 New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn headed a ceremony at City Hall titled, A Celebration of LGBT Pride – Marching Forward Together as the city that spawned the gay pride movement at Stonewall begins its PRIDE week festivities.
 The Master of Ceremonies for the evening was the “Queen of all Media”, the legendary Wendy Williams, who has always received love from the LGBT community and given it back (see Wendy's ceremony opening speech). Other highlights were an invocation given by the Rev. Jacqui Lewis, the Pledge of Allegiance by Lt. Dan Choi, a musical performance by 4-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald with the Brooklyn Pride Center and the Q-Wave (activist group dedicated to queer women and transgender/gender variant women of Asian descent) also being honored for their tireless work for the community.  “My life has gotten so much more magical since I’ve come out,” said Chely Wright, the country singer who has only been out for “five weeks” and who had told her story on Oprah. Wright then recalled her epiphany — and uttered the other memorable line of the night — that by staying in the closet, she was actually committing a hate crime against herself. She quickly lightened the mood with her half-joking admission that she’d been stalking Speaker Quinn for awhile before she came out, to the delight of all present (video below). Speaker Quinn concluded at the press conference, “The important thing to do is to keep moving forward, to be buoyed and affirmed by the people who are standing with you and marching with you.”  The packed house did, in fact, depart affirmed by those around them, and determined that the Jorge Steven López Mercados of the world haven’t given their lives in vain. We will march forward, together, carrying them with us into a brighter new day for all. ~ tS |
June 16, 2010
April 22, 2009
When I was Eleven ...
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When I was Eleven... © 2009 Taylor Siluwé
I wanted to be a scientist. While other boys played with sports, I played with bugs. Though my attempts at creating Bugzilla by injecting them with all sort of junk always failed, I never gave up. For me, creating something new and wonderful - like a fifty-foot Potato Beetle – was infinitely better than practicing getting little balls through little holes, or down field without breaking my glasses. The other boys thought I was weird and loved telling me so, hourly. Through all the getting suddenly shoved into the lockers, mocked for getting A’s without really trying, laughed at for doing anything more outgoing than just standing quietly in a corner, I never once thought of wrapping a rope around my neck and hanging myself. But then again, maybe if it were all the rage at the time, I would have. Maybe. ~
UPDATE: Anderson Cooper addresses Bullycide as prosecutors ponder criminal charges in the Jaheem Herrara case.
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April 12, 2009
The Bullycide & Same-Sex Marriage Apathy Connection
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I got this note recently in a same sex yahoo group:
Sadly, this is the attitude of many in the gay communtity. This issue reminds me of a line from the musical Funny Girl, the track Sadie, Sadie:
Barbra Streisand's character believed (as did all women then) that being married was the ultimate, being married meant something, it carried a powerful punch, it opened doors. So I agree that we have issues to worry about other than marriage equality, or, as I like to say, just equality -- because its really not about that "simple wedding band". For as long as they can deny us this basic right of human existence, and justify it for whatever reasons, it sends the unspoken message that:
By saying we don't deserve the right to [ fill in the blank ] shouts to the world that we're different, we're "less than", and opens the floodgate to discriminate, abuse, and even kill. That's unacceptable. That's why this seemingly unimportant issue is so very important.
Like Obama said, we have to be able to handle more than one thing at a time. And while we bicker over whether we should fight for this or that right, people, children, are dying. This heartbreaking story of an 11 year old who was bullied and called "gay" so much that he hung himself is becoming all too common. "Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hanged himself by tying an electrical cord around his neck that was fastened to a support beam in his home after enduring another day of being taunted at New Leadership Charter School." And yet, many of us STILL sit by while we are marginalized, and while our youth are tormented so that they hang themselves. It's truly sad what self-loathing homos will allow to be heaped upon their bowing and scraping heads. Thank God, I'll never be one of them. ~~
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April 02, 2009
...Whence Cometh Evil?
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Children are clean slates for the most part, 'til we dirty them up.
Hitler Youth In March 1933, before the onset of World War II, Hitler became chancellor of Germany and created this nationalistic youth group, with Nazi ideology and physical fitness as top priorities.
A young boy is pictured with a doll hanging from a noose at the home of deceased South Mississippi Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Jimmie Maxey during a memorial rally for Maxey on Aug. 10, 2002, in Petal, Miss. An adult member of the KKK had joked earlier with this child and other children about the importance of hanging blacks from the nearest tree when necessary.
All in the Family - KKK on the rise since Obama's election American photographer Anthony Karen spent over two years trying to get access to the Ku Klux Klan before being able to actually document them. His photos, published in The Invisible Empire: Ku Klux Klan (powerHouse Books 2009), show that the white supremacist group created over 140 years ago is still alive and well today. And even more so since the election of America's first black president, Karen tells us.
McKKK - "Start ‘em young, they said. This picture demands double takes; off the bat, you notice the fateful three letters on the little kids’ flag, and you’re thinking “oh shit kkk children”. Then you see the gun. Then you see how fat the kids are. While I suppose its comforting knowledge that down in kentucky, the future of the Klan is raised on McNuggets and Whoppers, making them slower, pictures like this make you scratch your head."
And last but not least, the pic which inspired this montage of ignorance, Nigeria. Where gay activists are up in arms over the proposed bill outlawing Same Gender Marriage. The bill defines SGM as any gay couple living together. Anyone who "witnesses, abet and aids the solemnization" of a same gender marriage would face five years in prison, or a fine. And a child shall lead them -- after being spoon-fed choice bits of dogma from church leaders more ignorant than the last, of course. When will we learn there is no salvation in those Holy books, just death. Hasn't it always been that way? Am I the only one with a memory? Every atrocity throughout history, in someone's mind, was mandated by God. Wake up people, and ask yourself -- so, whence cometh evil again? In case you forgot what it looks like, see below. ~~
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March 28, 2009
Milk epiphanies ...
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I finally, at long last, got to see Sean Penn and James Franco in Milk last night. These are some of the things that became clear to me, feel free to add to this brief list:
1. How a celebrity, especially a black one, could remain in the closet after seeing Milk is beyond me. All the usual arguments echo hollow, and weak. Pick an argument, shout it out loud, and see how feeble it sounds when verbalized. I realize now that my stance for full marriage equality as opposed to the 2nd class status of Civil Unions has been right all along.
2. I'm a Know-It-All who doesn't know as much as he thinks. Yeah. I've always said that I know all their is to know about Harvey Milk and that time in our queer nation but I couldn't have been more wrong. I'm ashamed I waited this long to see this amazing film, one made at a time when its needed the most, a time that actually mirrors Milks fight for our most basic rights. Thirty years later, Anita Bryant's holier-than-thou contingent is just as determined that we return to the closets of our past -- and like Anita they STILL, ironically, love us (but now, throwing shoes is even funnier).
3. The Rainbow Flag sprang from Harvey and this movement. A know-it-all like myself should have uh, known, yet I was blissfully ignorant. Like many modern day homos, I didn't realize we had our own gay Betsy Ross (Gilbert Baker) stitching the very first one 'cause we're a nation and need a flag. Now that flag drapes the world. Almost breaks my heart that I didn't know how that came about.
4. I'm in love with James Franco. Well, more in love than I already was. That's really no epiphany. My heart has had a hard-on for Franco since he played James Dean with amazing accuracy. Now, I'm all his. Just say the word Franco, and I'm so there. Here he is as Dean filming Giant. |