gay marriage in California. This project was made possible only by the Internet, and we believe there are a limitless number of opportunities for the LGBT community to harness the power of the Internet to educate, raise awareness, promote equality, and to debunk myths. We have been honoured to partner with the IDAHO Committee in the execution of such an amazing project.”

Prior to the launch of the video, Gays.com announced that it experienced a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which began at approximately 3.50am Hong Kong time on May 15, 2009, causing the entire website to be inaccessible.

A distributed denial of service attack occurs when a multitude of systems attempt to flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system with illegitimate website requests. The flood of traffic by these requests cause the Internet bandwidth of the attacked site to be consumed to such an extent that the website is inaccessible to other legitimate users.

Said Kenneth Tan, Gays.com spokesperson, “The timing of this DDoS attack on Gays.com is by no means a coincidence. We have been working for weeks on this high profile video campaign together with the Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. The final product of this campaign, a public awareness video, was going to be launched on the campaign site at http://gays.com/idaho on Sunday. This is a well-timed, well-orchestrated assault by a large botnet with tens of thousands of PCs sending requests to our site. Engineers with our Internet Service Provider remarked they have never seen an attack of this intensity before. We deplore these unscrupulous actions by an organised group to harrass, intimidate and silence us for what we are doing.”

Added Tan, “Our technical staff are now working round the clock to restore services to legitimate users. In the meanwhile, we are going through our access logs, gathering information through various mechanisms and connecting the dots to identify the origin of the attacks. We will be working with law enforcement officials to bring the cyberterrorists to justice.”

The video “IDAHO 2009: One Voice, One Message, Heard Around the World” is now accessible at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Rp8ep_ezE

The Committee for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) is a network of activists, present in over 50 countries, who seek to promote the idea of an international day against homophobia and transphobia. This day has been recognized officially by a number of governments around the world and provides an opportunity for the LGBT movement across the world to unite in a powerful demonstration of collective visibility.

Gays.com was designed for members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as the world’s first LGBT social networking website that designed for real people with real names an real world connections. The site aims to build an authentic social environment that helps people maintain their relationships with people they actually know. Launched in May 2008, Gays.com is headquartered in Hong Kong with a development team spread between Shanghai, China and Bielefeld, Germany.

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Souter proves a gay rights surprise

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Deb Price

Souter proves a gay rights surprise

When David Souter was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1990, gay-rights groups quickly lined up to oppose him: Three years earlier, as a state judge he had signed onto an advisory opinion saying nothing prevented New Hampshire from banning gay adoption.

But once on the court, Souter stepped into the shoes of civil rights giant William Brennan and quietly grew into them. What a joyful surprise Souter’s nearly two-decade run turned out to be.

Using his intellectual gifts and good heart, Souter helped produce a warming trend, enabling the court to begin moving away from four decades of icy treatment of gay men and lesbians.

Thanks to Souter, the court turned a major corner in 1995, when a unanimous opinion that he wrote for the court finally used the respectful term “gay.”

Souter’s ruling also spoke respectfully of Massachusetts’ gay-rights law, igniting the hope that major breakthroughs would come soon.

The first–Romer v. Evans–came the very next year. Souter voted with the majority in ruling gay Americans have a right to equal protection of the laws. He also voted with the majority in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision, which in 2003 declared gay Americans have a right to sexual privacy.

In between, Souter wrote a gay-friendly dissent to the 2000 ruling allowing the Boy Scouts to ban gay scoutmasters. And, in a 1998 signal that the court was not undercutting Romer, Souter signed onto an unusual statement by Justice John Paul Stevens stressing that the court’s refusal to hear a challenge to a sweeping anti-gay amendment in Cincinnati “is not a ruling on the merits.”

Within his own chambers, as my co-author Joyce Murdoch and I documented in “Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court,” Souter reacted respectfully when one of his law clerks came out. Souter hired another clerk who was a gay-rights scholar.

Souter, appointed by a Republican president, added a parting gift: By choosing to retire when a gay-supportive Democrat will pick his successor, he likely ensured the court will continue its trend toward reading gay rights into the Constitution’s promises of equality.

Obama offered a hint at what Souter’s replacement may look like when he said two years ago that he’d appoint justices with the “empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young, teenaged mom … to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old.”

More recently, Obama vowed to “seek someone who understands that justice” affects whether people feel “welcome in their own nation.”

That kind of Souter replacement would maintain what’s now believed to be a 5-4 split in favor of basic gay rights. She — or he — will join the court’s progressive wing amid a sea change in public attitudes and legal rights for those of us who are gay.

Knowledge of that “real world” could prove helpful: Unless Congress finally addresses two pressing injustices, the court might hear challenges in the next few years to the bans on openly gay soldiers and on federal benefits for same-sex married couples, notes gay law scholar Arthur Leonard.

Souter’s replacement hopefully will feel a special kinship to him, as he did to Brennan.

Even when ruling against a specific gay group in 1995 — declaring that forcing organizers of Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade to let an Irish-American gay group participate would violate the First Amendment — Souter was careful not to suggest the court agreed with anti-gay prejudices.

Thank you, Justice Souter, for making gay Americans feel more welcome in our own nation.

dprice@detnews.com (202) 662-8736